{"id":62480,"date":"2021-02-15T14:30:46","date_gmt":"2021-02-15T03:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=62480"},"modified":"2021-02-23T14:21:45","modified_gmt":"2021-02-23T03:21:45","slug":"xi-licenses-chinese-coastguard-to-be-wolf-warriors-at-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/xi-licenses-chinese-coastguard-to-be-wolf-warriors-at-sea\/","title":{"rendered":"Xi licenses Chinese coastguard to be \u2018wolf warriors\u2019 at sea"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Xi Jinping\u2019s control over the China Coast Guard, together with a new law<\/a> that authorises the coastguard to use force<\/a> against foreign ships in places China defines as in its own, is a big change that has so far attracted far less attention than it deserves.<\/p>\n

Maybe that\u2019s because Xi has acted on several fronts to assert Chinese power and take risks in the dying weeks of Donald Trump\u2019s term as US president and in the early days of Joe Biden\u2019s tenure. Some moves\u2014like the one to put sanctions on senior Trump officials<\/a>, their families and companies that employ them\u2014have rightly attracted attention as vindictive measures. Others, like the People\u2019s Liberation Army\u2019s incursions<\/a> into Taiwanese airspace, are about furthering Beijing\u2019s campaign to isolate and intimidate Taiwan and test US and international resolve.<\/p>\n

Taken together with these moves, Xi\u2019s boldness with the coastguard shows that he\u2019s ratcheting up the risk he\u2019s willing to take in confronting other nations and using the levers he has to project Chinese power. And the coastguard move is one that gives him very practical new tools to cause damage and insecurity and act in ways that others\u2014particularly militaries\u2014can\u2019t, and probably shouldn\u2019t, match.<\/p>\n

Chinese state media has downplayed the law, saying it\u2019s similar<\/a> to other nations\u2019 practices\u2014but it\u2019s not, because it signals that the Chinese state will ignore international law of the sea and international tribunal<\/a> rulings when using force and define the coastguard\u2019s jurisdiction to use force through China\u2019s unilateral characterisation<\/a> of its maritime boundaries. And the way the Chinese coastguard is likely to operate in practice will be quite different too.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve got used to stories of Chinese fishing fleets and Chinese militia vessels intimidating other nations\u2019 vessels and even bumping into them to get their way, particularly in the South China Sea in waters claimed by Vietnam and the Philippines, but also down into the Natuna Islands in Indonesia\u2019s exclusive economic zone.<\/p>\n

Chinese vessels have sunk Philippine<\/a> and Vietnamese<\/a> fishing vessels in the last year, and not seemed too bothered about meeting obligations to provide assistance to sailors needing help afterwards. We\u2019ve also got used to the Chinese coastguard shadowing Chinese fishing fleets, ready to intervene if they come into contact with other nations\u2019 vessels.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s different now, though, is that with this new law Xi has told his coastguard to be wolf warriors at sea\u2014and to use force, including lethal force, to assert Chinese interests.<\/p>\n

The Chinese coastguard has been building some novel ships that let it apply force not just with the weapons on board, but with the ships themselves. Coastguard vessels like the 10,000-ton Haixun<\/a><\/em> aren\u2019t just bigger than many naval ships operating in the South and East China Seas, but they also have strengthened hulls that are designed for deliberately hitting other vessels\u2014\u2018shouldering<\/a>\u2019 is the naval term of art.<\/p>\n

Imagine a specially designed large vessel like the Haixun<\/em> \u2018shouldering\u2019 a Vietnamese, Philippine, Indonesian or even US naval vessel, enabled by Xi\u2019s law and his command to Chinese agencies and officials to engage in a difficult \u2018struggle\u2019 against the world.<\/p>\n

Ships operated by those navies (and the Royal Australian Navy) don\u2019t have such strengthened hulls. They\u2019re designed to withstand some damage, mainly from weapons\u2014and the primary approach is to prevent missile hits.<\/p>\n

To see the kind of damage a collision with a large vessel causes to such ships, we\u2019ve got the example of the Norwegian frigate Ingstad<\/a><\/em>, which collided with an oil tanker in 2018 before being deliberately grounded and sinking. The images<\/a> tell the story. It ended with the frigate being scrapped because the damage (from the collision and from being underwater for four months) was too extensive to be repaired.<\/p>\n

So, we may need to be thinking less about the Chinese coastguard firing on other nations\u2019 vessels and more about how to handle coastguard commanders who are full to the brim with wolf warrior spirit and licensed by Xi to get into trouble, and how to deal with ships designed to hurt others without using their weapons.<\/p>\n

The ability to inflict damage without weapons gives the Chinese coastguard the easy ground in an encounter. A naval vessel that can\u2019t bump back without damaging itself is left with the choice of backing off and handing the encounter to the Chinese or using its weapons and being the first to fire. Neither is a great place to be.<\/p>\n

The Chinese coastguard\u2019s use of this new law and its ships in this way might get cheers in Beijing and make strident nationalists there happy. But if any Chinese leader thinks this \u2018nonlethal\u2019 use of force is a low-cost, politically free good, that would be a mistake.<\/p>\n

Coastguard ships bumping into, damaging and perhaps sinking not just fishing vessels but other countries\u2019 naval vessels would be a hugely escalatory and aggressive set of behaviours, especially in contested waters, no matter how Beijing characterises them. Maybe Xi needs to hear this from the leaders of other countries before we start seeing such antics on the water.<\/p>\n

More crystal-clear Biden<\/a> phone calls to Xi, and maybe calls from leaders like German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who could mention it while celebrating investment agreements, are paths here. In his first conversation with Biden, Xi said the US needed to show caution<\/a>\u2014well, that\u2019s a message he might take up himself.<\/p>\n

At a basic tactical level, capturing video of the Chinese coastguard in action on smartphones and developing a communication plan that gets that footage out before Beijing spins disinformation tales of \u2018It wasn\u2019t us. It didn\u2019t happen. They did it first\u2019 also make sense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Xi Jinping\u2019s control over the China Coast Guard, together with a new law that authorises the coastguard to use force against foreign ships in places China defines as in its own, is a big change …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":766,"featured_media":62491,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1383,52,2401,471],"class_list":["post-62480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-ccp","tag-china","tag-china-coast-guard","tag-south-china-sea"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nXi licenses Chinese coastguard to be \u2018wolf warriors\u2019 at sea | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/xi-licenses-chinese-coastguard-to-be-wolf-warriors-at-sea\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Xi licenses Chinese coastguard to be \u2018wolf warriors\u2019 at sea | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Xi Jinping\u2019s control over the China Coast Guard, together with a new law that authorises the coastguard to use force against foreign ships in places China defines as in its own, is a big change ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/xi-licenses-chinese-coastguard-to-be-wolf-warriors-at-sea\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ASPI.org\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-02-15T03:30:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-02-23T03:21:45+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/GettyImages-491149817.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"686\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Michael Shoebridge\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Michael Shoebridge\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/\",\"name\":\"The Strategist\",\"description\":\"ASPI's analysis and commentary site\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/xi-licenses-chinese-coastguard-to-be-wolf-warriors-at-sea\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/GettyImages-491149817.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/GettyImages-491149817.jpg\",\"width\":1024,\"height\":686,\"caption\":\"This picture taken on May 13, 2014 from a Vietnamese coast guard ship shows a Chinese coast guard vessel sailing near the area of China's oil drilling rig in disputed waters in the South China Sea. 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