My Rescue of Mussolini
by OTTO SKORZENY (1946)
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11TH AIRBORNE DIVISION (1943)
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Don'T GET KILLED BY MINES AND BOOBY TRAPS
BY THE U.S. WAR DEPARTMENT (1944)
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Faces of China: Past, present, & strategic future
BY THEODORE C. MATAXIS JR. AND STACEY WHITLOW (2022)
Preface 1
History/Background 2
Geography 2
Natural Resources 3
Population 4
Population Distribution/Control 5
Education 7
Human Rights 8
The Pearl River Delta Economic Zone (PRD) 10
New Silk Road Initiative 11
US and China Trade Relations 13
Military 15
Cyberspace 20
Future Potential Conflict and Flash Points 21
Taiwan/Hong Kong 21
Japan 23
North Korea 23
India 24
South China Sea 25
Current COVID-19 Pandemic 27
Conclusion 28
Works Cited
Maps, Figures and Tables Figures
Map of China Overlaid with United States 3
China with Bordering Nations 3
China Population 1950-2020 4
China Population 2020 5
Major Cities of China 6
Megacities of the World 6
Global Export Market Share 7
Global Export Market Share in Labor Intensive Goods 7
China’s Belt and Road Initiative 11
Major Naval Units 16
Major Ground Units 16
Major Aviation Units 16
Conventional Strike Capabilities 18
Nuclear Ballistic Missile Capabilities 18
China’s Official Defense Budget, 2009-2018 19
China Japan Disputed Islands 23
Uncertainty and Complexity of Korea 24
Chinese Claimed Territorial Waters in South China Sea 26
Tribunal Rejects China’s Claims in South China Sea 26
Aerial Views of Chinese Man-Made Islands 2
Preface
The world is transitioning toward a new world order. As the world struggles to deal with the local and global effects of COVID-19, national priorities, health plans, educational policies and economies are changing daily. Just as 9-11 drastically changed America’s way of life and greatly influenced national policies for the past two decades, the COVID-19 pandemic will change national and global relations even more profoundly over the next several decades.
After the devastation of 9-11, America’s focus shifted to the proactive Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) in the hopes that the country could prevent another catastrophic, homeland terrorist event. While America was mired in never-ending wars on many fronts that depleted valuable resources (both financial and human), China made significant inroads into the rest of the world by actively pursuing economic expansion. China used this period of time to become an economic and military powerhouse in the Indo-Pacific region. China used a combination of aggressive economic exploitation along with the reinforcement of its armed forces to insure long-term economic, political, and military success at home and throughout the region and world. Unlike the United States’ international strategy, which seems to ebb and flow with the election tides, China’s main focus is not to spread their political ideology, but rather to influence and control the new economic order of the world.
China is currently playing the long game. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) realizes that in order to assure its survival, it must maintain and sustain its promise of continued prosperity for the Chinese people. The CCP’s future prosperity will require expanding its trade and investments, developing new suppliers for required resources, securing adequate loans and grants, and modernizing its military might. In an effort to reach these goals, China’s Navy has been developing ports around the world that will enable it to keep China’s sea lanes open during most situations. By supporting infrastructure projects in various third-world countries around the globe, China has successfully expanded economically into the world and increased its access to vital natural resources.
China continues to create these international relationships that will allow the CCP unprecedented global access. In an effort to counter China’s expansion, the Department of Defense’s adopted the Indo-Pacific as its priority theater. In a speech given by Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter, in New York City during 2012, a new National Defense Strategy was announced to rebalance America’s nation’s global posture and presence by placing greater emphasis on operations in the Pacific. This strategic focus signaled that in terms of economics and national security, the region was growing in importance. Concurrently, the Department of Defense (DoD) shifted their priority from the Global War on Terrorism to assessing near peer and peer to peer competition. During June of 2019 the Department of Defense, The Indo-Pacific Strategy Report, “Preparedness, Partnerships and Promoting a Networked Region,” stated that America’s national interests are: “based upon the view that peace, security, and prosperity depend on strong, sovereign nations that respect their citizens at home and cooperate to advance peace abroad. It is grounded in the belief that U.S. leadership in promoting these widely held principles is a lasting force for good in the world.” During this time, DoD also decided to support enduring U.S. national interests. As explained by Carter in the National Security Strategy, the DoD had a clear mandate to “ protect the American people, the homeland, and the American way of life, promote American prosperity through fair and reciprocal economic relationships that address trade imbalances, preserve peace through strength by rebuilding its military (so that it remains preeminent), rely on allies and partners (to shoulder a fair share of the burden of responsibility to protect against common threats), and advance American influence by competing and leading in multilateral organizations (so that American interests and principles are protected).” These 2018 National Defense strategies guide the Department of Defense to retain the following goals: “1. Defend the homeland; 2. Remain the preeminent military power in the world; 3. Ensure the balances of power in key regions remain in our favor; and 4. Advance an international order that is most conducive to [America’s] security and prosperity.” In order to reach these lofty goals, the United States will need regional and global support. The significance of the Indo-Pacific area of operation is beyond the capability of any one nation and will require a partnership of nations to insure peace and economic prosperity throughout the region. This can only be accomplished by upholding the rules of laws established by the international community and the principles of fair economic competition.
This paper will highlight how the Chinese use the development of economic and military strength to ensure China’s continued development and prosperity. By strengthening their military, creating international alliances (required to obtain necessary natural resources), funding worldwide infrastructure (such as roads, rails, seaports, and airports in many unstable and failed nation states), and utilizing cyber technology, China is working to create a network of international allies and resources. Additionally, this paper will focus on the future peer battlefield with China. It will discuss a series of potential conflict areas while highlighting planning considerations and challenges that must be considered when operating in such complex and contested environments. Finally, this paper will also examine China’s strategy regarding how they employ their capabilities in the current operating environment, which has been made infinitely more complex by the COVID-19 pandemic. Presently, China is using the current pandemic to increase the need/reliance of many nations around the world on their assistance and medical supplies. In addition, this pandemic is allowing China an opportunity to use disinformation to polarize the United States and its allies. China’s manipulation of the current crisis with COVID-19 highlights the country’s use of misinformation in its foreign relations. The Indo-Pacific region includes some of the world’s largest preexisting populations and economies, as well as some of the world’s largest growing populations and emerging economies. Moving forward, it is imperative that the United States create a strategic plan for the area, which accounts for China’s role as well.
History/ Background
China's civilization dates from at least 1200 B.C.E. making it one of the most ancient civilizations in human history. From the 3rd century B.C.E and for the next two millennia, China would alternate between periods of unity and disunity under a succession of imperial dynasties. According to the War Department’s educational manual on China, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the country was beset by civil unrest, major famines, military defeats, foreign occupations (including its horrific attack and occupation by the Japanese during WWII), and a brutal civil war. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) established under MAO Zedong during WWII established an autocratic socialist system that ensured China's sovereignty and imposed strict controls over the everyday life of hundreds of millions of people. After 1978, MAO's successor DENG Xiaoping (along with other leaders) focused on market-oriented economic development. By 2000, the CIA reported that China’s output had quadrupled. For much of the population, living standards improved dramatically, but political controls remain tight.
Geography
China is located in East Asia. According to the CIA’s World Factbook, China has an area of 9,596,960 square kilometers making it the fifth largest country by area in the modern world (after Russia, Antarctica, Canada, and the United States). The country has a total land border of 22,457 kilometers, making it the country with the longest land border in the world. In spite of China’s large population, its population density is less than many other countries in Asia and Europe. The majority of its population is found in the eastern half of the country, along key rivers and in recently established megacities.
China’s climate is extremely diverse: tropical in south to subarctic in north. Its vast mountainous and desert areas remain sparsely populated; high population density is found along the Yangtze and Yellow River valleys, and the Xi Jiang River delta. China shares Mount Everest, the world's tallest peak above sea level, as the mountain’s summit point is divided by China’s border with Nepal. China also shares borders with 14 sovereign states, a 19-mile border with the special administrative region of Hong Kong, and a 1.86-mile border with the special administrative region of Macau. Governed by the Communist Party of China, the state exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, and four direct-controlled municipalities
History/Background 2
Geography 2
Natural Resources 3
Population 4
Population Distribution/Control 5
Education 7
Human Rights 8
The Pearl River Delta Economic Zone (PRD) 10
New Silk Road Initiative 11
US and China Trade Relations 13
Military 15
Cyberspace 20
Future Potential Conflict and Flash Points 21
Taiwan/Hong Kong 21
Japan 23
North Korea 23
India 24
South China Sea 25
Current COVID-19 Pandemic 27
Conclusion 28
Works Cited
Maps, Figures and Tables Figures
Map of China Overlaid with United States 3
China with Bordering Nations 3
China Population 1950-2020 4
China Population 2020 5
Major Cities of China 6
Megacities of the World 6
Global Export Market Share 7
Global Export Market Share in Labor Intensive Goods 7
China’s Belt and Road Initiative 11
Major Naval Units 16
Major Ground Units 16
Major Aviation Units 16
Conventional Strike Capabilities 18
Nuclear Ballistic Missile Capabilities 18
China’s Official Defense Budget, 2009-2018 19
China Japan Disputed Islands 23
Uncertainty and Complexity of Korea 24
Chinese Claimed Territorial Waters in South China Sea 26
Tribunal Rejects China’s Claims in South China Sea 26
Aerial Views of Chinese Man-Made Islands 2
Preface
The world is transitioning toward a new world order. As the world struggles to deal with the local and global effects of COVID-19, national priorities, health plans, educational policies and economies are changing daily. Just as 9-11 drastically changed America’s way of life and greatly influenced national policies for the past two decades, the COVID-19 pandemic will change national and global relations even more profoundly over the next several decades.
After the devastation of 9-11, America’s focus shifted to the proactive Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) in the hopes that the country could prevent another catastrophic, homeland terrorist event. While America was mired in never-ending wars on many fronts that depleted valuable resources (both financial and human), China made significant inroads into the rest of the world by actively pursuing economic expansion. China used this period of time to become an economic and military powerhouse in the Indo-Pacific region. China used a combination of aggressive economic exploitation along with the reinforcement of its armed forces to insure long-term economic, political, and military success at home and throughout the region and world. Unlike the United States’ international strategy, which seems to ebb and flow with the election tides, China’s main focus is not to spread their political ideology, but rather to influence and control the new economic order of the world.
China is currently playing the long game. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) realizes that in order to assure its survival, it must maintain and sustain its promise of continued prosperity for the Chinese people. The CCP’s future prosperity will require expanding its trade and investments, developing new suppliers for required resources, securing adequate loans and grants, and modernizing its military might. In an effort to reach these goals, China’s Navy has been developing ports around the world that will enable it to keep China’s sea lanes open during most situations. By supporting infrastructure projects in various third-world countries around the globe, China has successfully expanded economically into the world and increased its access to vital natural resources.
China continues to create these international relationships that will allow the CCP unprecedented global access. In an effort to counter China’s expansion, the Department of Defense’s adopted the Indo-Pacific as its priority theater. In a speech given by Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter, in New York City during 2012, a new National Defense Strategy was announced to rebalance America’s nation’s global posture and presence by placing greater emphasis on operations in the Pacific. This strategic focus signaled that in terms of economics and national security, the region was growing in importance. Concurrently, the Department of Defense (DoD) shifted their priority from the Global War on Terrorism to assessing near peer and peer to peer competition. During June of 2019 the Department of Defense, The Indo-Pacific Strategy Report, “Preparedness, Partnerships and Promoting a Networked Region,” stated that America’s national interests are: “based upon the view that peace, security, and prosperity depend on strong, sovereign nations that respect their citizens at home and cooperate to advance peace abroad. It is grounded in the belief that U.S. leadership in promoting these widely held principles is a lasting force for good in the world.” During this time, DoD also decided to support enduring U.S. national interests. As explained by Carter in the National Security Strategy, the DoD had a clear mandate to “ protect the American people, the homeland, and the American way of life, promote American prosperity through fair and reciprocal economic relationships that address trade imbalances, preserve peace through strength by rebuilding its military (so that it remains preeminent), rely on allies and partners (to shoulder a fair share of the burden of responsibility to protect against common threats), and advance American influence by competing and leading in multilateral organizations (so that American interests and principles are protected).” These 2018 National Defense strategies guide the Department of Defense to retain the following goals: “1. Defend the homeland; 2. Remain the preeminent military power in the world; 3. Ensure the balances of power in key regions remain in our favor; and 4. Advance an international order that is most conducive to [America’s] security and prosperity.” In order to reach these lofty goals, the United States will need regional and global support. The significance of the Indo-Pacific area of operation is beyond the capability of any one nation and will require a partnership of nations to insure peace and economic prosperity throughout the region. This can only be accomplished by upholding the rules of laws established by the international community and the principles of fair economic competition.
This paper will highlight how the Chinese use the development of economic and military strength to ensure China’s continued development and prosperity. By strengthening their military, creating international alliances (required to obtain necessary natural resources), funding worldwide infrastructure (such as roads, rails, seaports, and airports in many unstable and failed nation states), and utilizing cyber technology, China is working to create a network of international allies and resources. Additionally, this paper will focus on the future peer battlefield with China. It will discuss a series of potential conflict areas while highlighting planning considerations and challenges that must be considered when operating in such complex and contested environments. Finally, this paper will also examine China’s strategy regarding how they employ their capabilities in the current operating environment, which has been made infinitely more complex by the COVID-19 pandemic. Presently, China is using the current pandemic to increase the need/reliance of many nations around the world on their assistance and medical supplies. In addition, this pandemic is allowing China an opportunity to use disinformation to polarize the United States and its allies. China’s manipulation of the current crisis with COVID-19 highlights the country’s use of misinformation in its foreign relations. The Indo-Pacific region includes some of the world’s largest preexisting populations and economies, as well as some of the world’s largest growing populations and emerging economies. Moving forward, it is imperative that the United States create a strategic plan for the area, which accounts for China’s role as well.
