Page 2 of
2 China
makes a splash with coastguard
rules By Peter Lee
For
their part, officials in Hainan and the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs first spun the regulations as
pertaining to illegal activities by Vietnamese
fishing boats. However, the references to
"hooliganism" and "propaganda" indicate that
factors other than intensifying the abuse
Vietnamese fisherman already suffer at the hands
of the PRC's maritime authorities are at work.
Perhaps the most interesting element of the new
regulations was that they are not unprecedented in
East Asia. In fact, they target a shared anxiety
of the dominant Asian maritime powers:
unauthorized political tourism to disputed
islands. Consider these news report from August
2012. First, the Wall Street Journal's Japan Real
Time blog on August 16:
When the vessel carrying 14 Hong
Kong activists cruised into territorial waters
toward the contested islands Wednesday, Japan
was ready for them thanks to the media blitz
announcing their arrival. Authorities had loaded
up 10 of its coastguard ships with police
officers. The activists' island adventure on one
of the disputed islets, known as Senkaku in
Japan and Diaoyu in China, lasted less than half
an hour before they were arrested by Japanese
police.
Though Japan was prepared this
time around, typically, not every coastguard
patrol boat has a police officer on deck, which
effects the speed with which maritime violators
are handled. For starters, the coastguard isn't
allowed to make arrests. They have to wait for
the police to arrive, a considerable time sink
given the distance to the remote islands. But a
new bill that passed in Japan's lower house last
week could beef up the coastguard's powers so
they can make arrests even when they don't get
the luxury of a heads up. ...
The
biggest change would give the coastguard the
authority to deal with crime - such as illegal
entry or vandalism [emphasis added] - on
isolated islands in the absence of police
officers. Under current law, the Japan
coastguard have to stand by until the police
arrive.
That's what happened back in
2004 - the last time Chinese protesters
successfully landed on the island. The activists
enjoyed the craggy beaches for a whole day
before they were arrested even though the
coastguard had spotted the activists before they
landed in the early morning hours. Besides
telling them to leave, the coastguard lacked the
authority to do much else. The police arrived by
helicopter in the late afternoon.
The
bill would also give the coastguard another
means to prevent the landings. It would be
allowed to order intruding vessels to leave its
territorial waters without having to first
inspect the boats, which can be tricky if
multiple vessels enter Japan's space at the same
time. [11]
One might wonder if
the PRC government was paying attention. Answer:
yes. From Chinese news agencies on August 30:
Japan's House of Councillors passed
on Wednesday a bill designed to allow the Japan
Coast Guard to respond swiftly to such incidents
as foreigners' illegal landing on remote islands
in the country. [12]
Well, well,
well.
It looks like an accurate headline
for the Hainan kerfuffle should have been: "PRC
Copies Japanese Upgrade of coastguard Powers to
Prevent Island Incursions". In this context, it
should be noted that vis-a-vis Vietnam, the PRC's
predicament in the South China Seas is similar to
that of Japan's in the East China Sea: it has
effective control of contested islands that the
other party might be interested in challenging
through some unofficial populist/nationalist
expedition.
In the East China Sea, Japan
gave its coastguard more powers to deal with
obstreperous demonstrators trying to land on the
Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. In the South China Sea,
the PRC wants to pre-empt nationalist
chest-thumping by Vietnam over the
Paracels/Spratlys.
As for the Philippines,
after it took the risky step of dispatching its
navy to detain eight Chinese vessels for illegally
harvesting conch in the Scarborough Shoal (and
made the unwise decision to flaunt its coup by
releasing a photograph of the hapless fisherman
standing atop their ill-gotten shellfish), it
reorganized and upgraded its nascent coastguard in
April 2011and issued new regulations clarifying
its responsibilities, including:
Power or clear authority to board
and inspect all types of vessels, watercraft and
off-shore floating facilities to enforce all
applicable laws, to include the Revised Penal
Code, while within the country's maritime
jurisdiction. [13]
So maybe the most
accurate headline would have been: "PRC Follows
Lead of Japan and the Philippines in Clarifying
Coast Guard Powers". Nevertheless, in the matter
of the Hainan Coast Guard regulations, the
Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA)
chose to shoot from the hip. It issued a strident
statement denouncing the threat to freedom of
navigation it imputed to the Hainan announcement,
also implying that its duties do not include
picking up the phone and talking to its opposite
numbers in the PRC or, for that matter, reading
the newspapers carefully and critically before
making its views known:
The Department of Foreign Affairs
(DFA) said over the weekend that China's
reported plan to interdict ships that enter what
it considers its territory in the South China
Sea is a violation of the United Nations
Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Because of these reports, coming mostly
from the media, the DFA said it would like China
"to immediately clarify its reported plans to
interdict ships that enter what it considers its
territory in the South China Sea".
