Taiwan's coast guard used a water cannon on a Chinese fishing vessel near Dongsha Island, and the first thing to learn about the incident is how it is being sold. Taiwan says the vessel ignored three warnings before the cannon came out.

The version circulating online runs under a headline saying Taiwan's navy fired on Chinese ships, and that Xi Jinping is preparing a response. Neither claim appears in the account of the incident itself. The account describes a coast guard, a water cannon and a fishing boat. A fishing boat is not a warship, and a water cannon is not a gun.

That gap matters because the boat is the point. Beijing's pressure around Taiwan runs through vessels that can be called civilian, and the reply to a civilian vessel is a hose. The hose is what Taipei chose.

Dongsha is Taiwan-held and sits in the northern South China Sea, far from the main island and nearer the Chinese coast. A coast guard crew there has no fleet behind it, which makes the decision to use force, even this much, a deliberate one. Taipei had the same three warnings and the same option to let the boat drift on. It sprayed the boat.

Beijing has not yet said whether it treats this as a fishing dispute or as a sovereignty one. The wording of its first statement settles that. A line about the safety of fishermen is a complaint. A line about the waters is a claim, and a claim comes with coast guard patrols attached.

The same week, Japan's press reported Beijing building up Antelope Reef in the Paracels. China is adding concrete in one corner of the South China Sea while Taiwan is spraying water in another, and only one of those is permanent.

If Beijing's language treats the Dongsha spray as an attack on its waters rather than a fishermen's grievance, Dongsha becomes the next place Chinese coast guard ships come to stay.