Fleets of Force - Gift Article
How China strong-armed its way into dominating the South China Sea
Washington DC 16 NOV 2023
Mea Culpa!
At the height of the wars in the sandbox, Thirdoffset told his war college class that you can’t have an insurgency at sea. He could not have been more wrong. In fact, the insurgency was well underway at that very moment but the US and your humble scribe had not picked up on it. Regular readers will know how hard Thirdoffset has worked since to make up for that analytical error.
China has pursued a clever hybrid-warfare strategy in the South China Sea (SCS) over the past twenty years.
The foundational issue is as follows: China claims the territory of the SCS on the basis that Zheng He, an explorer in the Ming Dynasty, claimed the sea for China although there is no tangible legally viable and accepted record of this assertion.
The Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague found on 12 July 2016 that “there was no evidence that China had exercised exclusive control historically over the key waterway - a reference to the “nine-dash line” above. Further the Court ruled that China’s “recent land reclamation activities, and other activities in Philippine waters—were unlawful”
The panel also concluded that Beijing’s activities within the Philippines’ two-hundred-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ), such as illegal fishing and environmentally ruinous artificial island construction, infringed on Manila’s sovereign rights.
China disregarded the international court, influenced the then President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, to not make a fuss, and intensified its para-military maritime insurgency programs.
Duterte famously told President Obama to “got to hell” as part of his kowtowing to Beijing. He later recanted and attempted to assert Philippine sovereignty according to international law. Of course no one took him seriously. Duterte was a clown. He was probably paid off by China, and only changed his position once the CCP determined he no longer had value as a useful idiot and cut him off.
The current President, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, is a strong leader who enthusiastically protects Philippine sovereignty. He has been busy rebuilding the US alliance and forging new ones with Japan, Australia, and other non-traditional partners.
The principal military activity of the PLA in support of the political plan has been its maritime insurgency designed to undermine international law by virtue of gradually changing the circumstances on the ground. In this case the “ground” is shoals and waterways. How do you claim a waterway? You flood it with “fishing” vessels.
The PLA has been very innovative in their use of “maritime militias” to impose clever hybrid warfare tactics on the small states that contest the South China Sea. Chinese “fishing boats, most of which don’t actually fish” are designed to keep trouble just under the threshold of outright conflict as they salami slice their way to full control of the region. They have got away with building sea forts completely unchallenged for decades. Now even if the US and our allies wanted to do something about the forts they couldn’t - not without going to full scale war. The US has effectively been forced out of the region - which is why the USMC has been very busy getting creative about how to get back in without losing all its amphibious ships before they are able to land troops and equipment ashore. Therefore, China’s salami slicing tactics have been a raging success.
When Thirdoffset was in the Navy and given a tour of the radical new USS Zumwalt destroyer as it was being built, the CO, Captain Kirk USN, explained the many advantages of this extraordinarily expensive stealth platform (that are no longer being produced). Thirdoffset made the point that while it had roughly the same number of strike missiles as an SSN, it was not as stealthy. The skipper and his leadership team reacted like they found a “hostile” in their midst. They grew annoyed and vigorously asserted their ship had the radar cross section of a fishing trawler.
No doubt it did. However, there was just one problem with the designed they had not taken into consideration.
“Oh yes?” came the annoyed reply.
“A fisherman with a Mk I eyeball and a radio”.
No further conversation took place. Thirdoffset was ostracized for the remainder of the visit. This struck him as pretty childish and not very constructive. In a bigger sense, it was very instructive about how little thought had gone into the intersection of dependence on advanced technology versus comprehending the nature of the operational environment and how an adversary had chosen to subvert multi-billion dollar stealth advantages by very simple and cheap means.
Today the NYT released a very useful graphic of PLA activities in the region that illustrates the nature of the technology and sovereignty defeating challenge particularly well. It is a gift article from Thirdoffset for those who do not have a subscription to the paper.
Select text from the article
Beijing says many of these boats are just fishing. But they bristle with machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and high-velocity water cannons. They’re here for intimidation.
This fleet, built largely with government money, helps China dominate one of the most crucial and disputed waterways in the world: the South China Sea.
Working in tandem with an aggressive coast guard, these militarized fishing boats assert Beijing’s presence more than 1,000 miles from the Chinese mainland.
These fishing boats, most of which don’t actually fish, make up a maritime militia that is upending the rules of the sea. By providing backup to the China Coast Guard and maintaining a constant presence in remote waters—often parking on contested reefs for weeks at a time—they amplify China’s ambitions in the South China Sea.
China’s maritime militia is made up of civilians who on paper hold jobs as commercial fishermen. The blurring of lines is deliberate: China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has stressed the need for civilian-military unity to promote national security.
Such gray zone tactics help China quietly gain command over disputed areas. Beijing has used this method across its vast frontier, from the mountainous borders with South Asia to rocks in the East China Sea. And once China incrementally takes over, a new reality reigns.