After Chinese ships ram each other, concern over dangerous encounters in South China Sea

SYDNEY — As China has again ramped up its aggressive actions against Philippine vessels in the South China Sea, the recent collision of a Peoples Liberation Army Navy vessel with one from the Chinese Coast Guard illustrates how dangerous these encounters are becoming.

The coast guard vessel’s bow was smashed and the fate of several sailors who were on the bow moments before the Aug. 11 incident remain publicly unaccounted for by Chinese authorities.

“It looked to me as if the CCG vessel abruptly cut back into the wake of the Philippine vessel, which then put it directly in the path of the PLA Navy warship,” China analyst Euan Graham with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute wrote in an email to Breaking Defense. “Whatever the exact circumstances, China ended up wearing the consequences of its own dangerous seamanship. Close marking a much smaller Philippines vessel in this way could easily have ended in Philippine sailors being seriously injured or killed, painting China as the obvious aggressor.

“It shows how close we are to an incident that triggers a wider diplomatic and military crisis,” he said.

Instead of expressing concern, China has blamed the Philippines for the incident, despite video evidence showing the Philippine Coast Guard ship trying to evade being rammed or sprayed with a powerful water cannon by the Chinese Coast Guard ship.

“The key takeaway from this unprecedented collision was that clearly there might have been some problems in the coordination between the PLAN and CCG,” said Collin Koh, a senior fellow and coordinator of maritime affairs at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies who closely follows China’s maritime activities. “Immediately after the collision, the DDG 164 [Chinese naval vessel] did not stop to aid the CCG 3104 [Coast Guard vessel] but went on to chase after the [Philippine Coast Guard ship] Suluan. There could be something to be said about the internal working dynamics between the CCG and PLAN.”

The interaction was unusual, Koh said, because the Chinese navy previously adopted what he called more of a “over the horizon deterrence” in which it was would be “visibly present at a distance,” while the Chinese Coast Guard and maritime militia would handle actually “asserting Chinese sovereignty and rights against rivals” in the South China Sea.

Koh also questioned “the level of competency of the Chinese personnel, onboard both the DDG164 and CCG3104.” Overall, “the collision represents irrefutable evidence that China’s aggressive behavior poses not just a danger to its rivals in the SCS, but even to Chinese forces themselves.”

A naval analyst at the University of New South Wales, Jennifer Parker, agreed that the collision was “the result of aggressive behavior and poor tactical coordination between the PLAN and the CCG. It just shows what can go wrong when you drive ships in an unsafe and unprofessional manner.”

“We are lucky that this behavior on the seas and in the air has not resulted in more frequent accidents and a greater loss of life,” she said.

The stakes in the South China Sea, especially around flashpoints such as Scarborough Shoal, are growing as more countries, concerned about China’s behavior, execute joint operations with the Philippines to counter the PLAN and Chinese Coast Guard as they strive to create de facto control over what a UN tribunal has ruled are Philippine waters.

The British Royal Navy’s HMS Prince of Wales aircraft carrier joined with ships from America, Australia, Japan, Norway and Spain for an impressive deployment of three aircraft carriers — including the USS Nimitz super carrier and the small Japanese carrier Kaga — in a nine-day operation in the North Philippine Sea that ended the day after the two Chinese ships collided.

“The Philippines is being singled out through no fault of its own but because it is continuing to press ahead with deeper defense cooperation with the United States and ‘defy’ China. Australia is also in the middle of its largest-ever military exercises with the Philippines,” Graham noted. To send a clearer message to China that it will not withdraw its armed forces from Scarborough Shoal, he said, “Manila should consider a joint sail through with a US destroyer.”

Parker said the recently increased military presence from US, UK, Indian and other naval deployments may have led to China deploying more forces in the sea, but “the incidents around Scarborough Shoal are unique” and have more to do with what appears to be Chinese irritation at the Philippines naval and coast guard presence there. The shoal is well within the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone, but China has regularly deployed vast fleets of coast guard and “fishing vessels” around the shoal to exclude Filipino fishermen and government vessels since 2012.

But Koh said if anything the deployment of US and allied vessels has likely deterred more aggressive Chinese action than anything else.

“Their continued naval presence is at least discomforting enough for Beijing to have second thoughts about pushing the envelope of its coercive act against the Philippines, keeping it well within the non-kinetic threshold and not escalating it vertically to an armed conflict,” the Singapore analyst wrote. He praised the “assertive transparency strategy [of the Philippines] that [has] helped gain international support.”

The Philippine navy and coast guard and their Chinese counterparts now routinely video their encounters. The Philippines often publishes the videos quickly on the Internet and distributes them using various social media.