One of the ways China intimidates other countries is by sending ships to camp out near or in waters to which other countries have a formally established legal right. China doesn’t countenance the relevant international agreements and sometimes says so, implicitly relying on the mightier-than-you rationale for belligerent foreign policy explicated by such writers as Thucydides and Machiavelli.
Example: the “swarm” of Chinese vessels that, per a July 10, 2023 piece in The Maritime Executive, the Philippine military observed “at Iroquis and Sabina Shoal, raising new concerns about Chinese intentions in this oil and gas-rich region of the Philippine exclusive economic zone (EEZ).”
According to the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) no less than forty-eight Chinese fishing vessels have been spotted at anchor at Iroquois Reef, located south of Reed Bank in the South China Sea. . . .
Earlier overflights confirmed a trend of increasing numbers of Chinese fishing vessels, all exhibiting the characteristics of the Chinese maritime militia: commercial trawlers loitering in large numbers in a strategic area without making any efforts at fishing. . . .
For the AFP, the Chinese presence at these locations is an “alarming concern.” Nearby Reed Bank is believed to have high oil and gas potential, but has never been developed, largely because of Chinese interference in the Philippine EEZ. The Philippines suspended offshore exploration operations at Reed Bank in 2011 and again in 2014 after Chinese threats. (China considers the vast majority of the South China Sea to be its own sovereign territory, including Reed Bank and other sites in its neighbors’ EEZs.)
The Chinese do sometimes fish, and massively, in the waters off of other countries, even countries so far away as those of South America. But in this case, the Chinese government seems to have set up a pretend-fishing operation for the sake of laying claim to other kinds of natural resources and stopping anybody else from getting them, like the people in the Philippines whose exclusive economic zone China is thus invading.
