China's Emergence as a Superpower (2015 onwards)

[Backwards Observer]

From the ASPI Strategist

An international system is only effective if it’s seen as fair to the vast majority, including those who disagree with our point of view.

Not BS - https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/ru...alert-alarmed/

China has become the most formidable challenge to Asia’s regional order, and to Australia’s stake in that order, since the days of Japanese imperialism.

(i.e. since the days of european colonialism)

BS - https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/wi...ed-order-asia/

[Backwards Observer]

Australia ideal testing ground for China's influence - Global Times

China may not like being lectured by Australia about politics, human rights or anything else. But Chinese policymakers need to recognize that there are equally strong opinions about key aspects of "Australian values" that will generate significant blowback if consciously or accidentally threatened.

Is one of these "Australian Values" white supremacy? Just asking 'cos I heard more racist nonsense in two weeks in Australia than in eighteen years in the US. Don't think it was malicious, sure was noticeable. Here's an explanation I got from someone, "when we call a chinky, "a chinky", it's not being racist, it's just what we call 'em."

China's policymakers need to realize that it's not even necessary for claims about interference to be true, or any different in intent from the sorts of thing that every other country does for that matter, for them to create significant blowback.

http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1098390.shtml

it seems of little use to talk to anyone, not just the countries mentioned in this article, that counts a disregard for the truth as a value


...


[anecdote] When I was working in Australia a guy came in and after the briefest exchange seemed to take an instant dislike to me. If I was the only one in the shop he'd generally leave and come back when there was someone else he could deal with. A while later I was out having a smoke and he drove up in his ute. There was a White Pride Worldwide sticker with the celtic cross on his bumper. I figured okay I'm half-chinese so it's an invasion thing.
A few weeks later White Pride guy is in the shop and this chinese guy walks in. White Pride guy sees him, breaks into a big smile and they hang around laughing and joking for about fifteen minutes then go get a sandwich. I asked the other guy in the shop, "What's up with White Pride guy?" He goes, "I't's your accent (eighteen years in the States). He thinks you're a septic (septic tank - yank). He doesn't like Americans."

[Bill Moore]

I haven't read this yet, not sure when I'll get to it, but it comes highly recommended.

https://www.amazon.com/Silent-Invasi...=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Silent Invasion: China's Influence in Australia

Respected academic Clive Hamilton realised something big was happening when, in 2016, it was revealed that wealthy Chinese businessmen linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had become the largest donors to both major Australian political parties. Hamilton began to investigate the Chinese government's influence in Australia. What he found shocked him.

From politics to culture, real estate to agriculture, universities to unions, and even in primary schools, he uncovered compelling evidence of the CCP's infiltration of Australia. It is no exaggeration to say the CCP and Australian democracy are on a collision course, with the CCP determined to win, while Australia looks the other way.

Thoroughly researched and powerfully argued, SILENT INVASION is a sobering examination of the mounting threats to democratic freedoms Australians have for too long taken for granted. Yes, China is important to Australia's economic prosperity; but, Hamilton asks, how much is sovereignty as a nation worth?

'Anyone keen to understand how China draws other countries into its sphere of influence should start with Silent Invasion. This is an important book for the future of Australia. But tug on the threads of China's influence networks in Australia and its global network of influence operations starts to unravel.' –Professor John Fitzgerald, author of Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia

China pressured the Australian government and the publishing company not publish this book, but they lost that battle. At least the free world won one gray zone battle. No surprise for those who follow China's foreign policy that their claim about non-interference in internal affairs is a bunch of nonsense. Of course this is a form of statecraft that many nations practice to include the U.S., but what makes China different is that they are a totalitarian state with the economic capacity (new) and political willingness (not new) to use economic leverage to coerce countries to conform to their policies. This more often than not creates a zero sum gain for China relative to those coerced, despite China's claim of their desire for a win-win outcome. The truly sad part of this story is China is capable in so many ways of contributing the world in a positive manner to create those win-win agreements that increase global stability and prosperity for all concerned, yet they choose not to. One can't help but think they will eventually stumble over their own contradictions.

[Backwards Observer]

China pressured the Australian government and the publishing company not publish this book, but they lost that battle.

You have a source for this assertion?

