Japan expands counter-China coastguard training from Southeast Asia to Pacific islands

The Mobile Cooperation Team (MCT) initiative was first set up in 2017 as part of Tokyo’s efforts to train and equip the coastguards of Southeast Asian nations that felt threatened by China’s presence in the disputed waterway.

With Beijing actively looking to expand its sphere of influence further into the Pacific, Japan has now enlarged the project and two MCT units were dispatched on one-week missions to the Marshall Islands and Micronesia in January, the Yomiuri newspaper reported on Sunday.

The initial sessions involved exercises to locate and rescue small groups of people adrift at sea and lectures on international law for more than 60 local officials, the paper reported, with a senior official of the Micronesian maritime police expressing hope that further exchanges would be possible in the future.

“The primary reason that the Japan Coast Guard first set up these units was to compete with Chinese efforts to increase the presence of their coastguard units in the South China Sea,” said Masafumi Iida, a leading China analyst at the National Institute of Defence Studies in Tokyo.

“More recently, China has been actively expanding its areas of influence into the Pacific islands and the creation of an MCT specifically for this region is a reflection of that Chinese expansion,” he told This Week in Asia.

The Mobile Cooperation Teams have provided assistance on 105 missions to 20 countries since their creation seven years ago, advising local officials on how to conduct stop-and-search operations at sea, arrest techniques and methods to prevent oil spills from worsening. They have also offered advice on dealing with pirates and search-and-rescue operations.

Japanese officials would provide similar support to the Pacific nations,