People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia [PAFMM]

Sansha City’s party secretary and mayor, Xiao Jie, once described the city’s maritime militia as part of a “Great Wall of Steel” in the South China Sea. The militia contains a growing proportion of sea-based units, the blue-hulled, PLA-controlled People's Armed Forces Maritime Militia (PAFMM). The People's Armed Forces Maritime Militia (PAFMM) are sometimes known as “little blue men”. , China is using hundreds of fishing boats and its militia forces in the East and South China Seas to establish sovereignty, harass the fishing boats of neighboring countries, and obstruct the free navigation of countries outside the region. The PAFMM has played a noteworthy role in a number of military campaigns and coercive incidents over the years, including the harassment of Vietnamese survey ships in 2011, a standoff with the Philippines at Scarborough Reef in 2012, and a standoff involving a Chinese oil rig in 2014.

There are three maritime forces in mainland China. The first is the CCP Navy, the second is the CCP Coast Guard, and the third is the "maritime militia." Recently, the American think tank, the Asian Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI), released satellite photos, guiding that there are a large number of mainland Chinese fishing boats in the sandy islands. Most of these fishing boats are "maritime militias," and the main areas of activity are located in areas such as Subi Reef, Meiji Reef, Zhongye Island and Taiping Island in China. However, most of these fishing boats were not fishing.

Andrew S. Erickson notes that only Vietnam is known to have an equivalent sea force to pursue disputed sovereignty claims. While virtually unique and publicly obscure, China’s Maritime Militia is known clearly to the U.S. government, which monitors it closely. A component of the People’s Armed Forces, the PAFMM is a state-organized, developed, and controlled force operating under a direct military chain of command to conduct Chinese statesponsored activities. The PAFMM is locally supported, but answers to the very top of China’s military bureaucracy: Commander-in-Chief Xi himself.

The PAFMM is a subset of China’s national militia, an armed reserve force of civilians available for mobilization to perform basic support duties. Militia units organize around towns, villages, urban subdistricts, and enterprises, and they vary widely from one location to another. The composition and mission of each unit reflects local conditions and personnel skills. In the South China Sea, the PAFMM plays a major role in coercive activities to achieve China’s political goals without fighting, part of broader Chinese military doctrine that states that confrontational operations short of war can be an effective means of accomplishing political objectives.

The militia team has always been an important part of China's armed forces. As the third force of the Chinese Navy, the maritime militia is gradually growing. Most of them came from fishermen and received formal training from the Chinese Navy. Although most militiamen have their original professions, more people now choose to join the maritime militia team full-time.

According to the CCP’s militia regulations: “The militia is a mass armed organization led by the Communist Party of China that does not divorce from production. It is a component of the CCP’s armed forces and an assistant and reserve force of the CCP’s military.” The CCP’s military strategy and laws are integrated into the CCP’s military strategy and laws. Use maritime militia to carry out "maritime military struggle work" in the South China Sea. The "Maritime Militia" is a force organized, developed and controlled by the CCP. It operates under a direct military command system and carries out activities sponsored by the CCP government.

Mainland China has a large fishing fleet. Part of its thousands of fishing boats, as well as the fishermen working on them, are required to register as maritime militias and be mobilized. The Maritime Militia is an armed mass organization composed mainly of seafarers working in the civil economy. They are all trained and trained. Not only can it mobilize to defend and advance the CCP’s maritime territorial claims and protect its so-called "marine rights and interests," it can also mobilize to support operations during wartime. Since 2015, the strength of these CCP militias began to increase. Not only did they establish a headquarters in the Paracel Islands, they also trained with the CCP Navy and Coast Guard.

In its report published 19 November 2021, "Pulling Back the Curtain on China’s Maritime Militia", CSIS provided a comprehensive profile of a force that it said had been operating alongside Chinese law enforcement and military to achieve Chinese political objectives in disputed waters. This is known as ‘gray-zone tactics’ when unconventional forces and methods are used to pursue strategic interests while trying to avoid the possibility of a conflict. The report said that the creation in recent years of Chinese outposts with large port facilities led to a sharp increase in the number of maritime militia vessels sailing to the disputed Spratly Islands.

“The big picture is that there have been about 300 maritime militia vessels deployed in large groups around the Spratly Islands since August 2018, relying on China’s artificial islands for logistics support but no longer cloistering themselves within those harbors,” the report alleged. The report said militia vessels are funded by the Chinese government through subsidies “that incentivize local actors to construct vessels in accordance with military specifications and to operate them.” The authors conclude that “the majority of Chinese fishing vessels in disputed areas of the South China Sea do not operate as independent commercial actors but instead as paid agents of the Chinese government obligated to help fulfil its political and national security objectives.”

“Existing subsidy policies incentivize the operation of large vessels in disputed waters while providing no incentive to fish,” the report alleges, giving the example of special fuel subsidies to vessels above 55 meters in length “allowing owners to easily profit by deploying to disputed waters without fishing at all.” But Hu Bo, director of the Center for Maritime Strategy Studies at Peking University and one of China’s leading scholars on the South China Sea, argued that government subsidies to the fishing industry are very common in the world and “should not be taken as evidence of maritime militias.” According to the Chinese analyst, while “the militia has long been a traditional part of China's national defense” its role is on the decline, therefore drumming up the maritime militia’s power “is the most ridiculous ‘China threat’ theory.”.

Greg Poling, director of the CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative and one of the authors of the report, rejected Hu’s criticism. As for the “declining role” of the maritime militia, Poling said that “the evidence is quite the opposite.” He said “As we document in the report, there has been a boom in the size, funding and capabilities of the militia since 2013 when (President) Xi Jinping directed that the militia be expanded.”

Wartime Role

Admiral John Richardson, the US Chief of Naval Operations, said that he had informed the Chinese Vice Admiral Shen Jinlong in January 2019 that Washington would not deal with the maritime police or maritime militia, that is, fishing boats that cooperate with the military, and the Chinese Navy. Treat them differently because they are being used to advance Beijing’s military ambitions. According to General Richardson told the Financial Times, "I clearly stated that the U.S. Navy will not be coerced and will continue to carry out routine and legal operations around the world to protect the rights and freedoms of all countries and the legal use of sea and airspace."

According to a report on the US "Diplomat" website on 07 July 2019, US naval legal experts and Japanese maritime self-defense legal experts jointly wrote an article stating: During wartime, Chinese maritime militia fishing boats will be targeted by the US military. Originally, there was no uniform definition of naval auxiliary ships, but during armed conflicts, such ships should be treated the same as warships.

The ocean-going fishing vessels of the maritime militia would not be attacked unless they become military targets through their actions. If such ships engage in combat on behalf of the enemy, such as laying mines, or as auxiliary ships (such as transporting troops), and are incorporated into the enemy's kill chain through the C4SRI system, these ships may become targets. If their armed forces exceed their own security requirements, such as carrying anti-aircraft weapons, or otherwise making effective contributions to military operations, such as carrying military supplies, this behavior makes such ships a legitimate military target.

Some specialized PAFMM ships may directly become de facto naval auxiliary equipment. Regardless of their behavior, they are equipped with equipment that facilitates the Chinese navy's operations. There is currently no treaty that contains a definition of "military objectives" in naval operations, nor a general definition of "naval auxiliary vessels." Although naval auxiliary equipment may not be able to attack as legally as warships, they may become targets during an armed conflict even if they are not armed.