China Reportedly Deploys New Large Coast Guard Patrol Ships Around Senkaku/Diaoyudao Islands
🇨🇳 🇯🇵 | Commentary | originally posted on X
Commentary-themed posts are intended to broach or highlight a specific issue, not limited to recent and ongoing events. These posts will typically be much shorter and less detailed than analysis-themed posts.
Note: The following text was originally posted on my 𝕏/Twitter account. The original post may be expanded upon and edited for grammar and style in this here post. Link
It is interesting to see Japanese reports that two of the China Coast Guard’s (CCG) large new patrol ships—a Type 052D-class destroyer derivative and a Type 054A-class frigate derivative—are patrolling around the Senkaku/Diaoyudao Islands amid ongoing tensions between China and Japan.
These large CCG patrol ships—the attached file images of the vessels in question are for reference—are part of what is best characterized as the CCG’s “high seas fleet”—large and well-equipped patrol ships that are well-suited to spearheading a ~blockade-type action against Taiwan that is backstopped by the PLA Navy (PLAN). These large CCG ships can also be used to extend the CCG’s presence to more distant waters, including patrols in the North Pacific and perhaps the Indian Ocean. Chinese decision-makers have, however, so far dispatched the CCG’s expensive new large patrol ships to undertake fairly menial patrol duties in disputed waters in both the East China Sea and the South China Sea. It remains to be seen whether these—by current CCG standards—(literally) extraordinary patrol ships will be tasked with—by current CCG standards—(literally) extraordinary missions going forward.
It bears emphasis that the new large patrol ships built for the CCG’s “high seas fleet,” which are quite heavily downgraded and minimally armed derivatives of PLAN warship designs, are equipped with acquisition/air search radars. This allows these CCG vessels to independently detect Japanese aircraft, whether those of the formally civilian Japan Coast Guard (JCG), the Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF), or the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF). These CCG ships are also equipped with data links that will likely allow the CCG patrol ships to share their radar sensor data with PLAN vessels and vice versa. For Japan, the JMSDF and JASDF, and the formally civilian Japan Coast Guard in particular, the presence of armed radar-equipped CCG patrol ships in the East China Sea introduces a new form of risk.