Why we need to brace ourselves for more Chinse ram raids, experts claim
Beijing’s insistence on engaging in an ancient form of warfare may have finally pushed its neighbours over the edge.
The Philippine carabao (buffalo) is staring down China’s dragon. And that has Beijing fuming.
Monday’s collision, which ripped the bow of a Chinese coastguard vessel, was no accident.
It was the inevitable (if mistargeted) consequence of years of steadily forcing itself into the South China Sea.
Beijing is increasingly determined to ram home its desire to own the entire 3.5 million square kilometre expanse of water, sandbars, coral banks and islands.
All indications point to a willingness to get physical.
The collision is the latest in a decade-long series of confrontations between the two nations.
Beijing wants to control all of the sea’s rich fisheries, oil and gas deposits, and shipping lanes. Manila wants its UN-defined share.
Chairman Xi Jinping is doubling down on his demands. But President Bongbong Marcos has dug in his heels
China seized control of Scarborough Shoal in 2012. It has been harassing and blockading Second Thomas Shoal in the Spratly Islands since 2014. It’s been maintaining a near-permanent intimidation presence off Filipino-inhabited Thitu island since 2018.
Its bullying tactics are carefully tailored to be in a legal “grey zone” between an act of war and legitimate policing activities. And, in recent years, it’s begun employing the same tactics off Vietnam, Malaysia, and even Indonesia.
But Beijing may have finally pushed its neighbours too far.
“They have discovered that they can, in fact, stand up to grey zone pressure,” says Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative director Gregory Poling.
Beijing’s response has been to push harder.
Water cannons. Ramming. Both are physical actions that can turn deadly within moments.
“It’s time to change the narrative and hold China accountable for its aggressive behaviour,” argues US Naval War College professor and former naval captain Raul Pedrozo.
“Some ramming incidents and the use of water cannons can be a grave use of force that warrants a kinetic response in self-defence.”
Ram raid
Monday’s collision – which the Chinese Communist Party is yet to admit happened – was the result of deliberate posturing.
Chinese ships had ramped up their harassment of Filipino fishing and supply vessels off Scarborough Shoal.
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Southern Theatre Command said this was a response to “non-regional countries” working alongside Philippine patrol vessels. It insisted such co-operation “had undermined peace and stability in the region”.
The pursuit of the Philippine Coast Guard vessel BRP Suluan was just part of this response.
The grey bulk of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Type 052D guided-missile destroyer Guilin wasn’t even supposed to be there. Policing is supposed to be a civilian Coast Guard job. And Beijing had signed a treaty with Manila in 2012 not to send warships to the disputed atoll.
The cannon-and-missile carrying Chinese Coast Guard corvette CCG-3104 was chasing the BRP Suluan at high speed, trying to get close enough to blast it with a jet of high-pressure water.
The Filipino vessel had allegedly “trespassed” while supporting fishing boats at the shoal.
But the BRP Suluan made a sharp turn in an effort to remain out of reach as the corvette closed within water cannon range. At that point, the PLAN Guilin ploughed between the two ships, causing the CCG-3104 to crumple its bow against the destroyer’s side.
Beijing insists the collision between the two Chinese ships was the Philippines’ fault.
“We can imagine that a vehicle recklessly speeding, cutting off others, weaving through lanes, and driving wildly on a highway must bear full responsibility for all resulting traffic damages and face legal punishment and the judgment of justice,” China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations analyst Yang Xiao told the Global Times.
“Therefore, the full responsibility for the resulting damages lies with the Philippine side, and all losses should be entirely borne by the Philippine vessel that provoked and caused the incident at sea.”
Kinetic diplomacy
“Naval ramming has been a means of warfare for over 2500 years,” says Pedrozo. “It should, therefore, come as no surprise that China is engaging in this ancient form of warfare.”
And China has made it a feature, not a bug, of its intimidation tactics.
Its Maritime Militia fleet is a navy-co-ordinated collection of modified fishing boats. They have been built with reinforced steel bows for that specific purpose.