History/ Background
China's civilization dates from at least 1200 B.C.E. making it one of the most ancient civilizations in human history. From the 3rd century B.C.E and for the next two millennia, China would alternate between periods of unity and disunity under a succession of imperial dynasties. According to the War Department’s educational manual on China, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the country was beset by civil unrest, major famines, military defeats, foreign occupations (including its horrific attack and occupation by the Japanese during WWII), and a brutal civil war. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) established under MAO Zedong during WWII established an autocratic socialist system that ensured China's sovereignty and imposed strict controls over the everyday life of hundreds of millions of people. After 1978, MAO's successor DENG Xiaoping (along with other leaders) focused on market-oriented economic development. By 2000, the CIA reported that China’s output had quadrupled. For much of the population, living standards improved dramatically, but political controls remain tight.
Geography
China is located in East Asia. According to the CIA’s World Factbook, China has an area of 9,596,960 square kilometers making it the fifth largest country by area in the modern world (after Russia, Antarctica, Canada, and the United States). The country has a total land border of 22,457 kilometers, making it the country with the longest land border in the world. In spite of China’s large population, its population density is less than many other countries in Asia and Europe. The majority of its population is found in the eastern half of the country, along key rivers and in recently established megacities.
China’s climate is extremely diverse: tropical in south to subarctic in north. Its vast mountainous and desert areas remain sparsely populated; high population density is found along the Yangtze and Yellow River valleys, and the Xi Jiang River delta. China shares Mount Everest, the world's tallest peak above sea level, as the mountain’s summit point is divided by China’s border with Nepal. China also shares borders with 14 sovereign states, a 19-mile border with the special administrative region of Hong Kong, and a 1.86-mile border with the special administrative region of Macau. Governed by the Communist Party of China, the state exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, and four direct-controlled municipalities
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Border countries: Afghanistan 91 km, Bhutan 477 km, Burma 2129 km, India 2659 km, Kazakhstan 1765 km, North Korea 1352 km, Kyrgyzstan 1063 km, Laos 475 km, Mongolia 4630 km, Nepal 1389 km, Pakistan 438 km, Russia (northeast) 4133 km, Russia (northwest) 46 km, Tajikistan 477 km, Vietnam 1297 km
Natural Resources
It is fair to say that China’s global expansion started with its need to find and utilize natural resources to further its economic development, but it did not end there. China’s Natural resources include coal, iron ore, helium, petroleum, natural gas, arsenic, bismuth, cobalt, cadmium, ferrosilicon, gallium, germanium, hafnium, indium, lithium, mercury, tantalum, tellurium, tin, titanium, tungsten, antimony, manganese, magnesium, molybdenum, selenium, strontium, vanadium, magnetite, aluminum, lead, zinc, rare earth elements, uranium, the world’s largest hydropower potential, and arable land. According to Basov of Mining.com, China holds first place as a global leader in domestic mine production, overwhelmingly ahead of Australia, which sits second. Third-ranked Russia is ranked ahead of the United States and Canada, fourth and fifth, respectively. Of all commodities considered in Basov’s research, China is the leader in mining gold, zinc, lead, molybdenum, iron ore, coal, tin, tungsten, rare earths, graphite, vanadium, antimony and phosphate, and holds second place in mine production of copper, silver, cobalt, bauxite/alumina and manganese. The only two main produced commodities of which China is out of the top ten are diamonds and chromium.
This remarkable accomplishment by China’s mining industry raises questions regarding its ability to maintain its leading position long term, keeping in mind that China’s growing economy remains thirsty for sustainable supplies of raw materials (Basov). Chinese policy has also indicated an awareness of the finite availability of its natural resources. In order to overcome shortages of essential mineral commodities, as well as to secure long-term sustainable supplies for its ambitious economic development strategy, the government of China has entitled a number of local state-owned and private companies to actively pursue mining deals throughout the world during the last decade while focusing on how to better utilize their general population in a more robust workforce.
Population
China has the largest population in the world, but soon India will catch up making a future partnership worth monitoring. India has been a long-term competitor with China in the world’s growing economy and it has fought past wars over border disputes. India could be an excellent partner for the United States to keep pressure on China moving forward. Historically, China’s population is known for rapid expansion: in 1949 China had 540 million and by 1976 China had a population of 940 million. China’s 2020 population is estimated at 1,439,323,776, according to United Nation’s latest data. China’s population is equivalent to 18.47% of the total world population. This drastic population increase over the last several decades can be seen in WorldOMeter’s population chart included below.
Natural Resources
It is fair to say that China’s global expansion started with its need to find and utilize natural resources to further its economic development, but it did not end there. China’s Natural resources include coal, iron ore, helium, petroleum, natural gas, arsenic, bismuth, cobalt, cadmium, ferrosilicon, gallium, germanium, hafnium, indium, lithium, mercury, tantalum, tellurium, tin, titanium, tungsten, antimony, manganese, magnesium, molybdenum, selenium, strontium, vanadium, magnetite, aluminum, lead, zinc, rare earth elements, uranium, the world’s largest hydropower potential, and arable land. According to Basov of Mining.com, China holds first place as a global leader in domestic mine production, overwhelmingly ahead of Australia, which sits second. Third-ranked Russia is ranked ahead of the United States and Canada, fourth and fifth, respectively. Of all commodities considered in Basov’s research, China is the leader in mining gold, zinc, lead, molybdenum, iron ore, coal, tin, tungsten, rare earths, graphite, vanadium, antimony and phosphate, and holds second place in mine production of copper, silver, cobalt, bauxite/alumina and manganese. The only two main produced commodities of which China is out of the top ten are diamonds and chromium.
This remarkable accomplishment by China’s mining industry raises questions regarding its ability to maintain its leading position long term, keeping in mind that China’s growing economy remains thirsty for sustainable supplies of raw materials (Basov). Chinese policy has also indicated an awareness of the finite availability of its natural resources. In order to overcome shortages of essential mineral commodities, as well as to secure long-term sustainable supplies for its ambitious economic development strategy, the government of China has entitled a number of local state-owned and private companies to actively pursue mining deals throughout the world during the last decade while focusing on how to better utilize their general population in a more robust workforce.
Population
China has the largest population in the world, but soon India will catch up making a future partnership worth monitoring. India has been a long-term competitor with China in the world’s growing economy and it has fought past wars over border disputes. India could be an excellent partner for the United States to keep pressure on China moving forward. Historically, China’s population is known for rapid expansion: in 1949 China had 540 million and by 1976 China had a population of 940 million. China’s 2020 population is estimated at 1,439,323,776, according to United Nation’s latest data. China’s population is equivalent to 18.47% of the total world population. This drastic population increase over the last several decades can be seen in WorldOMeter’s population chart included below.
As a result of these skyrocketing numbers, global concerns about China’s rapidly expanding population have increased. China itself has indicated through past policies that it has its own population concerns, as is evidenced by its implementation of perhaps the country’s most extreme (and well-known) measure to limit families to “one child.” According to United Families International, this “one child” policy was introduced in 1979 (and modified in the mid 1980s to allow rural parents a second child, if the first was a daughter) and was designed to alleviate overpopulation while considering the social, economic, and environmental issues of the time. According to United Families International, “China pledged to keep its policy in place until the year 2050; despite the burgeoning number of men who were born compared to women (as a result of sex-selection abortion and female infanticide); despite an overall aging population; despite too few children growing into adult workers to pay for healthcare and pension programs; despite work force shortages and a general decline in economic competitiveness.”
The unintended consequences of China’s population policies were ultimately an increase in female infanticide and selective abortions because males were culturally preferred for economic reasons. As far back as Confucius, Chinese culture has subscribed to the belief that “Women were human--- but lower than men” (United Families International). By 2011, a massive gender imbalance became evident in the country’s population distribution (United Families International). In the population of citizens under the age of 20, China had 32 million more men than women. This gap will complicate the social and cultural availability of traditional marriage arrangements and future family planning initiatives. According to WorldOMeters latest data, the current birth rate is 0.32% which places it 85 in the world. Life Expectancy for the total population is around 77.4 years: male average 74 years, females average 78.4 years. In late 2015, the Chinese government announced a reversion back to a two-child limit for the whole country, as an effort to help balance this gender inequity for future generations. These drastic population changes over the last several decades can be seen in WorldOMeter’s population data included below.
The unintended consequences of China’s population policies were ultimately an increase in female infanticide and selective abortions because males were culturally preferred for economic reasons. As far back as Confucius, Chinese culture has subscribed to the belief that “Women were human--- but lower than men” (United Families International). By 2011, a massive gender imbalance became evident in the country’s population distribution (United Families International). In the population of citizens under the age of 20, China had 32 million more men than women. This gap will complicate the social and cultural availability of traditional marriage arrangements and future family planning initiatives. According to WorldOMeters latest data, the current birth rate is 0.32% which places it 85 in the world. Life Expectancy for the total population is around 77.4 years: male average 74 years, females average 78.4 years. In late 2015, the Chinese government announced a reversion back to a two-child limit for the whole country, as an effort to help balance this gender inequity for future generations. These drastic population changes over the last several decades can be seen in WorldOMeter’s population data included below.
China’s population represents the future potential of the country. China’s government realizes that to stay in power, it must maintain its recent economic growth within its new and emerging middle class. China’s ability to sustain power ultimately rests on reducing the age of its general population, supporting more marriages, balancing the country’s birth rates, and stabilizing China’s economic growth for the middle class.
Population Distribution/Control
The overwhelming majority of China’s population is found in the eastern half of the country; the west, with its vast mountainous and desert areas, remains sparsely populated (United Nations). Though China is ranked first in the world in total population, its overall density is less than that of many other countries in Asia and Europe.
Population Distribution/Control
The overwhelming majority of China’s population is found in the eastern half of the country; the west, with its vast mountainous and desert areas, remains sparsely populated (United Nations). Though China is ranked first in the world in total population, its overall density is less than that of many other countries in Asia and Europe.
The highest population density is found along the Yangtze and Yellow River valleys, the Xi Jiang River delta, the Sichuan Basin (around Chengdu), in and around Beijing, and in the industrial area around Shenyang. Currently, China is shifting the bulk of its population into their ever-growing metropolitan megacities: “A ‘megacity’ is defined as a metropolitan area with a population of more than 10 million” (Keegan). It appears that this trend will continue for the foreseeable future. Some cities in China are larger than several countries. By moving its workforce into these megacities, China is hoping to increase its workforce, while at the same time strengthen its economy (Keegan). According to the latest United Nation’s city report, there are currently 15 cities throughout China with populations larger than 10 million residents, “more than any other country in the world, and there are even more on the way” (Keegan). The distribution of the world’s megacities can be seen in this United Nations graphic (5). According to the United Nations, most megacities are located in the less developed regions or the “global South” (6).
The largest megacity in China is Guangzhou with a population of about 44,294,245 million. Other megacities throughout China include Shanghai (35,965,403 million), Chongqing (25,165,500), the capitol city of Beijing (22,500,000), and Hangzhou (21,102.000). China is a country “on the move and so are many of its people – quite literally. As part of a ‘National New-type Urbanization Plan’ unveiled in 2014, China aims to move 250 million of its citizens from the country’s rural areas into cities by 2026” (Keegan). There are strategic implications of China’s sustained economic growth in these megacities over the last three decades. According to Suokas, a reporter for GB Times, in this brief time, China has become the world’s second largest economy and is actively pursuing become the largest economy in the world.
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The UN has tracked this economic growth in the charts above. China hopes to continue this growth trend moving forward though its “Belt and Road Initiative” and the relocation of its work force into these megacities. Concurrent with creating these megacities, China has transformed a poverty-ridden, poorly educated nation into a great power that is playing an ever-increasing role in the economic globalization of the world. China has aggressively weaponized its economy to further its goals. China economic growth and global influence increased by providing aid, trade, investments, and loans, making it Asia’s newest economic hub. After the completion of its “Belt and Road Initiative” China will be in an even stronger global economic position than before. China has been known to manipulate its currency to further its objectives globally. China even owns a significant percent of the U.S. Government debt, which is financed at low interest rates. China is now in the position to withhold natural resources it has the acquired over the years from global supply chain. The United States relies on its supply of rare earth minerals from China, which is required for everything from cell phones to the manufacture of weapon systems. China has a reputation for using its economy in a targeted manner, and it is indeed founded.
China realizes that infrastructure and a control over natural resources will not be enough as they move forward into the future. China has included an educational component to their economic development plan. According to Suokas, a reporter for GB Times, given rising wages and declining working-age population, China has begun moving away from lower-end, labor-intensive exports and started producing more sophisticated, higher-value goods. According to the IMF, China’s domestic value added (value of its final exports that is produced domestically) has grown sharply, in particular in knowledge-intensive production. In order for this trend to continue, an educated populous is imperative.
Education
As referenced earlier, Chinese educational policies show a cultural understanding that its people are the key to the country’s survival and future development. Traditionally in China, education has been recognized as a critical key to the nation’s success. China has placed education above other values consistently throughout its history. The solid education of the majority of the country’s citizens is absolutely critical today for China to fulfill its future visions.
