China passed a controversial law that gives the coast guard more freedom to shoot foreign ships, a move that may increase the risk of military miscalculation in the Western Pacific.
The law aims to “safeguard national sovereignty, security and maritime rights,” the official Xinhua news agency said in a report earlier on Saturday. The law will take effect from February 1st.
China’s Coast Guard would be allowed to take “all necessary means”, including the use of weapons, to prevent or prevent threats from foreign vessels, according to the text released by Xinhua. Coast guard personnel will be allowed to board and inspect foreign ships operating in China’s “jurisdictional waters”, a term that covers areas claimed by other countries.
The measure may increase the risk of miscalculation in the vast areas of disputed waters that extend from the coast of China. Chinese coast guard ships often come in close contact – sometimes in tense confrontations – with foreign ships, while asserting Beijing’s claims across much of the South and East China seas.
China Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a regular meeting on Friday in Beijing that the move was “normal NPC legislative activity” and that China “will remain committed to maintaining peace and stability at sea “.
The claims of the resource-rich waters of the South China Sea have put China at odds with its Southeast Asian neighbors, including Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. In the East China Sea, Chinese and Japanese government ships routinely follow each other on patrols near uninhabited islands claimed by both sides.
Earlier this week, Japanese diplomats in a conference call with Chinese counterparts expressed strong opposition to repeated incursions into the country’s ships near the disputed Senkaku Islands, which are known as Diaoyus in China. Chinese delegates asked the two sides to work to make the area a “sea of peace, cooperation and friendship,” said the Foreign Ministry in Beijing.
The law is China’s last step in empowering its coast guard, which was created in 2013 by the merger of several maritime agencies and incorporated into the Armed People’s Police in 2018. The fleet has increased its presence in recently disputed waters, including an impasse with Vietnam at the Vanguard Bank of the South China Sea in 2019.
The move could also prompt other nations to strengthen their military presence in the waters, including then US national security adviser Robert O’Brien, who said last year that the U.S. Coast Guard was looking to expand its presence in the Pacific.
– With the help of John Liu, Jing Li and Colum Murphy