China Maritime Surveillance

In the recent time, the Fisheries Law Enforcement Command made a lot of noise with the deployment of YuZheng-310 to South China Sea. Even so, China Maritime Surveillance has slowly become the biggest fish of the five Chinese coast guard agencies as mentioned in the last post on this project. The force is responsible for enforcing laws and order within China’s territorial waters, exclusive economic zones. Since China is having so many disputes with USA and neighbouring countries recently on the issue of territorial waters and EEZ, CMS has clearly jumped to prominence over time.

It is taking over some of the roles previously assigned to the navy, so it's not surprising to see that the naval expansion also led to CMS expansion. In fact, it has received some 037 ships as part of this recent movement in retiring PLAN ships into the Coast Guard force. As PLAN rise in stature, CMS is also continuing to rise in stature. Unlike its military counterpart, I see a balanced growth of each of the fleet of the North, East and South Sea Headquarter of CMS. This trend clearly differs from that of PLAN, which favours the growth of blue water assets for SSF and anti-access assets for ESF (while leaving NSF to rot).

This is a recent summary of the major cutters of each of the three HQs of CMS.

North Sea Haijian-28 4435 ton Haijian-22 1200 ton Haijian-27 1200 ton Haijian-18 997 ton Haijian-17 1150 ton Haijian-11 800 ton

East Sea Haijian-52 3167 ton Haijian-51 1730 ton Haijian-46 1324 ton Haijian-53 1324 ton Haijian-49 997 ton Haijian-47 800 ton Haijian-62 800 ton

South Sea Haijian-81 4435 ton Haijian-83 3980 ton Haijian-71 1324 ton Haijian-72 890 ton Haijian-73 1117 ton Haijian-74 997 ton

This expansion of CMS was made into part of the 10th 5 year plan in 2000. The first phase of the buildup happened from 2004 to 2005. A 3000-ton class Haijian-83 was built by JiangNan shipyard. A 1500-ton class Haijian-51 was built by WuChang shipyard. Three 1000-ton class Type 1 Haijian-46, 17 and 71 were built by WuChang shipyard. A final 1000-ton class Type 2 Haijian-27 was built by HuangPu shipyard.

We have now reached the second phase of the CMS buildup. There are numerous cutters being built at multiple naval shipyards for CMS. In the Huangpu shipyard, there have been two cutters Haijian-23 and Haijian-75 that have been launched recently.

They are two of the four 1000 ton Type-II class cutters that are on order for HP. They are 75.8 m long and 10.2 wide. It's actually quite amazing to see how fast these 2 ships got launched. They only began earlier this year and will be delivered before the end of the year.

In the WuChang shipyard, Haijian-15 and Haijian-84 are currently launched and fitting out the electronics.


They are the 2 1500 ton class cutter that are on order for WuChang. Each cutter is 88 m long, 12 m wide and has 5.6 m draft. The actual displacement of the ship is 1740 ton. They were launched earlier this year and may be delivered before the end of the year. Although, WuChang does not build ship as fast as HP, so it probably won't make that time frame.

Finally, a 3000-ton class Haijian-50 started construction in WuChang in April of this year and is scheduled to be delivered to East Sea in May of Next Year. It will be similar to the Haijian-83 built for South Sea.

On top of that, WuChang is also contracted to build numerous 600-ton cutters for CMS. So, WuChang clearly has a large part in this 2nd phase of CMS build up. I would say that HP shipyard is making much better progress on its orders from the recent photos. Although, I'm sure 054As and Yuan submarines are still getting higher priority in these shipyard than the CMS ships.

The third phase of the buildup is probably going to happen at the end of the 12th 5 year plan if we go by the time line of the first 2 phases of the buildup. One of the projections is that they will be going for 3 5000-ton class, 3 4500-ton class, 4 3000-ton class, 6 2000-ton class, 16 1500-ton class and 14 1000-ton class. I doubt that they will go for that many, but the next phase will probably be larger, because PLAN will be expected to operate further away from the shore. With PLAN (especially SSF) becoming more blue water, CMS will only be given more tasks to protect China's shoreline. So, I think WuChang and HuangPu shipyard will be really busy cranking new cutters out in 3 or 4 years.