The nation’s expectations are that educational achievements will lead to higher social statuses, provide a way out of poverty for a majority of its citizens, and will be a critical foundation of a growing economy (Wan and Zhang). China has learned that poverty leads to instability and breeds more serious problems like trafficking (human and drug) and terrorism. China believes that education is one of the most powerful tools available to fight poverty. According to the China Education Center, in the early 1990s, China established a program of universal 9-year compulsory education. This effort has been taking children out of the work force and raising skill levels to enable them to become a successful part of the growing economy. Compulsory education includes six years of primary education, typically starting at age six or seven, followed by three years of junior secondary education (junior middle school) which then completes secondary education. Vocational training and Universities are available, but they require university applicants to compete for scholarships based on academic ability. In 2003, central and local governments in China supported 1,552 institutions of higher learning (colleges and universities), along with their 725,000 professors, and 11 million students. The current literacy rate of those 15 or older within the total population is 96.8%: male literacy is at 98.5% and female literacy is 95.2%. The country realizes that empowering their citizens with viable education and specific skills enables them to become more productive workers (Wan and Zhang). This focus has enabled China to lift some 200-300 million people out of poverty, an incredible achievement. China realizes this is a “win-win situation” for both the government and the people (Wan and Zhang).
Human Rights
The Chinese government maintains a tight control over its educational institutions. The government also tightened its ideological grip over universities. During the last decade, a number of professors, including foreigners, have been punished for making critical comments. Dissenters continue to endure arbitrary detention and imprisonment. Many have simply disappeared. China maintains tight control over the internet and mass media within its borders, and the CCP skews the narrative allowed to reach international press circuits. During the last decade, the CCP has continued to subject various activists and lawyers to travel bans, surveillance, detention, torture, and ill-treatment for their efforts to engage with the United Nations. Chinese authorities continue to harass and detain journalists who cover human rights issues, as well as their interviewees. Authorities have also tried to silence Chinese human rights defenders abroad by harassing and detaining their families in China.
The CCP has created a variety of ways to take control of its Chinese citizens. President Xi Jinping, born in 1953, has indicated his intent to rule indefinitely after China’s legislature amended the constitution in March 2018 to eliminate Presidential term limits. According to the Human Rights Watch, Presidential power was only one of the revisions made. During March of 2018, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) also strengthened its power over China’s government and people by overhauling the central government structure. The party created a powerful new government body called the National Supervisory Commission, “which is empowered to detain incommunicado anyone exercising public authority for up to six months without fair trial procedures in a system called ‘liuzhi.’” The CCP also subsumed state bodies in charge of religious, ethnic, and overseas Chinese affairs under a party agency called the United Front Work Department. According to the Human Rights Watch, “authorities increasingly deploy mass surveillance systems to tighten control over society.” In 2020, the government continues to collect its citizen’s biometrics including DNA and voice samples for automated surveillance purposes. China has developed a nationwide reward and punishment system known as the “social credit system.” They consistently develop and apply policing programs aimed at preventing dissent. Chinese policies regarding gender and sexual orientation are regressive at best. Chinese law prohibits sexual harassment, but its failure to define the term makes legal action virtually impossible. According to the Human Rights Watch, “Women continue to face widespread discrimination in the job market.” As China faces a gender imbalance and an aging population, “authorities are promoting traditional roles for women, encouraging them to marry early and have children.” Although the one-child policy has been relaxed, women and girls continue to face violations of their reproductive rights. The shortage of marriageable women in China has created a trafficking problem, a human rights atrocity that is largely ignored by the CCP. Throughout its history, the Chinese government remains hostile to women’s rights activism. China also continues to support regressive practices regarding sexual orientation. While China decriminalized homosexuality in 1997, it lacks laws protecting people from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, and same-sex partnership is not legal.
Some of China’s human rights violations are encouraged by the government’s inactivity. Other discriminatory policies are actively pursued by the CCP. According to Human Rights Watch, Chinese authorities have drastically increased their persecution of religious communities, “including prohibitions on Islam in Xinjiang, suppression of Christians in Henan province, and increasing scrutiny of Hui Muslims in Ningxia, during the last three years.” The government restricts religious practice to five officially recognized religions. Authorities retain control over religious bodies’ personnel appointments, publications, finances, and seminary applications. According to the Human Rights Watch, the government classifies many religious groups outside its control as “evil cults,” and “subjects members to police harassment, torture, arbitrary detention, and imprisonment.” A crackdown on Christian churches intensified in Henan province during 2018, as authorities demolished dozens of church buildings, prevented believers from gathering, and confiscated bibles. Chinese authorities are also hostile to many expressions of Uyghur identity, and have in recent years justified sweeping repression as a necessary response to threats of terrorism.
This campaign appears to be China’s largest Human Right’s transgression presently. According to the Human Rights Watch, “Authorities dramatically stepped up repression and systematic abuses against the 13 million Turkic Muslims, including Uyghurs and ethnic Kazakhs, in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region.” The CCP has carried out mass arbitrary detention, torture, and mistreatment” while imposing “pervasive controls on daily life.” The Chinese government began waging a “Strike Hard Campaign against Violent Extremism” in Xinjiang in 2014. Under this campaign, Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang face extraordinary restrictions: “Authorities have recalled passports throughout the region […] people have to apply for permission and go through checkpoints. They are subjected to persistent political indoctrination, including compulsory flag-raising ceremonies and political or denunciation meetings. With unprecedented levels of control over religious practices, authorities have effectively outlawed the practice of Islam in the region.” The CCP has also subjected people in Xinjiang to “pervasive surveillance where authorities employ high-tech mass surveillance systems that make use of QR codes, biometrics, artificial intelligence, phone spyware, and big data. And they have mobilized over a million officials to monitor people, including through intrusive programs in which officials regularly stay in people’s homes.” The level of repression has increased dramatically over the last decade: “authorities have stepped up mass arbitrary detention, including in pretrial detention centers and prisons, both of which are formal facilities, and in ‘political education’ camps, which have no basis under Chinese law.” Sources believe that over 1 million people are being held in these camps, “where Turkic Muslims are being forced to learn Mandarin Chinese, praise the government and party, and abandon many aspects of their distinct identity” (Human Rights Watch). As is the case with citizens throughout China, those who resist are severely punished.
So far, China’s economic foothold globally has allowed them to suppress a lot of the human rights complaints that have been voiced throughout the world. While some governments and parliaments publicly expressed concerns about Beijing’s human rights violations and continue to try to observe trials and meet with human rights defenders in China, few take forceful action to end abuses or press for accountability. China continues to use its permanent seat on the UN Security Council to block important discussions of human rights issues. According to the Human Rights Watch, in March 2018, China and Russia successfully mobilized other council members to prevent then-High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein from addressing the council on Syria. This is simply one example of China’s political dependence upon suppression, both within its borders and internationally. It is imperative that future policy development within the United States account for these human rights violations. Scott Perry of The Washington Times, explained the role America must play in future reactions with China: “Collectively and individually, Americans must place our nation’s welfare over profits and cheap products emanating from a government that’s guilty of countless crimes against humanity — to include concentration camps, forced organ harvesting and gross human rights violations, not to mention its active strategy to defeat and dominate the United States.” China’s human rights violations provide a viable weakness on the global stage, and the United States needs to develop a strategy to utilize this weakness to undermine the credibility of CCP as a global leader. The United States must find a way to hold China accountable on the global stage for its human rights violations.
The Pearl River Delta Economic Zone (PRD)
The Pearl River Delta Economic Zone (PRD) is a model of how powerful these megalopolis developments can be for the Chinese. Since the onset of China’s reform program started in the late 1970s, the Pearl River Delta Economic Zone (PRD) has been the fastest growing portion of the fastest growing province in the fastest growing large economy in the world (Foster and Moore). It is one of the most densely urbanized regions in the world. The PRD is a megalopolis, yet itself is at the southern end of a larger megalopolis running along the southern coast of China. As well as the delta itself, the term Pearl River Delta refers to the dense network of cities that covers nine prefectures of the province of Guangdong. The 2010/2011 State of the World Cities report, published by the United Nations Human Settlements Programmed, estimates the population of the delta region at 120 million people; it is rapidly urbanizing. According to a recent publication in The Telegraph, the PDR as of 2019, has an economy with an estimated worth of $2 trillion (Foster and Moore). The PDR accounts for approximately one-third of China’s trade value. The metropolitan region consists of one metropolitan area known as the Yuegang'ao Greater Bay Area or Guangdong—Hong Kong—Macau Greater Bay Area. There are continuous development plans to transform these various megacities into a single mega metropolitan area. The eastern side of the PRD (Shenzhen, Dongguan), dominated by foreign capital, is the most developed economically. The western areas (Foshan, Zhuhai, Zhongshan, Jiangmen), dominated by local private capital, are open for development. New transport links between Hong Kong, Macau and Zhuhai in the PRD are expected to open up new areas for development, further integrate the cities, and facilitate trade within the region (Foster and Moore). The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge, currently under construction, and the proposed Shenzhen-Zhongshan Bridge, currently in the planning phase, will be amongst the longest bridges in the world with a total length of approximately 50 km each.
Bigger still will be the enormous megacity called Jing-Jin-Ji. If all goes according to plan, according to Culture Trip, this giant megacity will be home to no fewer than 130 million people. Located on the northeast coast of China, Jing-Jin-Ji will combine the three existing cities of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei in what will become China’s main economic zone. The government has already announced that it will invest $36 billion to build 700 miles of rail as part of a transportation system serving the megalopolis. The goal is to introduce a “one-hour commuting circle” across the area. The scale of these megacity projects is enormous and one of the keyways that China hopes to boost its economy domestically and internationally.
The New Silk Road Initiative
China has not only focused on building awe inspiring infrastructure within its own borders, but it has also begun focusing its development projects in various countries throughout the world. By funding worldwide infrastructure such as roads, rails, seaports, and airports in many unstable and failed nation states, China is working to create a network of international allies and resources. Since the early 1990s, China has increased its global outreach and has continually looked for new markets for their products. This led to participation in international trade and development throughout the world. In 2013, President Xi announced in Kazakhstan that China hopes to build a “New Silk Road Economic Belt” along the original route of the original “Silk Road” traveled by Marco Polo from 1271-1295. For centuries the historical Silk Road connected Asia and Europe by land and by sea. The new proposal of China, while reviving the ancient concept of the Silk Road, “aims to carry forward the spirit of peace, cooperation, openness and inclusiveness for shared benefits,” according to Shan Wenhua, a professor at Jiaotong University in Xi’an, Xi’s signature foreign policy is “the first major attempt by the Chinese government to take a proactive approach toward international cooperation … to take responsibility.” (Kuo and Kommenda). China is planning construction projects in more than 60 countries along these routes. Just as when traveled by Marco Polo, China’s intent is to facilitate and develop economic unity along the way and connecting Asia, Europe and Africa (Sukas) and can be seen in the illustration below (Kuo and Kommenda).
China realizes that infrastructure and a control over natural resources will not be enough as they move forward into the future. China has included an educational component to their economic development plan. According to Suokas, a reporter for GB Times, given rising wages and declining working-age population, China has begun moving away from lower-end, labor-intensive exports and started producing more sophisticated, higher-value goods. According to the IMF, China’s domestic value added (value of its final exports that is produced domestically) has grown sharply, in particular in knowledge-intensive production. In order for this trend to continue, an educated populous is imperative.
Education
As referenced earlier, Chinese educational policies show a cultural understanding that its people are the key to the country’s survival and future development. Traditionally in China, education has been recognized as a critical key to the nation’s success. China has placed education above other values consistently throughout its history. The solid education of the majority of the country’s citizens is absolutely critical today for China to fulfill its future visions.
The nation’s expectations are that educational achievements will lead to higher social statuses, provide a way out of poverty for a majority of its citizens, and will be a critical foundation of a growing economy (Wan and Zhang). China has learned that poverty leads to instability and breeds more serious problems like trafficking (human and drug) and terrorism. China believes that education is one of the most powerful tools available to fight poverty. According to the China Education Center, in the early 1990s, China established a program of universal 9-year compulsory education. This effort has been taking children out of the work force and raising skill levels to enable them to become a successful part of the growing economy. Compulsory education includes six years of primary education, typically starting at age six or seven, followed by three years of junior secondary education (junior middle school) which then completes secondary education. Vocational training and Universities are available, but they require university applicants to compete for scholarships based on academic ability. In 2003, central and local governments in China supported 1,552 institutions of higher learning (colleges and universities), along with their 725,000 professors, and 11 million students. The current literacy rate of those 15 or older within the total population is 96.8%: male literacy is at 98.5% and female literacy is 95.2%. The country realizes that empowering their citizens with viable education and specific skills enables them to become more productive workers (Wan and Zhang). This focus has enabled China to lift some 200-300 million people out of poverty, an incredible achievement. China realizes this is a “win-win situation” for both the government and the people (Wan and Zhang).
Human Rights
The Chinese government maintains a tight control over its educational institutions. The government also tightened its ideological grip over universities. During the last decade, a number of professors, including foreigners, have been punished for making critical comments. Dissenters continue to endure arbitrary detention and imprisonment. Many have simply disappeared. China maintains tight control over the internet and mass media within its borders, and the CCP skews the narrative allowed to reach international press circuits. During the last decade, the CCP has continued to subject various activists and lawyers to travel bans, surveillance, detention, torture, and ill-treatment for their efforts to engage with the United Nations. Chinese authorities continue to harass and detain journalists who cover human rights issues, as well as their interviewees. Authorities have also tried to silence Chinese human rights defenders abroad by harassing and detaining their families in China.
