Why the Pacific Islands Forum Should Watch Taiwan’s East Coast

Ahead of the 55th Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), scheduled to take place August 30 to September 4 in Palau, Pacific Island leaders failed to reach consensus on a joint statement criticizing China’s submarine-based ballistic missile testing in the Pacific. The split reflects intensifying great-power competition and divergent threat perceptions between external powers and Pacific governments. Yet China’s growing military activities have clearly heightened concerns among forum members. 

Besides missile testing, another less visible source of pressure lies in the growing normalization of Chinese naval and coast guard activity in the waters east of Taiwan, a development the PIF has yet to fully connect to its own maritime interests. This maritime gateway east of Taiwan leads directly into the exclusive economic zones that the forum seeks to protect and deserves greater attention from Pacific Island states. 

Rather than a distant flashpoint, the waters east of Taiwan form the northern hinge of the same maritime arc that runs through Micronesia and Melanesia, linked by overlapping sea lines of communication and interconnected ocean current systems. This deep-water gateway to the Blue Pacific is increasingly being trespassed and pressured by Chinese government vessels.

Beijing appears to be using unresolved maritime boundary negotiations involving Japan and the Philippines as justification for expanding coast guard patrols and deploying more research and survey vessels east of Taiwan. Many of these platforms are converted former naval vessels, underscoring the increasingly blurred line between maritime law enforcement and strategic power projection. By increasing the frequency and persistence of deployments along Taiwan’s Pacific coast, Beijing appears to be seeking to normalize a sustained Chinese maritime security presence in the Blue Pacific waters. 

This expansion is unfolding alongside a broader rise in Chinese naval activity in the Western Pacific. Since 2025, the Liaoning and Shandong carrier strike groups have conducted operations and flight exercises beyond the first island chain. With China’s third aircraft carrier, the Fujian, reaching full operational capability, Beijing is moving closer to sustaining a regular carrier presence in the Western Pacific.

The growing presence of coast guard, research, survey, and naval vessels east of Taiwan suggests that China is gradually extending its maritime operating space from the Taiwan Strait into Taiwan’s Pacific approaches.

For Pacific Island countries, this expanding presence should not be viewed simply as an extension of cross-strait tensions. It could increase uncertainty along commercial shipping routes, raise maritime insurance premiums, lengthen transit times, and complicate the movement of energy, food, and other essential imports through the corridor linking Northeast Asia with Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and the wider Pacific.  

Even without an armed conflict, heightened tensions or more frequent military exercises could generate delays, rerouting, and higher transportation costs for states that are highly dependent on this maritime corridor. China’s expanding naval reach east of Taiwan therefore has implications well beyond Taiwan, intersecting directly with the maritime trade routes and supply chains on which Pacific Island countries depend.

The PIF’s diplomatic motto of being “friends to all and enemies to none” should not be mistaken for strategic insulation, particularly as the maritime status quo east of Taiwan is being reshaped by China’s growing presence and expanding military activity. In a worst-case Taiwan contingency, Beijing could seek to push through the Taiwan–Philippines–Melanesia corridor and constrain U.S. and allied access to the Western Pacific, regardless of whether any PIF member is involved in the conflict. 

For Pacific Island states, preserving free, open, and non-militarized sea lines of communication across the Western Pacific is therefore a vital interest and it should be articulated clearly before shifts in the regional balance of power become more difficult to reverse. The PIF’s “Ocean of Peace” framing should recognize the waters east of Taiwan as part of the same interconnected Pacific maritime space, rather than a separate area.

The Blue Pacific is a Pacific-led regional identity, not a corridor encompassing Taiwan’s east coast, and the argument here is not to redefine that identity. Rather, it is to recognize that the waters east of Taiwan sit within a strategically integrated maritime space stretching from Northeast Asia, through Micronesia and Melanesia, to Polynesia, where developments at one end can directly affect access, connectivity, and security at the other. Recognizing this interdependence is a matter of practical maritime awareness, not a request that Pacific states reframe their own identity or take sides in cross-strait politics.

What is at stake is neither alignment with one great power against another nor a choice between alignment and non-alignment. The more fundamental interest is preserving a maritime space in which all actors can navigate freely and maintain economic and commercial access without coercion, intimidation, or militarization.

Even if PIF members cannot agree on specific issues, such as China’s ballistic missile testing, they should still be able to forge a broader agreement on preserving a free, open, peaceful, and resilient Blue Pacific maritime corridor. That means the Ocean of Peace framework should be able to cover the waters east of Taiwan as a critical component of the broader Blue Pacific maritime domain. The forum could extend information sharing on vessel movements and coast guard activity to this corridor, providing Pacific Island states earlier warning of disruptions to the shipping lanes their economies depend on. 

Such an arrangement could provide a common foundation for the PIF to work with willing Pacific partners on maritime domain awareness, infrastructure resilience, and the security of regional sea lines of communication. Rather than requiring consensus on the behavior of any particular major power, this approach would anchor cooperation in a shared interest in an integrated Pacific maritime space that remains open, accessible, and resilient to coercion and disruption.