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China’s Fisherman
are in reality, a Second Navy
Don’t mistake Chinese fishermen as a ragtag band acting on
its own.
Readers know I write extensively about China and their
goal to take over the world as I did a few weeks ago. Although naysayers have whined about
President Trump’s move to increase tariff’s and fees on Chinese goods in
retaliation for their artificial low-balling of prices against our goods, I say
this is likely the only way to combat their unequal low wage empire building.
Perhaps the appointment of John Bolton for UN Secretary
was a good choice. He’s practical and a
hard liner, something we might just need after having eight years of and always
changing ‘line-in-the-sand’ Obama.
“When our
country needs us, we will go without a second thought to defend our rights,”
said Chen Yuguo in an interview with the Washington
Post (April 12, 2016).
If Chen were a sailor in China’s
People’s Liberation Army Navy, or perhaps an officer of the Chinese Coast
Guard, his pledge to use force for his country would not be particularly
noteworthy.
But Mr. Chen is a fisherman.
Chen is one of China’s 6 million-plus
fishermen. He captains a trawler from the port of Tanmen, one of the country’s
2,600 distant-water fishing ships.
And many of these vessels do more
than just fish. China indeed “needs” them, as Chen said, but not to “defend
China’s rights.” Instead, the Chinese government uses its huge fishing fleets
to take control of territory that does not rightfully belong to Beijing.
‘Fish, Protect, Occupy and Control’
Analysts commonly acknowledge that,
in terms of number of ships, China has both the largest navy in the world and
also the largest coast guard. Less frequently acknowledged is that these two
official maritime forces are reinforced by the world’s largest fishing fleet.
This fleet is more consequential than
it might seem.
“This is in no way a collection of
innocent, random, patriotic fishermen,” said Andrew Erickson, a professor of
strategy in the United States Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute.
“China likes to have that camouflage and likes to mis-portray it in that way,”
he said, “but it is not the case at all.”
Erickson said much of China’s fishing
fleet functions as a “maritime militia.” They are “trained, equipped and
organized directly by the pla’s [People’s Liberation Army’s] local military commands,”
Erickson said. “[I]t answers to the very top of China’s centralized
bureaucracy: Commander in Chief Xi Jinping himself.”
Christopher Rawley, a U.S. Navy
Reserve captain and a member of the board of directors of the Center for
International Maritime Security, agrees. The U.S. Naval Institute paraphrased
him as saying, “When you look at the thousands and thousands of fishing boats
operating out of China, you really should consider them a third arm of
Beijing’s naval presence” (Aug. 17, 2016).
Beijing uses this “third arm” as the
advance guard to fight its expansionist battles in the South China Sea and
beyond. And the fishing fleet’s involvement in China’s battles is not rare.
“Local fishermen have assisted more than 250 law enforcement operations at sea
over the past three years,” the state-run China
Daily reported in 2016. Since then, such
instances have become even more frequent.
The fishermen are happy to play their
role despite inherent dangers: Besides catching more fish in the contested
waters than they would in the depleted areas off China’s coast, the fishermen
also feel they are fulfilling their patriotic obligation: “It is our water,”
Chen said, referring to almost the entire South China Sea. “But if we don’t
fish there, how can we claim it is our territory?”
The basic strategy, according to
international security expert Alan Dupont, happens in this sequence: First,
fishing boats enter disputed waters and confront other nations’ vessels; then
the Chinese Coast Guard steps in; next come land reclamation projects; and it
ends with militarization and domination. Dupont calls the process “fish,
protect, occupy and control.”
Evidence shows the strategy is
working.
Securing Scarborough Shoal
Scarborough Shoal lies 120 nautical
miles from the Philippines, well within its “Exclusive Economic Zone,”
according to international law. The United Nations Convention on the Law of Sea
recognizes that each nation has exclusive rights to the waters up to 200
nautical miles from its coastline. Yet if a Filipino fisherman today wants to
fish in Scarborough, he must gain the permission of Chinese authorities.
This has not always been the
situation. In 2012, the Philippine Navy caught a group of Chinese fishing ships
anchored at Scarborough Shoal, some 550 miles from the closest Chinese land.
Philippine authorities boarded the vessels and found considerable quantities of
endangered marine species. But before they could make any arrests, two Chinese
Coast Guard ships arrived and worked with the fishing vessels to cordon off the
mouth of the lagoon.
A 10-week-long standoff ensued. Throughout
the period, vessels from the pla Navy floated on the horizon, sending
the Philippines a silent signal of the force Beijing was willing to use.
Finally, the U.S. brokered what it believed was a deal for both sides to
withdraw and return to the status quo ante.
As stipulated by the agreement, the
Philippines pulled out. But China did not honor its end of the bargain.
Instead, it kept its vessels at Scarborough Shoal, and they remain there to
this day on patrol.
“[T]here was no question that Beijing
had scored a tactical victory at Manila’s expense by successfully seizing and
occupying the disputed area,” wrote Ely Ratner, deputy director of the Center
for a New American Security’s Asia-Pacific Security Program (National Interest,
Nov. 21, 2013). Ratner and other analysts agree that if China had captured
Scarborough with overt military or coast guard vessels, it would have likely
prompted a weightier response from the U.S. and considerable international
backlash. But since Beijing used nonmilitary vessels as the front line, the
skirmish remained in a gray zone.