The CCP has created a variety of ways to take control of its Chinese citizens. President Xi Jinping, born in 1953, has indicated his intent to rule indefinitely after China’s legislature amended the constitution in March 2018 to eliminate Presidential term limits. According to the Human Rights Watch, Presidential power was only one of the revisions made. During March of 2018, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) also strengthened its power over China’s government and people by overhauling the central government structure. The party created a powerful new government body called the National Supervisory Commission, “which is empowered to detain incommunicado anyone exercising public authority for up to six months without fair trial procedures in a system called ‘liuzhi.’” The CCP also subsumed state bodies in charge of religious, ethnic, and overseas Chinese affairs under a party agency called the United Front Work Department. According to the Human Rights Watch, “authorities increasingly deploy mass surveillance systems to tighten control over society.” In 2020, the government continues to collect its citizen’s biometrics including DNA and voice samples for automated surveillance purposes. China has developed a nationwide reward and punishment system known as the “social credit system.” They consistently develop and apply policing programs aimed at preventing dissent. Chinese policies regarding gender and sexual orientation are regressive at best. Chinese law prohibits sexual harassment, but its failure to define the term makes legal action virtually impossible. According to the Human Rights Watch, “Women continue to face widespread discrimination in the job market.” As China faces a gender imbalance and an aging population, “authorities are promoting traditional roles for women, encouraging them to marry early and have children.” Although the one-child policy has been relaxed, women and girls continue to face violations of their reproductive rights. The shortage of marriageable women in China has created a trafficking problem, a human rights atrocity that is largely ignored by the CCP. Throughout its history, the Chinese government remains hostile to women’s rights activism. China also continues to support regressive practices regarding sexual orientation. While China decriminalized homosexuality in 1997, it lacks laws protecting people from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, and same-sex partnership is not legal.
Some of China’s human rights violations are encouraged by the government’s inactivity. Other discriminatory policies are actively pursued by the CCP. According to Human Rights Watch, Chinese authorities have drastically increased their persecution of religious communities, “including prohibitions on Islam in Xinjiang, suppression of Christians in Henan province, and increasing scrutiny of Hui Muslims in Ningxia, during the last three years.” The government restricts religious practice to five officially recognized religions. Authorities retain control over religious bodies’ personnel appointments, publications, finances, and seminary applications. According to the Human Rights Watch, the government classifies many religious groups outside its control as “evil cults,” and “subjects members to police harassment, torture, arbitrary detention, and imprisonment.” A crackdown on Christian churches intensified in Henan province during 2018, as authorities demolished dozens of church buildings, prevented believers from gathering, and confiscated bibles. Chinese authorities are also hostile to many expressions of Uyghur identity, and have in recent years justified sweeping repression as a necessary response to threats of terrorism.
This campaign appears to be China’s largest Human Right’s transgression presently. According to the Human Rights Watch, “Authorities dramatically stepped up repression and systematic abuses against the 13 million Turkic Muslims, including Uyghurs and ethnic Kazakhs, in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region.” The CCP has carried out mass arbitrary detention, torture, and mistreatment” while imposing “pervasive controls on daily life.” The Chinese government began waging a “Strike Hard Campaign against Violent Extremism” in Xinjiang in 2014. Under this campaign, Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang face extraordinary restrictions: “Authorities have recalled passports throughout the region […] people have to apply for permission and go through checkpoints. They are subjected to persistent political indoctrination, including compulsory flag-raising ceremonies and political or denunciation meetings. With unprecedented levels of control over religious practices, authorities have effectively outlawed the practice of Islam in the region.” The CCP has also subjected people in Xinjiang to “pervasive surveillance where authorities employ high-tech mass surveillance systems that make use of QR codes, biometrics, artificial intelligence, phone spyware, and big data. And they have mobilized over a million officials to monitor people, including through intrusive programs in which officials regularly stay in people’s homes.” The level of repression has increased dramatically over the last decade: “authorities have stepped up mass arbitrary detention, including in pretrial detention centers and prisons, both of which are formal facilities, and in ‘political education’ camps, which have no basis under Chinese law.” Sources believe that over 1 million people are being held in these camps, “where Turkic Muslims are being forced to learn Mandarin Chinese, praise the government and party, and abandon many aspects of their distinct identity” (Human Rights Watch). As is the case with citizens throughout China, those who resist are severely punished.
So far, China’s economic foothold globally has allowed them to suppress a lot of the human rights complaints that have been voiced throughout the world. While some governments and parliaments publicly expressed concerns about Beijing’s human rights violations and continue to try to observe trials and meet with human rights defenders in China, few take forceful action to end abuses or press for accountability. China continues to use its permanent seat on the UN Security Council to block important discussions of human rights issues. According to the Human Rights Watch, in March 2018, China and Russia successfully mobilized other council members to prevent then-High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein from addressing the council on Syria. This is simply one example of China’s political dependence upon suppression, both within its borders and internationally. It is imperative that future policy development within the United States account for these human rights violations. Scott Perry of The Washington Times, explained the role America must play in future reactions with China: “Collectively and individually, Americans must place our nation’s welfare over profits and cheap products emanating from a government that’s guilty of countless crimes against humanity — to include concentration camps, forced organ harvesting and gross human rights violations, not to mention its active strategy to defeat and dominate the United States.” China’s human rights violations provide a viable weakness on the global stage, and the United States needs to develop a strategy to utilize this weakness to undermine the credibility of CCP as a global leader. The United States must find a way to hold China accountable on the global stage for its human rights violations.
The Pearl River Delta Economic Zone (PRD)
The Pearl River Delta Economic Zone (PRD) is a model of how powerful these megalopolis developments can be for the Chinese. Since the onset of China’s reform program started in the late 1970s, the Pearl River Delta Economic Zone (PRD) has been the fastest growing portion of the fastest growing province in the fastest growing large economy in the world (Foster and Moore). It is one of the most densely urbanized regions in the world. The PRD is a megalopolis, yet itself is at the southern end of a larger megalopolis running along the southern coast of China. As well as the delta itself, the term Pearl River Delta refers to the dense network of cities that covers nine prefectures of the province of Guangdong. The 2010/2011 State of the World Cities report, published by the United Nations Human Settlements Programmed, estimates the population of the delta region at 120 million people; it is rapidly urbanizing. According to a recent publication in The Telegraph, the PDR as of 2019, has an economy with an estimated worth of $2 trillion (Foster and Moore). The PDR accounts for approximately one-third of China’s trade value. The metropolitan region consists of one metropolitan area known as the Yuegang'ao Greater Bay Area or Guangdong—Hong Kong—Macau Greater Bay Area. There are continuous development plans to transform these various megacities into a single mega metropolitan area. The eastern side of the PRD (Shenzhen, Dongguan), dominated by foreign capital, is the most developed economically. The western areas (Foshan, Zhuhai, Zhongshan, Jiangmen), dominated by local private capital, are open for development. New transport links between Hong Kong, Macau and Zhuhai in the PRD are expected to open up new areas for development, further integrate the cities, and facilitate trade within the region (Foster and Moore). The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge, currently under construction, and the proposed Shenzhen-Zhongshan Bridge, currently in the planning phase, will be amongst the longest bridges in the world with a total length of approximately 50 km each.
Bigger still will be the enormous megacity called Jing-Jin-Ji. If all goes according to plan, according to Culture Trip, this giant megacity will be home to no fewer than 130 million people. Located on the northeast coast of China, Jing-Jin-Ji will combine the three existing cities of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei in what will become China’s main economic zone. The government has already announced that it will invest $36 billion to build 700 miles of rail as part of a transportation system serving the megalopolis. The goal is to introduce a “one-hour commuting circle” across the area. The scale of these megacity projects is enormous and one of the keyways that China hopes to boost its economy domestically and internationally.
The New Silk Road Initiative
China has not only focused on building awe inspiring infrastructure within its own borders, but it has also begun focusing its development projects in various countries throughout the world. By funding worldwide infrastructure such as roads, rails, seaports, and airports in many unstable and failed nation states, China is working to create a network of international allies and resources. Since the early 1990s, China has increased its global outreach and has continually looked for new markets for their products. This led to participation in international trade and development throughout the world. In 2013, President Xi announced in Kazakhstan that China hopes to build a “New Silk Road Economic Belt” along the original route of the original “Silk Road” traveled by Marco Polo from 1271-1295. For centuries the historical Silk Road connected Asia and Europe by land and by sea. The new proposal of China, while reviving the ancient concept of the Silk Road, “aims to carry forward the spirit of peace, cooperation, openness and inclusiveness for shared benefits,” according to Shan Wenhua, a professor at Jiaotong University in Xi’an, Xi’s signature foreign policy is “the first major attempt by the Chinese government to take a proactive approach toward international cooperation … to take responsibility.” (Kuo and Kommenda). China is planning construction projects in more than 60 countries along these routes. Just as when traveled by Marco Polo, China’s intent is to facilitate and develop economic unity along the way and connecting Asia, Europe and Africa (Sukas) and can be seen in the illustration below (Kuo and Kommenda).
Since this 2013 announcement, Beijing’s multibillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been called “a Chinese Marshall Plan, a state-backed campaign for global dominance, a stimulus package for a slowing economy, and a massive marketing campaign for something that was already happening – Chinese investment around the world” (Kuo and Kommenda). The project’s name is a bit deceiving since in reality the “21st century silk road” consists of a series of overland corridors referred to as the “belt” while the worldwide shipping lanes represent the maritime “road” (Sukas). Currently, the BRI extends from “South-east Asia to Eastern Europe and Africa which includes 71 countries.” This presence blankets half the world’s population and a quarter of the world’s GDP, “all of which are quickly becoming trading partners with China as it progresses toward its goal of global dominance” (Bradsher). Jane Golley, an associate professor at Australian National University, describes it as an attempt to win friends and influence people. “They’ve presented this very grand initiative which has frightened people,” says Golley. “Rather than using their economic power to make friends, they’ve drummed up more fear that it will be about influence” (Kuo and Kommenda). According to Human Rights Watch, throughout the project, China has pressed ahead with its “One Belt, One Road” initiative despite the lack of safeguards or respect for human rights in many participating countries. Some governments, including Myanmar and Malaysia, backed away from previously agreed bilateral investment arrangements, citing unsustainable debt and concerns about sovereignty.
It is reported that Chinese companies have received over $340 billion in construction contracts and are engaged in projects across the world at an unprecedented scale with contracts financed by state-owned Chinese financial institutions. According to Michael Safi and Amantha Perera in their article published in the Guardian, Chinese companies have participated in the construction and operation of a total of 42 ports in 34 countries under its Belt and Road initiative. Additionally, China has also signed 38 bilateral and regional maritime agreements covering 47 countries along the Belt and Road trade routes. Maritime Silk Road currently links China’s coastal parts to the South Pacific and Australia and to Europe and Africa through the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean and the Arctic. Beijing’s maritime ambitions reflect the fact China is the world’s largest exporter and the second largest importer. China is securing access to infrastructure and resources that it considers critical to its economic development. These countries make up half the world’s population and a quarter of the world’s GDP, and they are quickly becoming economic partners with China. “China’s penetration of south Asia is the biggest game changer in 100 years,” says Constantino Xavier, a fellow at the thinktank Carnegie India. “The Russians tried; the Americans tried. This is the first time since at least world war two you have a massive power contesting the Indian state” (Safi and Perera). China’s dominance in the construction sector comes at the expense of local contractors in partner countries and often large debt owed to China. There are concerns as other nations stand by and watch what is taking place.
There is a very real fear that China is successfully using targeted economic investment to strengthen their geopolitical aims. Critics worry China could use “debt-trap diplomacy” to extract strategic concessions – such as over territorial disputes in the South China Sea or silence on human rights violations. In 2011, China wrote off an undisclosed debt owed by Tajikistan in exchange for 1,158 sq. km (447 sq. miles) of disputed territory (Davidson). “There are some extreme cases where China lends into very high-risk environments, and it would seem that the motivation is something different. In these situations, the leverage China has as lender is used for purposes unrelated to the original loan,” said Scott Morris, one of the authors of the Washington Centre for Global Development report, quoted by the Guardian (Davidson). Gaurav Dalmia, the chairman of the Indian conglomerate Dalmia Group stated, “Indian business leaders are concerned that China is building linkages around the world” (Safi and Perera). A lot of the development is in very high-risk areas. The world is starting to see China use their newfound leverage over these countries in exchange for quieting political disagreements (human rights issues mainly) and in exchange for contested territories (like in Tajikistan). It is becoming clearer as the project progresses that China’s only interest in this project is not economical (Davidson).
As BRI expands its scope, global concerns that BRI is a form of economic imperialism, which gives China too much leverage over other countries, increase. There are also the bigger geopolitical fears that China could use these projects as a way of shaping and influencing global policy that are becoming more evident as time passes. According to Jonathan Hillman, Director of the Reconnecting Asia Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, “It’s a reminder BRI is about more than roads, railways, and other hard infrastructure. […] It’s also a vehicle for China to write new rules, establish institutions that reflect Chinese interests, and reshape ‘soft’ infrastructure.” Global concerns about China’s ulterior motives have led some leaders to worry that the expanded Chinese commercial presence around the world will eventually lead to an expanded military presence. “If it can carry goods, it can carry troops,” says Jonathan Hillman, Director of the Reconnecting Asia Project at CSIS (Kuo and Kommenda). Chinese money has gushed into south Asia (especially Pakistan) in the past decade, and billions more has been promised as part of the BRI. Last year, China established its first overseas military base in Djibouti. Analysts say almost all the ports and other transport infrastructure being built can also be used for commercial and military purposes (Kuo and Kommenda). What has become clear in the research is that there are alternative motives for the Chinese government’s investment in these projects that go far beyond economic development and the pursuit of limited natural resources.
