The piracy challenge
Mainland media recently showed some harrowing pictures of Somali pirates holding the crew of a hijacked Chinese fishing trawler at gunpoint. The captives sat on deck with heads bowed in the sweltering sun. The photographs were taken by a US warship as the trawler headed through the Indian Ocean towards the coast of Somalia, where it was later anchored.
If the previous pattern of pirate operations is followed, the owners of the Tian Yu 8, of state-owned Tianjin Ocean Fishing Corp, will have to negotiate the freedom of the 25 crewmen, 17 of whom are Chinese nationals, by paying a big ransom. The US Navy says there have been at least 95 pirate attacks reported so far this year in the Gulf of Aden and surrounding waters, with 39 of them resulting in the capture of vessels.
Close to 20 of these ships are still held, along with their crews, including a Hong Kong-registered freighter, the Delight. It was seized in the Gulf of Aden on November 11, three days before the Tian Yu 8 was captured. Another cargo ship from Hong Kong, seized by Somali pirates in September, was released last month.
In response to this outbreak of maritime crime and the threat to international shipping off the Horn of Africa, the US, Europe, Russia, India, Pakistan and Turkey have sent warships to patrol waters in the region and protect shipping. At least 14 warships are in the area. The European Union is about to deploy a naval force of up to six ships at a time, supported by maritime patrol aircraft.
India is planning to increase its contribution by sending several of its most modern warships at a time. Japan and South Korea are also seeking parliamentary approval to make anti-piracy deployments.
Meanwhile, the UN Security Council is discussing proposals to give foreign navies a more robust mandate to counter Somali pirates.
Where is China in all this activity? Of the five permanent members of the Security Council, only China has yet to announce the dispatch of its navy to the scene. A Foreign Ministry spokesman was quoted as saying after the seizure of the Tian Yu 8 that Beijing condemned all pirate actions and was willing to combat piracy provided Somalia's government agreed.
Will Beijing seize this opportunity to start sending the People's Liberation Army Navy on routine deployments into the Indian Ocean? Many analysts predict this will happen anyway as China's naval power grows, and the need to protect its sea trade with the Middle East and Africa increases.
More than half of China's vital oil supplies are imported, and about 75 per cent of them come from the Middle East and Africa. China's commercial interests in Africa and the Middle East are increasing rapidly and its fishing trawlers already roam through the Indian Ocean and into the Atlantic. The longer Beijing hesitates before establishing an Indian Ocean naval presence, the more its Asian rivals - India and Japan - can consolidate their activity in the region.
According to the US Defence Department, China has Asia's largest naval force of destroyers, frigates, submarines and amphibious warfare ships. Since 2000, China has built at least 60 warships and the PLA Navy now has 860 vessels.
However, Beijing seems to be proceeding cautiously, for both operational and geopolitical reasons. Unlike India, China is far from the Indian Ocean. To get there, it has to send warships through Southeast Asian waters and past India - a deployment that would be widely noticed and not necessarily welcomed in the region.
Beijing is not yet used to working in international naval coalitions. In patrolling off the Horn of Africa, it would need to have access to its own replenishment ships or to local ports.
China's ability to project and sustain naval power over long distances remains limited. The Pentagon's latest assessment of China's armed forces published this year says Beijing is neither capable of using military power to secure its foreign energy investments nor of defending critical sea lanes against disruption.
If this assessment is correct, Beijing will probably avoid entanglement in anti-piracy patrols off the Horn of Africa and wait until it can more easily sustain global deployments before entering the Indian Ocean on a regular basis.
Michael Richardson is an energy and security expert at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore
