On January 7, the state-run China Daily newspaper posted a propaganda video accusing the United States of using “so-called freedom of navigation operations to provoke China and destabilize the region.”
The video, titled “U.S. Navy threatens livelihoods in South China Sea,” prominently features a Chinese fisherman it describes as “being one of many fishermen who have witnessed the U.S. Navy flexing its muscles.”
The fisherman claims U.S. vessels destroy the buoys and nets of Chinese fishermen. It also speculates about the USS Connecticut (SSN-22), a Seawolf-class nuclear attack submarine damaged last October in a collision with an underwater mountain in the South China Sea.
In the video, a Chinese military expert, looking at a satellite image, claims a nuclear leak cannot be ruled out, reiterating a Chinese Foreign Ministry talking point. The Chinese Foreign Ministry has repeatedly the sub incident to undermine U.S. freedom-of-navigation operations in the region.
Asked about the incident, the fisherman in the video claims that a nuclear leak could damage the marine ecosystem, which sustains his livelihood. One commentator in the video states claims the real U.S. goal is to preserve dominance in the region, not freedom of navigation.
This is all nonsense.
In fact, it is China, not the United States, which has repeatedly used military force against fishermen and maritime vessels in the region. Those actions, in tandem with China’s sweeping and illegal maritime claims, are what prompted U.S. freedom-of-navigation operations.
The video’s depiction of a lone, struggling fisherman bears no resemblance to the realities of China’s vast fishing fleet, which for its , including ramming competitors and foreign patrol ships.
China to escort illegal fishing expeditions – actions that some analysts have warned could lead to armed conflict.
Despite China's protests of U.S. vessels operating in international waters in the South China Sea, Chinese fishing vessels engaged in illegal fishing, particularly off of the coast of South America, imperiling their ecosystems.
Chinese ships have also been accused of turning off their GPS tackers in order to illegally fish around protected waters outside of the Galápagos Marine Reserve near Ecuador’s exclusive economic zone,
It is also Beijing that is threatening peace in the South China Sea through aggressive actions against its neighbors.
For example, last November, Chinese coast guard ships to stop Filipino ships from delivering food to Filipino troops on Second Thomas Shoal in the Spratly Islands, located in the eastern part of the South China Sea.
The Philippines called the actions of China’s coast guard illegal and asked it to “back off.”
In 2016, an international tribunal in The Hague, which has rebuked many of China’s sweeping claims to the South China Sea, ruled that Second Thomas Shoal is part of the Philippines' continental shelf and lies within its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea recognizes the 200-nautical mile stretch of sea from the coast of a state as its EEZ. But China has ignored The Hague’s ruling, and continues to illegally blockade the shoal.
In 1994, China also seized nearby Mischief Reef, which The Hague also ruled is part of the Philippines’ continental shelf. And China seized the Scarborough Shoal, some 137 miles east of the Philippines’ island of Luzon, and has captured islands and reefs from Vietnam.
The November incident between the Filipino ships and China’s coast guard was not isolated.
As Polygraph.info and others have reported, China has sunk Vietnamese fishing boats near the Paracel Islands, another disputed South China Sea archipelago. on a Vietnamese fishing boat drew a protest from Hanoi, which Beijing ignored. Two months later, the Chinese Coast Guard another Vietnamese vessel.
China has also to prevent Vietnam from carrying out exploratory activities within their claimed EEZs.
Last February, the Voice of America reported that China granting its Coast Guard the power to fire on foreign ships in the South China Sea, the stated goal being, among other things, safeguarding its “maritime rights and interests.”
The move puts countries like Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam, all of which have competing claims in the South China Sea, in the crosshairs.
This week, the U.S. State Department’s Office of Ocean and Polar Affairs, Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs covering China’s attempts to assert maritime dominance in the region.