US and China Trade Relations
An ancient Chinese stratagem instructs military leaders to “chen huo da jie,” or to “loot a house when it’s on fire.” This type of economic espionage and assertive stratagem creates particular problems for the United States’ economic future. Basically, if China strikes when its enemy is most vulnerable, right now we are pretty vulnerable. It is unknown the extent to which China has encroached on, or outright assaulted, nearly every meaningful sector of the American economy. According to a report recently published by the Rand Corporation, The United States is engaged in a new era of great-power competition, which is taking place, in part, in the realms of information, ideas, and ideology (Watts). The report goes on to explain how America is less influential internationally, and that China is perceived “as well as or more positively than the United States throughout much of the developing world” (Watts). Rand Corporation’s report suggests that to help support and proliferate its ideology abroad, China will use its economic policy as a means to slowly change policies from within global financial and investment institutions (Watts). China’s strategy and the problems it has created are simply too big to ignore any longer. American businesses have been eclipse by Chinese companies in the following areas: shipbuilding (in 1976, the US was #1 worldwide and now it is #19), semiconductors (according to The Economist, most of the world’s electronic manufacturing capacity now resides in China), batteries (73% of global lithium cell manufacturing capacity is located in China), and pharmaceuticals (over 60% of the United States’ major over-the-counter and prescription medications are imported from China). Perhaps the most surprising thing about all of the aforementioned vulnerabilities (drugs, ships, chips and batteries) is that China has emerged as a global economic leader during the last twenty years without a coherent Washington-led challenge or counter-policy.
In the last two decades, since Beijing was admitted to the World Trade Organization (WTO), China has gradually eclipsed America’s preeminence as a manufacturing nation. One example of China’s investment strategy is its acquisition of Smithfield Foods (purchased in 2013), the largest acquisition of an American company to date (Pei). Smithfield Foods produces 10% of all-American pork; it employs over 50,000 citizens, and it owns/leases 2,500 farms that are worth more than 500 million (with an annual revenue of 14 Billion). As with other Chinese purchases of American assets, “this particular deal can be seen from several perspectives [...] most interpretations manage to tell part of the real story” (Pei). According to Nancy McLernon, President of the Organization for International Investment, "The food supply is part of our critical infrastructure. But that should always be protected regardless of a company's ownership. It's imperative that we don't slam the door on job-creating investment by foreign companies based on knee-jerk reactions" (Kavilanz). While she has a point, “Regarding the Chinese Communists, America must become much more proprietary with our vital enterprises — manufacturing, technology, supply chain, medical, communications, agricultural, military, space and education. The wide-open door that ignores the consistent and continued crimes of the Chinese government must be closed” (Perry). It is also imperative that America hold foreign investors accountable for their motives and ultimate actions while protecting America’s future needs and economic autonomy.
The Smithfield purchase is only one example of China’s current strategy. In recent years, China has dominated production of most new technologies ranging from pharmaceuticals to smart phones, from wind turbines to solar panels, from commercial drones to new GPS capabilities. From a national security perspective, Chinese companies have taken ownership of U.S. companies critical to America’s strategic supply chain. According to Green, “the U.S. is entirely dependent on China for segments of the supply of rare earth minerals, which are necessary for everything from cellphones to critical weapon systems,” but the United State’s dependency on Chinese materials, products, and exports does not stop there.
It has become clear in recent months that the United States is too dependent upon China in regard to its pharmaceutical and medical response times during national crises. In December 2019, Politico published an article explaining how China was weaponizing pharmaceutical exports. According to Palmer and Bermingham, “One of the biggest national security threats in the U.S.-China trade war could be the everyday medicines taken by millions of Americans.” Almost all of the ibuprofen and hydrocortisone, and most of the acetaminophen, consumed in the United States originate in China. Last year alone, according to Commerce Department data, “China accounted for 95 percent of U.S. imports of ibuprofen, 91 percent of U.S. imports of hydrocortisone, 70 percent of U.S. imports of acetaminophen, 40 to 45 percent of U.S. imports of penicillin and 40 percent of U.S. imports of heparin” (Palmer and Bermingham). This medical dependency on China has never been clearer than it is right now in the middle of the COVID-19 Pandemic. This “wake-up call” is explored by Loren Thompson in his article entitled "Coronavirus Highlights US Strategic Vulnerabilities Span by Over-Reliance on China.” Thompson explains how “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration admits it lacks the capacity to track the supply chain of imported drugs […] The U.S. thus may have developed vulnerabilities in the availability of drugs needed during wartime [or clearly pandemics] without knowing it.” Palmer and Bermingham go on to support Thompson’s claim by explaining that many generic prescription drugs, even when they are manufactured in India or other countries, “often require active ingredients made only in China.” By continuing to avoid the implications and consequences of America’s newly developed economic relationship with China, America has become vulnerable to international influences during national crises. Our dependency on foreign nations to provide for and protect our national infrastructures is precarious at best and outright dangerous at its worst.
In an article published in The Hill this January, “The president has relied on tariffs to help strengthen U.S. production, an issue he says impacts national security” (Axelrod). For instance, the U.S. had two dozen aluminum smelters within its borders when the new century began; by the time President Trump took office, only five remained of which two were functioning at full capacity. Chinese smelters have no inherent pricing advantage, so critics have correctly concluded that China became the world’s largest producer (and exporter) of aluminum through the use of subsidies and other trade-distorting practices. A similar pattern prevails in steel, which explains why both industries became early targets of Trump tariffs: “[I]mports of these derivative articles threaten to undermine the actions taken to address the risk to the national security of the United States,” Trump said in one of his proclamations. “[D]omestic production capacity to produce aluminum articles and steel articles for national defense and critical infrastructure is essential to United States national security.” Trump concludes, “that it is necessary and appropriate in light of our national security interests to adjust the tariffs imposed by previous proclamations to apply to the derivatives of aluminum articles and steel articles,” he added. “This action is necessary and appropriate to address circumvention that is undermining the effectiveness of the adjustment of imports” (Axelrod). While this is an acknowledgement by the executive branch regarding the growing problem within Chinese and American trade relations, a more cohesive national plan is needed to effectively counteract China’s progress.
As America’s people and industries reel from the impact of a global pandemic, the U.S. should institute a temporary but immediate and total ban on the sale of any U.S. company deemed “critical infrastructure,” whose value has been “materially impacted by the pandemic, to a Chinese-owned or controlled entity” (Green). China has shown how it uses its economic policy to further its ambitious global and ideological plans through past currency manipulation and the withholding of critical materials (such as rare earth minerals, from the global supply chain): “Be it overtly or obliquely, through direct ownership or by de facto monopoly, China has encroached on or outright assaulted nearly every meaningful sector of the U.S. economy” (Green). It is no secret that China has been investing heavily in American Government debt, companies, and real estate for years. A majority of American officials agree that at least part of the reason China has become the world’s biggest manufacturing center is traceable to the kind of mercantilist practices supposedly banned by WTO rules, although there are still vast political differences about how the United States should address the underlying problems. Once again, China is playing a long game, and America has yet to figure out the rules. Green argues that the United States must take immediate action to protect our economic interests “from being looted by a uniquely opportunistic adversary.” It is clear that the United States needs to develop a clear path forward before it is too late to counteract the effects of its industrial, economic, and medical dependency on China.
Military
China’s geography has led to a history full of skirmishes along its boarders, civil unrest, occupations, and brutal wars. Historically, the Chinese military tradition is quite different than the direct approach the used by the Western world. Chinese military operations are patterned after earlier military philosophers and the ancient Chinese classics of Lao Tzu’s Te Ching and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Sun Tzu said, “It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.’’ As a result, China’s military operations traditionally utilize multiple paths to an objective. According to the War Department’s educational manual on China, the Chinese military operations include but are not limited to a dependence on indirectness, centrality of deception, deviousness, subtlety, secrecy, infiltration, the manipulation of one’s opponent, and outright treachery.
President Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders believe the ongoing reorganization of its Armed Forces is absolutely critical to achieving great power status and achieving the “Chinese Dream” of national rejuvenation: “A strong military is critical to advancing China’s interests, preventing other countries from taking steps that would damage those interests, and ensuring that China can defend itself and its sovereignty claims.” According to the US-China Military Scorecard: Forces, Geography, and the evolving balance of power, 1996-2017, China has developed its current military capabilities to project power far from home. Over the past two decades, China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) has transformed itself from a large, antiquated force into a capable, modern military.
According to the 2017 DOD’s Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China, The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is the largest in the world with 18 group armies and many specialized elements. In the past, China used law enforcement ships and maritime militia to enforce maritime claims and to challenge Japan’s claims of the Senkaku Islands. Their navy, now the largest in Asia, consists of 300 surface ships, amphibious ships, patrol craft, submarines, and two aircraft carriers (recently added in 2016). In the event/time of a crisis, their submarines and aircraft carriers can be used for anti-access or area denial in order to push the United States naval and air force out of the western Pacific (Larter). The Project Air Force team at Rand Corp. describes an emerging Chinese air force that aims to rival the United States' own, both technologically and strategically, often by mirroring: “It is important to recognize that many of the PLA efforts in the military aerospace sector focus on fielding of specific capabilities in sufficient quantities to deter the United States from entering a conflict; the PLA would vastly prefer deterrence over actual combat operations,” the 2017 Department of Defense report reads. “In this sense, the capabilities competition can be regarded as aimed at defeating the United States without actually fighting. Copying or innovating their own capabilities are both valid pathways to this goal for the Air Force. However, ‘the lower cost and higher speed of ‘the copying and adapting approach’ appears to have made it a preferred approach whenever available.” According to the latest data from the Department of Defense report during 2019 the major theaters (although constantly evolving) can be seen below.
It is reported that Chinese companies have received over $340 billion in construction contracts and are engaged in projects across the world at an unprecedented scale with contracts financed by state-owned Chinese financial institutions. According to Michael Safi and Amantha Perera in their article published in the Guardian, Chinese companies have participated in the construction and operation of a total of 42 ports in 34 countries under its Belt and Road initiative. Additionally, China has also signed 38 bilateral and regional maritime agreements covering 47 countries along the Belt and Road trade routes. Maritime Silk Road currently links China’s coastal parts to the South Pacific and Australia and to Europe and Africa through the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean and the Arctic. Beijing’s maritime ambitions reflect the fact China is the world’s largest exporter and the second largest importer. China is securing access to infrastructure and resources that it considers critical to its economic development. These countries make up half the world’s population and a quarter of the world’s GDP, and they are quickly becoming economic partners with China. “China’s penetration of south Asia is the biggest game changer in 100 years,” says Constantino Xavier, a fellow at the thinktank Carnegie India. “The Russians tried; the Americans tried. This is the first time since at least world war two you have a massive power contesting the Indian state” (Safi and Perera). China’s dominance in the construction sector comes at the expense of local contractors in partner countries and often large debt owed to China. There are concerns as other nations stand by and watch what is taking place.
There is a very real fear that China is successfully using targeted economic investment to strengthen their geopolitical aims. Critics worry China could use “debt-trap diplomacy” to extract strategic concessions – such as over territorial disputes in the South China Sea or silence on human rights violations. In 2011, China wrote off an undisclosed debt owed by Tajikistan in exchange for 1,158 sq. km (447 sq. miles) of disputed territory (Davidson). “There are some extreme cases where China lends into very high-risk environments, and it would seem that the motivation is something different. In these situations, the leverage China has as lender is used for purposes unrelated to the original loan,” said Scott Morris, one of the authors of the Washington Centre for Global Development report, quoted by the Guardian (Davidson). Gaurav Dalmia, the chairman of the Indian conglomerate Dalmia Group stated, “Indian business leaders are concerned that China is building linkages around the world” (Safi and Perera). A lot of the development is in very high-risk areas. The world is starting to see China use their newfound leverage over these countries in exchange for quieting political disagreements (human rights issues mainly) and in exchange for contested territories (like in Tajikistan). It is becoming clearer as the project progresses that China’s only interest in this project is not economical (Davidson).
As BRI expands its scope, global concerns that BRI is a form of economic imperialism, which gives China too much leverage over other countries, increase. There are also the bigger geopolitical fears that China could use these projects as a way of shaping and influencing global policy that are becoming more evident as time passes. According to Jonathan Hillman, Director of the Reconnecting Asia Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, “It’s a reminder BRI is about more than roads, railways, and other hard infrastructure. […] It’s also a vehicle for China to write new rules, establish institutions that reflect Chinese interests, and reshape ‘soft’ infrastructure.” Global concerns about China’s ulterior motives have led some leaders to worry that the expanded Chinese commercial presence around the world will eventually lead to an expanded military presence. “If it can carry goods, it can carry troops,” says Jonathan Hillman, Director of the Reconnecting Asia Project at CSIS (Kuo and Kommenda). Chinese money has gushed into south Asia (especially Pakistan) in the past decade, and billions more has been promised as part of the BRI. Last year, China established its first overseas military base in Djibouti. Analysts say almost all the ports and other transport infrastructure being built can also be used for commercial and military purposes (Kuo and Kommenda). What has become clear in the research is that there are alternative motives for the Chinese government’s investment in these projects that go far beyond economic development and the pursuit of limited natural resources.
