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Comment by vbtemp | Hacker News Reader

I know this article is about the waters off Korea, but I noticed a similar thing flying over the South China Sea, in particular the Tokyo-Bangkok route.

Flying late at night over the SCS, and then peering out the window from 40k ft, you see endless lights - thousands and thousands of them. At first I thought I was over land, but then checked the map. The next trip I noticed the same thing, and then the same. It was literally tens of thousands of these fishing trawlers, stretching as far as the eye can see. Presumably all Chinese, and also presumably present not just to trawl for seafood, but to establish facts on the sea. It was truly frightening and shocking.

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> Presumably all Chinese

That seems unlikely considering that Vietnam's entire coastline forms the western border of the South China Sea, so that's where they're most likely to fish. The Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia also border the sea and occasionally stop fishing boats in what they consider their territorial waters.

China probably has the largest fleet, but that doesn't mean the other countries are just watching them fish without doing anything.

OP/TFA implied that it was indeed Chinese, by encroaching on territorial waters and crowding out native fleets. At least that was my reading of the article and the above comment.

Yes, and I was arguing against that idea. The other countries didn't suddenly stop fishing in the area. And FWIW all of them are about equally "native" to the region, as in, people from all the surrounding coasts have been fishing there for centuries. Just the scale is new.

Many of those ships have crews that are part of the People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia (PAFMM). The militia are organized and commanded directly by the PLA's local military commands. They don't normally carry weapons, but they have military communications equipment and readiness to support PLA Navy.

https://www.andrewerickson.com/2016/03/chinas-maritime-milit...

How different is that from the US Coast Guard's (and especially regular merchant ships whose crews are part of the Coast Guard Reserve's) wartime function? I would suppose that all organized merchant-marine escort fleets are trained to cooperate/coordinate with their country's Navy; if not just to "get the heck out of the way, this area is about to be under attack."

Also, AFAIK, it's a de-facto "law of the sea" that pretty much all ships with transponders—no matter the flag they fly—will willingly act as relays for other ships that cannot communicate, in order to facilitate search-and-rescue. Same with planes. It's a whole part of their signalling codes.

There are so many of them and they are more closely integrated to PLA.

The encrypted military communication equipment they carry is designed works even during wartime operations under jamming.

It's quite interesting to see those fleet being analyzed and claimed to be "more closely integrated", while the PLA is still trying to push their new "Military and civilian integration" (军民融合) concept by copying how US did it. Are they that fast at embracing and enhancing?

PLA has had Maritime Militia since 70's.

>They don't normally carry weapons, but they have military communications equipment and readiness to support PLA Navy.

How are they supposed to support the PLA navy if all they have is a boat with some military radios? The only thing I can think of is cannon fodder or search and rescue.

As a forward observation post the enemy can't legally sink?

They are normally unarmed, but when it can all change at any time. It's hard to notice when that change is happening.

All of sudden there can be 50,000 or 100,000 ships carrying sea mines, underwater listening devices, depth charges, targeting systems or short range anti-ship missiles. Just like their merchant cargo ships they have some standardization that allows PLA to plan ahead what they can carry.

If USN carrier group must sail to help Taiwan in short notice and huge fleet of these ships just happen to stand in the way, then what? It's huge risk just to just assume that they are unarmed and sail trough, or that they have not mined the area. Just being able to provide targeting for Chinese anti-ship ballistic missiles is a big problem.

Even if just 10% of them are armed, USN would have to sink or inspect every one of them to neutralize the threat. 7th fleet is not carrying enough anti-ship missiles board to take them down quickly.

>If USN carrier group must sail to help Taiwan in short notice and huge fleet of these ships just happen to stand in the way, then what? It's huge risk just to just assume that they are unarmed and sail trough, or that they have not mined the area. Just being able to provide targeting for Chinese anti-ship ballistic missiles is a big problem.

Sounds like they're using civilian ships as human shields or cannon fodder to me. What's the legality of this? I feel like this would run afoul of some sort of international law requiring combatants to be identified[1], or preventing them from using civilians as human shields[2]. Can

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_war#Lawful_conduct_of_b...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_shields_(law)

If they are, and one were to draw up a list of other human rights violations and international laws that China is breaking, I don't think this would make the top five.

> How are they supposed to support the PLA navy if all they have is a boat with some military radios? The only thing I can think of is cannon fodder or search and rescue.

The OP gives an example:

> In the South China Sea, the Spratly Islands have attracted most attention as the Chinese government has built artificial islands on reefs and shoals in these waters, militarizing them with aircraft strips, harbours and radar facilities. Chinese fishing boats bolster the effort by swarming the zone, intimidating potential competitors, as they did in 2018, suddenly dispatching more than 90 fishing ships to drop anchor within several miles of Philippines-held Thitu Island, immediately after Manila began modest upgrades on the island's infrastructure.

Other obvious uses are espionage, observation, and covert transportation.

Embedding surveillance and comms capabilities in fishing fleets is an old trick- there is even a reference in Wikipedia for the Soviets doing it in the 80s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spy_ship).

That's not to dismiss it- the PLAN is almost certainly using the fishing fleet to expand its capabilities, and the giant size of the "invisible fleet" has national security implications for the region. The article touches on the use of the fishing fleet to assert Chinese claims to the Spratley islands and other contested regions, which is definitely a concern for regional stability.

So much light that it can be seen from space! [0]

[0] https://qz.com/1278321/an-image-from-space-reveals-the-fishi...

I'm not expert on air routes but Bangkok to Tokyo sounds like it would go over the North part of the South China Sea, near Hainan then along the coast of China. So not really where the flashpoints are.

Not sure what would be frightening and shocking apart perhaps from the potential overfishing, which is unfortunately widespread worldwide.

I'm sure that Vietnam, especially, and other neighbouring countries also have extensive fishing fleets in the South China Sea at large.

It goes a little farther south and then hangs a right turn to fly toward BKK from due East. So this was more from the south-central portion of the region. The "shocking" part was just the astounding number of vessels, stretching beyond the horizon.

Depending on where you were it might be the Japanese fishing fleet as well.

At night, the footprint of the Japanese fishing fleet in lights can expand the apparent size of the Japanese islands by what seems like double the area.

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