PLA’s coordinated coercion aims to erode international law

FORUM Staff

International leaders have for years denounced China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for unsafe intercepts of military aircraft in international airspace and risky maneuvers on the high seas, as well as the Chinese coast guard and maritime militia’s aggressive tactics in the waters of sovereign nations.

The coercive and dangerous moves are part of a concerted attempt to discourage countries from flying, sailing and operating safely in areas where international law allows, according to the United States Department of Defense’s (DOD) 2023 report on the People’s Republic of China’s military and security developments.

The goal of such gray-zone tactics — coercive moves that stop short of acts of war — “is to pressure the United States and other nations to cease lawful operations” near territory Beijing claims. Those claims increasingly fall outside internationally recognized borders.

Confrontations have escalated. The DOD said that between 2021 and 2023, PLA pilots performed 180 reckless maneuvers — more than in the previous 10 years combined — when approaching U.S. military aircraft over the East and South China seas.

“And when you take into account cases of coercive and risky PLA intercepts against other states, the number increases to nearly 300 cases against U.S., Ally and Partner aircraft over the last two years,” Ely Ratner, the U.S. assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, told reporters.

Recently declassified photos and videos show PLA pilots flying only meters from U.S. aircraft. Australia and Canada have reported similarly dangerous intercepts. Examples of the PLA’s reckless behavior also include maneuvers such as barrel rolls and other midair acrobatics near other nations’ military aircraft, the DOD reported.

The most recent such incident was in late October 2023, when a PLA aircraft came within about 3 meters of a U.S. B-52 bomber over the South China Sea, according to U.S. defense officials.

Meanwhile, Beijing has ramped up its maritime coercion against nations including Japan and the Philippines.

Tensions around the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands, which the PRC claims and threatens to seize, flared in early 2024 when the Chinese coast guard clashed with Japanese fishing and patrol ships and warned Japanese aircraft to leave the area. Beijing’s strategy has been to increase and sustain pressure around the islands, hoping the constant danger of military conflict would “frighten Tokyo into submission,” Denny Roy, a senior fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu, wrote for The Diplomat magazine. That has failed.

In the Philippines’ territorial waters, the Chinese coast guard and maritime militia regularly employ water cannons, blocking maneuvers, shadowing and other dangerous operations in areas the PRC illegally claims in the South China Sea. In March 2024, four Philippine Sailors were injured when the Chinese coast guard fired water cannons at their vessel. Manila has responded with what analysts call “assertive transparency,” publicly disclosing information about Beijing’s aggression.

“For many governments, the temptation is to go along, be quiet and not publicize anything, because you want everything to go back to normal,” Raymond Powell, director of the maritime transparency project SeaLight at California’s Stanford University, told the Radio Free Asia news service. But normal, he said, “is becoming less and less and less favorable for the region and for the other Southeast Asian countries.

“So the more you normalize the gray-zone activities, the more they simply become expected, and eventually you will normalize yourself right out of all of your own legal and internationally lawful rights.”