Thousands of Chinese boats mass at sea, raising questions

Thousands of Chinese fishing boats are gathering in geometric formations in the East China Sea in coordinated actions that experts believe are part of Beijing’s preparations for a potential regional crisis or conflict.

Watching ship tracking data on Christmas Day, Jason Wang was able to tell that something “unusual” was afoot as fishing boats flocked toward two parallel inverted Ls, each about 400 kilometers (about 250 miles) long.

Wang could spot about 2,000 fishing boats among the thousands of ships plying the busy waterways through automatic identification systems (AIS), a GPS-type signal used by commercial vessels to avoid collisions.

The ships, as close as 500 meters (1,640 feet) apart, held their positions in the high winds for about 30 hours and then suddenly dispersed.

“Something didn’t seem right to me because you very rarely see straight lines in nature,” said Wang, chief operating officer of ingeniSPACE, which analyzes satellite images and ship signal data.

“We saw two, 300, even a thousand (Chinese fishing boats gathering), but I thought anything over a thousand was unusual.”

Maritime and military experts told AFP that the mass gathering of Chinese fishing boats about 300 kilometers northeast of Taiwan on December 25 was on a scale they had never seen before.

Another incident detected in early January involved nearly 1,000 Chinese fishing vessels clustered in an irregular rectangle about 400 kilometers long in the same region of the East China Sea for more than a day.

Hundreds of these ships were also detected in the December 25 incident, Wang told AFP in an interview in Taipei.

Last week, about 1,200 boats gathered in two parallel lines east of the January and December events and held positions for about 30 hours, Wang said.

China’s massive fishing fleet operates in the Yellow Sea, East China Sea and South China Sea, competing with fishermen from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines.

While there is debate as to why so many Chinese fishing boats are clustered in geometric formations offshore, experts broadly agree that they are not there to fish.

Some experts have said the only plausible explanation is that China is testing its ability to line up large numbers of fishing vessels that could potentially be deployed in military operations such as a blockade or occupation of Taiwan or a crisis with Japan.

Gregory Poling, director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said of the Dec. 25 event: “I have never seen such a large number of Chinese fishing boats anywhere other than the port.”

Jennifer Parker, a former Australian naval officer, said the maneuvers were a “military-lens demonstration” that showed viewers that the boats had the ability to coordinate their movements.

“I’ve sailed all over the world and I’ve never seen fishermen operating so close together and with this degree of concentration,” said Parker, who is now a Senior Associate at the Australian National University’s National Security College.

“They’re definitely not fishing.”

Global Fishing Watch chief scientist David Kroodsma said the Chinese fishing fleet was “highly coordinated” and it was possible that ships were ordered not to fish in a particular area.

“A lot of times when you see rows of boats it’s because they’re right across a border where they’re not allowed to be. That’s what you see a lot of the time in this area,” Kroodsma said.

“If you look across the year, you’ll see many, many examples in different time periods where it’s clear there’s a line they shouldn’t be crossing. We don’t know why.”

– ‘State operation’ –

AFP’s reporting on this story included analysis of AIS data and nighttime satellite imagery, as well as interviews with experts from ingeniSPACE, Starboard Maritime Intelligence, CSIS and Global Fishing Watch, who also observe the December and January formations.

Unseenlabs, a French company specializing in maritime surveillance, confirmed AFP’s December 25 data, calling the concentration on ships “surprising and unusual.”

Experts were confident that the majority of the ships were real and not fake; This means that AIS data is manipulated to give misleading information about a ship’s location or identity.

“We have enough corroborating data to confirm that these ships are clearly there,” Poling said.

Mark Douglas, a former New Zealand naval officer and now a marine domain analyst at Starboard, said he had examined fishing patterns in the same area over the previous two years as part of efforts to verify the data.

“The behavior was never the same as this,” Douglas said. “During other periods of adverse weather conditions, ships returned to port rather than piling up offshore in such formations.”