One of the concerns raised last week inside the committee about publishing the book was the appropriateness of granting it the parliamentary power of qualified privileged – which prevents the authors of submissions from being sued, and protects others such as journalists who re-publish the contents of the book.

Three committee members were understood to have been concerned that tabling the manuscript would enable a commercial publisher who otherwise wouldn’t print the book to do so.

https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/201...lent-invasion/

Hamilton did not agree to heavy edits to the book to mitigate the potential for legal repercussion, which ultimately lead to the breakdown of the publishing deal. But he emphasised Allen & Unwin were not to blame and he held no ill-will towards the publishing giant.

An email from the publisher to Hamilton read that the most serious of the legal threats “was the very high chance of a vexatious defamation action against Allen & Unwin, and possibly against you personally as well”.

https://www.theguardian.com/australi...sher-pulls-out

Is acting on legal advice about potential lawsuits the same thing as direct pressure from China? Maybe you have access to sources that detail direct pressure from the PRC. If they can't stop the publication of a book, not sure how this speaks to their massive influence.

If the Australian government is serious about standing tall for their stake in the rules-based order in Asia, they should cease all trade with the PRC, reintroduce conscription, drastically increase the size of their military and develop or acquire a nuclear deterrent. Until then all their rhetorical posturing is being underwritten by American blood and subsidised by PRC treasure.

I don't think the PRC is ready for her close-up. As far as the US, it's like what the hell happened to you people.

[Bill Moore]

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-43193146

'China influence' book proves divisive in Australia debate

"China plans to dominate the world, and has been using Australia and New Zealand as a testing ground for its tactics to assert its ascendancy in the West," writes Prof Hamilton, a lecturer in public ethics at Charles Sturt University.

He says such a suggestion would have been "fantastic" in the past, but now "so much evidence has accumulated that the conclusion seems irresistible".

China and Russia, like other powers have practiced this type of statecraft for decades, but with social media and now economic power they can take it to a new level.

Last year, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation warned in a report that ethnic communities in Australia were "the subject of covert influence operations" aimed at shutting down criticism. It did not name China specifically.

Borrowing the Russia thug methodology?

The book has "international resonance", according to Prof Rory Medcalf, Head of the National Security College at the Australian National University.

"It is a book about how a multicultural democracy struggles when a foreign power exploits the open nature of its system," said Prof Medcalf, whose work is also quoted in the book.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-2...tralia/9464692

He refers to classified Chinese Government reports which instruct Chinese officials to infiltrate overseas churches that have Chinese congregations. "They instruct cadres to monitor, infiltrate and 'sinify' overseas Chinese churches by actively promoting the CCP's concepts of Chineseness and 'spiritual love'."

In 2014, he notes, the website of the Canberra Chinese Methodist Church included a statement which linked the rise of the CCP to God's will: "The awe-inspiring righteousness of Xi Jinping, the President of the People's Republic of China, and the rise of a great nation that is modern China are part of God's plan, predestination and blessing."

Again, the Soviets did this throughout the developing world during the Cold War. They even modified some Bibles in Latin America. Churches influence people's opinions, if you can influence the church you may have an exponential impact on opinion making.

China propaganda if you will, has an effective counter argument. This is all racial, Australia is trying to blame it problems on the Chinese, etc. They know that makes Westerners back up and think of a way to side step that accusation. Most interesting, the Chinese offered no counter arguments are the actual asserts in the book. I would rate their gray zone / Sun Tzu strategy of winning without fighting as significantly more sophisticated than Russia's. Although when I listened the BBC video "Does China have Influence in Australia," the Chinese kids they interviewed sounded quite naïve, and focused their comments on the world map being wrong. Of course the South China Sea and Taiwan are sovereign China territory. Amazing, and well if Australia's college kids are anything like ours they'll swallow it hook, line, and sinker.

[Backwards Observer]

Australian strategic orientation is firmly in the US orbit. Trust for the PRC outside of the Australian business community is in the negative. Every weekend a group of elderly Falun Gong supporters sits quietly on the corner in the local chinatown passing out anti-communist pamphlets. Across the street from them is The Epoch Times office. Mainland tourists walk by without seeming to bat an eyelid.

Do you feel that alarmism, exaggeration and distortion make the narrative appear stronger or weaker to exisiting and potential security partners in the Asian rules-based order? Or is it an inadvertent indication that a counter to the PRC's rise lacks a coherent strategy short of war.

