China's Emergence as a Superpower (2015 onwards)

[davidbfpo]

An updated article by Caitlin Talmadge an Associate Professor of Security Studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. It is one of several articles fully available in the latest 'Foreign Affairs': Do Nuclear Weapons Matter?

Near the beginning two passages as a "taster":

If deployed against China, the Pentagon’s preferred style of conventional warfare would be a potential recipe for nuclear escalation. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States’ signature approach to war has been simple: punch deep into enemy territory in order to rapidly knock out the opponent’s key military assets at minimal cost. But the Pentagon developed this formula in wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Serbia, none of which was a nuclear power.

China, by contrast, not only has nuclear weapons; it has also intermingled them with its conventional military forces, making it difficult to attack one without attacking the other. This means that a major U.S. military campaign targeting China’s conventional forces would likely also threaten its nuclear arsenal. Faced with such a threat, Chinese leaders could decide to use their nuclear weapons while they were still able to.

Link:https://reader.foreignaffairs.com/20...2/content.html

[Bill Moore]

An updated article by Caitlin Talmadge an Associate Professor of Security Studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. It is one of several articles fully available in the latest 'Foreign Affairs': Do Nuclear Weapons Matter?

Near the beginning two passages as a "taster":
Link:https://reader.foreignaffairs.com/20...2/content.html

Nuclear weapons since their inception have always mattered greatly. They changed the character of war and brought deterrence to the forefront. They also resulted in so-called gray zone conflicts/competition and proxy wars becoming the norm to pursue national interests while avoiding a direct conflict between nuclear armed powers. The author of this article seems to fault the U.S. preferred form of war (if we really have one) as the reason nuclear strikes will be exchanged if China and the U.S. go to war. This is typical academic bla, bla, bla, since he fails to mention other approaches to neutralize the PLA in the event of war, and he fails to identify the real culprit which is China's military aggression.

[Bill Moore]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-46733174

Xi Jinping says Taiwan 'must and will be' reunited with China

In a speech marking 40 years since the start of improving ties, he reiterated Beijing's call for peaceful unification on a one-country-two-systems basis.

However, he also warned that China reserved the right to use force.

[Bill Moore]

Chinese Leader Tells Armed Forces to Be Ready for War

https://m.theepochtimes.com/chinese-...r_2757819.html

Chinese leader Xi Jinping ordered China’s armed forces to step up their preparations for war, in a speech at a meeting of top brass on Jan. 4.

The Chinese communist regime is in the midst of ramping up its armed forces, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), as it seeks to bolster its territorial claims in the South China Sea, increase pressure on Taiwan, and confront the United States over issues from trade to the status of Taiwan.

Xi strengthens his grip and stands at the pinnacle of power

“In a disappointing turn for those who have upheld more optimistic prognoses for Xi – and for China – he [has] opted to revert the country back to the era of strongman politics and the personality cult,” Cheng Li, a director of the John L Thornton China Center, and Ryan McElveen, an associate director, wrote in an academic analysis for the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, earlier this year.

“Equally important, [his actions] further alienates a number of critical constituencies whose power Xi may be underestimating. Liberal intellectuals will be among the first to push back and shape the public discourse,” they continued.

China’s unconventional war is inflicting greater damage on India

https://m.hindustantimes.com/columns...C2mrK_amp.html

India’s China problem will only exacerbate when the planned 16-nation Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) accord takes effect, thereby creating a free-trade zone between the world’s two most-populous countries. Unlike the other states negotiating RCEP, India is not an export-driven economy; rather it is an import-dependent economy whose growth is largely driven by domestic consumption.

RCEP’s main impact on India will come from China, which Harvard’s Graham Allison has called “the most protectionist, mercantilist and predatory major economy in the world”. China, while exploiting India’s rule of law for dumping, keeps whole sectors of its economy off-limits to Indian businesses. It has dragged its feet on dismantling regulatory barriers to the import of Indian agricultural and pharmaceutical products and IT services.

