The United States Seventh Fleet Patrol and Taiwan: Past and Present
2019.01.22
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11159
By Catherine Kai-ping Lin
The US sent two destroyers through the Taiwan Strait on July 7 and a cruiser and a destroyer on October 22, 2018,[1] to underscore the US resolve in the trade war against the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and to show the US determination to defend the freedom of navigation not only in the Taiwan Strait but also in the South China Sea. Two destroyers patrolling down the Taiwan Strait in fact already constituted the regular US Seventh Fleet patrol of the Taiwan Strait from 1950 to 1969, known as the Taiwan Patrol Force (TPF). This article will describe briefly what the Seventh Fleet’s TPF in the Taiwan Strait was and try to place the patrol in the contemporary context.
The Establishment and Termination of the Taiwan Patrol Force[2]
The Chinese Nationalists (Kuomingtang) after losing the Chinese civil war to the Chinese Communists in 1949, under the assistance of the US Navy, retreated to Taiwan. At this time, the Chinese Nationalists still held twenty to thirty small islands along the southeastern coast of China. The Chinese Communists wanted to take over those offshore small islands, and the Chinese Nationalists still wanted to fight back and re-take the mainland. As a result, holding on to those small islands became important to the Chinese Nationalists. Many had also predicted that the Chinese Communists were highly likely to attack Taiwan in the summer of 1950.
However, the Korean War broke out on June 25, 1950. The US President Harry Truman, who was about to give up on Chiang Kai-shek (CKS),[3] had no choice but to announce a “neutralization” plan for the Taiwan Strait on the one hand to protect Taiwan from being seized by the Chinese Communists, and on the other hand to prevent CKS from counterattacking mainland China.[4] On August 4, 1950, the US Seventh Fleet established Task Group 77.3, which would eventually evolve into the TPF, and the surface component became TG 72.1, surveilling and guarding the sea and air spaces of the Taiwan Strait, as well as keeping tensions in the Taiwan Strait from escalating into war.
The TPF at first constituted included an average of four destroyers in or near the Taiwan Strait at any one time and covered the area from the East China Sea through the strait down to the South China Sea.[5] “A typical patrol in the Taiwan Strait might begin in waters just south of Japan; a ship would pass the Penghu Islands and then cruise by southern Taiwan. Meanwhile, other ships were usually patrolling in the opposite direction, heading north.”[6] If four ships were assigned to the TPF, the ships could rotate on patrol, alternately spending five days on patrol and five days in port.[7] When the Vietnam War heated up in the 1960s, “the destroyers, with their five-inch guns, were required there for shore bombardment duties.”[8] Consequently, smaller destroyer escorts (or DERs), meant for radar picket duty, were assigned to the TPF patrol. Their three-inch guns were less suitable for the shore bombardment role in Vietnam.[9] During slack periods, two DERs, rather than four destroyers, would be on assignment. “The usual operating pattern for two ships was one at sea for a week, while the other was on call in either Kaohsing or Keelung; turnovers were normally conducted at sea.”[10] According to Bruce A. Elleman, Taiwan Strait provided excellent training for the US Navy, “since the weather conditions there were some of the worst in their naval experience,”[11] and “during the 1950s, the need to maintain a constant patrol in the Taiwan Strait impacted almost every ship in the US Navy.” [12]

Ships with the Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group and John C. Stennis Carrier Strike Group transit the Philippine Sea on November 16, 2018. (Source: U.S. Indo-Pacific Command)
Besides patrolling the Taiwan Strait, in the beginning the Seventh Fleet also worked with the Chinese Nationalists on executing naval blockade along the southeastern coast of China to hinder the maritime trade of the PRC. The US in fact adopted a full embargo on strategic goods on the PRC from December 8, 1950, to June 10, 1971.[13] During the Vietnam War, the patrolling range of the Seventh Fleet was extended southward to Vietnam.
According to Elleman, the TPF played a decisive role in the three Taiwan Strait Crises (1954-55, 1958, and 1962) before the termination of the regular patrol in 1969. The three Taiwan Strait crises to different degrees involved the many offshore islands controlled by the Chinese Nationalists. However, the US neutralization order restricted the Seventh Fleet vessels from participating in the defense of any coastal islands held by the Chinese Nationalists, and the Seventh Fleet would also not interfere with the Chinese Nationalist operations from the coastal islands.[14] Nevertheless, no matter how the US administrations debated throughout the three crises whether to defend or force CKS to give up the offshore islands, the presence of the Seventh Fleet prevented the crises from escalating into all-out wars.
The PRC and the USSR split in the 1960s, and consequently throughout the 1960s the PRC shifted its trading focus from the USSR to Western countries. In 1969, once Richard Nixon became the US president, Nixon and his assistant for national security affairs, Henry Kissinger, decided to seize the moment to restart the on-and-off Warsaw talks, in an effort to balance off the USSR. In exchange for the PRC’s positive responses, Nixon-Kissinger terminated the regular patrol of the Seventh Fleet on November 15, 1969.[15] The official US Navy explanation was that the decision was necessary because it was “part of over 100 ship reduction in world-wide US naval deployment, made pursuant to recent $3 billion reduction in defense expenditures.”[16] In trying to assuage CKS, the US government further emphasized that the patrol had been only one aspect of the presence of the Seventh Fleet in the strait, that other aspects such as rest and recreation visits and periodic calls by Commander Seventh Fleet would continue, and that whatever additional units of the Seventh Fleet were necessary to fulfill the US commitments under the US-Taiwan Mutual Defense Treaty signed in 1954 were available for immediate deployment to the Taiwan Strait area.[17] The US government further assured CKS that there would be “a material increase in the aggregate number of transits of the Strait per month by ships of the Seventh Fleet. Most of the vessels of the Fleet moving in a north/south direction would transit the Strait rather than travel along the East Coast of Taiwan. As a result, there would probably be more actual transits of the Strait by Seventh Fleet vessels, and a more thorough naval observation of the Strait under the new procedure than when the two DE’s were on regular patrol.”[18] All of the above intermittent activities of the Seventh Fleet involving Taiwan eventually ended on January 1, 1979, as the US and the PRC established formal diplomatic relations.
The Military, Economic, and Political Impact of the Taiwan Patrol Force
The Seventh Fleet’s TPF in the Taiwan Strait exerted enormous impact on US-ROC-PRC relations during the patrol’s existence, as outlined by Elleman. According to Elleman, militarily, due to the TPF, “neither the PRC nor the ROC ever mounted a major attack across the Taiwan Strait.”[19] This objective remained important, since all attempts to urge a peace agreement on the ROC and PRC failed. The TPF also “acted much like a vernier switch, allowing the US Navy to increase or decrease cross-strait tensions to suit the US government’s larger policy objectives.”[20] The TPF moreover reassured “America’s East Asian allies-- including Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Australia--that the PRC could not invade the First Island Chain.”[21] The US government at the same time provided the Chinese Nationalists with “a dependable source of military equipment and training to defend themselves, even while not giving them sufficiently advanced equipment to allow Taiwan to attack the PRC of its own volition.”[22] As a result, “the Taiwan Patrol Force also contributed to high morale in Taiwan.”[23]
The Seventh Fleet’s patrol was also used by the US State Department as a political tool to influence the PRC’s behavior.
