An investigation of the US CSIS think tank describes the growing militarization of fishing fleets in the Chinese interests of South China interests.
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State subsidies, organized recruitment channels, owners related to the Beijing Government: a Washington Center for Strategic and International Studies (CIS), published on Thursday, November 18, raises the veil on the new Organization of the Chinese maritime militia (“Haishang Minbing”), armed arm of the aggressive sanctuarization policy led by Beijing in its immediate vicinity.
In the South China Sea, these civil appearance boats have made themselves known to harass Filipino fishermen, cut the road from US warships, or gather by dozens in front of some reefs disputed to put pressure on their countries residents. Appeared in 1974, the maritime militia had allowed China to delight the Pacels Islands in Vietnam. It is mounted in the 2000s, to support the illegal military constructions of the People’s Liberation Army (APL) on the archipelagos of Spratleys and Paracels. Until becoming, under the presidency of Xi Jinping since 2012, a spearhead with 300 ships, a professional fleet and deployed throughout the region in the reinforcement of the APL and the coastguard.
The CSIS has analyzed precisely 169 vessels. In the event of an incident, as was the case in the spring of 20021 with the organized group of 200 boats in front of the Whitsun reef, China asserts that its fishing vessels … fish independently. But the current ways of tracing – the satellite images and the system of identification of the AIS vessels – make it possible to affirm the opposite, recalls the CSIS: “when boats stroll for days or weeks without trawl or equipment deployed, it is absolutely obvious that they do not engage in commercial fishing. “Ditto when they position themselves” Raft “dissuasive, glued to each other, inactive for long weeks.
Strengthening and renovation of boats fishing
Two categories of vessels are this adept for “gray areas” of conflictuality, between open war and armed peace: professionals intended, or “fishing vessels of the maritime militia”; and fishermen joining it by opportunism or national feeling, “Fishing vessels supports spratleys”. These must have a minimum size (35 meters and 200 tons) and, according to government documents found by CSIS, navigate at least two hundred and eighty days a year in “specific maritime areas, delimited according to the objectives of national defense , in order to receive their complete wages “. The investigation cites the example of the Bei Yu 88603 and the Bei Yu 39198 GUI, present among the fleet massed in March-April 2021 in front of the Whitsun reef. These two ships received state subsidies for construction.
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