A new Chinese documentary offers startling
revelations from a 2007 confrontation in the South China Sea
In early January 2014, video of a recent CCTV4 documentary “Blue Frontiers Guard” appeared online,
providing a detailed history of the China Marine Surveillance (CMS) spanning
from roughly 2007 up until the present. The documentary, in Chinese with English subtitles, begins
with footage of an incident that occurred on June 30, 2007 between various
government vessels from Vietnam and China in the disputed waters off the
Paracel islands in the South China Sea. The incident, having previously gone
largely unreported, is covered in tremendous detail, providing a new frame of
reference for analyzing wider debates over Chinese assertiveness and the U.S.
“rebalance” to the region. In addition, the video also provides a number of new
insights into organizations such as CMS and its parent organization, the State
Oceanic Administration (SOA), including the tactics and command and control
arrangements of their vessels when out at sea.
The 2007 incident apparently resulted from an attempt by a
China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) survey vessel to conduct what the
documentary termed “normal operations” in the waters off the Western Paracel
islands beginning on June 26 of that year. Such operations are seen as anything
but normal by the Vietnamese, who continue to claim the islands despite China
having forcefully occupied them since 1974. Hanoi dispatched a fleet consisting
largely of naval auxiliary vessels to prevent the Chinese from surveying the
waters. A tense standoff ensued, culminating in reckless maneuvers by Chinese
CMS vessels that led to a number of serious collisions, threatening the safety
of all crews.
The Vietnamese vessels initially expelled the CNPC survey
vessel from the area, and the China State Oceanic Administration (SOA)
responded by promptly organizing a “rights safeguarding and law enforcement”
campaign, dubbed Enforcement Action Code 626. According to the
documentary, such operations exist outside the scope of regular enforcement
patrols, and in addition to CMS ships already in the vicinity, SOA dispatched CMS
vessels numbered 83 and 51 to the area as part of the campaign. They arrived on
June 29 and formed up in “alert order,” with two ships both fore and aft on
either side of the CNPC vessel, attempting to escort it back into the area for
the second time.
After failing to verbally persuade the Vietnamese vessels to
leave the area and allow the survey to commence, the CMS vessels first
initiated a protective cordon around the CNPC ship, then began to initiate a
number of offensive naval maneuvers. These maneuvers began at the lower end of
the spectrum with shouldering, but subsequently escalated to direct bow to
bridge ramming after the Vietnamese naval auxiliary vessel DN 29 broke
through the cordon. The offensive actions were undertaken on direct orders from
the CMS higher command at SOA, who commanded the captains of the vessels to
intentionally initiate collisions with the Vietnamese ships. According to the
Deputy Director General of SOA’s South China Sea Bureau, he and other
commanding officials were “stressed” over the risk to their own crews’ safety,
but nevertheless “asked them to hit other vessels.” Such offensive maneuvers
are considered by senior leadership at SOA to be more effective as they preempt
possible aggressive maneuvers by the other side. The same SOA official is
quoted in the video as stating that “based on our years long operational
experience, it is much easier to attack than to defend.” These comments serve
as a strong indication that at least some ranking SOA officials have a preference
for preemptive action, and that the organization itself, now in charge of the
restructured China Coast Guard, could be promoting an offensive operational
doctrine.
Rather than rogue or overzealous captains misinterpreting
vague guidance, this incident provides conclusive evidence that the impetus for
the collisions originated with very specific orders from the upper levels of
the organization’s central leadership back on the Chinese mainland. The
captains of the CMS vessels view such tactics as tools accessible to them, but
only use them following orders from their higher command. As the captain of CMS
vessel number 84 states in the video: “as long as the commander gives an order,
be it hitting, ramming, or crashing, we will perform our duty resolutely.”
The tactics used in this incident are reminiscent of
encounters that took place at sea between the U.S. and USSR in the early years
of the Cold War. Recent encounters between the American and Chinese navies
elsewhere in the South China Sea, such as that involving the USS Cowpens
in December, bring such parallels into stark contrast. While some commentators
stressed the role of the activities undertaken by the Cowpens
in causing the incident, the 2007 incident off the Paracels begs the question
of whether or not the Chinese People’s Liberation Army-Navy (PLAN) shares the
same operational doctrine as its ostensibly civilian counterpart. The Cowpens
incident reportedly involved the use of similar tactics, with a Chinese
amphibious ship shouldering the U.S. destroyer after it was asked but failed to
leave the area, eventually leading to a near collision between the two vessels.
That there would be doctrinal overlap between the PLAN and SOA is a distinct
possibility, with the two organizations continuing to strengthen already close ties as part of plans
outlined at a recent annual meeting held between their senior officials.
The CCTV4 documentary is remarkable not only for the level
of detail it provides on collisions that occurred in 2007 as a result of Cold
War-era tactics, but also because it provides this information in a tone that
seemingly condones and even endorses such actions. In addition to comments from
SOA officials discussing the “glorious end” to the confrontation, the narrator
in the documentary describes it as a “grand battle,” of which the outcome is
apparently regarded as successful. The Chinese leadership has reportedly viewed
similar incidents as having been settled in China’s favor, including the 2012
standoff at Scarborough Shoal, and may even have begun reformulating a maritime
strategy based on the “Scarborough Model.” Yet the CCTV documentary
suggests that the “Scarborough Model” is by no means new, and that the
operational concept of using civilian maritime law enforcement vessels to
conduct maritime “rights safeguarding” or “rights protection” campaigns has
quite possibly been in the works for some time, since at least 2007.
These insights also illuminate an important point in the
wider debate over what has been referred to as a more assertive or even aggressive Chinese foreign
policy, and its relationship to the “pivot” or “rebalancing” policy undertaken
by the Obama administration. Despite the initial signs of this newly assertive
foreign policy often being traced to the 2009-2010 period, China had already
begun as early as 2007 to undertake a series of provocative actions that seemed
designed to assert greater authority and jurisdiction over its claims in the
South China Sea. The resulting confrontation described above indicates that
Chinese assertiveness not only predated the rebalance, but the Obama
administration itself.
Scott Bentley is a PHD candidate at the Australian Defence
Force Academy (UNSW@ADFA), researching maritime security strategies in
Southeast Asia.
No comments:
Post a Comment