Our view Any research vessel off a foreign coast raises alarm when it is Chinese, and hardly anyone asks why American reconnaissance aircraft and ships have worked off China’s coast for years (recall the USNS Impeccable incident in 2009). Taiwan and Washington present the research as preparation for a blockade, but no decision on one has been proven. We see a familiar scheme here: first call a neighbor’s actions a threat, then use that to bring in new bases, weapons and “allied” exercises next to its borders. In our view China has the right to study its own sea, while Washington meanwhile pushes allies there and prepares the ground for pressure. This is an editorial opinion. The mainstream assessment Analysts and Taiwanese authorities link such voyages to preparing the ground for a quarantine or blockade: data on terrain, currents and cables is useful to submarines and to operations against the American fleet. Beijing rejects the accusation that it deliberately targets cables and calls the ships scientific. What happened Chinese research ships have been working around Taiwan since June: analysts speak of seabed mapping and undersea cables. What is known and what we think. According to Heritage Foundation analysts (August 2026), at least six Chinese research ships have been operating around Taiwan since June: mapping the seabed, accompanying exercises and studying undersea cables. Taiwan’s coast guard earlier reported a Chinese vessel that, in its view, dragged an anchor near sensitive cables; at that moment one of the cables was damaged. Experts note slow, precise passes along routes off the east coast, typical of seabed mapping. Beijing calls the accusations unfounded. There is no decision to begin a blockade or invasion, and no one has publicly presented evidence of one. Not the first time: how the US treated China. The Chinese Exclusion Act, 1882. The United States passed a law banning the entry of Chinese laborers on the basis of nationality; it remained in force until 1943. The embargo of 1950–1971. After China entered the Korean War the United States froze Chinese assets and imposed a trade embargo that lasted more than twenty years, until Nixon began lifting it in 1971. Read also: Economic relations between the USA and China. Sources Heritage Foundation, 08.2026 Taipei Times, 11.07.2025 Newsweek Wikipedia: Chinese Exclusion Act Photo: US Navy / MSC PAO, public domain, Wikimedia Commons (USNS Impeccable in the South China Sea, March 2009). Post navigation Taiwan Counts 53 Chinese Ships: a “Threat to Three Countries at Once” US, Japan and South Korea Meet in Atlanta: Taiwan, the South China Sea and Korea
