Keeping tabs on China’s murky maritime manoeuvres
America and its allies are using whizzy new tools to track China’s military activity and illegal fishing
IN JANUARY 2021 a fleet of Chinese fishing vessels approached the coast of Oman, apparently searching for squid. According to the ships’ automatic identification transponders, they stayed just outside Oman’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), which grants it control of fishing rights up to 200 nautical miles (370km) from its shores. But radio signals from the ships, detected by commercial satellites, told a different story. They indicated that the ships were operating within Oman’s EEZ in a suspected illegal raid on its valuable squid stocks.
This article appeared in the China section of the print edition under the headline “Squid games”
From the August 19th 2023 edition
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