They’ve also been fitted with high-pressure hoses. China’s warships carry them as a matter of course.
Such water cannons are routinely used by police and coast guard units worldwide for nonlethal control operations. But “use of high-pressure water cannons against ships and their crews can cause significant property damage and serious bodily injury to personnel”, Podrozo states.
It’s a matter of proportionality. “Thus, intentionally ramming a wooden-hulled fishing boat with a ship fitted with a hardened and reinforced steel hull constitutes a grave use of force that warrants a proportionate response in self-defence.”
Podrozo argues that Washington DC and Manila must draw a line in the sand, declaring that any ramming or water cannon use that results in death, serious injury or damage will be considered an armed attack.
That “falls within the scope of the collective self-defence provisions of the US-Philippine Mutual Defence Treaty”. But triggering this treaty will not inevitably lead to a shooting war, he adds.
Instead, it could enable the US to deploy its own forces using similar rough-and-tumble tactics in retaliation.
“China, at least so far, remains unwilling to escalate to lethal force despite its setbacks in the grey zone,” Polling argues. “The result has been a cycle of escalations, in which Chinese commanders ordered to avoid military force confront Southeast Asian counterparts with ever-more dangerous and supposedly nonlethal tactics … Upon failure, they partially de-escalate only to have the cycle begin anew elsewhere.”
But the odds of Beijing backing down on its intimidation tactics are negligible, he adds.
“China is unlikely to adjust its strategy so long as Xi is in power,” Poling writes. “He has embedded a maximalist interpretation of maritime claims — that all the South China Sea belongs to China by historical right — and made claiming that supposedly “lost” territory a key component of his China Dream.”
‘Alternative narratives of maritime order’
China’s pressure is not working well. It has failed to intimidate Southeast Asian claimants and make them surrender their sovereign rights,” US Pacific Fleet commander Admiral Steve Koehler told a Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) conference in June.
It has already made significant gains.
China’s 2013-2016 island fortress building campaign in the Paracel and Spratly Islands has embedded an overwhelming military presence far from its home shores. And that has enabled Chinese naval and coast guard vessels to maintain a near-constant presence as far south as Indonesia.
But the Philippines is leading an emerging regional resistance.
“Recent Chinese-Philippine tensions show Beijing’s strategy failing in a more spectacular, and dangerous, fashion,” writes Poling. “After years of accommodating Chinese demands, the Philippine navy and coast guard are patrolling disputed waters more, and the government is speaking up publicly when faced with Chinese harassment.”
Now, other South China Sea coastal states are looking to Manila’s success as an example.
“This military modernisation and political willingness to step up patrols have prompted pushback from the China Coast Guard and militia, including more frequent ramming, unsafe air intercepts, and nonlethal force measures such as water sprayings and dazzlers,” explains Poling. “Despite this, the Philippines has been undeterred.”
Meanwhile, Beijing has become increasingly shrill in the face of such open defiance.
“The territorial scope of the Philippines has long been determined by a series of international treaties, and China’s South China Sea Islands are outside the territory of the Philippines,” Chinese Defence Ministry spokesperson Zhang Xiaogang recently insisted.
China asserts its exclusive ownership of the South China Sea dates back 3000 years. But an International Court of Arbitration in 2016 found this had no historical substantiation.
Beijing, despite being a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), retaliated by asserting the court has no jurisdiction over China.
It insists its version of international law is the correct one.
“Rejecting these rights as ‘nonlegal’ is to impose a singular, Western-centric framework and to delegitimize alternative narratives of maritime order,” a Peking University South China Sea Strategic Probing Initiative report states.
Now Beijing seems set to continue ramping up its confrontational tactics.
“Even worse would be for China to determine that grey zone coercion had failed and that escalating to military force would be an acceptable risk,” warns Poling. “That is only likely if Beijing deems US involvement unlikely or infeasible.”
Jamie Seidel is a freelance writer | @jamieseidel.bsky.social
Originally published as Why we need to brace ourselves for more Chinse ram raids, experts claim
