CCP’s controversial coast guard law ‘a verbal threat of war’
FORUM Staff
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) coast guard has been given expanded power to use force against foreign vessels, a move that experts contend will spike tensions in the South China Sea, where Chinese maritime aggression has been widely condemned by other claimant nations.
A controversial law passed in late January 2021 authorizes the coast guard to “take all necessary measures including the use of weapons” to stop foreign vessels accused of infringing on the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC’s) jurisdiction, according to media reports. The PRC claims much of the South China Sea based on its nine-dash line, an arbitrary demarcation that was rejected by an international tribunal in 2016.
Ignoring that ruling, Chinese-flagged vessels, sometimes backed by the CCP coast guard, have encroached into other nations’ exclusive economic zones. South China Sea claimants Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam have objected to the CCP’s actions, which range from ramming and sinking vessels to detaining crew members and hindering natural resource exploration. (Pictured: A Philippine Coast Guard vessel sails past a Chinese Communist Party coast guard ship during a training exercise in the South China Sea in May 2019.)
The Philippines quickly filed a diplomatic protest over the new law. “While enacting law is a sovereign prerogative, this one — given the area involved or for that matter the open South China Sea — is a verbal threat of war to any country that defies the law, which, if unchallenged, is submission to it,” Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. tweeted January 27.
The legislation offers further evidence of the CCP coast guard’s increasingly militaristic posture, particularly in pushing illegitimate territorial claims. That’s in stark contrast to the core missions of Coast Guards of Indo-Pacific democracies such as the United States, with their shared commitment to ensuring maritime safety, assisting mariners in distress and combating piracy, drug trafficking and other maritime crime, often as part of international task forces.
While coast guards generally have law enforcement powers, including use of force in certain situations, the new law is problematic because of CCP coast guard incursions into other nations’ territory, according to Jay Batongbacal, an associate professor and director of the Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea at the University of the Philippines.
“Any use of force by China’s coast guard is not a mere law enforcement action, it is an actual use of force by the state, which can be considered as an act of aggression, or use of force contrary to the United Nations Charter, or tantamount to war, if it is employed in the waters of other countries that China claims as its own,” Batongbacal told the Vietnamese newspaper VnExpress International in a January 28 article.
In the past decade, one or more Chinese naval or maritime law enforcement vessels have been involved in nearly 80% of the major incidents in the South China Sea, according to the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The CCP “has actively employed its coast guard and other maritime law enforcement agencies to project power and assert sovereignty,” the Washington, D.C.-based think tank reported.
The report also noted increasing incursions by CCP coast guard vessels and Chinese fishing boats around the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea. The Japanese-administered islands are claimed by the PRC, which refers to them as Diaoyu. Days before the coast guard legislation was approved, Japanese diplomats complained about those incursions to Chinese officials, The Japan Times newspaper reported January 23.
The new law opens the door to more violations of international rules and national sovereignty, Southeast Asia expert Carl Thayer told Radio Free Asia. “China is just trying to dress up whatever it does and say, ‘Our laws cover it,’” the University of New South Wales professor said.
The CCP coast guard was formed in 2013 with the consolidation of four maritime law enforcement agencies and became a military branch five years later, according to the China Power Project. A PRC foreign ministry spokeswoman described the new legislation as clarifying the coast guard’s authority and ensuring law enforcement cooperation, the state-run China Global Television Network reported January 25.
China’s National People’s Congress, considered to be a rubber stamp for the CCP, approved the legislation three weeks after a newly revised national defense law took effect. Those revisions gave the CCP’s Central Military Commission more authority to mobilize military and civilian resources to defend “development interests,” which analysts believe could refer to the South China Sea.
Under the new law, the coast guard can use hand-held, shipborne and airborne weapons against foreign vessels and is authorized to prevent other nations from erecting buildings or floating installations on PRC-claimed reefs and islands, The Associated Press reported. It also is permitted to destroy any such structures already in place and board and inspect foreign vessels in disputed territory.
The CCP has persisted with militarizing artificial features on dredged land in the South China Sea, a project spree that has prompted the United States and its Indo-Pacific partners to conduct freedom of navigation operations and military exercises to ensure peace and stability in the vital waterway.
IMAGE CREDIT: AFP/GETTY IMAGES
