The risks of China's coast guard projecting police powers at sea

The force's actions in extending Beijing's grip over disputed territory are challenging the international maritime legal order and raising fears of armed conflict.

- Kathrin Hille

On July 24, China Coast Guard 5202 sailed loops around Thitu, an island in the Spratlys held by the Philippines, while at least four other vessels loitered around reefs close to the Philippine coast.

Meanwhile, 700km to the south, a Chinese coast guard ship was conducting a weeks-long patrol at Luconia Shoals off the Malaysian coast, and 1,500km to the north, yet another sailed around the Senkaku Islands, capping a record 215-day presence in Japan's territorial sea.

The breadth of operations. which included patrols deep inside Vietnam's exclusive economic zone and off the shore of the Taiwan-controlled islet of Kinmen a few days earlier illustrates how the force has become central to China's enforcement of its vast maritime claims while intimidating its neighbours.

"They are everywhere," said Captain Kentaro Furuya, a professor at the Japan Coast Guard Academy and a former coast guard officer. "They are trying to occupy the ocean as if it were part of their own land territory."

China's coast guard has been the world's largest for a decade. But Beijing's increasing militarisation, its great power turn under President Xi Jinping and a legal framework authorising its ships to help realise those swelling ambitions are challenging the international maritime legal order and raising fears of armed conflict.

On Aug 31, a Chinese coast guard ship rammed a Philippine coast guard vessel at Sabina Shoal near the Philippine coast. The incident came after China's coast guard in June rammed, towed and hacked holes in Philippine naval vessels, boarded them and confiscated weapons at nearby Second Thomas Shoal - its highest level of violence yet.

The clashes exemplified what Beijing called "rights protection law enforcement", a concept that frames the coast guard's actions as policing the waters to guard against foreign intrusion.

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