[LINK] "China to Pirates: All Your Base Are Belong to Us"

[rfmcdonald]

Counting on the sweet mercy of the People's Republic of China against aggressors is usually a bad idea, especially when you're Somali pirates.

In comments at the National Defense University yesterday, General Chen Bingde, the chief of general staff of China’s People’s Liberation Army, called for military action against Somali pirate bosses on land, not just against their minions at sea.

“For counter-piracy campaigns to be effective, we should probably move beyond the ocean and crash their bases on the land,” Reuters quoted Gen Bingde as saying.

That’s a much more aggressive take on piracy than we heard out of China in March. At that time, its permanent representative to the United Nations used a much more anodyne phrasing of the land-based approach, arguing for addressing it with “political, economic and judicial means.”

It’s also not the kind of statement the world is used to hearing from China in general.

Ever conscious of “national sovereignty,” China is often heard condemning military attacks rather than gunning for them. It has criticized the attacks on Libya (although they chose to abstain from a UN Security Council vote permitting them), the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden and the war in Iraq.

But piracy has a way of annoying countries into action. Like other rising economic and naval powers, China has been prompted to take on increasingly aggressive military measures as Somali pirates have menaced its merchant fleet in the Indian Ocean. In 2008, it sent a task force of warships to the waters off the Somali coast, marking its first deployment of naval power far away from its shores. Since then, China has conducted convoys to protect its shipping. Attacks still happen, though and Somali pirates are currently holding a number of Chinese nationals captured in various hijackings.

Attacks on land ports come with risks, however. Direct strikes could complicate Somalia’s battle against Islamist militants. And attempts to use private security-backed militias as proxies against pirates haven’t produced much results, either.