US and China Trade Relations
An ancient Chinese stratagem instructs military leaders to “chen huo da jie,” or to “loot a house when it’s on fire.” This type of economic espionage and assertive stratagem creates particular problems for the United States’ economic future. Basically, if China strikes when its enemy is most vulnerable, right now we are pretty vulnerable. It is unknown the extent to which China has encroached on, or outright assaulted, nearly every meaningful sector of the American economy. According to a report recently published by the Rand Corporation, The United States is engaged in a new era of great-power competition, which is taking place, in part, in the realms of information, ideas, and ideology (Watts). The report goes on to explain how America is less influential internationally, and that China is perceived “as well as or more positively than the United States throughout much of the developing world” (Watts). Rand Corporation’s report suggests that to help support and proliferate its ideology abroad, China will use its economic policy as a means to slowly change policies from within global financial and investment institutions (Watts). China’s strategy and the problems it has created are simply too big to ignore any longer. American businesses have been eclipse by Chinese companies in the following areas: shipbuilding (in 1976, the US was #1 worldwide and now it is #19), semiconductors (according to The Economist, most of the world’s electronic manufacturing capacity now resides in China), batteries (73% of global lithium cell manufacturing capacity is located in China), and pharmaceuticals (over 60% of the United States’ major over-the-counter and prescription medications are imported from China). Perhaps the most surprising thing about all of the aforementioned vulnerabilities (drugs, ships, chips and batteries) is that China has emerged as a global economic leader during the last twenty years without a coherent Washington-led challenge or counter-policy.
In the last two decades, since Beijing was admitted to the World Trade Organization (WTO), China has gradually eclipsed America’s preeminence as a manufacturing nation. One example of China’s investment strategy is its acquisition of Smithfield Foods (purchased in 2013), the largest acquisition of an American company to date (Pei). Smithfield Foods produces 10% of all-American pork; it employs over 50,000 citizens, and it owns/leases 2,500 farms that are worth more than 500 million (with an annual revenue of 14 Billion). As with other Chinese purchases of American assets, “this particular deal can be seen from several perspectives [...] most interpretations manage to tell part of the real story” (Pei). According to Nancy McLernon, President of the Organization for International Investment, "The food supply is part of our critical infrastructure. But that should always be protected regardless of a company's ownership. It's imperative that we don't slam the door on job-creating investment by foreign companies based on knee-jerk reactions" (Kavilanz). While she has a point, “Regarding the Chinese Communists, America must become much more proprietary with our vital enterprises — manufacturing, technology, supply chain, medical, communications, agricultural, military, space and education. The wide-open door that ignores the consistent and continued crimes of the Chinese government must be closed” (Perry). It is also imperative that America hold foreign investors accountable for their motives and ultimate actions while protecting America’s future needs and economic autonomy.
The Smithfield purchase is only one example of China’s current strategy. In recent years, China has dominated production of most new technologies ranging from pharmaceuticals to smart phones, from wind turbines to solar panels, from commercial drones to new GPS capabilities. From a national security perspective, Chinese companies have taken ownership of U.S. companies critical to America’s strategic supply chain. According to Green, “the U.S. is entirely dependent on China for segments of the supply of rare earth minerals, which are necessary for everything from cellphones to critical weapon systems,” but the United State’s dependency on Chinese materials, products, and exports does not stop there.
It has become clear in recent months that the United States is too dependent upon China in regard to its pharmaceutical and medical response times during national crises. In December 2019, Politico published an article explaining how China was weaponizing pharmaceutical exports. According to Palmer and Bermingham, “One of the biggest national security threats in the U.S.-China trade war could be the everyday medicines taken by millions of Americans.” Almost all of the ibuprofen and hydrocortisone, and most of the acetaminophen, consumed in the United States originate in China. Last year alone, according to Commerce Department data, “China accounted for 95 percent of U.S. imports of ibuprofen, 91 percent of U.S. imports of hydrocortisone, 70 percent of U.S. imports of acetaminophen, 40 to 45 percent of U.S. imports of penicillin and 40 percent of U.S. imports of heparin” (Palmer and Bermingham). This medical dependency on China has never been clearer than it is right now in the middle of the COVID-19 Pandemic. This “wake-up call” is explored by Loren Thompson in his article entitled "Coronavirus Highlights US Strategic Vulnerabilities Span by Over-Reliance on China.” Thompson explains how “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration admits it lacks the capacity to track the supply chain of imported drugs […] The U.S. thus may have developed vulnerabilities in the availability of drugs needed during wartime [or clearly pandemics] without knowing it.” Palmer and Bermingham go on to support Thompson’s claim by explaining that many generic prescription drugs, even when they are manufactured in India or other countries, “often require active ingredients made only in China.” By continuing to avoid the implications and consequences of America’s newly developed economic relationship with China, America has become vulnerable to international influences during national crises. Our dependency on foreign nations to provide for and protect our national infrastructures is precarious at best and outright dangerous at its worst.
In an article published in The Hill this January, “The president has relied on tariffs to help strengthen U.S. production, an issue he says impacts national security” (Axelrod). For instance, the U.S. had two dozen aluminum smelters within its borders when the new century began; by the time President Trump took office, only five remained of which two were functioning at full capacity. Chinese smelters have no inherent pricing advantage, so critics have correctly concluded that China became the world’s largest producer (and exporter) of aluminum through the use of subsidies and other trade-distorting practices. A similar pattern prevails in steel, which explains why both industries became early targets of Trump tariffs: “[I]mports of these derivative articles threaten to undermine the actions taken to address the risk to the national security of the United States,” Trump said in one of his proclamations. “[D]omestic production capacity to produce aluminum articles and steel articles for national defense and critical infrastructure is essential to United States national security.” Trump concludes, “that it is necessary and appropriate in light of our national security interests to adjust the tariffs imposed by previous proclamations to apply to the derivatives of aluminum articles and steel articles,” he added. “This action is necessary and appropriate to address circumvention that is undermining the effectiveness of the adjustment of imports” (Axelrod). While this is an acknowledgement by the executive branch regarding the growing problem within Chinese and American trade relations, a more cohesive national plan is needed to effectively counteract China’s progress.
As America’s people and industries reel from the impact of a global pandemic, the U.S. should institute a temporary but immediate and total ban on the sale of any U.S. company deemed “critical infrastructure,” whose value has been “materially impacted by the pandemic, to a Chinese-owned or controlled entity” (Green). China has shown how it uses its economic policy to further its ambitious global and ideological plans through past currency manipulation and the withholding of critical materials (such as rare earth minerals, from the global supply chain): “Be it overtly or obliquely, through direct ownership or by de facto monopoly, China has encroached on or outright assaulted nearly every meaningful sector of the U.S. economy” (Green). It is no secret that China has been investing heavily in American Government debt, companies, and real estate for years. A majority of American officials agree that at least part of the reason China has become the world’s biggest manufacturing center is traceable to the kind of mercantilist practices supposedly banned by WTO rules, although there are still vast political differences about how the United States should address the underlying problems. Once again, China is playing a long game, and America has yet to figure out the rules. Green argues that the United States must take immediate action to protect our economic interests “from being looted by a uniquely opportunistic adversary.” It is clear that the United States needs to develop a clear path forward before it is too late to counteract the effects of its industrial, economic, and medical dependency on China.
Military
China’s geography has led to a history full of skirmishes along its boarders, civil unrest, occupations, and brutal wars. Historically, the Chinese military tradition is quite different than the direct approach the used by the Western world. Chinese military operations are patterned after earlier military philosophers and the ancient Chinese classics of Lao Tzu’s Te Ching and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Sun Tzu said, “It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.’’ As a result, China’s military operations traditionally utilize multiple paths to an objective. According to the War Department’s educational manual on China, the Chinese military operations include but are not limited to a dependence on indirectness, centrality of deception, deviousness, subtlety, secrecy, infiltration, the manipulation of one’s opponent, and outright treachery.
President Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders believe the ongoing reorganization of its Armed Forces is absolutely critical to achieving great power status and achieving the “Chinese Dream” of national rejuvenation: “A strong military is critical to advancing China’s interests, preventing other countries from taking steps that would damage those interests, and ensuring that China can defend itself and its sovereignty claims.” According to the US-China Military Scorecard: Forces, Geography, and the evolving balance of power, 1996-2017, China has developed its current military capabilities to project power far from home. Over the past two decades, China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) has transformed itself from a large, antiquated force into a capable, modern military.
According to the 2017 DOD’s Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China, The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is the largest in the world with 18 group armies and many specialized elements. In the past, China used law enforcement ships and maritime militia to enforce maritime claims and to challenge Japan’s claims of the Senkaku Islands. Their navy, now the largest in Asia, consists of 300 surface ships, amphibious ships, patrol craft, submarines, and two aircraft carriers (recently added in 2016). In the event/time of a crisis, their submarines and aircraft carriers can be used for anti-access or area denial in order to push the United States naval and air force out of the western Pacific (Larter). The Project Air Force team at Rand Corp. describes an emerging Chinese air force that aims to rival the United States' own, both technologically and strategically, often by mirroring: “It is important to recognize that many of the PLA efforts in the military aerospace sector focus on fielding of specific capabilities in sufficient quantities to deter the United States from entering a conflict; the PLA would vastly prefer deterrence over actual combat operations,” the 2017 Department of Defense report reads. “In this sense, the capabilities competition can be regarded as aimed at defeating the United States without actually fighting. Copying or innovating their own capabilities are both valid pathways to this goal for the Air Force. However, ‘the lower cost and higher speed of ‘the copying and adapting approach’ appears to have made it a preferred approach whenever available.” According to the latest data from the Department of Defense report during 2019 the major theaters (although constantly evolving) can be seen below.
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Many of China’s programs are designed to overcome US military technological advantages (Department of Defense 2019). In March of 2020, China completed its global navigation system (GPS) establishing its independence and providing their military and economy additional capabilities. Their system will provide commercial alternatives to United States’ GPS, Russia’s GLONASS, and Europe’s Galileo for countries located along the “Belt & Road Initiative” (Singer and Lee). Commercially, China is expected to exceed $57 billion in 2020. For the PLA it is a cornerstone in their modernization by providing advance communications (currently down to squad level), supports precision-guided weapons, and most importantly independence in this domain. China recently shot down a weather satellite with a ballistic missile. Three other nations possess that capability: The United States, Russia, and India. China has developed the military capabilities to project power away from its shores, maintain sea lane security, participate in counterpiracy, and to take an active role in peacekeeping and humanitarian/disaster relief. According to the DOD, China is expanding its access to foreign ports to pre-position the necessary logistics support to regularize and sustain deployments in the “far seas,” waters as distant as the Indian Ocean, Mediterranean Sea, and Atlantic Ocean. Additionally, they have a significant presence in Panama and Central and South America. China now controls both ends of the Panama Canal. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Support base was built in Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa, significantly increasing China’s power projection there and into the Indian Ocean. This base is in close proximity to foreign bases of the United States, France, and Japan. The presence of this Chinese base, in such close proximity to a US base, has created geopolitical tensions. A greater overseas naval logistics and basing footprint would better position the PLA to expand its participation in non-combatant evacuation operations, search-and-rescue, and humanitarian assistance/disaster relief. China claims this facility is designed “to help the navy and army further participate in United Nations peacekeeping operations, carry out escort missions in the waters near Somalia and the Gulf of Aden, and provide humanitarian assistance.” (Department of Defense 2017). China’s overseas military basing may be constrained by the willingness of countries to support a PLA presence in one of their ports. A more robust overseas logistics and basing infrastructure would also be essential to enable China to project and sustain military power at greater distances from China.
One of China’s overarching focuses has been to leverage its growing power to assert its sovereignty claims over features in the East and South China Seas, According to The US-China Military Scorecard: Forces, Geography, and the evolving balance of power, 1996-2017, Chinas strategy has recently evolved from a “near sea” defense and added “far sea” protection to its mission. China has become the number one ship-producing nation in the world. They are continuing to build military outposts in the East and South China Sea. According to the DoD, China has created three man-made islands to seize disputed territories, to protect its shipping lanes, and to claim the surrounding territorial waters. These man-made islands currently have runways, hangars, anti-aircraft batteries and missile defense systems. According to the DoD’s 2019 report, China’s current conventional missiles capability extends from 300 km to 5,500 km while it’s Medium and Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles extend out to 13,000 km.
One of China’s overarching focuses has been to leverage its growing power to assert its sovereignty claims over features in the East and South China Seas, According to The US-China Military Scorecard: Forces, Geography, and the evolving balance of power, 1996-2017, Chinas strategy has recently evolved from a “near sea” defense and added “far sea” protection to its mission. China has become the number one ship-producing nation in the world. They are continuing to build military outposts in the East and South China Sea. According to the DoD, China has created three man-made islands to seize disputed territories, to protect its shipping lanes, and to claim the surrounding territorial waters. These man-made islands currently have runways, hangars, anti-aircraft batteries and missile defense systems. According to the DoD’s 2019 report, China’s current conventional missiles capability extends from 300 km to 5,500 km while it’s Medium and Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles extend out to 13,000 km.
