PLA’s dangerous moves seek to shield North Korea from sanctions enforcement

FORUM Staff

The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) recent “unsafe and unprofessional” intercept of a Royal Australian Navy helicopter highlights a pattern of dangerous maneuvers aimed at sanctions enforcers.

Beijing supported United Nations sanctions to deter North Korea’s destabilizing nuclear and weapons programs, but has undermined the international measures by allowing violators to use Chinese infrastructure and territorial waters to smuggle oil to Pyongyang, according to an investigation by The New York Times newspaper.

The PRC also abstained from a U.N. Security Council vote in March 2024 that would have authorized a panel of experts to continue monitoring sanctions and investigating violators. Russia, which analysts say has illegally procured North Korean weapons for its war in Ukraine, vetoed the measure.

The U.N. sanctions remain in place, however. Japan, South Korea and the United States are working to establish a new multinational panel of experts that could more effectively monitor North Korea, Reuters news agency reported. Meanwhile, Allies and Partners across the region continue patrolling for suspected sanctions violators.

A Royal Australian Navy pilot was forced to take evasive action when a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) jet detonated flares in its flight path in early May 2024, endangering the aircraft and its crew, Australia’s Defence Department said. The MH-60R helicopter launched from HMAS Hobart near South Korea as part of a U.N. mission to uphold sanctions on the North.

“Australians are engaging in important work enforcing U.N. Security Council sanctions and in doing that work, we’re operating on the high seas in accordance with international law, in accordance with the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea,” Defence Minister Richard Marles told reporters.

“And we expect that when we have interactions with other militaries, including with the Chinese military, that those interactions are professional and safe,” he said. “This incident was completely unacceptable.”

Months earlier, Royal Australian Navy divers were injured while supporting the U.N. mission, according to media reports. The divers were untangling fishing nets from a ship’s propellers when they were subjected to sonar pulses from a nearby PLA warship.

“China’s specific objective here is to dissuade U.S. allies from continuing to physically enforce sanctions against North Korea,” wrote Euan Graham, an analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

Other nations have reported unsafe interactions with the PLA.

The U.S. said in late 2023 that it had documented more than 180 instances of coercive and dangerous behavior by PLA pilots since 2021. “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., allied and partner aircraft over the last two years,” said Ely Ratner, assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs.

Also in late 2023, a Canadian surveillance plane was monitoring the East China Sea for suspected violators of the U.N. oil embargo on Pyongyang when a PLA jet came within 5 meters and launched multiple flares.

“We’re solidly in international airspace,” Canadian Air Force Maj. Gen. Iain Huddleston told reporters aboard the surveillance plane.

The PRC attempts to justify its reckless tactics by claiming other nations’ militaries should stay away from its borders. The intercepts happen where international law allows any country to fly, however.

Reporters aboard another Canadian air patrol in late 2023 said the aircraft was more than 50 kilometers from an island that Beijing claims — but doesn’t control — when the PLA issued a radio warning.

The PRC is not the focus of such surveillance missions. Their purpose includes deterring illicit oil transfers and collecting information on suspected sanctions violators to share with the multinational Enforcement Coordination Cell, which includes Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, the United Kingdom and the U.S.