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Strategic Rivalry With China

Slowly but surely, America’s relationship with China is becoming a major flashpoint within relations not only between Washington and Beijing, but within the U.S. and between the U.S. and its European allies.

A Brookings Report issued in June notes that “that while both the United States and Europe are both moving toward a tougher and more critical view of China, European governments aren’t anywhere near as tough. Instead, they are trying to advance their distinct interests, which means emphasizing cooperation and partnership with China along with vigorous competition and criticism… the official EU statement issued after the summit is headlined: ‘EU-China Summit: Defending EU interests and values in a complex and vital partnership.’The word “partnership” has basically disappeared in U.S. policy and most policy debates about China, replaced by “competition,” “rivalry,” even “confrontation.”

Donald Trump made a tougher stance towards Beijing a key part of his 2016 campaign, and has continued that theme throughout his presidency. Fury over the role of China’s malfeasance in the COVID-19 has solidified his stance.

Recently, The White House released a comprehensive examination of the strategic relationship with China. In essence, it describes past efforts at cooperation and urging that nation to become a part of the peaceful and cooperative world community, with a political system that defends basic human rights, as a failure. According to the study,

Over the past two decades, reforms have slowed, stalled, or reversed. The PRC’s rapid economic development and increased engagement with the world did not lead to convergence with the citizen-centric, free and open order as the United States had hoped. The CCP has chosen instead to exploit the free and open rules based order and attempt to reshape the international system in its favor. Beijing openly acknowledges that it seeks to transform the international order to align with CCP interests and ideology. The CCP’s expanding use of economic, political, and military power to compel acquiescence from nation states harms vital American interests and undermines the sovereignty and dignity of countries and individuals around the world.”

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In the last few months of his administration, President Bill Clinton sign legislation which gave China essentially the same access to American markets as most nations.  What followed was, in essence, an economic disaster for the U.S.  Using a variety of illicit economic practices, Beijing devasted American companies and, in particular, devasted American manufacturing, blue-collar employment, and the pharmaceutical industry, a challenge that become particularly evident in the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.  While many are calling for tough sanctions in retaliation for Beijing’s actions, U.S. dependency on China for most of its medicines has restrained the nation’s ability to strike back.

Unfair trade and predatory financial practices are only part of the problem.  Using its already massive and still growing economic clout, China has openly threatened retaliation against any who speak against it.  An NBA player who criticized the Chinese Communist Party’s human rights record was silenced by his sports leadership following Beijing’s threats to cut off that league from its market.

In addition, Beijing has engaged in a level of espionage that made even the old Soviet Union’s spying look amateurish in contrast. Some of that effort is traditional cloak-and-dagger, stealing major secrets from the military and the companies it contracts with.  But it doesn’t stop there.  Even non-military related research is targeted to an unprecedented degree.

The Chinese Communist Party is not shy about its efforts.  It has used it money muscles to meddle in U.S. education and cultural institutions, including altering Hollywood movie scripts and developing “Confucius Institutes” on college campuses to persuade students to see that nation as a benevolent presence.

Photo: Beijing evening (Pixabay)

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U.S.-China relations at the danger point

China’s rise to superpower status in both military and economic realms has, despite all hopes to the contrary, been neither peaceful nor beneficial to the international community.

The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission was created by Congress to report on the national security implications of the bilateral trade and economic relationship between the United States and the People’s Republic of China.

In its 2015 Report to Congress, the Commission presents a worrisome outline of the current state of Sino-American relations, with a candor rarely expressed by either government or the media.  The New York Analysis of Policy & Government has examined the lengthy report, and we begin our three-part summary with the testimony before Congress of Dennis Shea, vice chairman of the Commission.

U.S.-China security relations suffered from rising tensions and growing distrust in 2015, largely due to China’s aforementioned cyberespionage activities against a range of U.S. government, defense, and commercial entities, as well as its unprecedented island-building campaign in the South China Sea.

