NEWS AND ANALYSIS:
Chinese officials remain largely silent on the South China Sea collision between a People’s Liberation Army navy destroyer and a Chinese coast guard cutter this week that analysts say likely led to Chinese injuries and deaths.
The sole response from Beijing on the embarrassing collision that took place Monday as both Chinese ships pursued and apparently tried to ram a Philippine coast guard vessel was a state media report blaming Manila.
Video footage of the collision revealed that four Chinese coast guard personnel were standing on the bow of the cutter as the warship slammed into its front at high speed, shearing off the entire bow of the ship.
The only public response in China to the incident appeared in the state propaganda outlet Global Times. The outlet blamed what it called “resulting damage” on the Philippine coast guard ship that was being pursued and moving quickly to avoid water cannon fire from the Chinese cutter.
Analysts say the four Chinese coast guard members likely were killed in the collision.
China specialists say Beijing’s maritime forces have engaged in about a dozen ship rammings over the last 5 to 10 years against vessels in the region from the Philippines, Vietnam, Japan and Indonesia.
From the video, it appears the Philippine cutter, the Suluan, successfully evaded the high-speed chase by hitting its stern and damaging the rudder or propellers.
The Chinese coast guard is known to have tried using similar tactics several times in recent years.
To avoid the Chinese attack, the Philippines’ cutter operator was attempting to maneuver to protect its stern. The Chinese coast guard ship had been steaming ahead, spraying its water cannon toward the Philippine ship. Apparently, the cutter’s driver did not see the destroyer that plowed into it.
Retired Navy Capt. Jim Fanell said the collision, about 10 miles east of Scarborough Shoal, is the second time China’s military and maritime forces were embarrassed in the waters.
The first incident took place in April 2012 when a Philippine navy warship, a former U.S. Coast Guard cutter, caught China red-handed stealing giant clams and coral heads from within the shoal located in Manila’s exclusive economic zone.
“That event resulted in the [People’s Republic of China] seizing sovereign control of the shoal and opened the door for the PRC’s last 10-year expansion and de facto control of the entire South China Sea,” said Capt. Fanell, a former Pacific Fleet intelligence director.
“Despite the clear failure in communication and seamanship, now 13 years on, it is likely the PRC will use this incident to regroup and quickly reassert their presence and control over Scarborough Shoal.”
Capt. Fanell said he expects China to deploy an armada of ships from its navy and coast guard to sweep away all Philippine ships in the area. The Chinese are also expected to use the PLA navy to create conditions for building an artificial island, as was done in other parts of Spratly Islands from 2013 to 2015.
Capt. Fanell said China’s failure to acknowledge the loss of Chinese sailors is stunning. “Clearly [Chinese President] Xi Jinping and the Central Military Commission are in lockdown mode on how to deal with this incredible loss of face,” he said.
A similar silence occurred in 2001 after a Chinese J-8 pilot was killed in an aerial collision with a U.S. EP-3 surveillance aircraft. The Chinese leadership waited 11 days before commenting on that incident.
Capt. Fanell said the American military should be preparing for some type of asymmetric attack from the Chinese Communist Party.
On Wednesday, two days after the incident, a U.S. warship sailed close to Scarborough Shoal in a show of force.
China’s state media reported that a Chinese warship confronted and drove away the guided missile destroyer USS Higgins during the transit near the shoal.
Navy Cmdr. Megan Greene, a Seventh Fleet spokeswoman denied that the American ship was pressured to leave the area after sailing within 12 nautical miles of the shoal
“China’s statement about this mission is false,” Cmdr. Greene said in a statement. “USS Higgins conducted this [freedom of navigation operation] in accordance with international law and then continued on to conduct normal operations.”
The destroyer operation “reflects our commitment to uphold the freedom of navigation and lawful uses of the sea as a principle,” she said.
“The United States is defending its right to fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows, as USS Higgins did here. Nothing China says otherwise will deter us,” Cmdr. Greene said.
Another former naval officer, retired Navy Capt. Scott Smith, said the ship collision highlights troubling seamanship by the Chinese.
However, the incident also shows the degree to which the PLA navy and China coast guard are willing to risk life and limb to assert China’s excessive sovereignty claims in the South China Sea, Capt. Smith said in an article in the U.S. Naval Institute journal Proceedings.