Economically, after the outbreak of the Korean War, the US government adopted a full embargo on strategic goods on the PRC, and the Seventh Fleet helped execute the embargo and naval blockade with the Chinese Nationalists. Elleman argued that “Washington’s long-range goal was to deny the PRC a wider range of trade partners. Over time, it was hoped that this would add additional friction to the already tense Sino-Soviet relations”[24] as the PRC became increasingly dependent on the USSR economically. By the late 1950s, the PRC’s “debts to the USSR had grown to almost $2 billion, roughly equal to the US government’s economic aid to Taiwan between 1950 and 1969.”[25] Mao Zedong, in order to begin to pay off the PRC’s enormous debts to the USSR, adopted economic policies that, such as the Great Leap Forward, generated nationwide famine. Therefore, according to Elleman, the Chinese Nationalist naval blockade and American strategic embargo were “highly successful in furthering the Sino-Soviet rift.”[26] On the other hand, although political rights were negligible in Taiwan, Taiwan was in the process of achieving the economic miracle, which would not have been possible without the security provided by the Seventh Fleet.[27]
The Seventh Fleet’s patrol was also used by the US State Department as a political tool to influence the PRC’s behavior. As the unfriendly relations between the PRC and USSR in the 1960s culminated into the 1969 Sino-Soviet border disputes, according to Elleman, “the Nixon administration’s 1969 decision to change the Taiwan Patrol Force from a permanent to an intermittent patrol sent a potent signal to Beijing. Although Taiwan was told that this change was due to economic necessity, it was in fact a political decision.”[28] Therefore, this gesture to Beijing, which was largely outside the public view, eventually resulted in the re-opening of the Warsaw Talks, Kissinger and Nixon’s trips to the PRC, the normalization of US-PRC relations, US-PRC cooperation in counterbalancing the USSR, and finally the end of the Cold War.[29]
The Continuing Strategic Impact of the US Navy in the Taiwan Strait
Although the Seventh Fleet’s patrol in the Taiwan Strait officially ceased operations on January 1, 1979, Elleman argued that the US Navy continued to wield strategic impact in the Taiwan Strait, and one of the examples is provided by the 1995-1996 Taiwan Strait crises, in which the American reaction proved similar to those to the earlier Taiwan Strait crises.[30]
The PRC conducted ballistic missile tests between July 21 and 28, 1995, in the Taiwan Strait in response to the US government granting of an American visa to Taiwan’s president Lee Teng-hui to visit Cornell University.[31] From August 15 to 25, 1995, the PRC held military exercises involving about twenty warships and forty aircraft. In November 1995, just prior to Taiwan’s December parliamentary elections, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) staged “further naval, amphibious, and air-assault operations, near Dongshan Island.”[32] In response, the US Navy sent the USS Nimitz through the Taiwan Strait on December 19, 1995, on its way to the Indian Ocean. According to Elleman, “this was the first time an American aircraft carrier had transited the Taiwan Strait since the late 1970s,”[33] and in many ways, this transit paralleled the June 29, 1950, visit by the carrier Valley Forge, “which had helped signal the establishment of the Taiwan Patrol Force.”[34]
US Navy has had 18 unsafe or unprofessional encounters with Chinese military forces in the Pacific since 2016.
From March 8 to 25, 1996, the PRC again conducted ballistic missile exercises and live-fire exercises to correspond with the run-up to Taiwan’s first presidential elections under universal suffrage on March 23, 1996.[35] In response, the US Navy “dispatched the USS Independence aircraft-carrier battle group to the area. Its aircraft were patrolling about 100 miles off of Taiwan. The USS Nimitz carrier group was also ordered to return from the Persian Gulf at high speed. Other naval assets included two Aegis guided-missile cruisers and U.S. Air Force RC-135 Rivet Joint electronic surveillance aircraft.”[36] This US Navy’s intervention, according to Elleman, in fact “constituted the largest demonstration of American naval diplomacy against China since the first two Taiwan Strait crises of the 1950s.”[37] The strategic rationale was again to neutralize the Taiwan Strait as to not allow a cross-strait invasion, which was much the same as in the 1950s. To Elleman, although Independence and Nimitz were not a new official TPF, they carried out similar functions in the spirit of the Seventh Fleet during the Cold War period.[38]
The US Seventh Fleet’s Patrol in the Context of the Contemporary US-PRC Strategic Competition/Cold War
Tensions have risen between the US and PRC ever since Xi Jinping assumed the presidency in the PRC in 2012 and unveiled the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013. Since Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party’s Tsai Ing-wen became president in 2016 and refused to affirm the “1992 Consensus”[39] in the PRC context, tensions across the Taiwan Strait have also increased. The PRC has been squeezing Taiwan’s international space by, for instance, convincing three Latin American countries to sever ties with Taipei and recognize Beijing, threatening US companies that depict Taiwan as a distinct geographic entity, and compelling Delta Airlines to publicly apologize for not calling Taiwan a “province of China” on its website.[40] And as “the PRC has arguably spent the most time and money building a comprehensive military-support infrastructure in the South China Sea that might allow it to one day obtain its strategic goals through force”[41] than all the other countries combined that have an interest in those waters, it seems that a new Cold War is about to arise from strategic competition between the US and PRC.
