For 10 days last October top US military athletes were in Wuhan, China competing in the 2019 Military World Games. How the world has changed in only a few short months. Or, has the military competition just gone unnoticed? Although the Covid-19 virus has garnered the world’s attention, and deservedly so, other important developments continue to emerge from China. One of the most significant may be recent reporting on the state of the increasing Chinese military threat. Only three decades ago Beijing commanded backward, ill-trained, and ill-equipped forces. The country lacked a blue water navy and had little chance of successfully extending its sphere of influence beyond its own shores.
In 2020 the world is witnessing an emerging global power whose aggressive and intimidating behavior no longer belies the long-term goals of President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). China blatantly announces and exerts its power across many parts of the globe from the depths of sub-Saharan Africa to the cold waters of the Arctic Ocean. While not yet officially a global military power the strategic threat it poses is real and not limited to its neighboring countries or even the Indo-Pacific region. Politically China is challenging the leadership of other major nations in international bodies in pursuit of its own self-interest, while repressing the freedom of its own people at home. Its goal: hegemonic military power and global political influence and prestige.
Western world leaders, since the opening of China, have softly encouraged Beijing to be a good actor and to participate in world affairs. Few nations, however, have exhibited the political willpower to stand up to the communist power’s belligerent behavior. In 2020 China analysts increasingly are questioning the long-term price to be paid for historically allowing China’s paramount leaders, including the current president Xi Jinping, to commandeer world opinion, rape large areas of Africa, exploit the developing world of its natural resources, impose the CCP’s will on the Arctic nations, and conduct influence-peddling in South America and Europe. This is all ongoing while much of the world ignores China’s human rights and other atrocities at home.
According to a recent Heritage Foundation report on great power competition, the Chinese threat since 2015 has increased dramatically although not evenly across all areas of the world. Xi Jinping has a better military capability in 2020 to carry out aggressive action far from the country’s shores than at any time in its modern history. Dedicated cyber warfare troops regularly attack other nations’ communications and information infrastructures. According to some computer analysts, China may have surpassed the United States’ technical capability, and its overall capacity, to eliminate the Chinese cyber threat.
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The US Department of Defense reports that China intends to be a world-class military power by 2049. Once devoid of a blue water navy China today is building its second aircraft carrier, sailing two new cruisers and has many more military ships under construction. The People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAN) which only three decades ago cannibalized plane parts to keep 50% of its air force in the air at any one time, now operates the fifth-generation J-20 aircraft. This plane has stealth characteristics, many of which appear to be stolen intellectual property from US manufacturers. Cyber theft also has enabled China to reduce the cost and skip the years of research and development it takes to create new military technologies.
China has claimed international territory and its navy operates freely throughout the South and East China Seas. It is capable of threatening freedom of navigation and effectively can deny, if it chooses, to provide access of ships and planes to 70% of the world’s oceanic commercial routes, which account for $3 trillion worth of global trade. China has militarized islands throughout the region, built runways capable of landing military jets, installed advanced missile launchers, and dredged lagoons to create ports to service its military ships far from its shores.
In recent years China has weaponized space and demonstrated it directed-energy weapons and satellite jammers. Today, there is the additional danger of China’s Huawei 5G network. The CCP requires it to provide the Chinese government all information off the network, when requested to do so, by Chinese law. In essence, Beijing has created a world-class espionage tool while the West watched.
With the world following daily updates on the Covid-19 virus there is little public discourse on China’s military advances and its near-peer status with many of the great powers. The Trump Administration is ramping up the United States’ defense and improving deterrence measures against a belligerent China. To safeguard the world the US and other western nations remain vigilant and not ignore China’s military during the current pandemic as it is not sitting idle while the virus spreads.
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: Wuhan, China (Pixabay)