The Voyage of the Meishan and Xiushan: China’s Template for a Blue-Water Coast Guard

The China Coast Guard cutters Meishan and Xiushan slipped into port on Oct. 17, ending a dramatic 35-day deployment that brought them from the East China Sea to the Sea of Japan, the North Pacific, the Bering Sea, and, ultimately, the Arctic Ocean — and back again.

The deployment, which occurred as part of a bilateral engagement with the Russian Maritime Border Guard, made news in China for two main reasons, both superlatives. It marked the first time that the two coast guards had ever conducted a joint patrol, and the first time that the China Coast Guard had ever operated in the Arctic Ocean. Both milestones lent themselves to easy narratives — of deepening ties between China and Russia, of Beijing’s expanding activities in the high north — narratives that the government of the People’s Republic of China did much to encourage.

However, the voyage of the Meishan and Xiushan marked another breakthrough, that, while less obvious, may be even more important. It was the first time the China Coast Guard had ever conducted a “blue-water” paranaval operation. The composition of the task force (modified naval frigates), its leadership (a career naval officer), and the secrecy that attended its activities all differed from out-of-area coast guard patrols of the past. These facts, combined with Chinese framing of the mission, suggest that Beijing regarded the deployment as an operation to defend and advance its overseas interests, making it more “gray” (that is, naval) than “white” (coast guard).

The Deployment in Brief

The voyage of the Meishan and Xiushan comprised three phases. First, the two ships sailed to Vladivostok for bilateral exercises with the Russian Maritime Border Guard (Sept. 16–20). Here the ships, together with their Russian counterparts, practiced search and rescue, conducted simulated boarding of noncompliant vessels, fired their main and secondary guns, and steamed in formation.

Next, the Meishan and Xiushan, accompanied by two Russian ships, the P. Kamchatskiy and the Kamchatka, conducted a joint patrol in the North Pacific (around Sept. 21–27). According to Chinese reporting, they largely confined their operations to the “high seas,” a legal term that refers to waters beyond state jurisdiction. To get there, the ships transited through the Sea of Japan and the Sea of Okhotsk. While in the North Pacific, the joint task force conducted firefighting/damage control and man overboard drills.

Lastly, the task force sailed north for the Arctic leg of their journey (Sept. 27–Oct. 1). This brought them through the Bering Sea, Bering Strait, and the Chukchi Sea. The ships did not remain long in the Arctic Ocean. On Sept. 28, the U.S. Coast Guard spotted them 440 miles south of St. Lawrence Island, the southern gateway to the Bering Strait, heading northeast. By Oct. 1, however, they were already returning south through the strait, mission accomplished. Roughly two weeks later, the ships were home in Zhoushan, Zhejiang. It is unclear at what point they separated from their Russian counterparts, or the path by which they arrived home.

Navy Ships, Navy Commander, and Navy Secrecy

For this operation, the China Coast Guard borrowed heavily from its sister service, the People’s Liberation Army Navy. First, the Meishan (2303) and Xiushan (2305) belong to the Type 818 class of patrol cutter, the design of which is based on a Chinese naval frigate — the Type 054A. The Type 818 and Type 054A are not identical. The cutters lack missiles and related combat systems. Their decks are also studded with equipment that frigates do not need, above all, the powerful water cannons that the coast guard has used with devastating effect against Vietnamese and Filipino mariners in the South China Sea.

Still, the Type 818 retains valuable capabilities particular to the Type 054A design. The two classes probably have the same combined diesel and diesel powerplants, which means the Meishan and Xiushan have excellent endurance and comparatively high top speeds. The two classes have the same main gun, a 76 millimeter cannon, and two 30 millimeter secondary batteries. Like the Type 054A, the Type 818 is organized around a modern combat information center, images of which were disclosed when the ships went to “general quarters” during exercises in Vladivostok. Both classes have facilities to embark helicopters.

