PHILIPPINES LABELS CHINESE COAST GUARD "ARMED ROBBERS"

HOW FAR WILL THE DRAGON SWIM? 

 Your Backyard Is His Backyard.

 pd swimming dragon

The Philippines has accused the Chinese Coast Guard of Armed robbery. The Dragon's coast guard robbed filipino commercial fishermen at gunpoint during a series  of confrontations in a hotly disputed shoal area in the South China Sea. Crewmen from clearly marked Chinese coast guard vessels forcefully boarded two Philippine fishing boats near the disputed Scarborough Shoal on April 14, 2015. After subduing the Philippine boat's crew the Chinese crewmen confiscated the vessel's catch. Reportedly the catches were confiscated at gunpoint. The two boats were among 20 or so Philippine registered commercial fishing boats at Scarborough Shoal at the pertinent time. The shoal is located about 140 miles off of the main Philippine island of Luzon easily within the traditional and internationally recognized 200 mile Philippines exclusive economic zone. The shoal is about 408 miles from the nearest Chinese land mass and thus more than 200 miles outside any conceivable range that China could claim under present international law as part of their exclusive economic zone. The Philippines have filed a diplomatic protest with China. We doubt that China is impressed. We agree with the Philippine assessment of the event, outright armed robbery conducted by the Chinese coast guard. 

 The Chinese coast guard has been occupying the shoal since 2012  when they took it by the simple expedient of simply showing up there with overwhelming naval forces. A week after the armed robbery, by April 23, 2015 Philippine sources were also reporting that a Chinese coast guard vessel had hit a Philippine fishing boat with water cannon, causing enough damage to send it back to port. The boarding team which took the catch in the first described incident also deliberately damaged fishing equipment aboard the Philippine vessel.

As we have described before, China claims nearly all of the South China Sea, even waters and islands close to the coast of the Philippines and other Asian neighbours. Their claim is utterly meritless in law or history but is simply being enforced by armed coast guard forces. China has bothered to create the world's largest coast guard so as to distinguish this thevery from "naval action". Coast guard forces internationally are distinguished from naval forces by lighter armament, and police authority over civilians. By claiming their state sponsored nautical thugs are "coast guard" crews China delays some international outrage and tries to build some credibility for their bogus argument via "effective administration". They will claim before international maritime tribunals and the court of world opinion that they have been effectively enforcing mineral licensing and commercial fisheries for years in the claimed areas. They will of course gloss over the fact that they had to first eject by superior arms the rightful sovereigns. 

 To any scholar of international law the case is simple. China is a thug state, a swimming dragon devouring the wealth of its neighbors. Their "coast guard" is a blight upon the good name of the world's coast guards largely legitimate law enforcement and search and rescue naval auxiliaries doing humanitarian within the national waters of their national sponsors. China has created the world's first gang of thieves to formally achieve official state sanction as seagoing bandits.  The Chinese coast guard all 930 vessels richly deserves  to be sent to the bottom of the sea.