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PAPER UNDER REVIEW. PLEASE DO NOT CIRCULATE OR DISTRIBUTE*** the China Coast Guard ***PAPER UNDER REVIEW. PLEASE DO NOT CIRCULATE OR DISTRIBUTE*** The China Coast Guard: A New Maritime Power? Chin-Hao Huang1 (corresponding author) [email protected] Avery Simmons2 [email protected] Yale-NUS College 16 College Ave West Singapore 138527 Singapore June 2017 1 Chin-Hao Huang is assistant professor of political science at Yale-NUS College. He is the recipient of the 2017-2018 Lee Kong Chian National University of Singapore-Stanford University Distinguished Fellowship on Contemporary Southeast Asia. His research focuses on the international relations of East Asia. He is author of the book Power, Restraint, and China’s Rise (forthcoming) and has published in The China Quarterly, The China Journal, International Peacekeeping, and in edited volumes through Oxford University Press and Routledge, among others. He received the American Political Science Association (APSA) Foreign Policy Section Best Paper Award (2014) and has testified before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission on China’s foreign affairs. 2 Avery Simmons is a research assistant in the Global Affairs program at Yale-NUS College. ***PAPER UNDER REVIEW. PLEASE DO NOT CIRCULATE OR DISTRIBUTE*** The China Coast Guard: A New Maritime Power? Abstract The empirical focus on China’s coast guard leads to some fairly thought-provoking conclusions, and ones that run counter to the conventional wisdom about China’s increasing aggressiveness in the maritime domain. If territorial integrity, access to sea lanes, and power projection are at stake in the East and South China Seas, China’s decision to forego military deterrence as a first resort is intrinsically a puzzling and costly signal. Drawing from primary and secondary open-sources, the paper presents a newly assembled aggregate data of the coast guard’s deployment and enforcement activities in both the East and South China Seas. The emergent pattern of behavior in coast guard activities reflects a different kind of strategic deterrence against other claimant states, even as the use of force and costly military deployments are restrained to assert China’s territorial claims. The tracking and analysis of the activities further shows that while the coast guard’s strength emanates from its non-military character, therein lies an inherent bureaucratic constraint as well. On the few occasions where naval and paramilitary forces were involved or supersede coast guard patrols, tensions in both the East and South China Seas ratchet up. The extent to which the coast guard is empowered to carry out its responsibilities thus remains in flux. In fact, a weakened civilian coast guard overshadowed by an increasingly active maritime militia that is armed and haphazardly trained could prove to be the more destabilizing complication to regional security. Keywords Chinese Coast Guard; East China Sea; South China Sea 1 ***PAPER UNDER REVIEW. PLEASE DO NOT CIRCULATE OR DISTRIBUTE*** Introduction In August 2016, a flotilla of 230 armed Chinese fishing vessels sailed into the waters surrounding the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea. Cutters from the China Coast Guard (CCG) accompanied the fishing militia. Even though China undoubtedly has the capacity to send naval assets into the disputed waters, battleships from the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) were strikingly missing from the front lines of the scene. If power projection, territorial integrity, access to sea lanes and resources are at stake, China’s decision to forego military deployment as a first resort is intrinsically a puzzling signal. This paper examines how and why the coast guard has been deployed with increasing frequency in China’s ongoing maritime disputes in the East and Chin. As a civilian agency, the CCG’s functional activities include border patrols and maritime law enforcement to assert China’s territorial claims in the contested waters. A careful documentation of open-source reports of CCG activities since its formation in 2013 illuminates established patterns in the CCG’s encounters in the East and South China Seas and the distinct ways it operates with (and from) the maritime militia and PLAN. The preliminary data and results reveal that the CCG has emerged as an effective and strategic deterrence against rival claimant states. The increasing deployment of the CCG shifts the onus to other claimant states to either double down or retreat from confronting a civilian law enforcement agency, even as the use of force and costly military deployments are restrained to assert China’s territorial claims. The paper begins by reviewing the purpose and origins of the CCG, underscoring the rationale for a consolidated civilian agency to take the helms of