The United States coastguard cutter Boutwell arrived in Shanghai on Thursday at the start of a four-day visit. It will pick up a Chinese law-enforcement officer while there, and then sail on to the northwestern Pacific to look for vessels engaged in illegal fishing. During the patrol, it is scheduled to call at Yokosuka in Japan and Petropavlosk in Russia.
The voyage reflects what a coastguard officer called 'a developing network for maritime security' that includes America, Canada, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia. Without much fanfare, coastguards and other law-enforcement agencies have been working together to detect fishermen who violate international agreements, illicit drug smugglers and traffickers in human beings.
Chinese patrol boats have taken part in exercises with US cutters and helicopters, and Russian and Japanese coastguards have co-ordinated operations against North Pacific drift-netters. A Japanese coastguard officer said they had captured a vessel smuggling drugs because a Chinese crew had radioed ahead a description of the vessel that had outrun them.
Several weeks ago, officers from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, China's Border Control Department, Japan's coastguard and South Korea's coastguard, gathered at the North Pacific Coast Guard Forum in Honolulu to discuss 'best practices'. The Russians didn't come, but they are hosting a high-level meeting in St Petersburg shortly.
High on the agenda was differences in legal systems, which the officers agreed was perhaps the biggest obstacle to working together because each nation gives different authority to its officers. China's legal system tends to be draconian. Japan's is layered with German and then American concepts. Korea's legal system, imposed by Japan's occupation of 1910-1945, is still infused with ancient Confucianism.
On the other hand, an exchange of ideas on how to discover hidden compartments went well. 'We know how to measure rather precisely,' said an American officer. 'We can make sure they can't put drugs in a secret place.'
