🇨🇳⚓️🇺🇸 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

🇨🇳🧪🇦🇶 China’s fifth research station in Antarctica sparks concerns about its ambitions

The launch of Qinling station on Feb 7, however, has sparked concerns about China’s ambitions on the continent, which has no permanent inhabitants, unlike the Arctic.

The expansion seeks to position China as a major scientific player in Antarctica, in line with its emerging great-power status, said Professor Marc Lanteigne, who teaches political science at the University of Tromso: The Arctic University of Norway.

“At the same time, it (could) potentially lay the groundwork for increased economic activities should the legal situation in the region change in the coming decades,” Prof Lanteigne told The Straits Times.

Mining is currently banned in Antarctica under the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, also known as the Madrid Protocol, which came into force in 1998. A concern is that China may press for a rethinking of the mining opportunities on the continent when this treaty is up for review in 2048, said Prof Lanteigne.

He noted that while China has research and economic interests on both poles, it faces less competition in Antarctica, given that the continent has no permanent inhabitants.

Assistant Professor Benjamin Ho said in the Arctic, countries such as Russia and the United States have staked claims, so China could see this as an opportunity to venture within Antarctica. “You can’t call yourself a global great power if you don’t have a presence around the globe,” said Prof Ho, who specialises in Chinese foreign policy at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

🔗 https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/china-s-fifth-research-station-in-antarctica-sparks-concerns-about-its-ambitions?s=09