China’s maritime policy. It examines how the coast guard fits into China’s overall maritime bureaucracy, its leadership and decision-making structure, and the occasional tension with paramilitary forces. The paper then takes a closer look at the CCG activities, categorizing its functions and activities in the East and South China Seas from July 2013 to May 2017 and discerning patterns across the ongoing maritime disputes through extensive open-source data and case studies. Lastly, the paper addresses the implications of the CCG’s increasing activism in the maritime domain, as well as the challenges and opportunities for managing maritime security in the region. A New Maritime Authority Prior to the creation of the China Coast Guard, China’s maritime presence was fractured amongst multiple agencies with overlapping responsibilities. Ill-coordinated and ineffective as a maritime law enforcement, these agencies were labeled the ‘Nine Dragons,’ 2 ***PAPER UNDER REVIEW. PLEASE DO NOT CIRCULATE OR DISTRIBUTE*** referencing the traditional Chinese myth of nine dragons stirring up the sea.3 Conflicting agendas among the wide array of agencies added to the discord. There was no overarching body to mediate between fishing, environmental protection, or maritime tourism interests, nor was there internal cohesion in law enforcement, since border control, customs, illegal fishing, and search and rescue operations were handled by different government ministries. With the South China Sea emerging as a hot-button issue, a strong and successful showing in a territorial dispute could bring attention to an agency or make the career of ambitious government officials. Provincial governors with control over local maritime paramilitary forces could activate and deploy them in the contested waters. As Linda Jakobson puts it, ‘under the auspices of ‘safeguarding rights’ and ‘maritime consciousness’, one can justify almost anything.’4 With different agencies angling and competing for power and resources, executing a coordinated policy on the maritime disputes was nearly impossible. Then-Director of the State Oceanic Administration (SOA) Liu Cigui published an article emphasizing the necessity of a streamlined maritime law enforcement body in relation to China’s maritime goals. Liu indicated the priorities and criteria for a maritime power: ‘[One needs to] establish maritime administration and maritime law enforcement systems that are authoritative and highly efficient, have fairly concentrated functions, and have uniform responsibilities; that can perform overall planning for both internally oriented administrative law enforcement and externally oriented rights protection law enforcement; and that can provide organizational support for efforts to build China into a maritime power.’5 Likewise, China’s 2012 Defense White Paper reflected this new sense of urgency, indicating that it was ‘an essential national development strategy to exploit, utilize and protect the seas and oceans, and build China into a maritime power.’6 Michael McDevitt identifies maritime power as military, political, and economic influence exerted through the ability to use the sea, with an equal emphasis placed on the naval and civilian dimensions. As such, maritime power 3 Stirring up the South China Sea (I), report no. 223, Asia Report, International Crisis Group: Working to Prevent Conflict Worldwide (Brussels, 2012), 8. Note: The “nine dragons” included the PLA Navy, Marine Safety Administration, Search and Rescue Centre, China Marine Surveillance, Environmental Protection Agency, the Maritime Police and Border Police (both under the Ministry of Public Security), Fisheries Law Enforcement Command (Ministry of Agriculture), and Customs Law Enforcement (General Administration of Customs). 4 Linda Jakobson, China’s Unpredictable Maritime Security Actors, report (Lowy Institute for International Policy, 2014), 33. 5 Liu Cigui, “Some Considerations on Building China into a Maritime Power” (Guanyu Jianshe Haiyang Qiangguo De Ruogan Sikao), State Oceanic Administration Website, 26 November 2012. Available at: http://www.soa.gov.cn/xw/ldhd/lyx/201212/t20121204_19016.html. 6 Kimberly Hsu, Craig Murray, and Matt Wild, “China’s 2012 Defense White Paper: The Diversified Employment of China’s Armed Forces,” Rep. U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission Staff Research Backgrounder, 3 May 2013, Web, Accessed 28 June 2016. 3 ***PAPER UNDER REVIEW. PLEASE DO NOT CIRCULATE OR DISTRIBUTE*** encompasses not only ‘sea-based military capabilities’ but also ‘civilian capabilities such as a coast guard, port infrastructure, merchant shipping, fishing, and shipbuilding.’7 Possessing maritime power necessarily implies the capability to protect China’s maritime rights and interests, as the legitimacy of its presence
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