China Seeks Dominance In The High Seas Using Fisheries Militia

China maintains an anchored presence in the contested waters of the South China Sea through fishing fleets, an undertaking imperative to the advancement of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a reimagining of the ancient Silk Road with which it plans to encircle the globe by 2049, Shea Donovan reported for Newsweek.

Photo Insert: China's notorious Fishing Fleet

In March 2021, the Philippines called attention to a fleet of Chinese vessels occupying the Whitsun Reef, to which both China and the Philippines lay claim. The National Task Force for the West Philippine Sea revealed more than 200 Chinese maritime militia vessels anchored in the reef.

"It is our own ocean, but instead of catching fish, we are too afraid to go back there because somebody might attack us," Dionesio Cabacungan, a fisherman at Sisiman Port, Philippines, told RadioFreeAsia. "They tried to shoot at us," he said. "Three times they shot."

"I think in many ways it was a practice run to see what the Philippines would do," Rockford Weitz, Director of the Fletcher Maritime Studies Program at Tufts University, told Newsweek. Weitz identified the Whitsun Reef incident as evidence of China's maritime militias beginning to recognize their potential, a threatening realization for the United States and countries facing the South China Sea.

"There was no hot conflict from it. But they had presence, they ignored orders. They established discomfort," Weitz said. "They essentially sent the message, 'We're here, and we have plenty of assets to be here permanently.'"

China has both the largest maritime militia and the largest commercial fishing fleet in the world. As the world's top seafood consumer, China has a legitimate reason to invest in its fishing vessels. Whether or not they are harvesting fish sustainably, they are helping to feed China.

It was one of the first powers to weaponize their fishing industry, at scale, but it remains a global concern. China’s territorial sea and inland waters are already barren.

China has made a strategic effort to equip its fishing communities with state-of-the-art ships and equipment, and possibly arms, creating a "motivated and organized fleet of civilian vessels able to both claim marine resources and also occupy contested waters," Jay Batongbacal, associate professor and Director of the Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea at the University of the Philippines, told RadioFreeAsia.

Batongbacal explained that because China has essentially depleted all of its own coastal fisheries, the Chinese government has invested significantly in its fishing fleet.

Financial support was provided to modernize the vessels, supplying them with radio equipment, fishing equipment, and GPS transponders in an effort to ensure the boats are able to fish further away from their own shore.

The strength of the fleet is its deniability. Because China denies the boats are military vessels, Chinese officials can feasibly equate any action against them by foreign navies or coast guards to an attack on Chinese civilians. Yet, the Argentinians sunk a Chinese fishing ship that strayed into Argentinian waters and tried to ram a Navy ship.

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