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Interestingly, China has long maintained a “no first use” (NFU) nuclear weapons policy that states it would use nuclear forces only in response to a nuclear strike against China. China’s NFU pledge consists of two stated commitments: China will never use nuclear weapons first at any time and under any circumstances, and it unconditionally undertakes not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against any non-nuclear-weapon state or in nuclear-weapon-free zones. The NFU is an interesting policy when considered in historical context. According to Henry Kissinger, in his book On China, Nixon’s rationale behind the de facto alliance with China was because the Soviet Union was preparing to launch a pre-emptive nuclear attack against China. Nixon, according to Kissinger, decided the Soviet Union was the more dangerous party and that it was against America’s interests for China to be "smashed" in a Chinese-Soviet war. "It was a revolutionary moment in US foreign policy," Kissinger explains. "An American president declared we had a strategic interest in the survival of a major communist country." Both nations were determined to resist Soviet advances, so they quickly agreed to a common philosophy: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” This shift in the balance of power turned China and the United States into mutually dependent economic giants; however, they never developed a strategic plan outlining how they would work together.
According to the DoD, China is investing a significant percentage of its GDP into its official defense budget. Subsequently, “China’s leaders remain focused on developing the capabilities to deter or defeat adversary power projection and counter third-party intervention—including by the United States—during a crisis or conflict.” In spite of China’s slowing economic growth its a military budget has grown at an average of 10% since 2007, producing the country’s strongest and most modernized military to date (Department of Defense 2019).
According to the DoD, China is investing a significant percentage of its GDP into its official defense budget. Subsequently, “China’s leaders remain focused on developing the capabilities to deter or defeat adversary power projection and counter third-party intervention—including by the United States—during a crisis or conflict.” In spite of China’s slowing economic growth its a military budget has grown at an average of 10% since 2007, producing the country’s strongest and most modernized military to date (Department of Defense 2019).
This investment, along with regular naval vessel visits to foreign ports, reflects and amplifies China’s growing influence and highlights the extending reach of its armed forces. As discussed later in greater detail, according to Michael Safi and Amantha Perera in their article published in The Guardian, Chinese companies have participated in the construction and operation of a total of 42 ports in 34 countries under its Belt and Road initiative. Additionally, China has also signed 38 bilateral and regional maritime agreements covering 47 countries along the Belt and Road trade routes. Maritime Silk Road currently links China’s coastal parts to the South Pacific and Australia, and to Europe and Africa through the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Arctic. China’s expanding international economic interests are increasing demands for the navy to operate in more distant maritime environments to protect Chinese citizens, natural resources, investments, and critical sea lines of communication (SLOC). China most likely will seek to establish additional military bases in countries with which it has a longstanding friendly relationship and similar strategic interests, such as Pakistan, and in which there is a precedent for hosting foreign militaries.
Arms transfers are also a component of China foreign policy, used in conjunction with other types of military, economic aid, and development assistance to support broader foreign policy goals (Department of Defense 2017, 21). From 2011 to 2015, China was the world’s fourth largest arms supplier with more than $20 billion in sales. Over $9 billion was made by selling to Asia-Pacific countries, primarily Pakistan. Sub-Saharan Africa was China’s second largest regional arms market. China’s ability to remain among the world’s top five global arms suppliers hinges largely on continued strong sales to Pakistan. Recently, China signed an agreement with Pakistan for the sale of eight submarines. The first four will be built in China, with the remaining four in Pakistan. China’s arms sales are conducted via state-run export organizations to generate profits and to offset defense-related research and development costs. The fact that China exports this weaponized technology without any scrutiny or concern about human rights aid sales and allows them access too many buyers. Chinese arms are less expensive than those offered by other sources. China is one of only a few global suppliers of such equipment and faces little competition for sales to the Middle East and North Africa. This likely will result in the Middle East and North Africa surpassing Sub-Saharan Africa as China’s second largest arms export market. Other major Asia-Pacific customers of Chinese military equipment include Bangladesh and Burma. China sold arms to several states in the Middle East and North Africa, including Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates. China faces little competition for sale of such systems.
It is important to remember that historically China has fought many wars/skirmishes with many of its border countries over land disputes. China perceives American troops in South Korea, Japan, and Afghanistan as serious threats to its autonomy. Since the American presence in Afghanistan curtails the growth and spread of anti-Chinese terrorist groups, America’s presence in Afghanistan poses a unique dilemma for Chinese policy. According to the Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs, having witnessed the United Kingdom’s, Russia’s, and now the United States’ unsuccessful operations in Afghanistan, China has no designs on Afghanistan’s territory and considerers it the “graveyard of empires.” While Washington was distracted, bogged down, and spending trillions of dollars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Beijing used the “god-sent ‘window of strategic opportunity’” to build its strength (Gertz). While the United States needed China’s nominal support for its war on terror, China played up the terrorist threats in Xinjiang, using the global war on terror to justify its policy in the Uighur region (Gertz). The Chinese have viewed America’s wars since 9/11 as the best things that have happened to China since the end of the Cold War: America’s preoccupation allowed China to strengthen itself for future interactions.
Cyberspace
Analysts believe that China is not simply focusing on modernizing their military, creating strategic global routes, investing in competing economies, and monopolizing medicinal products to garner global influence, but that the country has strategically planned to control and utilize cyber activities (attacks and espionage) to help secure its global position. Despite the fact that there is no commonly accepted definition of cyber warfare, Chinese military analysts frequently say that “Cyber warfare is strategic warfare in the information age, just as it was nuclear warfare in the 20th century” (Heginbotham). This definition serves as the foundation China uses to argue that cyber warfare has a much broader significance to national security in areas beyond the military. China’s overarching concern is balancing national security needs, domestic social stability, and continual economic development in order to sustain its recent growth. The Chinese government’s monitoring of the internet and social media (both internally and externally) is to prevent various illegal online actions that could cause social unrest (which could lead to large-scale social and political instability). At the same time, China utilizes the internet and social media as platforms to disseminate distorted information throughout China and the world. China has not developed these cyber capabilities and policies in a vacuum.
China’s academic discussion of cyber warfare started in the 1990s (when it was called “information warfare” internationally). Impressed by how the US military benefited from the application of high technologies in the Gulf War, China began to realize that there was no way to adequately defend itself without understanding how the world was using high technologies, mainly information technologies, in more critical and significant roles. Once China began to understand the future implications of technology’s use across the globe, China began creating cyber units within its military. The presence of these cyber units was confirmed by a Chinese defense ministry spokesman, Geng Yansheng. In a briefing in Xinhua, Yansheng declared that “The team was set up to better safeguard the internet security of the armed forces.” He acknowledged that cyber security was an international problem, affecting civil and military arenas. His belief at the time was that China was still “relatively weak” in internet security protection, and vulnerable to cyber-terrorism (Heginbotham). China has come a long way since Yansheng’s initial interpretation, and China’s implementation of these cyber units has strengthened immensely. The Chinese government’s views on cyber warfare are now consistent with its military strategy, and they are continuously modified according to China’s domestic needs and the activities of foreign militaries (Bing).
China’s present- day cyber policy is a direct real-time response to the changing cyber warfare approaches and practices of other countries, especially those of America and Russia. China uses its cyber capabilities to collect intelligence within America’s diplomatic, economic, and defense industrial base sectors. The information China now targets can be used to benefit China’s high-technology industries, to support China’s military modernization, or to provide the CCP insights into the perspectives of American leadership. The information China now targets aligns with the PLA’s goal to reproduce America’s defense networks, logistics, and various other military capabilities. An excellent example of how China utilizes stolen US military technology is China’s recreated J-31, a direct copycat of America’s technically sophisticated F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (Bing). China also reversed engineered a Russian J-15, carrier jet fighter (Bing). The skills required for these intrusions are similar to those necessary to conduct successful cyberattacks.
There have been scores of articles that claim that China poses and uses cyber-attacks on a regular basis, both locally and globally, to ultimately win global dominance. The Office of the Secretary of Defense’s Annual Report to Congress in 2017 states that “Computer systems around the world, including those owned by the U.S. Government, continued to be targeted by China-based intrusions […] These and past intrusions focused on accessing networks and extracting information.” China continues this cyber-enabled theft in order to advance its military’s technology and its economic development. The official list of Chinese cyber-attacks is very long. These Chinese cyber offenses have become the reality of modern-day hybrid warfare. Every American sector is under attack: military, technology, and media. The British intelligence analyst Glenmore Trenear-Harvey explains that “The intelligence agencies of many countries believe that China has had an elite hacking team within the army for over 5 years. There can be ‘literally thousands of hackers within China who have been recruited to form a ‘botnet army,’ attacking from unsuspected computers. They can then use this capability either to conduct a denial of service, take down sites, or act as a Trojan horse to get within computers and steal information” (Segal and Lan). Scores of articles claim that the Chinese government is behind the scenes in many malicious global cyber activities. They claim that China is using cyber power to ultimately win global dominance. Even though many of these reports focus on the tensions between China and the United States, these actions are unlikely to cause armed conflict. Suspicions, however, could drag the US and China into future arms races, and even hot wars. Given the risks, it is necessary to examine China’s intentions and understand their future strategic vision regarding cyber warfare in regard to the United States.
FUTURE POTENTIAL CONFLICTS AND FLASHPOINTS
Taiwan/Hong Kong
Is Taiwan going to be independent or part of a reunified China? This question seems to rest at the center of Chinese and American foreign relations right now. Gen. Wei Fenghe, China’s defense minister, at the Xiangshan Security Forum organized by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) assured delegations from sixty-four countries that China’s military “has always been a staunch defender of world peace” (Hille, Feng, and Manson). He then went on to say that “Taiwan is China’s core interest--- If anyone tries to separate Taiwan from China, China’s military will take action at all costs” (Laing). China, meanwhile, is downplaying its de facto colonization of the South China Sea and emphasizing other Asian security issues seen as important to Chinese leaders. At that same security forum, Major General Yao Yunzhu, Director Emeritus of the Center on China-America Defense Relations at the Academy of Military Science in Beijing, stated that “Seriously talking about the risk of a war in the South China Sea is nonsense, we will not allow that to happen. But there is Taiwan, there is North Korea, there are other issues” (Hille, Weng, and Manson). Issues that must be considered as the United States moves forward with Chinese negotiations involving future policy agreements in regard to Taiwan. The operative questions regarding Taiwan are responsible for several key points of tension between China and the United States.
China and Taiwan split during a civil war in 1949; Beijing still considers Taiwan Chinese territory and has increased its threats to annex the self-governing democracy by force if necessary. According to the Human Rights Watch, authorities in Tibetan areas continue to “severely restrict religious freedom, speech, movement, and assembly, and fail to redress popular concerns about mining and land grabs by local officials, which often involve intimidation and arbitrary violence by security forces.” Authorities also utilize intense surveillance of all communications. Education is also a way China practices control. According to the Human Rights Watch, “Intensified political education has been reported in monasteries and schools, and for the public at large.” Authorities have also used a nationwide anti-crime campaign to encourage the Tibetan people to “denounce members of their communities on the slightest suspicion of sympathy for the exiled Dalai Lama or opposition to the government.”
Until 1997, Hong Kong was ruled by Britain as a colony but then returned to China. Under the one country, two systems arrangement, it has some autonomy, and its people have more rights. Taiwan continues to reject Chinese pressure to reunite Taiwan and China under the one country, two systems framework that governs Hong Kong. Hong Kong’s recent riots started in June 2019 over an extradition bill that would have allowed for criminal suspects to be extradited to mainland China under certain circumstances. The protestors strongly believe this bill exposes them to unfair trials and possibly violent treatment at the hands of the Chinese government. The protesters also believe that this bill allows China greater influence over Hong Kong’s government and could be used to target activists and journalists. Hong Kong's protests started in June. The bill was withdrawn in September, but demonstrations continue and now demand full democracy and an inquiry into police actions. Clashes between police and activists have become increasingly violent, with police firing live bullets and protesters attacking officers and throwing petrol bombs. Currently, Hong Kong citizens maintain some autonomy and they are allowed more rights than those on the mainland. Presently the United States still supplies weapons to Taiwan.
Taiwan, claimed by Beijing but clinging to its independence with the help of a U.S. commitment to aid its defense, has been a sore point between China and the U.S. for decades but tensions appear to be escalating in the last five years: “Wei’s threatening tone reflected a new level of tension in military relations between the two countries” (Hille, Weng, and Manson). The series of confrontations are part of a new and more fractious military relationship in which Beijing and Washington no longer conceal that they are rivals. “In the past, China’s identity in the U.S. strategy was as a problematic partner. Now it is a major competitor,” Jin Canrong, an international relations expert who frequently advises Chinese policymakers, said at the Xiangshan Forum (Hille, Weng, and Manson). “The U.S. cannot accept China’s rise and so this year we have a lot of foreign relations conflicts and a trade war. This is the reality we must live with” (Hille, Weng, and Manson). Possible scenarios for future conflict between China and the United States in regard to this conflict of interest could escalate to include: a cross-strait conflict could be a simple blockade of Taiwanese ports (mirroring relations between the US vs. Cuba in the 1960s), or ground missiles that target specific locations, or even a full-scale invasion. Pentagon officials worry that China’s increased military spending, growing global footprint, and extensive technological research will close the gap that has ensured America’s global military dominance, raising the prospect of a flare-up based on miscalculation or deliberate provocation (Hille, Weng, and Manson). The question that seems to remain at the forefront of this conflict is, “Would the US be willing to start WWIII in order to continue their support of Taiwan?”
