The international community should be mindful of China’s “gray zone” activities carried out by its maritime militia and coast guard west of the first island chain, an area where Beijing seeks to establish full control, a former Japanese Navy rear admiral told a security forum in Taipei on Friday.
China has been exploiting freedom of navigation by deploying its maritime militia to international waters to escalate its “gray zone” activities, Katsuya Yamamoto, who was in the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force, said at the International Conference on Sea Lane Security held by the Ocean Affairs Council and National Sun Yat-sen University.
“Gray zone” activities refer to actions that fall between the traditional notions of war and peace, typically involving ambiguous or non-traditional methods that aim to achieve strategic objectives without overtly crossing the threshold into open conflict.
Photo: Reuters
Among China’s activities that are considered to meet the definition are the regular crossing of the median line of the Taiwan Strait by Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft. In the past few months, it has also used its coast guard and maritime militia to intimidate Philippine vessels operating near Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島) — which Taiwan also claims — ramming them, and deploying military-grade lasers and water cannons against them.
China has also been preventing fishers from accessing traditional fishing sites within the Philippine exclusive economic zone, negatively affecting local economies, foreign media reported.
China has accused Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party of incrementally pushing for independence and insisted that it has the right to patrol the waters around the Spratly Islands.
Yamamoto, who now heads the Security Studies Program at the Tokyo-based Sasakawa Peace Foundation, said that China’s maritime militia is part of the PLA and has taken part in wars, including the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War.
Under international humanitarian law, the maritime militia is defined as a regular part of the country’s armed forces and a combatant, he said.
China inculcates the notion in its soldiers and sailors that whatever happens in the waters west of the first island chain — the string of islands from the Japanese archipelago, through Taiwan and the Philippines to Borneo, Indonesia — is a “domestic matter.”
Based on that premise, all hostile elements west of the chain must be eliminated — a task that falls to the China Coast Guard, he said.
The China Coast Guard is different from its foreign counterparts, as it functions as a “complete naval force” that can operate independently even if China escalates its “gray zone” activities, he said, adding that the coast guards of Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines would need the support of their respective navies in such a scenario.
If democratic countries ignore the “gray zone” situation that China seeks to perpetuate with its maritime militia, the international order would transform into a “Chinese-style international order” as envisioned by Beijing, Yamamoto said.
It is important that the international community increase the visibility and transparency of what is happening in the waters west of the first island chain, share the intelligence, and jointly condemn and push back against challenges to the “status quo,” he said.
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