And the gray zone, where nations
conflict without breaking into conventional warfare, is precisely where China
wants such territorial clashes to take place.
Thanks largely to its fishing fleet,
Beijing won this gray-zone conflict. Scarborough Shoal now effectively belongs
to China.
After China’s victory was clear,
state media lauded the fishermen as an “advanced militia unit.” President Xi
personally praised them and advised the fisherman fleet to more actively back
China’s “island and reef” development projects.
The Oil Rig Standoff
On May 2, 2014, China positioned its hysy 981 offshore oil rig in waters near the Paracel Islands, about
120 miles from Vietnam’s coast. Vietnam decried the move as a clear
infringement of its sovereignty and sent 29 ships to the area to challenge it.
But China’s pla Navy, Coast Guard and fishing fleet formed a 10-nautical-mile
cordon of 80 vessels around the oil rig, forcibly repulsing the Vietnamese.
“All three of China’s sea forces were there,” Erickson said, adding that “they
were all communicating and coordinating and they were acting together in a
relatively effective manner.”
Over the next few weeks, a standoff
took place and each side reported being rammed and water-cannoned by the other
nation’s vessels. On May 26, a large, steel-hulled Chinese fishing boat was
caught on video ramming and sinking a smaller Vietnamese fishing boat. Eight
crewmen were thrown into the sea; two had to swim out of the cabin through a window
that had broken during the attack.
The incident marked a dramatic
escalation in the standoff. If China had sunk the Vietnamese vessel with a pla Navy or Coast Guard ship, the matter would almost certainly
have provoked a meaningful response from the U.S. or other nations. But since
Beijing was able to claim that the fishermen who sunk the ship were acting
independently and only in self-defense, there was little kickback. China was
able to leave the rig in the region, harvesting Vietnam’s oil, as long as it
chose to.
The Diplomat said the hysy 981 standoff allowed China to achieve its “primary goals of
broadcasting to its neighbors that a rising Vietnam alone could not stop it and
the U.S. would not intervene” (Aug. 30, 2014). Another victory for Beijing thanks
in large part to its fishing fleet.
A Page From Putin’s Playbook
Two months before the hysy 981 standoff, Russian President Vladimir Putin pried the
Crimean Peninsula away from Ukraine and grafted it into Russia. Putin did not
accomplish this illegal land grab with an overt military invasion. Instead, he
sent Russian soldiers into Ukraine with the insignia removed from their
uniforms and the signage taken off their vehicles.
By not deploying regular troops, the
Russian government had a degree of deniability, which hindered potential
challenges. “Were they mercenaries? Could it be Crimean vigilantes? Or was this
some unsanctioned adventure by a local commander?” asked Russian security
affairs specialist Mark Galeotti. “[T]he lack of insignia on these ‘little
green men’ and Moscow’s flat denial that they were Russian troops was enough to
inject a moment’s uncertainty into the calculations in both Kiev and nato. [A]nd Russia was able to seize Crimea without a single fatal
casualty.”
By the time of the Crimean
annexation, China had already been using the “little blue men” of its fishing
fleet as the advance guard to assert its expansionist territorial claims. But
Putin’s success in Crimea may well have spurred the Chinese leadership to
increase such hybrid warfare tactics.
Using “little blue men” not only
gives China deniability, but the quasi-civilian status of the fishermen
complicates the rules of engagement for U.S. naval vessels, for coast guard
personnel from the Philippines, Vietnam and South Korea, and for any other
official government entity trying to combat the illegal behavior.
These shadowy, hybrid war tactics
have helped China and Russia to successfully expand their domination; both
nations will likely continue using them.
‘Steering the World Toward War’
Many analysts are not overly alarmed
by China’s increasing assertiveness in the South China Sea and elsewhere. As
Ratner said, “From their vantage point, accommodation is preferable to risking
war over ‘a bunch of rocks’” (op cit).
But Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry has said that China’s takeover in
this region is “steering the world toward war.” In our July 2016 issue, he
wrote about the Spratly Islands, which are claimed by China, the Philippines,
Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam. These islands are the main location where Chen
Yuguo and numerous other fishermen currently focus on asserting Chinese
dominance.
“China is ignoring these nations’
territorial claims,” Mr. Flurry wrote. “China is being aggressive and
provocative,” and thereby challenging “seven decades of American naval
dominance in the Pacific Rim.” This aggressive behavior “should alarm the
world!” he wrote.
Speaking of the South China Sea,
through which a third of the world’s maritime commerce passes each year, Mr.
Flurry wrote, “Since Japan’s defeat in World War ii, America has protected this vital
trade route and brought peace to this part of the world.” But since the U.S.
military is now retreating from the region, “other great powers are coming in
to fill the vacuum,” he continued. “China is intimidating the nations of
Southeast Asia into submission to its will. It is forcing these countries to do
what it wants. Everything is headed in the direction of war.”
Bruce, the Poor Man, free thinker, social critic & cynic
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1 comment:
Only Trump, Japan and a very select few others seem to realize what a threat China has become. Their goal of world domination continues to march along unabated while the US has become relegated to the same status as Russia beginning under the lack of leadership of Obama. While he was busy firing top military brass, Germany has become the major player in Europe and is now the 3rd largest arms exporter in the world and is setting up shop in Africa and elsewhere - all while Congress is too busy stabbing Trump in the back. Class case of Rome burning.
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