Taiwan Warns China's Salami-Slicing Expansion to Persist
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- Lii Wen, deputy secretary-general of Taiwan's National Security Council, warned on July 8 that China's 'authoritarian expansionism' in regional waters will persist if the world fails to voice concerns or act.
- Lii described Beijing's approach as 'incremental salami-slicing,' using military, coast guard, research, and maritime militia vessels to press claims and attempt to 'transform international waterways into internal waters.'
- Ocean Affairs Minister Kuan Bi-ling told the same international forum that Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines face the 'same pattern of actions' deliberately controlled to remain below the threshold of conventional warfare.
- Kuan cautioned that when such actions accumulate, 'it may create an entirely new status quo' without any single incident rising to the level of open conflict.
- Japanese and Chinese coast guard ships faced off on July 7 near disputed islands claimed as the Senkaku by Japan and the Diaoyu by China, with each side claiming it drove out the other's vessels from its territorial waters.
Why it matters: Two senior Taiwanese officials publicly named Japan and the Philippines as facing the identical maritime pressure campaign, turning Taiwan's warning into a three-country framing rather than a solo complaint. The July 7 Senkaku/Diaoyu coast guard faceoff provides the freshest evidence of that shared exposure — a concrete escalation that landed the day before the warnings were delivered, making the call for international pushback an immediate ask rather than a theoretical one.
