Unusually High Number Of Chinese Navy Ships Hit Seas As US Remains Laser Focused On IranFrancis Kapper
Contributor
April 10, 2026 4:17 PM ET
As the United States turns its focus away from Asia and dials in on the Middle East, China is reportedly ramping up its deployment of naval power on the high seas.
The Chinese navy and coast guard have deployed 100 vessels in the East and South China Seas, according to information that two Taiwanese security officials told Reuters.
China’s presence is highly heightened when compared with the usual strength in the theater of about 50-60 ships, according to a statement that one official provided to Reuters. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: CCP-Tied Activists Desperately Trying To Keep Chinese Land Grabs Alive Near US Military Bases)
However, these ships are nowhere to be seen on the map. They are all operating with their transponders turned off, according to open source websites like VesselFinder, which do not show any naval assets in the region besides a few coast guard ships at the time of this article’s publication.
“I think that China is ramping up because they know that the Americans are essentially out of power projection in the Indo-Pacific region for years,” Brandon Weichert, a former congressional staffer and national security expert, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“We’re sending two carriers to the Indo-Pacific presently, but there is no way that Trump will seriously do anything to risk a war with Xi over Taiwan,” Weichert said.
“Safeguarding the common homeland through peaceful development” was a point made by Chinese President Xi Jinping in an official Chinese Communist Party meeting. This was relayed by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson, Mao Ning, in an X post. This contradicts the military escalation in the area.
The Chinese and Taiwanese governments didn’t respond to a request for comment.
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https://dailycaller.com/2026/04/10/china-naval-ships-us-iran-taiwan/