[Backwards Observer]

Here's where Australia was in 2015:

In the global game of power in Asia, America is winning hands down - despite China's attempts to exploit US failings.

https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/asia-...09-1mh6tv.html

Now you're telling me they're afraid of their own people

and well if Australia's college kids are anything like ours they'll swallow it hook, line, and sinker.

knock yerselves out

[Bill Moore]

From the link you posted.

The world would be a safer place if Kerry had learned as fast as Clinton did. Or if Obama had been as tough, consistent and focused with his follow through.

China would not be building "a great wall of sand" in the South China Sea, as the US Pacific Commander colourfully put it last week, if John Kerry had continued Clinton's powerful regional diplomacy and Obama had not lost interest.

In my opinion John Kerry is an idiot and traitor starting with his unfounded comments on the Vietnam War that he could not back up with any facts. Recently this clown went to the Middle East in an unofficial capacity and told the Palestinians to oppose any peace deal that the Trump administration was working on. That seems to be working out great for everyone now. He has a long history of child like behavior not aligned with U.S. values that defy commonsense. Notably absent from this article which is three years old is Bush Junior's decision to invade Iraq, which in the informed opinion of many was the greatest strategic mis-step in U.S. history, and the subsequent commitment allowed both Russia and China to increase their hegemonic behavior largely unopposed.

Obama's was elected because he opposed Bush's failed foreign policy. Unfortunately, he did little better. Obama was so naïve he confused "don't to stupid sh**" as a foreign policy, and he didn't have the wisdom or courage to confront challenges when he should have. What we have now is too early to tell, partly due to the deep political divide in our system that impedes implementation of strategy.

Backwards Observer comments:

Australian strategic orientation is firmly in the US orbit. Trust for the PRC outside of the Australian business community is in the negative. Every weekend a group of elderly Falun Gong supporters sits quietly on the corner in the local chinatown passing out anti-communist pamphlets. Across the street from them is The Epoch Times office. Mainland tourists walk by without seeming to bat an eyelid.

According to one of the articles I linked stated minority dissident groups in Australia opposed to China's policies are being targeting, to include acts of violence. Is it correct? I don't know, maybe an Aussie monitoring this site can weigh in and confirm or refute it. However, they are being pressured by pro China groups in other countries. In regards to the book "Silent Invasion," you stated it is exaggerated. I suspect most books along these lines contain a fair amount of hyperbole, but that doesn't mean the overall argument is invalid. If you think the author is incorrect, the you attack his specific arguments. As one of the articles states, China complained about the book, but they didn't offer any counter arguments, only attempted to delegitimize the author by calling him a zenophobe and racist. Sounds like our far left, a bunch of meaningless labels void of logic.

Do you feel that alarmism, exaggeration and distortion make the narrative appear stronger or weaker to exisiting and potential security partners in the Asian rules-based order? Or is it an inadvertent indication that a counter to the PRC's rise lacks a coherent strategy short of war.

There is nothing I stated that is an exaggeration, if anything I moderated my comments. If the book contains hyperbole, then expose it with logic. If I recall our the guidance in our former and current National Security Strategy correctly, there isn't anything in it stated we oppose China's rise. In fact, it states we welcome it "if" China participates in a rules based international order. They clearly have a lot to offer to the world. However, a country that pulls a some maps out of a footlocker and then claims that the South China Sea is sovereign territory is clearly not the behavior of a nation that intends to follow the long accepted rules of international behavior.

I have been frustrated with the lack of an effective U.S. strategy that advances our prosperity and security interests for years. China is only one threat, but arguably the most capable. A war strategy won't counter intellectual property thief, unfair trading practices, our China's support for authoritarian leaders in third world nations including Russia. Yes, we need a stronger military, principally to avoid war, but deterrence alone is not a strategy that advances our interests.

[davidbfpo]

Surely not as a Chinese company has purchased Greece's major commercial port, Piraeus and the Italians think there is a fraud:

uropean Union and Italian authorities are investigating suspected wide-scale tax fraud by Chinese criminal gangs importing goods via Greece’s largest port of Piraeus, a trade gateway between China and Europe, officials said.

