At first light, nothing appears unusual in the waters of the East China Sea: tightly packed fishing boats, dim lights flickering across the surface, and the slow rhythm of what seems like an ordinary maritime routine. But on satellite monitoring screens, the tranquil image dissolves. These are not merely fishing vessels searching for a catch. They move with the discipline of a military formation — like a navy stripped of its uniform.
Who are these men at sea? Fishermen pursuing a livelihood, or part of an unofficial maritime force operating in the shadows of international law?
Far from the noise of capitals and traditional battle maps, China has spent more than a decade quietly constructing one of the most ambitious geopolitical projects of the modern era. Unlike conventional naval expansion built around aircraft carriers and destroyers, Beijing’s strategy relies on wooden fishing boats, buried coral reefs, and civilian militias operating in the murky space between peace and war.
Western analysts have dubbed the project the “Great Maritime Wall of China” — sometimes the “Great Wall of Sand.” Behind the metaphor lies a sprawling network of artificial islands, military outposts, semi-militarized fishing fleets, and advanced surveillance systems designed to wage what experts describe as “gray-zone warfare”: reshaping Asia’s maritime balance of power without triggering open conflict.
At the center of that strategy is one of the world’s most opaque maritime forces: China’s maritime militia.
In late 2025, maritime tracking systems began detecting unusual activity in the East China Sea. Hundreds of ostensibly civilian vessels maneuvered in tightly coordinated formations with little resemblance to normal fishing activity. They carried no military insignia and operated without public orders, yet their movements appeared anything but random.
By reconstructing data from Automatic Identification Systems (AIS), Maritime Mobile Service Identity (MMSI) records, and satellite imagery, a striking pattern emerged.
Since December 2025, investigators tracked hundreds — and later thousands — of Chinese vessels forming nearly perfect straight-line formations across open waters. There were no signs of conventional fishing patterns, trawling routes, or the chaotic movements typical of large-scale fishing seasons. Instead, the formations repeated with military-like precision.
Between Dec. 24 and Dec. 27, 2025 alone, investigators identified 1,862 vessels operating in a large maritime formation near Japan’s maritime boundary.
Less than two weeks later, a second formation involving 1,469 vessels appeared, followed by a third in March 2026 comprising 841 vessels.
The most striking detail was not the scale of the fleets, but the repetition. Maritime identification records showed that 985 vessels participated in more than one formation, suggesting sustained operational coordination under a centralized command structure.
To understand the roots of these operations, analysts trace the story back more than a decade.
In 2013, giant Chinese dredging ships began operating quietly atop submerged coral reefs in the South China Sea. Within a few years, according to documented intelligence assessments, those reefs had been transformed into artificial islands equipped with airstrips, naval ports, radar systems, and missile launch platforms.
In an interview conducted for this investigation, Gregory Poling, a maritime security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the term “Great Wall of Sand” was originally coined by former U.S. Admiral Harry Harris, who led U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. “China constructed thousands of acres of artificial land on these tiny coral reefs in the South China Sea. And over the course of a couple of years, turned them into air and naval bases, which has allowed China to project power hundreds of miles south of its coast in a way it never could before,” poling said.
Intelligence reports and academic research point to the existence of a shadowy paramilitary force known as the People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia (PAFMM), a maritime militia structurally linked to both the Chinese military and coast guard.
The South China Sea sits at the center of one of the world’s most critical maritime corridors, carrying trillions of dollars in annual trade and containing vast reserves of oil, natural gas, and fisheries.
But the geopolitical dispute lies in competing territorial claims involving the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Taiwan, and China. Beijing insists that most of the sea falls within its so-called “Nine-Dash Line,” a unilateral demarcation claiming historic rights over the region. In 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague rejected China’s claims, but Beijing ignored the ruling and continued enforcing its own maritime reality.
At sea, the vessels appear to be ordinary fishing boats. Their crews dress like fishermen and drift slowly through disputed waters. But many, according to Poling, do little or no fishing at all.
“China has the world’s largest militia, so irregular military service. And that’s— that dates all the way back to Mao Zedong and his concept of People’s Army,” Poling said, describing vessels that appear civilian while carrying out state-directed missions.
“There is a professional component of that. These fishermen who never ever fish. The only thing they do is militia work, and that accounts for several hundred boats. Now, most of what they do is they just get in the way. They complicate activities and decisions of China’s southeast Asian neighbors. They also enhance China’s surveillance capabilities by reporting back to the Chinese Navy,” he added. “And they exist not only in the South China Sea. There are also militia units in the East China Sea, and that would be focused on the Taiwan contingency. And what exactly they would do in a Taiwan contingency is something that U.S. and Taiwanese planners spend a lot of time thinking,” he highlighted.
