Think You Know China? – USA Gov Policy

True or false… take the quiz!

1)China claims near Arctic nation status although it is 900 miles from the region. It has observer status on the Arctic Council and owns more modern icebreakers than the United States.

2) China’s New York and San Francisco consulates are major hubs for its US espionage operations. China has infiltrated NY City government, with an NYPD officer charged in September with serving as a “secret agent” for China.

3) China’s navy (PLAN) is the largest in the world, with an overall battle force of approximately 350 ships and submarines, including over 130 major surface combatants. The PLAN openly sails its uninvited warships through US territorial waters. The PLAN is largely composed of modern multi-role platforms featuring advanced anti-ship, anti-air, and anti-submarine weapons and sensors.

4) China’s army (PLA) is the largest standing ground force in the world and is transitioning into a modern, mobile, and lethal ground force by fielding upgraded combat systems and communications equipment and enhancing its ability to conduct and manage complex combined-arms and joint operations. China has a large, and effective, cyber warfare force than can effectively challenge that of the United States and the West, in some areas, surpass it.

5) China’s air force (PLAAF) and PLAN Aviation together constitute the largest aviation forces in the region and the third largest in the world, with over 2,500 total aircraft and approximately 2,000 combat aircraft. China flew a spacecraft to the dark side of the moon before any other nation.

6) China has more than 1,250 ground-launched ballistic missiles (GLBMs) and ground-launched cruise missiles (GLCMs) with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. The US fields one type of conventional GLBM with a maximum range of 300 kilometers and no GLCMs.

7) Chinese consulates in more than two dozen American cities are aiding undercover Chinese Communist Party soldiers posing as university students to engage in spying.

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8) The PRC conducts influence operations to achieve outcomes favorable to its strategic objectives by targeting cultural institutions, media organizations, business, academic, and policy communities in the United States, other countries, and international institutions. These include K-12 propaganda operations in over 500 US public schools, often funded through the CCP’s Confucius Institutes in the United States.

9) China funds research professors at Ivy League universities in return for providing China sensitive scientific information and advanced technology, with one Harvard University professor alone receiving more than $1.5 million.

10) In 2019, China announced its annual military budget would increase by 6.2 percent, continuing more than 20 years of annual defense spending increases.

If you answered “yes” to all ten questions you sadly earned a perfect score. The Pentagon now acknowledges that China has surpassed the United States in many military areas and that it is likely to continue to advance rapidly to meet its long-term goal of becoming a hegemonic superpower by 2049. China is emerging as an aggressive, non-democratic, nation-state fomenting unrest in American cities, engaging in the theft of intellectual property from the West, and refusing to cooperate with international health researchers to stop the Covid-19 virus. It is challenging international oceanic commerce in the South and East China Seas and commercial air traffic flying in international air space above the region.

China pollutes the world physically, overfishes the oceans far from its shores, and severely abuses its own minority populations. China and the CCP leadership simply refuse to play by the modern nation-state system provided for in the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. They flaunt the norms of the international rules-based system that has provided unprecedented political stability and economic prosperity to much of the world for centuries. It must end.

China’s leadership may be descendant from an ancient Han culture, but President Xi Jinping and the CCP are more Marxist/Leninist today in their doctrine of total war and global domination. Their grand strategy: overthrow the United States and rebuild the western world in Beijing’s autocratic image. It is a chilling revelation to those who love freedom and democracy. There is no more lag time. China called “check,” now the west must move before it is “checkmate.”

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

Quick Analysis

Ukraine’s Frozen Conflict

As we approach winter in the northern hemisphere, the war in Ukraine is beginning to resemble a “frozen conflict” from many perspectives. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently told the media he hopes the war will end faster once President-elect Trump takes over in January. Opinions in Moscow, however, differ from that of the Ukrainian leader. Russian President Vladimir Putin argues that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) needs to exclude Ukraine from joining in “exchange” for peace. If it does not, he says, then no end to the war is in sight. So far there is no Christmas solution. Several NATO countries, according to Vladimir Socor of the Jamestown Foundation, are tentatively considering “coalitions-of-the-willing” to provide security for Ukraine outside of the formal NATO framework. There is, however, no collective mechanism today under which such an arrangement is viable. According to the NATO Charter, while Ukraine is a NATO partner country, it may not join as a full member since it has not fulfilled the requirements for membership. That has not stopped NATO and allies from continuing “to provide Ukraine with unprecedented levels of support, helping to uphold its fundamental right to self-defence,” according to the organization. Socor says that keeping Ukraine out of NATO will not advance peace with Russia. Waiting for a peace settlement, he suggests, would only serve to encourage Moscow to continue the war indefinitely. Although the Biden Administration officially withdrew its support for Ukrainian membership in 2021, NATO maintains an “open door” policy toward membership-seeking countries. The current White House position led the way for European states to oppose Ukraine’s membership saying that a decision should be delayed until “conditions are met.” Biden pushed for changing “open door” to a “bridge” metaphor. It is not intended as an across-the-board NATO policy and has been implemented in the past on a case-by-case basis, says Socor. “The alliance’s open-door policy was not fully insulated from Russia’s non-statutory blocking power, and NATO-aspirant countries’ path toward membership was not always irreversible.” Russia has successfully blocked states like Georgia from joining, first in 2008 and again after the war in Ukraine began in 2014. Russia recognizes the value add of Ukraine to NATO is enormous and that Kyiv has a better case than some other nations. Putin’s invasion was, in part, intended to foreclose that option. By 2021, Moscow was pushing hard to maximize its war objectives, which included further annexations of Ukrainian territory. A main goal for Putin was, and is, to ensure there is no Ukraine left to join NATO. As President-elect Trump prepares to assume office in January, he is faced with the historical challenges presented by the war. Post-conflict security guarantees were the center of several proposals made during the 2023 military stalemate. The incoming Trump Administration has yet to outline how it intends to handle the Russia-Ukraine war. Analysts in Washington believe that the new Administration will expect its European allies to guarantee the majority of Ukraine’s security needs. As we approach 2025, several European nations have acknowledged that they do not view Ukraine as eligible for NATO membership as it would draw the organization into the middle of the conflict. Others want to wait until the war is over or pending a “peace” settlement before considering Ukrainian membership. Socor reports that some “influential voices” are suggesting that “Kyiv should join NATO after “freezing” the war along a stable armistice line, de facto accepting Ukraine’s partition, with NATO security guarantees applying de jure to the government-controlled territory only.” This would mean starting accession talks soon with the actual talks to commence only after a ceasefire is in place. Trump arrives in Washington at a time when Putin’s hybrid strategies of war in Ukraine have eviscerated commonly-held differences between war and peace. “Absent a political consensus in NATO over Ukrainian membership, certain European allies, including France’s President Emmanuel Macron, are holding informal consultations about post-conflict security guarantees to Kyiv by NATO members outside of NATO’s framework,” according to the Jamestown Foundation. The Biden Administration downplayed the discussions on possible forms of military assistance and defense industry cooperation by sending only an Assistant Secretary of State. For a European peace to hold the Trump Administration would need to formally extend the United States’ nuclear deterrence to Ukraine. Options under discussion in Europe include a “coalition of the resolute” to deploy forces to Ukraine as part of a possible armistice package, deterring further Russian attacks, says Secor. European officials are also debating, without any agreement, whether its military forces could perform non-combat logistical roles to free Ukrainian forces to fight. None of the possible courses of action has moved forward as all eyes are waiting on the incoming Trump Administration for clues about its intended level of support for a NATO framework and other non-NATO proposals. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.