Link:https://www.euractiv.com/section/eu-...way-to-europe/

[AdamG]

Didn't find this previously posted -

The best political commentary out of East Asia last week is the one published on December 15 by South Korea’s second largest newspaper, Dong-A Ilbo. The paper’s editors asked a question on the mind of the entire Korean nation after their president had been outrageously snubbed by the Chinese leadership during his four-day state visit to the communist country, and Korean reporters accompanying their president’s visit were savagely beaten by thuggish Chinese security guards: “China should reflect on this question: why is it that for such a big country, there is hardly any neighbor that can be described as China’s friend?”
The question is poignant. It reveals a spectacular vulnerability of China’s national security: China has no real friends along its long, vast land and maritime borders, and any Chinese aggression against any one of its many aggrieved neighbors will likely trigger a massive defense and military coalescence as well as a much stronger coalition of the willing against China.

This is indeed China’s Achilles heel.

https://www.hoover.org/research/chinas-achilles-heel

[AdamG]

Some of China’s biggest strides are coming in air-to-air missiles, the weapons that for one or two million dollars can destroy a $150 million aircraft. That’s a cost efficient way of trying to level the playing field with the U.S.. China’s defense budget is well over three times as big as Russia’s or India’s, but still much lower than the $610 billion the U.S. spends, according to SIPRI.

In March, the U.S. Air Force awarded a half-billion-dollar contract to supply close allies with Raytheon Inc.’s latest long range air-to-air missile, capable of hitting enemy planes from 100 miles (160 kilometers) away. The Meteor, a new European equivalent, may be even more deadly. But China’s latest offering, the PL-15, has a greater range than either.

Airborne Warning
The PL-15 also supports an active electronically-scanned array radar that makes evasion difficult for the most agile of fighter jets. Russia has yet to succeed in equipping its own missiles with the technology. When the PL-15 was first tested in public, then-U.S. Air Force Air Combat Command chief Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle was concerned enough to call on Congress to fund a response.

Another Chinese air-to-air weapon in development, provisionally known as PL-XX, would strike slow-moving airborne warning and control systems, the flying neural centers of U.S. air warfare, from as far away as 300 miles. At closer quarters, China’s new PL-10 missile is comparable to the best “fire-and-forget” equivalents, meaning any dogfight would likely end with a so-called mutual kill, a significant deterrent.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...r-in-the-skies

[AdamG]

(CNN)China's first domestically built aircraft carrier began sea trials on Sunday, a historic step in the country's mission to build a navy capable of rivaling the world's leading maritime powers.

The new aircraft carrier, temporarily named Type 001A, sailed out at around 7 a.m. in Dalian, in the northeast province of Liaoning, according to reports in Chinese state media.
The 50,000-tonne ship will become the country's second aircraft carrier, and the first to be entirely built and designed inside of China, when it joins the navy sometime before 2020.
The carrier's maiden sea trial follows a speech given by Chinese President Xi Jinping on April 12, in which he announced plans to build a "world-class" navy under the banner of the Chinese Communist Party.
China's first carrier, the Liaoning, a retrofitted Soviet-era vessel bought from the Ukraine, was hailed as the fulfillment of a "70-year dream" of the Chinese nation when it launched to much celebration in 2012.
But experts said while the new aircraft carrier will dramatically boost China's military power in the Asia region, its technology was still outdated and lagged far behind the world's naval superpower, the United States.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/12/asia/...ntl/index.html

[AdamG]

The escalating territorial disputes in the Pacific between China and America’s allies create an ever-more-urgent need for U.S. sea power. But even as China rapidly expands and modernizes its navy, the Trump administration has not proposed enough funds to maintain America’s maritime advantage. Beginning with the coming 2019 federal budget, the president and Congress must commit to funding a full, modern fleet—or risk ceding essential U.S. and allied interests.

Adm. Phil Davidson, nominated to lead the U.S. Pacific Command, told the Senate in April: China “is no longer a rising power but an arrived great power and peer competitor.” He added that “China has undergone a rapid military modernization over the last three decades and is approaching parity in a number of critical areas; there is no guarantee that the United States would win a future conflict with China.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/america...eas-1526338043

[davidbfpo]

An opinion piece by the Australian commentator, Hugh White, that opens with:

Australia’s problem with China is bigger and simpler than we think, and thus harder to solve. It isn’t that Beijing doesn’t like Julie Bishop, or that it’s offended by our new political interference legislation, or that it’s building impressive new armed forces, or staking claims in the South China Sea. It’s that China wants to replace the United States as the primary power in East Asia, and we don’t want that to happen. We want America to remain the primary power because we don’t want to live under China’s shadow.