In this contemporary context of US-PRC strategic competition and a looming Cold War, it seems that Taiwan has once again become strategically important to the US, especially in the US framework of Indo-Pacific strategy. The current US national security advisor John Bolton has suggested in a January 2017 commentary before he took the NSA position that Washington “could enhance its East Asia military posture by increasing US military sales to Taiwan and by again stationing military personnel and assets there. Bolton argues that Taiwan is closer to the Chinese mainland and disputed islands in the South China Sea than either Okinawa or Guam – giving US forces greater flexibility for rapid deployment throughout the region should the need arise.”[42]

U.S. Vice President Michael Pence said that a Chinese naval vessel came within 45 yards of the USS Decatur in the South China Sea, forcing the ship to quickly maneuver to avoid collision. (Source: White House)
In fact, after the US sent a cruiser and a destroyer through the Taiwan Strait on October 22, 2018, Taiwan’s minister of defense Yen Teh-fa confirmed that US Navy ships had actually already previously sailed through the Taiwan Strait as many as ten times in 2015.[43] The significance of the October 22, 2018 transit is that a cruiser, which is a better warship than a destroyer was sent together with a destroyer. In fact, the two destroyers sent together on July 7, 2018, already constituted the ship composition of the regular TPF. Although US Navy ships sailed through the Taiwan Strait as many as ten times in 2015, it was one ship at the time.[44] On the other hand, the main difference between the 2015/2018 transits and the intermittent Seventh Fleet patrol from 1969 to 1979 is that in 2015/2018 US Navy ships just sailed through the high seas to exercise freedom of navigation without pulling in to shore.
In terms of the South China Sea, the US defense authorities have sought to coexist with the PRC where possible while also pushing back on what the US sees as the PRC’s militarization of the region. According to US military statistics, “the US Navy has had 18 unsafe or unprofessional encounters with Chinese military forces in the Pacific since 2016.”[45] The US Air Force has also had at least one such encounter during the same period.[46] In February, May and July 2016, at least three of those incidents involved “Chinese fighter jets making what the US considered to be ‘unsafe’ intercepts of Navy surveillance planes.”[47] The US Navy’s most recent encounter with PRC forces occurred on September 30, 2018, while the “destroyer USS Decatur was sailing within 12 miles of two of the Spratly Islands as part of what the US calls a ‘freedom of navigation operation’.”[48] A Chinese destroyer came within 45 yards of the US destroyer, forcing the US destroyer to maneuver to avoid a collision. “The US labeled the Chinese warship’s actions unsafe and unprofessional, while Beijing said the US was threatening the safety and sovereignty of China.”[49] Commander Nathan Christensen, the US Seventh Fleet spokesman, said after the incident that “U.S. Forces operate in the Indo-Pacific region on a daily basis, including the South China Sea. As we have for decades, our forces will continue to fly, sail and operate anywhere international law allows. All operations are designed in accordance with international law and demonstrate that the United States will fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows. This is true in the South China Sea as in other places around the globe.”[50]
In conclusion, the author of this article recommends that, in the best interest of Taiwan in defending the country’s freedom and democracy, Taiwan’s maritime policies should overlap with the national interest of the US in exercising freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region. At present, Taiwan has actual control over some of the islands in the South China Sea, such as Tai-ping (Itu Aba), one of the main islands of the Spratly Islands, and Pratas Island. Taiwan authorities should make the seaports of Tai-ping (Itu Aba) or Pratas accessible and be prepared to cooperate with the US whenever the situation arises, such as a call for humanitarian aid, that US Navy ships need to come aground at the seaports of the islands. Taiwan authorities moreover should make Taiwan’s seaports available for US Navy ships to pull into the shores of Taiwan again in the same spirit as in 1950-1969 to prevent a possible invasion from the PRC.