China’s apparent goal was to drive Filipino fishermen away from Scarborough Shoal, which both China and the Philippines claim as their maritime territory, he said.
The fact that after the collision, the destroyer continued its pursuit of the Philippine Suluan cutter and did not seek to assist the crippled cutter shows that PLA orders for the operation were strict.
Capt. Smith said the incident reveals the difficulties for China in maintaining naval forces.
“Such problems increase when a nation tries to maintain tight control over an expanding force and while trying to aggressively assert illegal control over distant seas,” he said.
Trump faulted for loosening AI chip sales to China
Communist founder Vladimir Lenin once said: “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” That appears to be taking place in the Trump administration with the recent loosening of restrictions on selling advanced artificial intelligence microchips to China.
Mr. Trump’s former White House deputy national security adviser, Matthew Pottinger, warned in a recent article that the decision to lift restrictions on Nvidia selling its H20 AI chips to China will help Beijing defeat the U.S. in the high-technology race to develop the technology.
“President Donald Trump’s team just gave China’s rulers the technology they need to beat us in the artificial intelligence race,” Mr. Pottinger said in an article, co-written with Liz Tobin, in The Free Press.
“If he doesn’t reverse this decision, it may be remembered as the moment when America surrendered the technological advantage needed to bring manufacturing home and keep our nation secure.”
Mr. Pottinger and Ms. Tobin are currently with Garnaut Global, a research and advisory firm focused on China’s geopolitical and technological aspirations.
Mr. Trump reversed his policies on limiting NVIDIA chips after initially calling for NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang to resign over past close ties to the Chinese Communist Party. But Mr. Huang, who recently met with the president, was successful in persuading Mr. Trump to lift the ban on H20 chips that China urgently needs to make its AI more effective.
Mr. Pottinger and Ms. Tobin, who was China director on the White House National Security Council staff from 2019 to 2021, said that in exchange for allowing the AI chip sales, the U.S. government will be a financial beneficiary of the process.
Reports indicate that NVIDIA and another advanced microchip maker, AMD, agreed to provide 15% of their China chip revenues in exchange for U.S. export licenses.
Mr. Pottinger and Ms. Tobin said the arrangement“effectively monetizes what was supposed to be a national security restriction.”
NVIDIA’s H20 chips, which the administration claims are comparable to Chinese AI chips, were used in China’s unique DeepSeek AI that shocked the world last January for using low-cost technology.
“China’s lack of unfettered access to U.S.-designed AI chips is America’s clearest advantage in the AI race,” Mr. Pottinger and Ms. Tobin said. “By reversing the ban, the White House is helping Beijing’s Communist regime close the gap.”
They noted that in April, China’s military released a video titled “The Robot Dog’s Time to Kill Has Come.” The video shows an AI-enabled, four-legged terminator unit, made by Chinese robotics firm Unitree, with an assault rifle mounted on its back, running alongside human soldiers and firing at a target.
The video is a clear indication of China’s AI-enabled military plans.
The two China analysts urged Mr. Trump to immediately halt all H20 sales to China.
“This is Trump’s legacy moment,” they said. “Will he be remembered as the president who secured American AI dominance? Or as the president who triggered a second China shock for Nvidia’s short-term profit margins?”
North Korean network breached, hackers claim
Two hackers identified by the code names Saber and cyber0rg, published a recent report claiming to have breached a North Korean hacker network, according to a report in the cybersecurity outlet Phrack.
The dramatic break involved compromising a North Korean workstation of a hacker identified only as “Kim” who works for a Pyongyang cyber espionage group called Kimsuky, also known as Advanced Persistent Threat 43 and Thallium.
Documents from the hack were posted by DDoSecrets, a nonprofit group that exposes leaked data.
Kimsuky is said to be both a government intelligence-gathering network and criminal enterprise seeking to steal and launder cryptocurrency.
The compromise of the North Korean network “shows a glimpse how openly ‘Kimsuky’ cooperates with Chinese [government hackers] and shares their tools and techniques,” the hackers wrote.
The documents show Saber and cyb0rg obtained evidence showing Kimsuky broke into several South Korean government networks and companies, email addresses, and hacking tools used by the Kimsuky group, internal manuals, passwords, and more data.
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• Bill Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.