India focuses on Pakistan’s unconventional war by terror but forgets that China is also waging an unconventional war, though by economic means. Indeed, China’s economic war is inflicting greater damage, including by killing Indian manufacturing and fostering rising joblessness among the Indian youth.

[davidbfpo]

A commentary by a US SME (a new name to me) and starts with:

This report assesses China’s global expansion by military and nonmilitary means, implications of China’s activities, and the U.S. response, as mandated by Section 1259b, “Assessment on United States Defense Implications of China’s Expanding Global Access,” of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018, Public Law 115-91.

Link to commentary:http://www.andrewerickson.com/2019/0...global-access/ and to the author's bio:http://www.andrewerickson.com/about/

[Bill Moore]

http://www.dia.mil/Military-Power-Publications/

In September 1981, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger asked the Defense Intelligence Agency to produce an unclassified overview of the Soviet Union’s military strength. The purpose was to provide America's leaders, the national security community, and the public a comprehensive and accurate view of the threat.

In the spirit of Soviet Military Power, DIA began in 2017 to produce a series of unclassified Defense Intelligence overviews of major foreign military challenges we face. This volume provides details on China’s defense and military goals, strategy, plans, and intentions; the organization, structure, and capability of its military supporting those goals; and the enabling infrastructure and industrial base. This product and other reports in the series are intended to inform our public, our leaders, the national security community, and partner nations about the challenges we face in the 21st century

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China’s double-digit economic growth has slowed recently, but it served to fund several successive defense modernization Five-Year Plans. As international concern over Beijing's human rights policies stymied the PLA’s search for ever more sophisticated technologies, China shifted funds and efforts to acquiring technology by any means available. Domestic laws forced foreign partners of Chinese-based joint ventures to release their technology in exchange for entry into China’s lucrative market, and China has used other means to secure needed technology and expertise. The result of this multifaceted approach to technology acquisition is a PLA on the verge of fielding some of the most modern weapon systems in the world. In some areas, it already leads the world. Chinese leaders characterize China’s long-term military modernization program as essential to achieving great power status. Indeed, China is building a robust, lethal force with capabilities spanning the air, maritime, space and information domains which will enable China to impose its will in the region. As it continues to grow in strength and confidence, our nation’s leaders will face a China insistent on having a greater voice in global interactions, which at times may be antithetical to U.S. interests. With a deeper understanding of the military might behind Chinese economic and diplomatic efforts, we can provide our own national political, economic, and military leaders the widest range of options for choosing when to counter, when to encourage, and when to join with China in actions around the world. This report offers insights into the modernization of Chinese military power as it reforms from a defensive, inflexible ground-based force charged with domestic and peripheral security responsibilities to a joint, highly agile, expeditionary, and power-projecting arm of Chinese foreign policy that engages in military diplomacy and operations across the globe.

Entering the 21st century, China’s leaders rec¬ognized the confluence of several factors that led them to expand the scope and quicken the pace of PLA development: China’s growing global economic and political interests, rapid technology-driven changes in modern warfare, and perceptions of increased strategic-level external threats, including to China’s mari¬time interests. At this time, Chinese leaders perceived a “period of strategic opportunity” wherein the country presumably would not be involved in a major military conflict before 2020, allowing time for economic and military development. As a result, throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, China’s leaders initi¬ated several practical steps to modernize the PLA as a warfighting instrument.

The PLA has been a politicized “party army” since its inception and exists to guarantee the CCP regime’s survival above all else, serving the state as a secondary role, in contrast to most Western militaries, which are considered apolitical, professional forces that first and foremost serve the state.

China characterizes its military strategy as one of “active defense,” a concept it describes as strategically defensive but operationally offensive. The strategy is rooted in the con¬cept that once Beijing has determined that an adversary has damaged or intends to damage China’s interests at the strategic level, Beijing will be justified in responding “defensively” at the operational or tactical level, even if the adversary has not yet conducted offensive military operations. Beijing interprets active defense to include mandates for deescalating a conflict and seizing the initiative during a con¬flict, and has enshrined the concept in China’s National Security Law (2015) and in the PLA’s major strategy documents.

