China’s ‘Cabbage Tactics’ pestering Philippines to cede territorial waters

Grown weary of getting lambasted on a world stage for its pugnacious method throughout the South China Sea, China is now prepared to provide ‘peaceful intimidation’ a strive.

Chinese President Xi Jinping reviewing People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy fleet within the South China Sea. (AP/File)

By Dipti Yadav: Much has already been written about disputes engulfing the South China Sea (SCS) area. What retains it in vogue, nonetheless, is the continuous travesty of regional Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) by China, insofar as relating to its persistent incursions right into a ‘completely harmless meandering’.

The latest case of a ‘military-grade’ laser utilized by China to briefly blind the crew members of a Philippines Coast Guard (PCG) vessel on a resupply mission to the Ayungin Shoal, certainly one of Manila’s claimed islands, shouldn’t be new within the laborious historical past of Chinese ‘uncanny’ fleets doing a roundabout within the SCS to badger overseas vessels and labelling them as a ‘threat’ in order to not directly grant itself entry for counteracting by itself whim.

The response by the Chinese Foreign Ministry to the identical included, not surprisingly, that it was only a process to make sure ‘navigational safety’ because the vessel had ‘intruded’ the waters. Hence, the CCG crew was pressured to make use of a laser to measure the gap and pace of the Philippines vessel, and to not deliberately blur the Filipino crew’s sight as alleged.

CCP’s gambit within the SCS finds point out quite a few occasions throughout the coteries of intellectual diplomats. One such weird tactic termed ‘cabbage tactics’–China’s long-tested ploy of deploying a various assemblage of vessels to wrap, encompass, and squeeze an adversary’s vessel till the realm turns into surrounded by many boats.

Where merely a single warship was leveraged in olden occasions to intimidate the adversary, China slightly opts for a swarm of vessels sectioned in three peels, very a lot an identical to a cabbage – therefore the jargon.

Wrap, encompass and squeeze: ‘Cabbage armada’ tactic exercised by China

The first layer includes innocuous PAFMM (People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia) fishing vessels which come ‘uniquely’ outfitted with computerized weapons and bolstered hulls. These vessels enter the rival claimants’ EEZ or territorial waters in a bid to elicit a response and scrutinize the adversary’s potential earlier than making one other encroachment drive.

If the response is that of retaliation, vessels affiliated with the China Coast Guard (CCG) kind the mid peel of the cabbage, ever-ready to counter overseas vessels working close to Chinese-claimed options throughout a standoff between the 2.

Comparatively much less militaristic in nature, each the China Coast Guard and PAFMM fleets kind the ‘grey zone’ for harassing different vessels and getting away with it. In case the circumstances worsen, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) fleet waits alongside the shoreline of China’s landmass, therefore forming the outermost layer.

To sum all of it up, all the tactic boils down to 3 steps. Exhibiting sovereignty over the waters via the impenetrable layers of a number of vessels, testing the adversary’s endurance, and eventually exhausting the enemy so as to make it give up –all with out the usage of pressure, albeit ‘peaceful intimidation’.

Countless incidents have surfaced within the SCS area since 2016. The Philippines has filed 211 in complete as diplomatic protests towards China, out of which 153 have been in 2021 alone. Though this has not barred China from working towards its bellicose method of evicting any overseas vessel from its personal ratified ‘nine-dash line’ waters.

In every occasion of this unlawful encroachment, China has by no means deterred to subject a press release on the identical with a benign comeback. As an instance, within the March 2021 prevalence during which 200 Chinese fishing boats entered Whitsun Reef which falls underneath the Philippine EEZ, China countered it by making some extent that its vessels have been merely looking for shelter from unhealthy climate, claiming as well as that they weren’t even part of its maritime militia.

China has all the time had a readily baked response for nearly each incident involving vessels of Mandarin origin.

The United States has practiced freedom of navigation operations (FONOP) occasionally close to the disputed areas of the SCS. Going by the primary goal of the EEZs, it supplies a nation with the flexibility to train unique financial rights (comparable to the usage of minerals and sources mendacity beneath the seabed for economical functions) over practically 200 NM sea space from its personal shoreline, whereas the area falling inside 12 NM is termed as ‘territorial waters’.

Nonetheless, China has its personal definition of an EEZ – that one has absolute management over waters, each economically in addition to territorially. When genuinely, an ‘innocent passage’ made by a sure vessel shouldn’t be certain to any repercussions by the state answerable for that EEZ.

By getting a maintain on practically the entire options based mostly within the SCS, China makes an attempt to construct a protecting wall that retains it away from a possible menace arising from an abrupt enhance within the variety of U.S. bases close to its landmass. Capturing every archipelago provides it a way of authority over the last word EEZ that arises from the identical, even whether it is getting overlapped by the opposite nations’ EEZs indirectly or different.

Duterte’s ‘immense belief’ in China’s cooperation step by step got here to a halt when Marcos was formally appointed as Philippine’s new president. So far, Marcos has been proper to steadiness out China with the US, via placing offers associated to the financial system with the previous, and delving on countering territorial disputes with the latter. Despite repeatedly wording the time period ‘peace’ in its official messaging, China finds no qualms in doing the precise reverse in the case of motion.

Only this month, Marcos granted the US short-term entry to 4 of its navy bases and has pledged to renew joint maritime patrols collectively. Clearly an overt try and frighten Shanghai, Marcos as a substitute performed mushy by stating there was ‘no direct threat to China’.

Published On:

Feb 17, 2023