Second, the China Coast Guard chose a career naval officer, Senior Captain He Feng (何峰), to serve as the task force commander. He Feng enlisted in the navy after he graduated from a high school in Hai’an, Jiangsu. He was subsequently chosen to pursue an undergraduate degree at the navy’s Dalian Ship Academy. After commissioning as an officer, he quickly promoted within the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s surface warfare community. By 2012, he was the skipper of a naval frigate, probably a Type 054A. Four years later, he served as the chief of staff for the opposition (i.e., “Blue”) force in the annual China-Russia “Joint Sea-2016” exercise, held in Zhanjiang, Guangdong, duty for which he received a commendation from his unit (Unit 91991, the 6th Destroyer Flotilla). The following year, He Feng went to sea as the chief of staff for the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s 26th Gulf of Aden Escort Task Force, comprising two Type 054A frigates and an oiler.

He Feng was likely transferred to the coast guard in 2018 or 2019, one of several outstanding naval officers assigned to bolster the service, then in the throes of a difficult reform. His former boss, Rear Admiral Wang Zhongcai (王仲才), commander of the 26th Escort Task Force, was made the coast guard’s commandant and may have personally selected He Feng to go with him. As of March 2024, He Feng served as the director of the Law Enforcement Department of the 2nd Directly Subordinate Bureau, the coast guard unit that owns the Meishan and Xiushan.

Lastly, this China Coast Guard deployment was unprecedented in the degree of secrecy that surrounded it. This manifested in multiple ways. Aside from a brief moment while sailing south through the Bering Strait, the ships did not transmit their location, bearing, and speed via automatic identification system. This was not standard practice. The coast guard often transmits automatic identification signals when operating in the most sensitive areas of the East China Sea and South China Sea, even though as government vessels they are not required by international convention to do so. Moreover, coast guard cutters have always transmitted automatic identification system signals when conducting North Pacific fisheries patrols in the past. The navy, by contrast, never transmits these signals, presumably for the sake of operational security. That likely was the consideration here as well.

Moreover, despite significant Chinse reporting on the mission, the coast guard provided few clues about the destination of the bilateral patrol. It did not, for example, telegraph its plans to sail to the Arctic Ocean. While the coast guard did reveal the task force’s intentions to patrol the high seas of the North Pacific, it offered no sense of where in this vast expanse the ships would operate. The Global Times — citing a naval officer, Zhang Junshe — hinted that the task force might sail north to the Bering Sea, but no credible reporting predicted an Arctic Ocean deployment.

Navy Mission

In key respects, the mission of the Meishan/Xiushan task force more closely resembled a naval operation than a coast guard operation. In general, navies exist to defend and advance the interests of the states that operate them, principally, though not exclusively, against the threats and actions of foreign armed forces. Coast guards, on the other hand, chiefly enforce domestic law against nonstate actors and ensure the safety of life at sea. There can be significant overlap between the missions. Indeed, some smaller countries have sea services that serve both functions. But this basic division of labor normally obtains, especially for great powers.

Coast guards with large oceangoing cutters may be assigned missions in waters beyond their countries’ legal jurisdiction. The U.S. Coast Guard’s Shiprider Program is a case in point. Based on bilateral agreements, the service helps resource-constrained partner countries enforce law in their exclusive economic zones by physically transporting local law enforcement personnel to the scene of suspected criminal activity. The U.S. Coast Guard also enforces regional fisheries agreements designed to suppress high seas drift net fishing, including in the North Pacific. Beijing likewise has provisions in its “Coast Guard Law” allowing the coast guard to carry out law enforcement tasks in waters beyond Beijing’s jurisdiction, as allowed by international agreement.

Publicly, the coast guard characterized the North Pacific portion of the bilateral patrol as a fisheries patrol. The two coast guards were “actively safeguarding the high seas fishing order,” based on a U.N. resolution (46/215) and a regional high seas fisheries management convention. To this end, the task force purportedly “inspected” fishing vessels. However, the coast guard provided no corroborating images or information, as they have always done for past North Pacific fisheries deployments.

Moreover, despite its advanced capabilities, the Type 818 would not be the preferred ship for a North Pacific patrol, if fisheries enforcement were indeed the primary objective. Each summer, the coast guard sends a task force to patrol high seas fishing grounds in the North Pacific, but it has never selected a Type 818 for the task. Instead, it opts for larger, more versatile ships like the 5,000-ton Changshan (6501), or purpose-built fisheries enforcement cutters like the 3,500-ton Shicheng (6306), both of which had just returned from a 45-day North Pacific fisheries patrol when the Meishan and Xiushan departed for theirs.

