In early December last year, the crew of U.S. Coast Guard cutter Myrtle Hazard sailed all night, anchored off the Pacific nation of Palau and boarded a group of Chinese boats to help confiscate valuable sea cucumbers. tens of thousands of dollars. harvested illegally.
The fast-response cutting device, which operates approximately 6,600 miles from the continental US and approximately 750 miles from its home port in the US territory of Guam, is part of the newest Coast Guard growth zone: it helps to countering China’s growing naval power in the Pacific.
China has used coordinated action by its fishing fleets, coastguard and navy to establish its presence in the South China Sea. It has a growing presence in the South and Central Pacific. Chinese fishing fleets have emerged around island nations such as the Republic of Kiribati and Tuvalu, which have some of the richest tuna fishing activities in the world, and the Chinese navy has also established itself in the area, including a stopover of fishing vessels. war in Sydney in 2019 and visits to a naval hospital ship in Fiji in 2018.
In response, the US Coast Guard is building in the region. In recent months, it has based two of the most advanced new cutters in US Guam, nearly 4,000 miles closer to Shanghai than to San Francisco. Another month is coming. For the first time, the Coast Guard has an attaché at the US Embassy in Canberra, Australia, and another attaché will move to Singapore next year.
The Coast Guard has steadily increased its activity in the Western Pacific and near the shores of China. In 2019, he deployed milling cutters in the Western Pacific for more than 10 months to work with the US Navy’s seventh fleet. One, USCGC Bertholf, transited the Taiwan Strait in a defiant spectacle to China, the first U.S. coast guard ship to make the voyage highly politicized.