Four Chinese vessels were ‘transiting in international waters but still inside the US exclusive economic zone’
Multiple Chinese military warships were spotted off the coast of Alaska over the weekend, the US Coast Guard announced.
In a statement released on Wednesday, the US Coast Guard said that it detected three vessels approximately 124 miles (200km) north of the Amchitka Pass in the Aleutian Islands, as well as another vessel approximately 84 miles (135km) north of the Amukta Pass, a strait between the Bering Sea and the north Pacific Ocean.
All four Chinese vessels were “transiting in international waters but still inside the US exclusive economic zone, which extends 200 nautical miles from the US shoreline”, according to the US Coast Guard.
“The Chinese naval presence operated in accordance with international rules and norms,” R Adm Megan Dean of the US Coast Guard said, adding: “We met presence with presence to ensure there were no disruptions to US interests in the maritime environment around Alaska.”
The EEZ doesn’t pose any restrictions on international transit. The Chinese can sail in our EEZ. We can sail in their EEZ. It’s only the territorial sea that’s restricted.
Like, you can say that warships or warplanes being near territory is something to watch, sure, but news media needs to quit exploiting the fact that readers don’t know the difference between different types of waters to manufacture “more-interesting” stories.
Be that as it may:
Chinese warship, go fuck yourself.
You remember how that story ends right?
It is a bit more complicated than that, mostly because the US isn’t a signatory to unclos, while China is. However, China does not recognize the agreed upon terms of unclos, while America for the most part does…
The problem is that there is conflicting information on how the states in question interprets what they and others can do in EEZs, and how the EEZs are constituted in the first place.
In reality an international body of laws like unclos is only enforceable if the international court is willing to confront its members with hard power. Withholding that, it’s just a dog and pony show that has the possibility of validating an international conflict if someone oversteps their mark.