As the Philippines accuses China of using maritime militias to encroach on its exclusive economic zone (EEZ), China’s leading military magazine Naval and Merchant Ships alleges that Vietnam’s maritime militias are massing near Hainan Island, the Xisha Islands and Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. The magazine called on the authorities to “take a serious view of the situation and deal with it in a timely manner.
In a report published last week, the South China Morning Post reported that in 2009, Vietnam passed a “militia self-defense force law” that authorizes its maritime militia to perform maritime patrols and surveillance missions to confront and expel invading foreign vessels. The law also authorizes Vietnam to defend islands and reefs under Vietnamese control. The EU estimates the size of Vietnam’s maritime militia to be about 8,000 fishing boats and 46,000 fishermen, but Ship Knowledge alleges that it may exceed 70,000, and that these trained militiamen participate in a range of missions when not fishing, sometimes in cooperation with the Vietnamese Navy.
“Ship Knowledge alleges that these missions include covert surveillance of Chinese military installations and vessels, and sometimes deliberate clashes with Chinese maritime police vessels to attract Western media attention. The report alleges that the guerrilla tactics of the Vietnamese maritime militia may offset the size and technical superiority of Chinese law enforcement vessels, and that even if Vietnamese vessels are captured, the economic costs are limited, but the diplomatic and political benefits could be significant, making the Vietnamese side fearless.
Vietnam and China, two communist countries that share the concept of guerrilla warfare and “people’s war,” both reportedly have a long tradition of maritime militias that specialize in mobilizing fishermen and fishing boats to assert sovereignty in the South China Sea. For China in particular, the maritime militia was the precursor to the modern People’s Liberation Army Navy, according to Collin Koh, a researcher at the Raja LeNam School of International Relations at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
Last month, the Philippines accused China of amassing more than 200 maritime militia vessels in the waters of Whitsun Reef in the Spratly Islands, and at least 240 Chinese maritime police and militia vessels remain in the Philippines’ exclusive economic waters. Vietnam claimed that Vanguard Bank was within its 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone and deployed maritime militia vessels to obstruct it, confronting the Chinese vessels and protesting to the Chinese side several times.
In 2014, China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) moved an oil rig to the waters off Triton Island, the southernmost island in the Paracel Islands, causing a standoff between Vietnamese and Chinese vessels and a serious deterioration in relations between the two countries, which led to serious anti-China riots in Vietnam.
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