What constitutes a strike force and when is it dangerous?
On the evening of April 11, 2020, while the world sat transfixed over the climbing death tally from the Covid-19 virus, its latest unseen enemy, the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning along with two guided-missile destroyers, two guided-missile frigates, and a combat support ship sailed through the Miyako Strait near Okinawa. The carrier strike group came within 205 miles of Taiwan. Just 48 hours earlier the PLAF flew a J-11 fighter, H-6 bomber, and a KJ-500 reconnaissance plane past the southwestern tip of the island.
That group then moved on to track a US R-135 electronic surveillance aircraft in international airspace in the western Pacific. At a time when the United States’ two aircraft carriers in the region, the USS Roosevelt and USS Reagan, are docked tending to Covid-19 cases on board, the question arises as to why China decided to push forward with a show of force.
The Liaoning hasn’t visited these waters since June 2019. In the months preceding the global onset of the Covid-19 virus the PLAF and PLAN ramped up China’s aggressive behavior offshore. Was this latest event by a strike force intent only on testing Taiwan’s preparedness and response? Or, does it portend a future fraught with more negative challenges for the rest of the world? Have the major nations lost their vigilance in tracking China’s long-term grand strategy to emerge as a global power and regional hegemon inside of the next two decades? These are questions western military planners and American politicians need to be asking now while viable options still exist. It also should be of concern to the American public as China is not above using whatever type power it can wield to bully and inflict damage on nation-states it views as competitors or enemies.
At the same time as Beijing is claiming ignorance over the origin of the pandemic, or blaming it on the United States, its leaders are implementing faux export restrictions to withhold US-bound medical supplies needed to combat the virus. These include large quantities of test kits already FDA approved, N-95 face masks, personal protective equipment, and other types of critical medical goods stuck in warehouses and at Chinese airports. China’s new regulations, established this month, come down from high-ranking officials in Beijing as Covid-19 cases pass the two million mark worldwide.
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China’s strategic behavior often belies its true militaristic goals. Intentional or not, Beijing’s handling of the current crisis has opened to the world a brief window into the inner workings of CCP planners. President Xi, who also is Chairman of China’s Central Military Commission, is an authoritarian leader determined to undermine Western liberal values. Whether it is the export of G-5 network technologies, which in effect restrict individual freedom by acting as an artificial intelligence-based surveillance system, or nationalized internet services with the ability to restrict political dissent and discourse across the developing world, China is determined to woo the world, defy conventional behavior and overtake the United States as the global hegemon. Whether recognized or not, be it through a traditional strike force group on the high seas, a cyber force in space, or outright physical bullying, the world is engaged in a total, protracted struggle with China. Two years ago, Rick Fisher, a China military expert, warned the US Congress that the United States has about ten years to take action to counter the Chinese threat. We have eight left. The Covid-19 virus might be the lynchpin that seals China’s fate. The lovefest with China will dissipate only if world leaders are vigilant and recognize the global domination plans of the government of the People’s Republic of China and act.
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.
Photo:China’s first home-built aircraft carrier leaves Dalian in Northeast China’s Liaoning province for sea trials on May 13, 2018. [Photo/Xinhua]