"If
media reports are accurate, we are specifically
concerned with the information that foreign
vessels illegally entering the waters under the
jurisdiction of Hainan province, which China
claims to include virtually the entire South
China Sea under the 9-dash line, can be boarded,
inspected, detained, confiscated, immobilized
and expelled, among other punitive actions," the
DFA said in a statement.
It added that
"this planned action by China is a gross
violation of the Declaration on the Conduct of
Parties in the South China Sea [DCC],
international law, particularly Unclos.
"[It is also] a direct threat to the
entire international community, as it violates
not only the maritime domain of coastal states
established under Unclos, but also impedes the
fundamental freedom of navigation and lawful
commerce."
The DFA said this planned
action by China is illegal and will validate the
continuous and repeated pronouncements by the
Philippines that China's claim of indisputable
sovereignty over virtually the entire South
China Sea is not only an excessive claim but a
threat to all countries.
"If media
reports are accurate, the law deserves
international condemnation by Asean, our
international partners and the entire community
of nations," the DFA added. [14]
The
Philippines, unfortunately, is the odd man out in
the Asian security equation because of its
financial and political woes, and its attempts to
raise the alarm concerning the new Hainan
regulations seem to have fallen on deaf ears.
Meanwhile, the PRC and Japan are engaged
in a major buildup of their non-naval maritime
forces in order to establish facts on the ground
(or waves, if you will) and demonstrate effective
control of the islands they claim. From the
Chinese side, state media reported:
China is preparing itself to deal
with complicated marine disputes. On July 24,
Sansha city, Hainan province, the country's
newest city, was established on Yongxing Island
to administer the Xisha, Zhongsha and Nansha
islands and their surrounding waters. Another 36
inspection ships are expected to join the China
Marine Surveillance fleet by 2013. [15]
From the Japanese side, if one wants
to put the full price tag on the national purchase
of three of the Senkaku Islands, don't stop at the
declared price of 2.05 billion yen (US$26.1
million). The figure is more like 19 billion yen,
($250 million), once one includes the
spectacularly fattened budget for the Japanese
Coast Guard, as the Wall Street Journal reported
in October 2012:
The bulk of the money approved
Friday will be used to purchase four 1,000-ton
patrol vessels, three 30-meter long patrol
boats, and three helicopters, as well as finish
up a 350-ton patrol vessel. Some 2.1 billion yen
will be used for equipment such as digital image
transmission systems - gear that allows
helicopters to transmit images to headquarters.
These purchases are part of a plan to
replace old vessels and "build up a stronger
class of players," Kondo said. Although the new
vessels may be assigned to different parts of
Japan, "there is no question they will be
dispatched to the Senkaku area" and will
contribute to the facilitation of a smoother and
larger-scale patrol system, he said. [16]
Heightened PRC "assertiveness" in the
South China Sea is not the only trend at work. To
take a page from European history, what is going
on could be described as "the enclosure of the
commons" by the PRC and Japan: the incremental
extension and institutionalization of exclusive
control over resources that were once exploited in
common or were simply too unimportant to be
contested. From the standpoint of perceived
equity, especially to less well-heeled players
like the Philippines and Vietnam, this process is
unfair and highly undesirable. However, the fact
that these land-and-sea grabs are conducted using
the rhetoric of law enforcement and using police
forces and police regulations (even as national
sovereignty chest-thumping persists) promotes
stability by establishing a civilian firewall to
handle disputes before the military officially
engages. I would speculate that this is not an
entirely welcome development for the United
States, as moves and countermoves by Japan and the
PRC create a viable de facto security regime in
the Asian seas, one that is increasingly less
reliant on the US military presence. As the PRC
fine-tunes its maritime, diplomatic, and
image-management tactics, expect more unwelcome
news in the future.
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