AS many as 300 boats loaded with Chinese commercial vessel fishermen disguised as paramilitary forces and whose operations are heavily subsidized by the Chinese government are now operating in the West Philippine Sea on any given day, a report by two US-based think tanks said.
A report published last week by the Center for Strategic & International Studies-Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (CSIS-AMTI) and Center for Advanced Defense Studies said the presence of Chinese militias in the South China Sea “is no secret” but lately, their numbers have gone up and are “on a more constant basis than ever before.”
Gregory Poling, a fellow of CSIS-AMTI, cited a lot of anecdotal evidence of the presence of Chinese militias in the South China Sea beginning 1974, when China took control of some islands occupied by the Vietnamese forces in the Paracel archipelago. They also played a key role in China’s seizure of Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines in 2012, as well as the deployment of a Chinese oil rig into Vietnamese waters.
“What we discovered over the course of this research though is there’s clearly been an effort to professionalize and build out the militia over the last eight years coinciding with [Chinese President] Xi Jinping’s elevation to power,” Poling said in a virtual briefing uploaded by CSI over their YouTube channel.
It noted that China has shifted its focus “toward asserting control over peacetime activity across the South China Sea” after it completed constructing artificial island outposts in 2016. However, these “peacetime activities” border on the “gray zone” by expanding their maritime militias.
From providing logistic support to Chinese artificial island building in the harbors of Zamora and Panganiban Reef in 2017, militias were dispersed to other islands but largely concentrated to Philippine-held or Philippine-claimed islands in the West Philippine Sea.
In 2018, 100 militia boats were deployed near Pag-Asa Island, the biggest island occupied by the Philippines with almost 200 civilian residents. Earlier this year, around 200 militia boats also gathered at unoccupied Julian Felipe Feef (international name: Whitsun Reef). Militia deployment also increased in Philippine-claimed McKennan Reef and Burgos Reef. In 1998 China occupied McKennan and Burgos reefs, reclaimed as artificial islands and built with military supply platform and anti-aircraft weapons.
More Chinese militias were also deployed to oil and gas fields in areas occupied by Malaysian and Vietnamese forces.
CSIS-AMTI and CADS researchers found that these militias belong to the modern type of Chinese maritime militias—the Spratly Backbone Fishing Vessels (SBFV) —owned by commercial fishing companies with steel-hulled civilian fishing boats, with lengths of as much as 55 meters and engine power of at least 1,200 kW.
“Their operations are funded by the Chinese government through subsidies that incentivize local actors to construct vessels in accordance with military specifications and to operate them in disputed waters, ready to assist Chinese law enforcement and naval forces when necessary,” the report stated.
The subsidy amount? Around US$3,743 per day (P187,150) as “special fuel subsidies.”
The fuel subsidy is just to be “deployed to disputed waters without fishing at all.”
SBFV militias are different from the first type of Chinese maritime militias who are professionals, with uniformed crew operating vessels that were designed with weapons storage facilities. They are the first batch of militias who initially came from the villages of Tanmen Township in Hainan province south of China.
“Both professional militia and SBFVs participate in large deployments aimed at asserting Chinese sovereignty, and both deny access to ships from foreign countries, but statements from Chinese officials suggest that more aggressive operations would first be entrusted to professional militia vessels,” the report added.
The US think tank said militias pose “significant challenge” to other claimant countries.
“Competing claimants lack the maritime capacity to match the size and quantity of China’s boats. Other powers that have an interest in preventing maritime coercion are often only equipped with the blunt instrument of naval power, the deployment of which against ostensible fishing vessels would be both escalatory and impractical,” it added.