China ups ante in its maritime disputes with neighbors

WASHINGTON – China has upped the ante in its maritime disputes with Asian neighbors including the Philippines by adding two destroyers and nine other warships to its lightly armed maritime surveillance fleet, Washington Times columnist Bill Gertz said.

The new Chinese warships will operate in the East China Sea, where tensions are especially high between China and Japan over Beijing’s claims to the Senkaku Islands, and in the South China Sea where China is involved in a dispute over ownership of parts of the sea with the Philippines and Vietnam among others, he said.

“The maritime surveillance team’s power has been greatly strengthened and its capacity to execute missions sharply improved, providing a fundamental guarantee for completing the currently arduous task to protect maritime interests,” Gertz quoted Yu Zhirong of Beijing’s Research Center for Chinese Marine Development as saying.

US military intelligence agencies are reported to have been closely monitoring the Chinese for just such an escalation.

Previously, US authorities viewed the lack of Chinese naval forces in disputes among Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam and India as a key indicator of  limited Chinese assertiveness.

Miles Yu, another Washington Times columnist, said China was conducting a people’s war against South Korea’s maritime authorities by dispatching a large number of fishing vessels into the South Korean exclusive economic zone.

He said Chinese fishing boats often carry out operations on behalf of the government to provoke other countries, as in a recent spat with the Philippines in Panatag (Scarborough) Shoal.

China has territorial disputes with virtually all of its maritime neighbors including its communist ally North Korea, where Chinese fishermen occasionally are detained by the Stalinist regime in Pyongyang, Yu said.