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🇨🇳⚓️🇺🇸 China's Coast Guard: The Tip of Xi's Spear

In 2012, when Chinese marine surveillance vessels pushed the Philippine navy out of disputed waters in the South China Sea, Beijing learned it was possible to assert its sweeping territorial claims under the cover of enforcing domestic laws, without the help of its military.

The following year, China merged five civil maritime agencies into the unified Chinese coast guard. Since 2018, it has been under the command of the paramilitary People's Armed Police, which is itself controlled by the Central Military Commission chaired by Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

The rise of the Chinese coast guard, which operates several converted People's Liberation Army ships, freed up the Chinese navy to focus on deterrence and warfighting, Koh told Newsweek. The agency also has its own distinct ship classes, which can be "up-armed in wartime," a design choice also practiced by other nations including the United States.

China, meanwhile, has leaned on the financial means and the industrial capacity to raise a coast guard that now rivals most navies. Its Zhaotou-class patrol vessel—the world's biggest armed coast guard cutter—is larger than the U.S. Navy's Arleigh Burke-class destroyer.

In the South China Sea, long-running territorial disputes between Beijing and half a dozen other capitals are coming to a head as Manila fights for access to traditional fishing grounds in its exclusive economic zone. The U.S. is treaty-bound to defend the Philippines against an "armed attack" in the waters, but the Chinese coast guard is unlikely to cross that threshold.

Coast guards are traditionally considered less threatening than their gray-hulled navy counterparts, which tend to be more heavily armed. But China is challenging that premise, observers say.

"The coast guard gives the Chinese a certain narrative that they can promote—that by using the coast guard while other parties deploy their navies, China is the one that is promoting peace and stability and avoiding escalation," Koh said.

There are no easy answers [to gray zone warfare]. China has dedicated enormous resources to making itself into the world's premier maritime power by most measures," said Tom Shugart

"They are now the world's largest shipbuilders, shipowners and trading nation. They have the world's largest fishing fleet by far, the world's largest coast guard, and the world's largest navy by a number of ships, if not by tonnage," Shugart told Newsweek.

"The only way to deal with that is to band together; we have to have tight alliances. Like-minded nations have to work together closely and pool their resources to come close to matching that," he said.

🔗 https://www.newsweek.com/china-coast-guard-xi-jinping-territory-claims-east-south-china-seas-taiwan-strait-1874109