Interesting article in the Economist re the expansion of the Chinese Coast Guard - highlights:-
THE ZHAOTOU-CLASS cutter may be a lowly coastguard ship. But it is no pushover. At 12,000 tonnes, it is the world’s largest vessel built for such use. It looms over most American or Japanese destroyers. Its roomy deck accommodates two helicopters, a 76mm gun and a thicket of other weaponry. China has two of them. The arrival of the behemoth is intended to make a point: China backs its claims in that area with a panoply of steel. In November China published a draft law that would empower the coastguard to demolish other countries’ structures built on Chinese-claimed reefs, and to board and expel foreign vessels. In some circumstances it could even fire on hostile ships.
In 2013 China merged several civilian maritime law-enforcement agencies into a new unified one, called the Chinese Coastguard Bureau. Five years later this was put under the command of the People’s Armed Police, a paramilitary force that reports to the Central Military Commission, the country’s supreme military body. In effect, this turned China’s coastguard into a branch of the armed forces—much like its counterparts in America and India.
Today China’s coastguard has more than 500 ships. In the region, Japan is a distant second with 373. Others trail far behind. China’s ships have got beefier, too. A decade ago China had just ten vessels with a full-load displacement of at least 1,500 tonnes (about the size of a small warship). By 2015 it had 51 such ships. Today it has 87, says the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based think-tank.
China has reacted huffily to other countries’ concerns about the draft coastguard law. To some extent, it is right to be miffed. Most of the bill’s provisions match those of laws elsewhere and accord with international norms, says Collin Koh of RSIS.
But there is every reason to worry about the Chinese law’s proposed scope. It covers China’s “jurisdictional waters”, a term that the country applies to most of the South China Sea, says Ryan Martinson of the US Naval War College. Most of those waters are claimed by other countries or regarded as part of the global commons. Article 22 of the draft bill would allow China’s coastguard to create “temporary exclusion zones”, potentially cordoning off swathes of open ocean.