China navy disguises as civilian, while coast guard acts as military

Coast guards are supposedly civilian. But the China Coast Guard (CCG) leads incursions in the West Philippine Sea. Chinese fishermen also perform naval blockades. Behind all that is Beijing’s armed force, directing so-called low intensity “gray zone operations.”

The CCG has more than 500 gunboats. At least 50 are equipped with missiles. Two are extra-large. At 12,000-ton displacement, they dwarf the 8,000-ton destroyers of neighbors’ navies.

The duo each has on deck two combat helicopters, a 76-mm cannon and several machine guns. Below are anti-submarine weapons.

One of the two gigantic cutters is deployed in the East China Sea. There it circles Japan’s Senkaku Isles in bogus assertion of sovereignty. The other is in the South China Sea, trespassing Vietnam and Philippine exclusive economic zones. It has been spotted several times at Panganiban (Mischief) Reef. Beijing stole and fortified that Philippine sea feature in 1995. Panganiban is 120 miles off Palawan, well within the Philippines’ 200-mile EEZ but 800 miles outside China’s.

(The Philippine Coast Guard has but a few dozen craft, mostly for near-shore rescue. For enhanced patrols, Filipino coast guards hitch rides on fast boats of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources.)

The world’s largest, the CCG is used to aggress. Nine CCG vessels led the occupation of Panatag (Scarborough) Shoal, 123 miles off Zambales, in 2012. Since then, CCG patrols have been driving away Filipino fishermen with machine guns and water cannons. The CCG also menaces Philippine exploration ships in Palawan’s oil- and gas-rich Recto (Reed) Bank. It assists the People’s Liberation Army-Navy in harassing Filipino sailors resupplying a Marine contingent in Ayungin (Second Thomas) Shoal.

In 2013 four Chinese civilian fisheries and maritime agencies were combined with the CCG. The CCG in turn was placed directly under the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Military Commission. The CMC also controls the People’s Liberation Army. It can be said that the “civilian” CCG is now an adjunct of China’s armed force, also the world’s largest.

Last week Beijing’s new maritime law came into effect. The CCG is now authorized to fire at or board foreign vessels in China’s falsely claimed territorial waters. That encompasses the entire South China Sea, including the EEZs of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. The law ostensibly is against smuggling, drugs and piracy. But it can be used as excuse to confront neighbors’ merchant and fishing fleets. Beijing claims the SCS via a baseless “nine-dash line.” It defies an international court’s 2016 outlawing of Beijing’s self-proclaimed sea boundary.

Beijing is emboldening the CCG to escalate tensions. Clashes can occur in neighbors’ EEZs. Indonesia, for one, routinely confiscates and burns Chinese poaching trawlers in its Natuna Reefs. Boosted by Beijing law and firepower, the CCG can now defend the poachers whom it escorts.

Meantime, the People’s Liberation Army-Navy employs fishermen for sea aggression. Maritime militia trawlers spearhead the poaching of endangered shark, sea turtles, giant clams and fan corals in Panatag. Worse, they swarm around Pag-asa Island and Sandy Cay, in Palawan’s Kalayaan town. That blockade disrupts food deliveries to Pag-asa residents and prevents fishing in Sandy Cay.

In Hainan island-province alone, the PLAN counts on 26,000 militia craft. The People’s Armed Force Maritime Militia has 84 vessels with reinforced steel hulls for ramming. In June 2019 one such launch deliberately battered an anchored Filipino wooden boat in Recto Bank, then abandoned the 26 fishermen thrown overboard. It wasn’t an isolated incident. The year before, a steel-hulled militia trawler also rammed a Vietnamese boat in the Paracels; it was repeated twice this year.

The PLAN trains the militia in naval maneuvers, surveillance and communications. It equips the trawlers with spyware and light weapons. Around Pag-asa the militia alerts the PLAN, stationed in nearby Subi Reef, about the approach of Philippine air and sea lifts. They also maliciously blind Filipino patrol pilots with infrared lasers. US airmen have also been victimized. Subi is another Philippine reef grabbed by Beijing in 1988 and fortified starting 2014.

In 2017 Vietnam withstood the combined might of the PLAN, CCG and PAFMM. The PLAN attempted to plant an offshore oil rig in the Paracel archipelago. The CCG’s 12,000-ton cutter rammed and sank two Vietnamese coast guard vessels. PAFMM militia trawlers discarded pretenses at innocent fishing and participated in the weeks-long melee at sea. In the end the PLAN retreated with its oil rig to Hainan.

Any peaceful country’s navy is for defense, and its coast guard for law enforcement. The military and civilian roles clearly are delineated. Not for Beijing.

China’s sea aggression deprives Filipinos of food, fuel and other resources from the West Philippine Sea.

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