Dr. Catherine Kai-ping Lin is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research. Her research field is on the interaction of Taiwan’s nationalisms with Taiwan’s arms procurement from the United States. Dr. Lin holds a PhD degree in Diplomatic History from Georgetown University. She also received a master’s degree in international Relations from Yale University and a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Brown University.
[1] Ryan Browne, “US Destroyers Sailed through Taiwan Strait,” CNN, July 21, 2018, https://edition.cnn.com/2018/07/07/politics/taiwan-strait-us-ships/index.html; Ryan Browne and Barbara Starr, “US Sails Warships through Taiwan Strait amid Tensions with China,” CNN, October 23, 2018 https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/22/politics/us-warships-taiwan-strait-china/index.html; the US in fact just sent a destroyer and a replenishment oiler through the Taiwan Strait on November 28, 2018, as this article was about to go off to print, Ben Werner, “U.S. Guided-Missile Destroyer, Oiler Transit Taiwan Strait,” US Naval Institute News, November 28, 2018, https://news.usni.org/2018/11/28/39 064
[2] This and the next two sections are primarily based on material from Bruce A. Elleman’s High Seas Buffer: The Taiwan Patrol Force, 1950-1979 (Newport, Rhode Island: Naval War College Press, 2012) and Taiwan Straits: Crisis in Asia and the Role of the U.S. Navy (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015).
[3] Chiang Kai-shek was the president of the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan and thus the leader of the Chinese Nationalists after the Korean War broke out. Website of the Office of the President of the Republic of China (Taiwan), https://www.president.gov.tw/Page/83
[4] Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States, 1945-1992: Uncertain Friendship (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1994), pp. 32-33.
[5] Elleman, High Seas Buffer: The Taiwan Patrol Force, 1950-1979, p. 20.
[6] Ibid., p. 28.
[7] Ibid., p. 21.
[8] Ibid., p. 22.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid., p. 23.
[11] Ibid., p. 26.
[12] Ibid., p. 28.
[13] Ibid., p. 118.
[14] Ibid., p. 60.
[15] Ibid., 117-118.
[16] Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XVII, China, 1969–1972, ed. Steven E. Phillips (Washington: Government Printing Office, 2006), Document 34.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XVII, China, 1969–1972, ed. Steven E. Phillips (Washington: Government Printing Office, 2006), Document 52.
[19] Elleman, Taiwan Straits: Crisis in Asia and the Role of the U.S. Navy, p. 150.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Ibid. According to Elleman, the First Island Chain, “in PRC geostrategic theory, stretches from the Aleutian Islands through the Kurile Islands, the main islands of Japan, the Ryukyu Archipelago, Taiwan, and the Philippines to the Greater Sunda Island.” Elleman, High Seas Buffer: The Taiwan Patrol Force, 1950-1979, p. 134; Robert D. Kaplan, “The Geography of Chinese Power: How Far Can Beijing Reach on Land and at Sea?” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 89, no. 3 (May/June 2010), p. 33.
[22] Elleman, Taiwan Straits: Crisis in Asia and the Role of the U.S. Navy, p. 151.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Ibid., p. 153.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Ibid., pp. 153-156.
[28] Ibid., pp. 157-158.
[29] Ibid., p. 158.
[30] Elleman, High Seas Buffer: The Taiwan Patrol Force, 1950-1979, p. 129; Elleman, Taiwan Straits: Crisis in Asia and the Role of the U.S. Navy, pp. 132-133.
