China's Maritime Militia Is a Growing Threat

A large Chinese fishing fleet continues to exhibit unusual behavior in the East China Sea. From December 24 to 26 of 2025, more than 2,000 vessels formed an inverted L-shape stretching 470 kilometers.

Similar activity followed in January and March 2026, with over 1,000 vessels lining up, some crossing the Japan-China median line. Most are from Zhejiang Province, with 200–300 vessels participating each time.

Under the Japan-China fisheries agreement, such activity is not illegal as long as it constitutes fishing. But legality does not explain intent. Why do thousands of vessels repeatedly line up over hundreds of kilometers?

If these are maritime militias rather than ordinary fishing boats, they represent a serious security challenge for Japan and the region.

China's Maritime Militia 

What exactly is the maritime militia? Article 22 of China's National Defense Law defines the militia as part of the country's armed forces, alongside the People's Liberation Army's active-duty and reserve forces and the People's Armed Police. 

Chinese sources indicate that fishermen and ship crew members can be conscripted. While they normally pursue civilian livelihoods, they are mobilized as needed to support the military and the China Coast Guard. They are also said to undergo regular political education and training. The formations observed above likely reflect such organized activity.

Although best known for its role in the South China Sea, the maritime militia has expanded beyond it. In the East China Sea and Yellow Sea, local governments and provincial military districts have increasingly coordinated to develop such units. 

In Zhejiang Province, for example, pilot programs began around 2013 — when maritime rights protection was elevated to a central priority across party, state, and military — establishing militia units in cities such as Ningbo, Wenzhou, and Taizhou.

Maritime militia personnel occupy a deliberately ambiguous space. They are civilians, but also quasi-military actors. As Connor M. Kennedy of the US Naval War College notes, this dual identity enables China to operate effectively in the gray zone between peace and conflict. 

With such forces now organized along much of China's coastline, countries along the First Island Chain, including Japan, face a persistent challenge from maritime militia-based gray-zone tactics.

Guarding the Chinese Military's Flanks

The Xi Jinping administration's push to organize maritime militias along the entire coastline should be understood as part of a broader strategy to support its military expansion into the Pacific.

In June 2025, China deployed two aircraft carriers in the Pacific simultaneously for the first time. According to Japan's Joint Staff Office, one of them, the Liaoning, operated as far south as roughly 990 km from Okinotorishima, near the exclusive economic zone of Yap in the Federated States of Micronesia and close to Palau. 

China is now positioned to pressure Taiwan not only from the mainland but also from the Pacific side, while seeking to deny US access across the waters between the First and Second Island Chains.

For such a strategy to hold, China must secure its rear. That means constraining Japan's naval and coast guard activity in the East China Sea. If maritime militias can be used to disrupt or slow the movements of the Japan Coast Guard and the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, Beijing can more effectively assert control over these waters.

In this sense, maritime militia is more than a coastal force, but is a supporting element of China's broader effort to block key straits and areas. It may weaken deterrence along the First Island Chain and reshape the regional balance in its favor.　

Gray-Zone Operations 

Now that China has demonstrated its ability to mobilize thousands of fishing vessels, Japan must urgently assess the implications and recalibrate its response. What, then, should it be wary of?

First, large-scale fishing fleets complicate the Japan Coast Guard's ability to patrol the territorial waters around the Senkaku Islands. There is precedent. In 2016, 200 to 300 Chinese fishing vessels gathered near the islands, followed by China Coast Guard ships that repeatedly intruded into Japanese waters. 

A decade later, the scale could be far greater. While the Japan Coast Guard maintains a constant presence with its 1,000-ton-class patrol vessels, future incidents may involve thousands of vessels operating in coordination with the China Coast Guard.

Second, China is creating an asymmetrical dynamic by framing situations as fishermen versus warships or fishermen versus government vessels. This allows it to gain the upper hand in both physical and information domains.

In 2009, Chinese maritime militia vessels obstructed the US Navy surveillance ship Impeccable in the South China Sea, attempting to interfere with its operations. 

The same logic applies to cognitive warfare: Beijing can portray Japanese patrol vessels as "harassing" civilian fishing boats, framing enforcement actions as state aggression. Such narratives have been repeatedly deployed in the South China Sea and could be replicated around the Senkakus or in a Taiwan contingency.

Third, there is the possibility of a "high-tech people's war." Xi Jinping is now adapting Mao Zedong's concept of mass mobilization through the integration of maritime militias with new technologies.

Reports indicate that these units are training to operate unmanned systems. In a crisis, they could deploy large numbers of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) for reconnaissance or sabotage, including attacks on undersea cables. Chinese documents also suggest that these highly mobile units may be tasked with electronic warfare operations such as jamming.

China is likely to deepen coordination between its maritime militia and the China Coast Guard in the East China Sea. Japan must reaffirm its strategy for addressing the gray-zone challenges posed by such coordination without allowing the debate to be overshadowed by military contingencies over Taiwan.

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Author: Sakabe-Mori Aki, assistant professor at the University of Tsukuba

(Chisako T. Masuo, ingeniSPACE, Masahiro Yumino contributed to this article)