In just two years, China has presented other South China Sea claimants with a fait accompli by dredging up nearly 3,000 acres of sand in disputed waters on which to stake its claim, station military assets, and project force into contested waters. These activities are stirring anxiety and distrust in Southeast Asia; Vietnamese government officials and other experts expressed to the Commission the growing sense that China is strategically encircling the country.

In October, after months of China’s increasingly aggressive assertions of its South China Sea claims, a U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer conducted a freedom of navigation patrol within 12 nautical miles of one of the reclaimed features for the first time. Though China’s maritime dispute with Japan over the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea received less media attention in 2015, China continued to quietly increase its military and civilian presence in contested waters by conducting regular air and maritime patrols near the islands and erecting 16 energy exploitation structures. China’s military continues to expand its reach beyond the East and South China seas.

In September 2015, China’s Navy sailed through Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, the closest it has ever sailed to U.S. territory during a distant sea deployment without a port call. China’s military also conducted exercises in the Mediterranean Sea, antipiracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden, and an evacuation of noncombatants in Yemen. To support these expanding capabilities, China appears to be seeking to establish its first overseas military facility in Djibouti.
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The Chinese Navy’s increasing activities far from China’s shores reflect China’s growing capability and willingness to use its military to protect its overseas economic assets and expatriate population. Beyond the increasing blue water profile of China’s naval forces, the Commission examined two additional aspects of China’s ongoing military modernization efforts: China’s space and counterspace programs and its offensive missile forces.

China has become one of the world’s leading space powers after decades of prioritization and investment. China’s space program generates international prestige and influence, and enables China to collaborate on a range of bilateral and multilateral space activities. Among its goals in the space industry, China specifically aimed to capture 15 percent of the global launch services market and 10 percent of the global commercial satellite market by 2015, although these efforts have produced mixed results. Militarily, as its developmental counterspace capabilities become operational, China will be able to target vulnerabilities in the spacedependent U.S. national security architecture.

These capabilities could hold at risk U.S. national security satellites in every orbital regime. China’s space and counterspace programs have significant implications for the United States. That’s why the Commission recommends Congress continue to support the U.S. Department of Defense’s efforts to reduce the vulnerability of U.S. space assets through cost-effective solutions, such as the development of smaller and more distributed satellites, hardened satellite communications, and non-space intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets such as unmanned aerial vehicles.

When examining China’s offensive missile forces, the Commission found China has achieved extraordinarily rapid growth in its conventional missile capability. In fact, China has the most active ballistic and cruise missile program in the world today. China’s initial conventional missile development focused heavily on expanding its short-range ballistic missile force for Taiwan contingencies. In the past decade, China’s development of longer-range missiles, pursuit of advanced missile technologies, and diversification of its launch platforms have enabled it to hold at risk a wider range of targets farther from its shores, even as far as the second island chain. China’s short-range ballistic missile force has grown from 30 to 50 missiles in the mid-1990s to more than 1,200 in 2015, mostly deployed along the Taiwan Strait.

China has also developed and fielded new types of medium-range and intermediate-range ballistic missiles. It currently has the ability to conduct precision strikes against land and naval targets within the first island chain. As part of its missile force modernization, China is developing cruise missiles that are increasingly difficult for the U.S. military to detect and defend against. It fielded its first ground-launched land-attack cruise missile, and is developing air-, ship-, and submarine-launched cruise missiles with land-attack and antiship missions.

The YJ–18 anti-ship cruise missile is almost certainly capable of supersonic speeds during the terminal phase of its flight, a feature that reduces the time shipborne defenses have to react to an incoming threat. In the meantime, the sheer number of China’s cruise missiles poses a formidable challenge against existing U.S. Navy defenses. These developments have led the Commission to recommend Congress direct the U.S. Department of Defense to provide an unclassified estimate of the People’s Liberation Army Second Artillery Force’s inventory of missiles and launchers, by type, in future iterations of its annual report to Congress analyzing military and security developments involving China.