Seethe more, I'm getting a chubby
China Expands Patrols of Taiwan’s Pacific Coast, Raising Maritime Tensions
By Andreo Calonzo Bloomberg September 7, 2026
Sep 7, 2026 (Bloomberg) –For decades, China’s maritime pressure on Taiwan centered on the major shipping strait separating the two neighbors. Now, Beijing is piling unprecedented pressure on its Pacific coast — a vital lifeline with US allies.
China has deployed on average two Coast Guard cutters per month east of Taiwan since June, after Japan and the Philippines announced plans to define their overlapping maritime border in the region. The appearance of those vessels marks the first time such patrols have been reported in the area in data going back to January 2025.
Patrols in these waters covered a vast area of 27,100 square nautical miles — more than twice the size of Taiwan — based on Bloomberg calculations using ship-tracking data. Ships stayed 30 nautical miles from the island’s eastern coast, remaining outside Taiwan-claimed waters.
Controlling the east would become essential to enforcing an effective blockade of Taiwan during a Chinese invasion of the island. Disrupting shipping off the Pacific coast would have global implications for commodities. Vessels ferrying oil, gas, iron ore and agricultural products made 527 transits through the east in June, exceeding the 420 through the generally busier Taiwan Strait, according to MarineTraffic data.
“If the Taiwan Strait is the front door, the eastern waters have often been treated as the back door,” said Jing Ge, instructor at Florida International University’s politics and international relations department. “Beijing wants to demonstrate this back door is no longer uncontested.”
While the Taiwan Strait handles almost half the world’s container fleet, the island’s eastern coast holds strategic importance by forming a maritime link with the Philippines and wider Pacific. Sea lanes in the area lead to key ports and military facilities, where the US and its regional allies could deliver supplies, while its deeper waters are ideal for submarines and undersea surveillance.
China’s Coast Guard has described such deployments as “routine law-enforcement” patrols, and has pledged to strengthen patrols to safeguard Beijing’s maritime rights. China has in the past also conducted military drills, including in this area, to rehearse encircling Taiwan, the self-governed island the Communist Party considers its own despite never having ruled it.
China’s activity is an attempt to “leverage ‘law enforcement patrols’ to establish a new normal for its maritime presence in the waters east of Taiwan,” the Taiwan Coast Guard Administration said in an email. Vessels have been dispatched in a timely manner in response, it added.
The US has called China’s actions “deeply destabilizing.” Despite that opposition, China’s Coast Guard announced last week it had deployed a new set of vessels east of Taiwan, sustaining its presence in the area.
Sea Boundaries
The role of China’s Coast Guard has moved beyond traditional law enforcement in recent years. That was laid bare by the introduction of a Coast Guard Law in 2021, which expanded the agency’s reach by authorizing it to “take all necessary measures, including the use of weapons” to protect what Beijing defines as China’s sovereignty.
Its new operations around Taiwan started on June 1, when China’s Coast Guard deployed two large patrol cutters — the 5,000-ton Daishan and the 3,000-ton Baita — to waters east of the island. Those vessels were previously used around the East China Sea, including the Japanese-controlled Senkaku islands, which China also claims and calls the Diaoyus.
Days earlier, Japan and the Philippines had announced plans to start negotiations to delimit their sea boundaries, as part of broader efforts from the two US allies to deepen their partnership. China opposed the talks, saying they’d interfered with its own maritime claims in that region.
“Beijing is using the joint statement issued by Japan and the Philippines as a pretext for greatly expanding its presence in these waters,” said Ryan Martinson, assistant professor at the China Maritime Studies Institute of the US Naval War College.
Later in June, China sent larger law enforcement ships, the 10,000-ton Haixun 09 and the 6,600-ton Haixun 06, to circle Taiwan. That rare multi-agency operation included China’s largest deep-sea survey ship and a rescue vessel.
During their five-day voyage, the vessels for the first time questioned foreign commercial ships passing along Taiwan’s Pacific coast. According to Chinese state media, the ships also “inspected” 198 passing vessels during the mission to reinforce traffic-control capabilities. It was unclear what the report meant by “inspected.”
“If those interactions become routine, the next question is whether Chinese authorities begin to request more information,’ said Zack Liao, political risk analyst at UK-based think tank China Strategic Risks Institute. “After that, whether they issue navigational instructions.”
US-based independent monitor Armed Conflict Location & Event Data has separately reported “a significant increase in research vessels operating at unusually slow speeds east of Taiwan” near undersea communications infrastructure.
China kept up the pressure by sending two more Coast Guard cutters to relieve the Daishan and Baita after a month in the area. That was described by a US congressional commission as Beijing’s way to establish a continuous presence.
“Using the CCG rather than the PLA Navy avoids military confrontations and allows Beijing to portray these activities as law enforcement while establishing the persistent presence necessary for a future blockade,” said the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
As the activity ramped up, Taiwan held military exercises in mid-July on Orchid and Green Islands, off its southeastern coast, for the first time in three decades. Weeks later, China staged passing exercises with Indonesia in the area, the first time Beijing has announced training with another country in the eastern waters.
China’s push to establish a presence east of Taiwan ultimately puts pressure on the US to respond, analysts say.