“I don’t know why … but it seems certain that these ships were instructed that this is what they were supposed to do,” Douglas said.

Thomas Shugart, a former U.S. Navy submarine warfare officer and now Associate Senior Fellow at the Defense Program at the Center for a New American Security, said the number of ships involved indicates a “government operation.”

“To my knowledge, there is no commercial organization that controls this many fishing boats,” Shugart said.

– ‘Maritime militia’ –

The Chinese navy ranks first in the world in terms of the number of warships and submarines on the Global Firepower list.

Experts say Beijing is also using its massive civilian fleet of fishing boats, ferries and cargo ships as part of its preparations for a regional crisis or conflict, including in Taiwan.

China has threatened to use force if necessary to seize Taiwan, which it claims is part of its territory, and US officials have flagged 2027 as a possible timeline for an attack.

In its 2025 report to Congress on China’s military power, the US Department of Defense said: “The PLA continues to make steady progress toward its 2027 goals” and “China expects to fight and win the war against Taiwan by the end of that year.”

Beijing has stepped up military pressure on Taiwan in recent years, deploying warplanes and warships around the island almost daily.

China has also conducted several large-scale exercises around Taiwan, often described as rehearsals for blockading and seizing the region.

Civilian ships are “absolutely central” to China’s military planning for an operation against Taiwan, Shugart said.

The Chinese navy does not have enough landing craft to provide the troops and equipment it would need to make an invasion of Taiwan possible.

“I don’t think they could invade Taiwan in the absence of this dual-purpose civilian-military naval mass,” Shugart said. “With that it turns into ‘maybe they can’.”

Some experts said many of the fishing boats that participated in the mass events in December and January were probably part of China’s maritime militia.

The maritime militia consists of fishing boats trained to support the military, and the fleet is used to defend China’s territorial claims, including the South China Sea, where they flock to disputed reefs.

Poling said AIS data showed that the “vast majority” of ships picked up in the East China Sea came from the eastern province of Zhejiang, where several maritime militia ports are located.

“Like ground-based militias in China, they are called up for reserve service from time to time,” Poling said.

“My guess is that this was an effort to see if the militia could be assembled. These are civilians, these are fishermen, not professional militias in the South China Sea,” he said.

Maritime militias could have “a variety of roles” in a military operation, such as harassing warships or acting as decoys for missiles fired by opposing forces, Parker said, but their presence could also interfere with China’s ability to strike its own targets.

“It is clear that China’s operational planning in the South China Sea and around Taiwan includes maritime militias as force multipliers,” he said.

“It is reasonable to assume that this would also be the case in the event of a military crisis with Japan.”

– Threats of retaliation –

Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Jay Tarriela said the maritime militia’s role in the South China Sea has expanded beyond the reefs to assisting the Chinese coast guard in “blocking and harassing” Philippine fishing boats and even using water cannons against Filipino fishermen.

“They no longer have secret roles,” Tarriela said.

“They are essentially part of the (Chinese) government, a fleet, advancing their illegal interests in the South China Sea.”

Beijing has not publicly commented on the fishing boat formations in the East China Sea.

Japan’s coast guard declined to comment when contacted by AFP. Tokyo has been locked in a deepening row with Beijing after Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi suggested Japan would intervene militarily if China tried to take Taiwan by force.

It is “really difficult” to respond to China’s gray zone activities – coercive actions for which war action falls short – or military operations in the region, a diplomat told AFP on condition of anonymity.

“China often threatens or hints at retaliation, which is often vague,” the diplomat said.

Experts said the fishing boat maneuvers were consistent with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s overall goal of preparing the military to potentially seize Taiwan.

“I can’t tell you whether Xi Jinping will decide whether or not to pull the trigger,” Shugart said.

“But as an analyst, it seems certain that the PLA has developed the capabilities necessary to credibly threaten an invasion in 2027, as directed.”

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