Coast Guard strengthens international communication

China Coast Guard has been strengthening international communication and cooperation on law enforcement, such as holding bilateral meetings and conducting joint patrols with neighboring countries, including the Republic of Korea and Vietnam, officials said on Friday.

"In 2022, we successfully held high-level meetings with the coast guard officials of ROK and Vietnam separately, and renewed the memorandum of cooperation with the ROK Coast Guard," Zhao Xuexiang, deputy chief of the CCG, said at a Friday news conference reviewing the agency's work last year.

The coast guard also carried out joint patrols with the ROK maritime law enforcement department, and conducted joint patrols in the Beibu Gulf with the Vietnam Coast Guard, he said, adding that they carried out fishery patrols in the North Pacific in 2022.

The official highlighted a multilateral meeting hosted by the Vietnam Coast Guard in December, in which Chinese high-level coast guard officials held bilateral talks with their counterparts from Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, the Philippines and Indonesia.

"We had fruitful talks with law enforcement agencies of those countries, which laid the foundation for further cooperation with ASEAN countries, deepened mutual understanding and enhanced our friendship," Zhao said.

Domestically, the coast guards across the country have coordinated and cooperated closely with local public security authorities to crack down on drug-related crimes.

Liu Dejun, deputy head for law enforcement of the CCG, said that coast guards at various levels seized 1.12 metric tons of drugs and 1.2 tons of drug-producing materials last year, with three major gangs producing and selling drugs destroyed, and 37 suspects arrested.

Liu revealed that the coast guard has always been making all-out efforts to curb drug-trafficking activities at sea, by carefully carrying out joint maritime and ground operations and building a maritime prevention and control system.

In addition, the coast guard also kept cracking down on human smuggling, with an increasing risk of maritime smuggling, as smuggling gangs have turned to explore sea routes, given that many countries' border control has been strengthened during the COVID-19 pandemic, the coast guard official said.

"Last year, the coast guards at various levels uncovered 45 cases of people smuggling, and 1,219 stowaways were arrested, successfully cutting off a number of maritime smuggling routes," said Liu.