China's naval and coast guard presence around Taiwan has now set new records for three consecutive months, and the numbers show no sign of slowing down. This surge in activity follows Tokyo and Manila's announcement in late May that they would begin talks over maritime boundaries in waters east of Taiwan, an area Beijing has been steadily moving into ever since. Taiwan's defence ministry tracked mainland coastguard, survey, and other official vessels a total of 118 times within just the first 24 days of August alone. That already surpasses July's total of 117 sightings, which itself had topped June's count of 111. To put that in perspective, these three months represent the highest activity levels recorded since Taiwan first began publishing this kind of detection data back in July 2024. Before this streak started in June, the previous high point for mainland government ship activity in a single month was just 50, recorded in April 2025, according to a report from South China Morning Post. AMTI relied on commercial ship tracking data to map out where this activity has been concentrated. Their findings show that between June and August, most of the movement centered on waters where Chinese, Japanese, and Philippine maritime claims all overlap with each other. That's a notable change from earlier in the year. Between January and late May, AMTI found almost no comparable activity in that same stretch of ocean. The scale of these operations became especially clear in the days right after Japan and the Philippines made their announcement. According to AMTI, Chinese law enforcement vessels hailed 198 commercial ships passing through the area, asking for details on their ports of call and crew information. Instead, the report raises the possibility that Beijing sees this moment as an opportunity to build what it called a "semi-permanent presence" in the region, one that could allow China to exercise some degree of jurisdiction over waters east of Taiwan going forward. Sagar is a journalist with an interest primarily in geopolitics and American domestic politics. Before joining Times Now, he wrote for Republic and Sw... View More