Other statements suggest that the coast guard conceived this mission in terms more often associated with naval operations. The commanding officer of the Meishan, Captain Feng Mingming (冯明明), declared that the North Pacific patrol had “positively expanded the connotations of [the China Coast Guard’s] rights protection law enforcement mission.” This suggests that the coast guard, at least in part, saw its purpose as safeguarding China’s own rights and interests in this region. Indeed, “rights protection law enforcement” is the term Chinese experts have long used to describe paranaval actions to assert Chinese territorial claims in disputed space in the East China Sea and South China Sea. Perhaps for the first time, at least publicly, the coast guard has applied this concept to out-of-area deployments.

Chinese maritime expert Yang Xiao (杨霄), from the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, made similar remarks when asked why the Meishan and Xiushan were chosen for this mission. The key, in his view, was their large displacement, which allowed them to maintain “long-term maritime presence” and gave them “multiple tactical uses.” Ultimately, the Type 818 was the “preferred ship type for the [the China Coast Guard] when conducting middle and long distance patrols for maritime rights protection [emphasis added].”

Chinese sources did not specify which “rights” the ships were sent to protect. But with the emphasis on the North Pacific fisheries order, Beijing may have been posturing to safeguard the prerogatives of China’s distant water fishing fleet in the Pacific Ocean. Recall that in early 2024, Chinese diplomats reacted furiously to a case of U.S. Coast Guard personnel boarding Chinese fishing vessels suspected of operating illegally in Vanuatu’s exclusive economic zone.

During the Arctic portion of the patrol, the ships may have been asserting China’s right to access these potentially valuable sea lanes. This was suggested in another statement by Task Force Commander He Feng. During an interview following the ships’ arrival in the high north, He declared that “in reaching in the Arctic Ocean, the coast guard had demonstrated its ability to protect maritime transport in the region.” Commerce protection, of course, is a classic navy mission.

Going Abroad, As a Second Navy

During a 2014 interview following the founding of the China Coast Guard, a senior officer named Wu Zhuang (吴壮) discussed the future of his service. In his view, there would be a clear division of labor between the coast guard and the navy. The coast guard would “guard the homeland,” thereby enabling the navy to operate overseas, “carrying out major international tasks.” The September-October bilateral engagement with Russia suggests that Wu’s vision is obsolete. The Chinese government has empowered the coast guard to become a “blue-water” maritime law enforcement force, and there are clear indications that this trend will not be confined to the Arctic Ocean.

A close analysis of the deployment of the Meishan/Xiushan task force suggests that when it goes abroad, the coast guard will borrow heavily from its sister service, the People’s Liberation Army Navy. The coast guard could have sent any of its dozens of specialized patrol cutters to carry out this bilateral engagement, including those that have already operated with success in the North Pacific. Instead, it chose ships modeled on the navy’s most advanced class of frigate. For this mission, the coast guard did not select a coast guard officer with decades of maritime law enforcement experience to command the task force; instead, it opted for a career naval officer only recently transferred to the service. Lastly, unlike most coast guard deployments — but like navy deployments — the service imposed a high degree of operational security on the mission. The cutters did not transmit automatic identification system signals, nor did the coast guard indicate where the task force planned to operate in the North Pacific or even that it intended to make a run for the Arctic.

Chinese reporting on the Meishan/Xiushan task force also reveals that the coast guard framed the deployment, at least in part, using terms commonly associated with naval missions. Even if we accept coast guard statements that the North Pacific patrol was intended to uphold the regional fishing order — a very generous assumption — other language suggests a far more parochial purpose: namely, to safeguard China’s maritime rights and interests in these waters. This clearly indicates that the coast guard is applying key concepts from its East and South China Sea strategy to its evolving blue-water mission set.

In sum, Beijing has apparently decided to empower the coast guard to go abroad as an instrument to protect China’s overseas interests — a less menacing, but still very capable, version of the navy. Where those interests collide with the interests of other states, Beijing will regard it, and wield it, like a second navy.

Ryan D. Martinson is a researcher in the China Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College. The views expressed in this article are the author’s alone and do not reflect the assessments of the U.S. Navy, U.S. Department of Defense, or any other U.S. government entity.

Image: The Chinese Coast Guard.

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