MANILA – Hundreds of Chinese vessels that have been circling Pag-asa Island in the West Philippine Sea are part of intimidation tactics meant to give Beijing control of the strategic waterway, an analyst warned Sunday.
The Philippine military on Friday expressed alarm the presence of some 600 Chinese vessels near the sandbar.
“They have been a critical part of Chinese intimidation around the Senkaku Islands [in the East China Sea], and in the South China Sea,” said retired US Navy captain Carl Schuster, former director of the US Pacific Command’s joint intelligence center.
The boats, seen as part of China’s maritime militia, are often armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and sometimes with handheld surface-to-air missiles that take out aircraft, he told ANC.
They typically form a blockade, get in the way of supply crafts and occasionally ram fishing vessels with reinforced hulls, he added.
“Typically, what you’ll see is they (China) can’t just slip and take it (territories)…They’ll use the maritime people’s militia essentially to blockade, make it difficult to support, and intimidate any non-military craft,” Schuster said.
He added: “If your Coast Guard or your military Navy tries to do anything about it, the Chinese Coast Guard will show up as well as the Chinese Navy. It’s kind of a 3-tiered tactics to achieve an objective and the objective is to establish control over the entire Spratly Islands chain and 90 percent of the South China Sea.”
The militia in January 1974 was used by China to seize Paracel islands from Vietnam, noted Schuster.
“The South Vietnamese Navy thought they were going after fishing craft and they suddenly found themselves fighting a close-in battle against heavily armed and reinforced militia boats,” he said.
He added: “When the battle was in the balance, the PLA (People’s Liberation Army), Navy showed up and the Vietnamese had to withdraw. The islands have belonged to China ever since.”
The militia has killed 25 to 30 Vietnamese fishermen yearly since 2012, Schuster said.
Manila could opt to tell Chinese envoys that it would take the disappearance of any Filipino fishermen as an act against Philippine interests, he suggested.
The Philippines used to be a staunch critic of China’s claims over the sea.
But after his election in 2016, President Rodrigo Duterte put the dispute on the back burner in favor of courting Chinese trade and investment.
Philippine troops and fishermen have frequently complained about harassment by Chinese maritime security forces. (ABS-CBN/AFP/PN)
