,
9 tweets,
3 min read
Read on Twitter
THREAD > Another round of South China Sea fan fiction seeking to confuse and misdirect regarding the well-documented and publicly acknowledged (in China!) operations of the maritime militia. scmp.com/week-asia/geop…
Again, rather than try to directly grapple with the mountain of evidence presented by @AsiaMTI, @AndrewSErickson and others, Zhang Hongzhou throws a half dozen alternative theories at the wall to see what sticks. So here we go.
No, the 300 Chinese fishing vessels present daily at Subi and Mischief Reefs are not small-scale, artisanal reef fishers. They average 55 meters and most are light falling net vessels. They are not built for the types of reef fishing Zhang speculates could be happening.
No, this can't be explained as rogue unlicensed fishers. We traced back 9 of them based on their infrequent AIS signatures and confirmed they were built w/ state subsidies by well-connected firms. This is fairly consistent across the fleet. See, for example, the work of @mabishan
No, these are not clam digging vessels hiding their poaching. That happens, we know what they look like, and these aren't it. For instance, a fleet of clam diggers was recently active at Bombay Reef in the Paracels, and couldn't be missed in satellite imagery.
Now having dismissed Zhang's latest round of yeah-but-what-if-ism, let's look at some other facts. First, if you're a commercial fishing vessel, esp. of this size, you don't operate within a few miles of 299 of your buddies.
Second, and I can't repeat this enough, THE MILITIA IS NOT A SECRET! It is an acknowledged arm of the state, governed by Chinese law. There is a wealth of documentation, from news reels to the social media posts of the militia members themselves out there. See @AndrewSErickson.
And finally, isn't it more than suspicious that the only time these vessels aren't in port at Mischief and Subi Reefs, they're clustered around Philippine and Vietnamese-occupied reefs in the vicinity, without any fishing gear in the water, and usually w/ the CCG or PLAN nearby?
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck. The evidence that these Chinese SCS fleets are primarily militia is vast and growing. The burden is on the detractors to disprove that mountain of evidence, not just spin yarns. END.