The PLA often uses the term “informatization” to describe the transformation process of becoming a modern military that can operate in the digi¬tal age. The concept figures prominently in PLA writings and is roughly analogous to the U.S. mil¬itary’s concept of net-centric capability: a force’s ability to use advanced information technology and communications systems to gain operational advantage over an adversary.

The PLA’s Strategic Support Force (SSF), established in December 2015, has an import¬ant role in the management of China’s aero¬space warfare capabilities.121 Consolidating the PLA’s space, cyber, and electronic warfare capabilities into the SSF enables cross-domain synergy in “strategic frontiers.”

[flagg]

While not principally national security related, this article on WeChat is worth reading:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/09/t...na-wechat.html

It offers a glimpse into the fundamental differences between individual Western social platforms and the all encompassing single app WeChat in China with over 1 billion monthly active users.

Again, while it’s not principally a weapon or tool of war, it is quite possibly the most valuable piece of virtual infrastructure in China worthy of a CARVER matrix.

It’s like Facebook, WhatsApp, banking/credit/payments, 3rd Party services, etc. It arguably earns the title “Super App”.

Trade has been used as a weapon.

It’s not outside the realm of possibility that the WeChat platform could be used as a weapon to expand a Chinese dominant economic block by compelling its use with trading partners via leverage.

What if Chinese debt trap diplomacy compelled the use of WeChat?

Is there a risk of the US Dollar global reserve currency becoming the WeChat global default platform?

[Bill Moore]

A commentary by a US SME (a new name to me) and starts with:
Link to commentary:http://www.andrewerickson.com/2019/0...global-access/ and to the author's bio:http://www.andrewerickson.com/about/

This is worth reading, it is a government product so you can quote more than a paragraph if you like.

Near-Abroad. China’s most substantial expansion of its military access in recent years has occurred in its near-abroad, where territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas persist. China continues to exercise low-intensity coercion to advance its claims in the East and South China Seas and uses an opportunistically-timed progression of incremental but intensifying steps to attempt to increase effective control over disputed areas while avoiding escalation to military conflict.

China seeks some high-tech components and major end-items from abroad that it has difficulty producing domestically – particularly from Russia and Ukraine. China has purchased advanced Russian defense equipment such as the SA-X-21b (S-400) surface-to-air missile system and Su-35 fighter aircraft, and is pursuing a Sino-Russian joint-design and production program for a heavy-lift helicopter and diesel-electric submarines. China is partnering with Russia to purchase electronic components as well as creating joint production facilities located within Russia. In addition, China has signed significant purchase contracts with Ukraine in recent years, including contracts for assault hovercraft and aircraft engines.

China has also obscured its investments in media in the United States and other countries. For example, a 2015 Reuters report revealed that China Radio International (CRI), a Chinese state-owned entity, was using subsidiaries to mask its control over 33 radio stations in 14 countries, including the United States. These radio stations broadcast pro-China content but have not registered as agents of a foreign government under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

n 2009, China used economic incentives, including a currency swap agreement to stabilize Argentina’s currency, to negotiate a 50-year, rent-free lease of nearly 500 acres for a satellite tracking facility in Argentina.
In 2011, China reportedly agreed to forgive an undeclared amount of Tajikistan’s debt and received over 1,000 square kilometers of disputed territory in exchange.

n 2016, after the visit of the Dalai Lama to Mongolia, China suspended talks on a major assistance loan, worsening Mongolia’s fiscal challenges and eventually driving it to seek an IMF bailout. China also increased fees on imports of mining products from Mongolia and temporarily closed an important border crossing.

In 2016, China tried unsuccessfully to dissuade South Korea from deploying a missile defense system by restricting tourism, cutting imports, and closing nearly 90 Korean-owned supermarkets in China.