The strategy gives China leverage below the threshold of war. The ships are not formally military assets, yet they serve security and political objectives. That, analysts say, is the essence of gray-zone warfare: using civilian or quasi-civilian tools to impose facts on the ground without direct military confrontation.
The investigation also analyzed AIS vessel tracking data, MMSI identifiers, and open-source tracking information from Global Fishing Watch to examine vessels linked to three suspicious maritime formations.
Researchers reviewed more than 100 ships and identified highly organized naming patterns that appeared inconsistent with the randomness typical of independent fishing fleets. Many vessels shared recurring prefixes, including “Zhe,” a reference to Zhejiang province on China’s east coast, and “Min,” associated with Fujian province on China’s southeast coast.
Cross-referencing MMSI records with regional Chinese registries revealed broader details involving vessel ownership, government subsidies, licensing structures, and hidden logistical networks.
Beijing officially denies using fishing fleets for military or sovereignty operations. But local government subsidy records reviewed during the investigation tell a different story.
In a random sample of suspected vessels, 88 out of 114 ships were officially listed in local financial support registries, receiving tens of thousands of dollars annually for fuel subsidies, equipment upgrades, maritime transport, and operational expansion.
More significant than the financial backing is the legal framework underpinning it. China’s National Defense Mobilization Law allows authorities to requisition civilian vessels for national defense purposes during emergencies, effectively giving Beijing a ready-made mechanism to transform commercial fishing fleets into naval support assets.
The investigation also uncovered official Chinese state media reports honoring some of these vessels and their captains for participating in what authorities described as “heroic maritime rescue operations.” Among the highlighted ships were Zhedaiyu 11492 and Zheyuyu 82085, whose captains reportedly received “First-Class Merit” awards.
But comparisons between the timelines of those reported rescue missions and AIS tracking data revealed discrepancies difficult to explain.
In one case, a vessel’s AIS signal had disappeared months before the officially reported rescue operation. In another, tracking data showed a ship docked in port at the exact time it was allegedly conducting a rescue mission at sea.
While AIS systems can be manually disabled or malfunction, international maritime safety regulations require them to remain active. The discrepancies may not amount to definitive proof of military operations, but they deepen suspicions surrounding the true nature of these fleets.
The investigation also identified large logistical support vessels embedded within the formations, many bearing the suffix “Yun.” These ships were not fishing. Instead, they moved systematically between fleets carrying fuel, food, and supplies.
Researchers identified 14 supply vessels through AIS data — a logistical capability that would allow massive fleets to remain at sea for days or weeks at a time, a hallmark of organized naval operations rather than traditional fishing activity.
Fishing Vessel Activity Tracking
| Type | Vessel Name | MMSI | Last Broadcast | Fishing Hours |
|---|
Poling argues that the ultimate goal of China’s artificial islands and maritime militias extends beyond conventional military power into what he calls “sensor dominance.”
China can see and hear everything that moves on or above the South China Sea. The Americans cannot. It means that Chinese missiles launched from the Chinese mainland or from Chinese Navy ships can strike anything that moves on or above the South China Sea. And that radically changes the way that the U.S. government would have to think about responses to a crisis involving the Philippines or Taiwan,” Poling stated.
According to Poling, the islands are equipped with long-range radar systems, advanced satellite communications, over-the-horizon radar technology, and likely underwater sonar arrays. Together, they provide Beijing with unprecedented maritime surveillance and targeting capabilities.
Military analysts increasingly warn of a potential future scenario in which China could deploy this “ghost fleet” to impose a de facto blockade around Taiwan.
The strategy would involve flooding surrounding waters with thousands of ostensibly civilian fishing vessels, disrupting commercial shipping lanes, slowing allied military intervention, and creating massive maritime congestion — all without formally declaring war.
Poling said military planners in Washington and Taipei are already studying the possible role these maritime militias could play in any future Taiwan Strait crisis.
The core challenge, he said, is that China operates skillfully within a legal and political gray zone, where conventional military responses risk being portrayed as attacks on civilians.
China’s broader strategy is one of gradual encroachment rather than decisive confrontation. Rather than seeking a direct military clash, Beijing appears focused on slowly reshaping geographic and legal realities until its overwhelming maritime presence becomes normalized — and increasingly difficult for the international community to reverse.
And each time hundreds of vessels line up in eerily precise formations across contested waters, the same unsettling question resurfaces:
Are they merely fishing boats searching for a catch — or has Beijing already built the largest disguised quasi-civilian naval force in modern history?
Adapted and translated from the original Arabic.
Randa Jebai
Randa Jebai is an award-winning journalist with more than 20 years of experience. She joined Alhurra TV’s investigative team in 2020, earning honors from the AIBs, New York Festivals, and the Telly Awards. She previously worked with major Lebanese outlets and holds master’s degrees in law and journalism.