[31] Elleman, High Seas Buffer: The Taiwan Patrol Force, 1950-1979, pp. 123-124; Elleman, Taiwan Straits: Crisis in Asia and the Role of the U.S. Navy, pp. 128-129.
[32] Elleman, High Seas Buffer: The Taiwan Patrol Force, 1950-1979, p. 124; Elleman, Taiwan Straits: Crisis in Asia and the Role of the U.S. Navy, p. 129.
[33] Elleman, High Seas Buffer: The Taiwan Patrol Force, 1950-1979, p. 124; Elleman, Taiwan Straits: Crisis in Asia and the Role of the U.S. Navy, p. 130.
[34] Elleman, Taiwan Straits: Crisis in Asia and the Role of the U.S. Navy, p. 130.
[35] Elleman, High Seas Buffer: The Taiwan Patrol Force, 1950-1979, p. 125; Elleman, Taiwan Straits: Crisis in Asia and the Role of the U.S. Navy, pp. 130-131.
[36] Elleman, Taiwan Straits: Crisis in Asia and the Role of the U.S. Navy, p. 131.
[37] Ibid., p. 132.
[38] Elleman, High Seas Buffer: The Taiwan Patrol Force, 1950-1979, p. 127; Elleman, Taiwan Straits: Crisis in Asia and the Role of the U.S. Navy, p. 132.
[39] “The content of the 1992 Consensus is, in fact, quite complex. First, both sides of the Strait have different definitions and interpretations of the term. The ruling Chinese Communist Party evokes the term to indicate that both the Mainland and Taiwan belong to ‘one China,’ and both aim at ultimate unification under the ‘one country, two systems’ framework. Their counterparts in Taiwan take a different view. The Kuomintang (KMT, the ruling party on Taiwan from 1949-2000 and 2008-2016) argues that the Consensus simply indicates that both the Mainland and Taiwan belong to one China; however, the interpretations on ‘China’ are different on both sides. For China, ‘one China’ refers to ‘the People’s Republic of China,’ but for Taiwan, ‘one China’ refers to ‘the Republic of China.’” Austin Wang, Charles K.S. Wu, Yao-Yuan Yeh, & Fang-Yu Chen, “What Does the 1992 Consensus Mean to Citizens in Taiwan?” The Diplomat, November 10, 2018, https://thediplomat.com/2018/11/what-does-the-1992-consensus-mean-to-citizens-in-taiwan/
[40] Vice President Mike Pence’s Remarks on the Administration’s Policy Towards China, October 4, 2018, Hudson Institute, Washington D.C., USA.
[41] Elleman, Taiwan Straits: Crisis in Asia and the Role of the U.S. Navy, p. 143.
[42] Gary Sands, “Will Bolton Push for US Troops on Taiwan?” Asia Times, April 6, 2018, http://www.atimes.com/will-bolton-push-us-troops-taiwan/
[43] Hsu Yu-wei, “US Navy ships sailed through the Taiwan Strait 10 times or 10 US Navy ships sailed through the Taiwan Strait? Yen Teh-fa: Their meaning is the same,” United Daily News, October 25, 2018, http://udn.com/news/story/10930/3441793
[44] Ibid.
[45] Ryan Browne, “US Navy has had 18 unsafe or unprofessional encounters with China since 2016,” CNN, November 3, 2018, https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/03/politics/navy-unsafe-encounters-china/index.html
[46] Ibid.
[47] Ibid.
[48] Ibid.; Ben Werner, “Destroyer USS Decatur Has Close Encounter with Chinese Warship,” US Naval Institute News, October 1, 2018, https://news.usni/org/2018/10/01/37006
[49] Ryan Browne, “US Navy has had 18 unsafe or unprofessional encounters with China since 2016,” CNN, November 3, 2018, https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/03/politics/navy-unsafe-encounters-china/index.html
[50] Ben Werner.