March 19, 2025

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The Chinese Communist Party’s Grey Zone Paradigm

Taiwan Coast Guard via AP

Over the past decade, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has increasingly relied on actions in the so-called “grey zone” — competitive interaction among and with state and non-state actors that fall between the traditional binary of war and peace — to achieve its objectives and spread its influence. In other words, grey zone tactics are nonmilitary coercive actions spanning diplomatic, economic, and security measures that the PRC uses to leverage its interests and gain an advantage in strategic competition with other nations.

Beijing, like Moscow, is comfortable operating in this space, while the United States lags. In the South China Sea and elsewhere, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has attempted to assert its territorial claims and use a range of hybrid tactics to advance its foreign policy agenda, all without provoking a military response. For the CCP, much of how it operates, especially in Asia, is viewed predominantly through a political lens, with military aspects secondary in many cases. The grey zone is considered a subset of the CCP’s approach to political warfare. As the PRC grows in economic and military power, it sees itself as the natural hegemon in Asia and has allocated the resources necessary to make this a reality. Grey zone tactics augment China’s more muscular approach, especially –– though not exclusively –– in the maritime domain, with some of its neighbors in the region primarily targeted.

New footage showing special barges deployed at Zhanjiang, China, in what appears to be an over-the-shore logistics exercise, highlights the ongoing preparations by the PRC for a potential military invasion of Taiwan, a scenario that Beijing has war-gamed for many years. The latest logistics exercise seemed to simulate a situation in which the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) secures a beachhead on Taiwanese territory and then uses these barges to bring heavy military equipment ashore. While this latest development underscores the ongoing military preparations by the PLA, the CCP has simultaneously ramped up its grey zone methods both in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond, as a method of pursuing both its foreign policy objectives.

By incrementally leveraging coercive means that fall below the threshold of what would likely spark a military response by the United States or its allies, the CCP has sought to alter the regional status quo in its favor and bolster its status as a global superpower without triggering open conflict, while at the same time preparing for such a possibility. Its grey zone doctrine has been both incremental and multifaceted, combining activities in the economic, military, cyber, and information domains and incrementally applying pressure through non-military tactics before resorting to kinetic action.  The incremental nature of Beijing’s approach is sometimes described as “salami-slicing,” wherein China takes over territory in a gradual manner, tests thresholds, and then ultimately makes its expansion a fait accompli. In this sense, Russia and China watch each other closely to monitor what works, what doesn’t, and why, using these lessons learned to drive adaptation.

In the South China Sea, the CCP has strategically employed a mix of coercion, legal warfare, kinetic tactics, and narrative warfare to bolster its territorial and economic claims. A notable example occurred in 2024 when China’s Coast Guard and maritime militia vessels blocked Philippine resupply missions to the BRP Sierra Madre, a Philippine Navy vessel stationed near the Second Thomas Shoal. This shoal has long been a flashpoint in regional tensions due to its proximity to significant, yet largely untapped, oil and gas reserves. Although the shoal lies within Philippine territorial waters, China asserts historical rights to the area, citing its "nine-dash line," which claims vast swathes of the South China Sea, including resources and activities within these disputed waters. A UN arbitration under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) ruled in favor of the Philippines and that China’s claims to historic rights and resources within the “nine-dash line” have no legal basis. When an agreement to diffuse tensions was reached, China shifted its focus to the Scarborough and Sabina Shoals. Grey zone tactics in the maritime domain have included ramming and boarding boats, but also legal warfare such as in May 2024, when the CCP announced it would authorize the China Coast Guard to detain foreign vessels and people in waters it considered within its jurisdiction, as per the 2021 China Coast Guard Law.

In the airspace around Taiwan, the PRC has leveraged a series of grey zone tactics, designed to assert the CCP’s territorial claims and ensure deference from other nations by flexing its military muscles. Throughout 2024, the PRC has tested the boundaries of Air Defense Identification Zones (ADIZ), the airspace a country monitors for aircraft it permits to use its airspace for security purposes. In January 2024, the PRC stationed four PLA Navy warships around Taiwan, which have been deployed near the border of China’s ADIZ which it declared unilaterally over much of the East China Sea. In December 2024, the PLA conducted large-scale aviation and naval exercises in the air and sea space around Taiwan, shortly after Taiwan President Lai Ching-te visited allies in the region.

As part of its grey zone tactics, China has also employed a strategy of economic ‘carrots and sticks’. Through a mix of economic coercion and inducements, China has sought to influence other countries to act in accordance with the CCP’s interests. Its coercive practices have, for example, entailed trade restrictions in response to territorial disputes in the South China Sea against Vietnam and the Philippines. It has also included hovering with patrols, alongside fishing fleets that serve as de facto patrol vessels, to disrupt the economic activities of neighbors, such as Malaysia's oil and gas exploration near Luconia Shoals. Through its maritime tactics, China also sought to infringe upon the Exclusive Economic Zone of Indonesia in 2024.

The CCP’s grey zone practices have often gone hand-in-hand with information operations and cyberattacks, which have increasingly aligned with Russian operations, to strategically bolster Beijing’s narratives and disrupt trust in public institutions globally, while it undertakes illegal measures in pursuit of its strategic objectives. According to the National Security Bureau in Taiwan, the PRC distributed 60 percent more pieces of false or biased information in 2024 than the previous year, for a total of 2.16 million pieces. In the context of the CCP’s grey zone tactics, these operations often serve to erode trust in established media and democratic institutions, and to frame its actions as legitimate, complicating the believability and strength of opposition narratives.