By: Christopher P. Cavas
WASHINGTON – On any given day, vast numbers of ships ply the waters of the western Pacific. Giant containerships and tankers are easy to spot, but omnipresent and more diffuse are thousands of smaller craft – fishing boats and small cargo vessels – that dot the waters of the East and South China seas, the Sea of Japan, the Philippine Sea and more.
A great many of those small craft are Chinese, and according to a number of sources among those are many hundreds of craft enlisted in a quasi-military, organized maritime militia. In scenarios that are ever more common in the growing number of territorial disputes throughout the region, small or large numbers of fishing trawlers suddenly come together to disrupt, block or harass ships of other nations. Chinese media often portray the confrontations as involving aggrieved fisherman or commercial sailors upset about some country’s intrusions – an element of plausible deniability that plays well in some public relations or diplomatic settings.
“China's maritime militia is only as deniable for China as we allow it to be, and we don't have to allow it to be deniable,” said Andrew Erickson, a professor of strategy at the US Naval War College, where he is a founding member of the China Maritime Studies Institute.
The militia, Erickson said, are controlled directly by the Chinese military, adding another degree of complexity to at-sea confrontations below that of the navy and coast guard. The craft, he said, are “working in close coordination with the other two more powerful sea forces or at least with their backing and coordination added as necessary.”
Erickson often refers to the militia as “little blue men” – a play on references to little green men” employed by Russia in Crimea and the Ukraine to insinuate military forces into a region without clear identification.
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