Other nations in the region and beyond have to make choices; which the author writes as - near the end:

....what price are we willing to pay to resist it, and how far are we prepared to go? Those choices must be based on a realistic assessment of China’s power and ambitions, and of the cost we will incur by opposing them.

Link:https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/au...e-about-china/

[davidbfpo]

This popped up via Twitter thanks to a "lurker" and has yet to be read fully. I am sure this capability has appeared here before. The author's introduction:

Rarely is a topic so little recognized and so little understood, yet so important and so amenable to research using Chinese-language open sources… To increase awareness and understanding of this important subject, here is a convenient compendium of major publications and other documents available on the matter thus far.

Link:http://www.andrewerickson.com/2018/06/the-complete-china-maritime-militia-bookshelf-fully-updated-just-now/?

[davidbfpo]

An un-read IISS blog article that is sub-titled:

Chinese private security companies are going global to protect the country's assets and citizens, in the sometimes unstable countries linked to Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative.

Link:https://www.iiss.org/blogs/analysis/2018/08/guardians-belt-and-road?

[Bill Moore]

China’s Growing Power Is Bringing Military Drills Center Stage in Asia

https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2.../?oref=d-river

China will soon take part in unprecedented joint military exercises in Russia, sending 30 aircraft, 900 tanks, and 3,200 personnel to its neighbor’s far east.

Russia’s drills, held every four years, are the largest since the early 1980s, and the inclusion of Chinese troops, a first, is seen as a major geopolitical shift. Moscow and Beijing each want to send a signal to the Washington with military cooperation—though it’s China, not Russia, that the U.S. now considers its main threat.

More concerning than the upcoming exercise with Russia are the other combined exercises mentioned in the article. China conducting a limited military land exercise on its border with Russia in a strategically insignificant region doesn't demonstrate the ability to project power beyond its borders in a meaningful way like true great powers. I have a feeling we'll start hearing stories leak out after the exercise about PLA land force incompetence, and a large number of their vehicles breaking down.

[davidbfpo]

Bill,

Thanks for the above post.

In my reading list and it is a very short article is this:https://nationalinterest.org/blog/bu...angerous-29352

All very impressive, except as one comment in the PMC article remarked the PLA's last combat operation was in 1979.

A "lurker" suggested we examine this short PLA video of an amphibious operation. One response:

You don't just "walk through" on landings like this,there'll be a lot of obstacles, boobie traps , bad weather and blood bath before most of these armor vehicles get to reach the beaches.

Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us4805xdhy8

[AdamG]

Repeat a perception until it becomes a reality.

A modernization program focused on naval and missile forces has shifted the balance of power in the Pacific in ways the United States and its allies are only beginning to digest.

While China lags in projecting firepower on a global scale, it can now challenge U.S. military supremacy in the places that matter most to it: the waters around Taiwan and in the disputed South China Sea.

That means a growing section of the Pacific Ocean — where the United States has operated unchallenged since the naval battles of World War II — is once again contested territory, with Chinese warships and aircraft regularly bumping up against those of the U.S. and its allies.

To prevail in these waters, according to officials and analysts who scrutinize Chinese military developments, China does not need a military that can defeat the U.S. outright but merely one that can make intervention in the region too costly for Washington to contemplate. Many analysts say Beijing has already achieved that goal.

https://www.wral.com/china-shoring-u...ific/17803020/

[AdamG]

Buying African votes in the UN.

China will write off any amount owed by indebted countries or developing nations, President Xi Jinping said. China is offering US$60 billion in financial support and a debt write-off to impoverished African nations- no strings attached, Chinese President Xi Jinping said Monday
*
The Chinese official laid out the extensive financial strategy to African leaders, with plans to invest US$5 billion in African exports, US$ 10 billion for "development financing" and US$15 billion in grants, interest-free loans, and concessional loans; a credit line of US$20 billion. Xi said their friendship was time-honored and that China's investment in Africa came with no political strings attached.

https://www.telesurtv.net/english/ne...0903-0005.html