“What Beijing is testing east of Taiwan is whether it can gradually rewrite expectations about who governs navigation and maritime order in the Western Pacific,” said the China Strategic Risks Institute’s Liao. “That means the response should also be international.”
https://gcaptain.com/china-expands-patrols-of-taiwans-pacific-coast-raising-maritime-tensions/
Iran Says to Announce New Restricted Zone in the Gulf in the Coming Days
By Yasmine Ghania and Hatem Maher Reuters September 7, 2026
DUBAI, Sept 7 (Reuters) – Iran said it will announce a new restricted zone in the Gulf in the coming days, along with maps of a new shipping corridor through the Strait of Hormuz, as a weekend exchange of strikes on shipping sent oil prices higher on Monday.
The new restricted zone will begin from where the U.S. blockade of Iran begins and extend into areas of the Gulf, Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said on Sunday in an interview with state TV.
Few details were provided on the plan, but Rezaei said any ship entering the new zone would be added to a sanctions list.
In addition, maps detailing passage routes for the Strait of Hormuz, a vital energy conduit largely closed to tanker traffic, would also be approved soon, Rezaei said.
“The maps of a new international corridor which lies in Iranian and Omani waters and in which Iran will have management have been agreed and should be signed in the coming days,” he said.
“We will only commit to the Strait of Hormuz being open when they (the Americans) stop the sabotage, threats and attacks on Iran,” Rezaei added.
Six months after U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran sparked the war, the conflict appears to be at a stalemate. A preliminary ceasefire accord reached in June has unraveled, and little progress has been made in diplomatic efforts to get the peace process back on track.
After a pause in military action for much of August, tit-for-tat strikes have resumed. U.S. forces struck three Iranian oil tankers on Saturday, U.S. Central Command said, including one off Kharg Island, Iran’s key oil export hub, following attacks by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on U.S. warships in the region.
Tehran has shown it retains the capability to attack U.S. interests in neighboring countries and to shut down oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of global oil supplies flowed prior to the conflict.
An average of 10 commodity ships transited the Strait per day in the past 10 days, the lowest since May, according to shipping data on Monday. That helped oil prices extend last week’s big gains, with Brent crude up 0.8% above $97 a barrel.
SANCTIONS, OIL BLOCKADE SQUEEZE ECONOMY
Iran has said it will step up efforts to tackle problems created by U.S. sanctions that are crippling its economy.
However, the U.S. campaign to throttle Iran’s economy by blockading its oil exports and stopping sanctions evasion is growing increasingly difficult to withstand, three senior Iranian sources have said.
Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said on Sunday that the U.S. should understand that the rules of the game have changed “before it is too late.”
“From now on, any attack against Iran’s interests and security will receive a faster, heavier and more painful response,” he said in a speech published on his Telegram channel.
Qalibaf said that alongside the military front, Iran’s main battle was now over production and people’s livelihoods.
He cited sharp currency fluctuations, inflation, unemployment and market management as major challenges, adding Iranians could tolerate hardship but not mismanagement or inaction and expected the government to act quickly.
Iran’s Economy Minister Ali Madanizadeh said Tehran planned to respond to U.S. economic pressure with reforms and rejected the notion that sanctions would cause it to change course, according to state media on Sunday.
“They speak of economic pressure and isolation, of breaking off financial ties and they think that by pressuring the economy of a country they can change the decisions of its people,” Madanizadeh said.
“I have to clarify one point: The responsibility of reforming Iran’s economy is with its government and people, not with the U.S. Treasury.”
KHARG ISLAND HIT 550 TIMES IN PRIOR MONTHS, IRAN SAYS
Iran is the third-largest producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and exported 90% of its crude via its Kharg Island export hub before the war. Flows have been disrupted since a U.S. blockade of Iranian oil exports began in mid-April.
U.S. Central Command said on X that as of Sunday it had redirected 92 commercial vessels, disabled three and boarded two to ensure strict compliance with its blockade.
On August 31, U.S. President Donald Trump issued a one-line social media post accompanied by an AI-generated video depicting Kharg Island being “blown to smithereens.” Iranian authorities have vowed a strong response if Kharg is attacked.
In an interview aired on state TV on Sunday, Iran’s Oil Minister Mohsen Paknejad said the island had been hit around 550 times in previous months but continued to operate.
Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has pushed up fuel prices, weighing on Trump’s popularity as his Republican Party heads into elections in November when control of Congress is at stake.
However, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said oil was getting through the waterway.
“Our transits through the Strait are averaging over 9 million barrels a day now, and with the access pipelines that go around the strait, we’re probably two-thirds or more of pre-conflict flows. So Iranians are still causing trouble, but the United States Navy is winning that battle,” he told CNN.
https://gcaptain.com/iran-says-to-announce-new-restricted-zone-in-the-gulf-in-the-coming-days/
>Well, every Canadian is pretty much against America now
Since I already see Alberta as an independent nation, how are they doing today?
>Maybe enticing Canada to develop a nuclear weapon so Hegseth can say we are never allowed to obtain a nuke and therefore send F-35s to blow up CN Tower
They don't have the money or the talent for a nuke but leave the tower up to keep an eye on the buildings once they are abandoned
For Anon Amusement
The funniest BACKFIRE in internet history
The Pleb Reporter 19 hours ago Run Time 18:39
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rQrCgFPf30