A Chinese scientific ship packed with surveillance equipment has docked in a Sri Lankan port. Hundreds of fishing boats moored for months between disputed islands in the South China Sea. And ocean ferries are built to be capable of carrying heavy vehicles and large loads of people.
All are ostensibly civilian ships, but experts and concerned regional governments say they are part of a Chinese civil-military merger strategy, little hidden by Beijing, that enhances its maritime capabilities.
China’s navy is already the largest in the world by number of ships, and it has been rapidly building new warships as part of a broader military expansion. It launched it’s first domestically designed and built aircraft carrier in June, and at least five new destroyers will soon be on the way.
The buildup comes as Beijing attempts to exert broader influence in the region. It is ramping up its military activities around the autonomous island of Taiwan, seeking new security deals with Pacific islands and building artificial islands in disputed waters to strengthen its territorial claims in the South China Sea, which the United States and its allies have challenged.
In the South China Sea’s Spratly Islands, for example, China pays commercial trawlers more than they can make by fishing simply to drop anchor for a minimum of 280 days a year to support Beijing’s claim to the disputed archipelago, said Gregory Poling, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative.
“China can use nominally civilian vessels that are state-directed, the state paid to eat away the sovereignty of its neighbours, but then plausibly deny that the state is responsible,” he said.
China has been using civilian fishing trawlers for military purposes for decades but has recently increased the numbers by creating a “Spratly Backbone Fleet” out of a government subsidy program begun under President Xi Jinping, which helps cover building new vessels, among other things.
Poling said that those ships “largely appeared almost overnight” after China constructed port infrastructure a few years ago on the artificial islands it built in the Spratlys that could be used for resupply.
Now there are about 300 to 400 vessels deployed there at any given time, he said.
The Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and others also have claims to the Spratly Islands, which sit in a productive fishing area and essential shipping lane. They are thought to hold untapped reserves of natural gas and oil.
But the Chinese ships deter other trawlers from fishing in the area, and have been slowly displacing them from the grounds, with little that governments can do, said Jay Batongbacal, who heads the University of the Philippines’ Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea.
“Because they are ostensibly civilian fishing vessels, navies’ ships are unable to deal with them lest China accuses the Philippines of provoking an incident and using force against civilians,” he said. “They take advantage of perceived ‘grey zones’ below the threshold for triggering a self-defence response.”
China hasn’t tried to disguise its military use of civilian ocean-going ferries, which have had to meet defence standards since 2016, allowing them to accommodate military vehicles like tanks, said Mike Dahm, a retired U.S. Navy intelligence officer who has written on the topic for the U.S. Naval War College China Maritime Studies Institute.
Slickly produced state television videos showing trainloads of military vehicles and troops boarding the vessels and heading to sea, stating openly they are testing “how to use civilian transportation resources to execute military tasks.” The latest such exercise wrapped up earlier this month.
This could be meant to intimidate Taiwan, which China claims as its own and has not ruled out attempting to take by force. It also dovetails with the Chinese government’s message that the public is contributing to national security, Dahm said.
China at the moment does not possess enough amphibious craft to transport the number of troops needed 160 kilometres (100 miles) across the Taiwan Strait for a potential beach landing on the island, and the ferries could be a stopgap measure should a crisis prompt China to decide to invade, Rahmat said.
China also may not want to take on the expense of building and maintaining a “huge amphibious armada” for an indeterminate period, Dahm said.
Military amphibious craft is built to land troops and vehicles on a beach. In contrast, ferries provide port-to-port movement, which would only be effective if China could capture Taiwanese ports in serviceable condition, Dahm said.
Still, in a crisis, China’s People’s Liberation Army could attempt a chancy gambit like offloading amphibious vehicles from the ferries at sea or using floating causeways, Dahm said.
“There is always the possibility that the PLA could commit to a high-risk operation against Taiwan with the possibility of losing many civilian ships,” he said.