Sun Tzu wrote long ago that to see farther one must stand on higher ground. The 24-hour news cycle is producing an overload of information on China and its foreign policy since the spread of the Covid virus. That makes it more difficult to discern China’s long-term global agenda from its daily rhetoric. Clues to the CCP’s true intentions can be found in where Xi Jinping is spending the government’s money and in China’s ongoing military projects unrelated to its disinformation and propaganda campaigns. That news, perhaps, is the most troubling information to date. The senior Chinese leadership has for over a decade in closed CCP meetings, and in public, stated that it intends to remake the world in China’s image. Those statements support the current direction and technological advances made by China’s military.
Western leaders do question whether China is planning to make serious naval moves in the Pacific in the near future. But how seriously does the Biden Administration take the Chinese threat? Set aside Beijing’s rhetoric on Taiwan for a moment to examine what military planning actions Beijing is taking that cost it time, money, and human resources. Earlier this week Space Wars reported that satellite imagery shows clearly that China has built full-scale outlines of “American warships including an aircraft carrier” as possible targets to practice killing the US Navy’s carrier battle groups. The massive American carriers are among the United States’ most powerful arsenal of weapons. Washington should assume this a long-term goal for Xi Jinping. Western intelligence agencies have known for years that China is spending a solid percentage of its military budget on developing advanced weapons systems, including anti-ship missiles that can sink American carriers, and nuclear-tipped hypersonic missiles capable of traversing the south pole before landing on target inside the continental US.
Images of an American carrier, a destroyer, and other US ships first showed up on satellite images in early 2019, but not in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of China where you would expect them. They were built in the middle of the country’s 390,000 square mile, Tarim Basin ballistic testing range in western Xinjiang’s Taklamakan Desert. This area, also known as East Turkestan, is on the east end of the contaminated region where China first conducted their Project 596 nuclear weapons tests in the mid-1960’s and is where many Uyghur minorities live today. Toward the end of the Trump Administration China began dismantling most of the site but after Biden’s election started rebuilding it. It was finished in September.
The site appears to be more than propaganda as it contains highly sophisticated instrumentation poles that can be used to monitor advanced tests. Space War reports that according to a Pentagon report on China released last week, the PLA is “is currently on a major arms modernization drive… with many weapons designed to help neutralize the most important American warships in the event of a regional conflict.” The Pentagon report states that the DF-21D missile, which has a range of more than 930 miles has “the capability to conduct long-range precision strikes against ships, including aircraft carriers, out to the Western Pacific from mainland China….” In March, US Navy Admiral Philip Davidson told the US Senate that the employment [of the DF-21D] during a large-scale PLA exercise demonstrates the PLA’s focus on countering any potential third-party intervention during a regional crisis.”
This is what the Taoists indicate when they say that the lower viagra discount “Tan Tien” is concerned with pure or primal awareness of the self and become lost in the “monkey mind” which is the left hand linear brain mixed with our subconscious programming. With more blood streaming in and less try content viagra buy germany streaming out, the corridors in the penis expand, bringing about an erection. An adequate sleep increases the risk of erectile dysfunction. viagra 100mg prices The dig this levitra discounts major menace involves the case of pressure in the lungs.On Tuesday Taiwan’s Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng, who assumed his role in February with a portfolio that includes reforming the island’s military, stated that China is capable now of blockading Taiwan’s critical ports and airports to cut off key transport links and lines of communication. Taiwan’s biennial defense report released this week indicates that its military analysts view Beijing as dramatically strengthening its air, sea, and land strike capabilities against the island. The report, according to AFP, also warned that China is capable of striking all of Taiwan with its missile arsenal, including ballistic and cruise variants, and is beefing up its ability to launch amphibious assaults on the island. Most military analysts in Washington concur that it is not a question of if China will act, with many suggesting the remaining unknowns are when and where.
China’s CCP faces many domestic constraints. Money prioritized and spent on offensive military programs takes away from what can be used to stabilize the economy through social welfare and other critical domestic programs. Lessons from Chinese military history, as taught by Sun Tzu, indicates that the CCP leadership knows to stand high on the hill to look farther down the path. That long view also should reveal to senior national security officials in the Biden Administration that Xi Jinping and the CCP recognize they must use military means at some point to retain their legitimacy with the population and to remain in power. Retaking Taiwan and/or delivering a serious blow to the US military has the potential to be the top option open to Xi Jinping and the CCP in the coming years. That knowledge should secure its position as a top priority danger to the free world.
DARIA NOVAK served in the United States State Department during the Reagan Administration, and currently is on the Board of the American Analysis of News and Media Inc., which publishes usagovpolicy.com and the New York Analysis of Policy and Government. Each Friday, she presents key updates on China.
Illustration: Pixabay