For months, China has been expanding its claims to waters and islands off its shores, leading to conflict with neighbors and even the U.S., which has dispatched warships to the region to defy the rapidly growing military power in Asia.
Now, shots have been fired in another of China’s sea fights.
This time it’s with South Korea, according to a report in Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.
It happened just days ago when South Korea’s Coast Guard fired live rounds at Chinese fishing boats that were inside Korean-controlled waters.
An unclassified report from the Office of Naval Intelligence said it was the first time shots had been fired in the dispute.
The Nov. 3 intel report revealed what happened: “During the early evening hours, three coast guard patrol boats fired M60 machine gun rounds at 30 Chinese fishing boats that were threateningly bearing down on them while they towed away two trawlers that had been fishing about 90 km southwest of Socheong Island in Incheon.”
The report said that three hours earlier, the patrol boats “had spotted some 50 Chinese trawlers fishing illegally about 5.5 km inside Korean waters.”
“During that time, several Chinese fishing boats rammed a South Korean Coast Guard boat. Two patrol aircraft were then scrambled and fired a total of 18 flare bombs before the trawlers finally turned back and fled toward Chinese waters.”
Beijing, which has gone to the lengths of building islands for aircraft runways to solidify and defend its claims to territory off its shores, in August warned foreigners to stay away.