Japan
Our Alliance with Japan is the cornerstone of America’s security interests in Asia and it is fundamental to regional stability and prosperity. According to the U.S. Department of State, Japan is one of the world’s most successful democracies and largest economies. The U.S. provides no developmental assistance to Japan, yet Japan provides bases, as well as financial and material support to U.S. forward-deployed forces that are essential for maintaining stability in the region.
Arms transfers are also a component of China foreign policy, used in conjunction with other types of military, economic aid, and development assistance to support broader foreign policy goals (Department of Defense 2017, 21). From 2011 to 2015, China was the world’s fourth largest arms supplier with more than $20 billion in sales. Over $9 billion was made by selling to Asia-Pacific countries, primarily Pakistan. Sub-Saharan Africa was China’s second largest regional arms market. China’s ability to remain among the world’s top five global arms suppliers hinges largely on continued strong sales to Pakistan. Recently, China signed an agreement with Pakistan for the sale of eight submarines. The first four will be built in China, with the remaining four in Pakistan. China’s arms sales are conducted via state-run export organizations to generate profits and to offset defense-related research and development costs. The fact that China exports this weaponized technology without any scrutiny or concern about human rights aid sales and allows them access too many buyers. Chinese arms are less expensive than those offered by other sources. China is one of only a few global suppliers of such equipment and faces little competition for sales to the Middle East and North Africa. This likely will result in the Middle East and North Africa surpassing Sub-Saharan Africa as China’s second largest arms export market. Other major Asia-Pacific customers of Chinese military equipment include Bangladesh and Burma. China sold arms to several states in the Middle East and North Africa, including Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates. China faces little competition for sale of such systems.
It is important to remember that historically China has fought many wars/skirmishes with many of its border countries over land disputes. China perceives American troops in South Korea, Japan, and Afghanistan as serious threats to its autonomy. Since the American presence in Afghanistan curtails the growth and spread of anti-Chinese terrorist groups, America’s presence in Afghanistan poses a unique dilemma for Chinese policy. According to the Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs, having witnessed the United Kingdom’s, Russia’s, and now the United States’ unsuccessful operations in Afghanistan, China has no designs on Afghanistan’s territory and considerers it the “graveyard of empires.” While Washington was distracted, bogged down, and spending trillions of dollars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Beijing used the “god-sent ‘window of strategic opportunity’” to build its strength (Gertz). While the United States needed China’s nominal support for its war on terror, China played up the terrorist threats in Xinjiang, using the global war on terror to justify its policy in the Uighur region (Gertz). The Chinese have viewed America’s wars since 9/11 as the best things that have happened to China since the end of the Cold War: America’s preoccupation allowed China to strengthen itself for future interactions.
Cyberspace
Analysts believe that China is not simply focusing on modernizing their military, creating strategic global routes, investing in competing economies, and monopolizing medicinal products to garner global influence, but that the country has strategically planned to control and utilize cyber activities (attacks and espionage) to help secure its global position. Despite the fact that there is no commonly accepted definition of cyber warfare, Chinese military analysts frequently say that “Cyber warfare is strategic warfare in the information age, just as it was nuclear warfare in the 20th century” (Heginbotham). This definition serves as the foundation China uses to argue that cyber warfare has a much broader significance to national security in areas beyond the military. China’s overarching concern is balancing national security needs, domestic social stability, and continual economic development in order to sustain its recent growth. The Chinese government’s monitoring of the internet and social media (both internally and externally) is to prevent various illegal online actions that could cause social unrest (which could lead to large-scale social and political instability). At the same time, China utilizes the internet and social media as platforms to disseminate distorted information throughout China and the world. China has not developed these cyber capabilities and policies in a vacuum.
China’s academic discussion of cyber warfare started in the 1990s (when it was called “information warfare” internationally). Impressed by how the US military benefited from the application of high technologies in the Gulf War, China began to realize that there was no way to adequately defend itself without understanding how the world was using high technologies, mainly information technologies, in more critical and significant roles. Once China began to understand the future implications of technology’s use across the globe, China began creating cyber units within its military. The presence of these cyber units was confirmed by a Chinese defense ministry spokesman, Geng Yansheng. In a briefing in Xinhua, Yansheng declared that “The team was set up to better safeguard the internet security of the armed forces.” He acknowledged that cyber security was an international problem, affecting civil and military arenas. His belief at the time was that China was still “relatively weak” in internet security protection, and vulnerable to cyber-terrorism (Heginbotham). China has come a long way since Yansheng’s initial interpretation, and China’s implementation of these cyber units has strengthened immensely. The Chinese government’s views on cyber warfare are now consistent with its military strategy, and they are continuously modified according to China’s domestic needs and the activities of foreign militaries (Bing).
China’s present- day cyber policy is a direct real-time response to the changing cyber warfare approaches and practices of other countries, especially those of America and Russia. China uses its cyber capabilities to collect intelligence within America’s diplomatic, economic, and defense industrial base sectors. The information China now targets can be used to benefit China’s high-technology industries, to support China’s military modernization, or to provide the CCP insights into the perspectives of American leadership. The information China now targets aligns with the PLA’s goal to reproduce America’s defense networks, logistics, and various other military capabilities. An excellent example of how China utilizes stolen US military technology is China’s recreated J-31, a direct copycat of America’s technically sophisticated F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (Bing). China also reversed engineered a Russian J-15, carrier jet fighter (Bing). The skills required for these intrusions are similar to those necessary to conduct successful cyberattacks.
There have been scores of articles that claim that China poses and uses cyber-attacks on a regular basis, both locally and globally, to ultimately win global dominance. The Office of the Secretary of Defense’s Annual Report to Congress in 2017 states that “Computer systems around the world, including those owned by the U.S. Government, continued to be targeted by China-based intrusions […] These and past intrusions focused on accessing networks and extracting information.” China continues this cyber-enabled theft in order to advance its military’s technology and its economic development. The official list of Chinese cyber-attacks is very long. These Chinese cyber offenses have become the reality of modern-day hybrid warfare. Every American sector is under attack: military, technology, and media. The British intelligence analyst Glenmore Trenear-Harvey explains that “The intelligence agencies of many countries believe that China has had an elite hacking team within the army for over 5 years. There can be ‘literally thousands of hackers within China who have been recruited to form a ‘botnet army,’ attacking from unsuspected computers. They can then use this capability either to conduct a denial of service, take down sites, or act as a Trojan horse to get within computers and steal information” (Segal and Lan). Scores of articles claim that the Chinese government is behind the scenes in many malicious global cyber activities. They claim that China is using cyber power to ultimately win global dominance. Even though many of these reports focus on the tensions between China and the United States, these actions are unlikely to cause armed conflict. Suspicions, however, could drag the US and China into future arms races, and even hot wars. Given the risks, it is necessary to examine China’s intentions and understand their future strategic vision regarding cyber warfare in regard to the United States.
FUTURE POTENTIAL CONFLICTS AND FLASHPOINTS
Taiwan/Hong Kong
Is Taiwan going to be independent or part of a reunified China? This question seems to rest at the center of Chinese and American foreign relations right now. Gen. Wei Fenghe, China’s defense minister, at the Xiangshan Security Forum organized by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) assured delegations from sixty-four countries that China’s military “has always been a staunch defender of world peace” (Hille, Feng, and Manson). He then went on to say that “Taiwan is China’s core interest--- If anyone tries to separate Taiwan from China, China’s military will take action at all costs” (Laing). China, meanwhile, is downplaying its de facto colonization of the South China Sea and emphasizing other Asian security issues seen as important to Chinese leaders. At that same security forum, Major General Yao Yunzhu, Director Emeritus of the Center on China-America Defense Relations at the Academy of Military Science in Beijing, stated that “Seriously talking about the risk of a war in the South China Sea is nonsense, we will not allow that to happen. But there is Taiwan, there is North Korea, there are other issues” (Hille, Weng, and Manson). Issues that must be considered as the United States moves forward with Chinese negotiations involving future policy agreements in regard to Taiwan. The operative questions regarding Taiwan are responsible for several key points of tension between China and the United States.
China and Taiwan split during a civil war in 1949; Beijing still considers Taiwan Chinese territory and has increased its threats to annex the self-governing democracy by force if necessary. According to the Human Rights Watch, authorities in Tibetan areas continue to “severely restrict religious freedom, speech, movement, and assembly, and fail to redress popular concerns about mining and land grabs by local officials, which often involve intimidation and arbitrary violence by security forces.” Authorities also utilize intense surveillance of all communications. Education is also a way China practices control. According to the Human Rights Watch, “Intensified political education has been reported in monasteries and schools, and for the public at large.” Authorities have also used a nationwide anti-crime campaign to encourage the Tibetan people to “denounce members of their communities on the slightest suspicion of sympathy for the exiled Dalai Lama or opposition to the government.”
Until 1997, Hong Kong was ruled by Britain as a colony but then returned to China. Under the one country, two systems arrangement, it has some autonomy, and its people have more rights. Taiwan continues to reject Chinese pressure to reunite Taiwan and China under the one country, two systems framework that governs Hong Kong. Hong Kong’s recent riots started in June 2019 over an extradition bill that would have allowed for criminal suspects to be extradited to mainland China under certain circumstances. The protestors strongly believe this bill exposes them to unfair trials and possibly violent treatment at the hands of the Chinese government. The protesters also believe that this bill allows China greater influence over Hong Kong’s government and could be used to target activists and journalists. Hong Kong's protests started in June. The bill was withdrawn in September, but demonstrations continue and now demand full democracy and an inquiry into police actions. Clashes between police and activists have become increasingly violent, with police firing live bullets and protesters attacking officers and throwing petrol bombs. Currently, Hong Kong citizens maintain some autonomy and they are allowed more rights than those on the mainland. Presently the United States still supplies weapons to Taiwan.
Taiwan, claimed by Beijing but clinging to its independence with the help of a U.S. commitment to aid its defense, has been a sore point between China and the U.S. for decades but tensions appear to be escalating in the last five years: “Wei’s threatening tone reflected a new level of tension in military relations between the two countries” (Hille, Weng, and Manson). The series of confrontations are part of a new and more fractious military relationship in which Beijing and Washington no longer conceal that they are rivals. “In the past, China’s identity in the U.S. strategy was as a problematic partner. Now it is a major competitor,” Jin Canrong, an international relations expert who frequently advises Chinese policymakers, said at the Xiangshan Forum (Hille, Weng, and Manson). “The U.S. cannot accept China’s rise and so this year we have a lot of foreign relations conflicts and a trade war. This is the reality we must live with” (Hille, Weng, and Manson). Possible scenarios for future conflict between China and the United States in regard to this conflict of interest could escalate to include: a cross-strait conflict could be a simple blockade of Taiwanese ports (mirroring relations between the US vs. Cuba in the 1960s), or ground missiles that target specific locations, or even a full-scale invasion. Pentagon officials worry that China’s increased military spending, growing global footprint, and extensive technological research will close the gap that has ensured America’s global military dominance, raising the prospect of a flare-up based on miscalculation or deliberate provocation (Hille, Weng, and Manson). The question that seems to remain at the forefront of this conflict is, “Would the US be willing to start WWIII in order to continue their support of Taiwan?”
Japan
Our Alliance with Japan is the cornerstone of America’s security interests in Asia and it is fundamental to regional stability and prosperity. According to the U.S. Department of State, Japan is one of the world’s most successful democracies and largest economies. The U.S. provides no developmental assistance to Japan, yet Japan provides bases, as well as financial and material support to U.S. forward-deployed forces that are essential for maintaining stability in the region.
This Japanese/American Alliance is based on shared vital interests and values. Both countries realize that this alliance is critical to the maintenance of stability in the Indo-Pacific region. Through this alliance the U.S. and Japan coordinate with India trilaterally, negotiate in the U.S.-Australia-India-Japan consultations, and advance maritime security and economic development in Southeast Asia. The CIA Fact Book states that Japan spends less than 1% of the GDP on their military, which consists of the Japan Self-Defense Force (JSDF), Ground Self-Defense Force (Rikujou Jieitai, GSDF), Maritime Self-Defense Force (Kaijou Jieitai, MSDF), Air Self-Defense Force (Koukuu Jieitai, ASDF), and Japan’s Coast Guard (Ministry of Land, Transport, Infrastructure and Tourism). Sino-Japanese relationships are very contentious because China is afraid, there is anger and deep harbored resentments over Japan’s actions toward them during the first half of the 20th century that still taint all diplomatic relationships between the two countries. Additionally, there is a persistent ongoing dispute over the Japanese-administered island of Senkaku/Diaoyu islands with China.
North Korea
North Korea has been in the news a lot lately regarding the rumors surrounding the country’s leader and his response to a recent medical procedure. The questions about what would happen should Kim Jong-Un, Supreme Leader North Korea, die or be incapacitated were sparked by a CNN report that the North Korean despot was in “grave danger” following a surgery. However, the Yonhap News Agency, a South Korean-government funded organization, later tweeted out that there were “no unusual signs” of Kim’s health. But even if he is not on his death bed, Kim does have health issues and his exit from the stage would create turmoil. Without a designated heir there will be “chaos, human suffering, instability,” retired South Korean Lt. Gen. Chun In-Bum, the former head of his nation’s special operations forces, told Military Times. “It’s bad news for everyone” (Altman).
North Korea
North Korea has been in the news a lot lately regarding the rumors surrounding the country’s leader and his response to a recent medical procedure. The questions about what would happen should Kim Jong-Un, Supreme Leader North Korea, die or be incapacitated were sparked by a CNN report that the North Korean despot was in “grave danger” following a surgery. However, the Yonhap News Agency, a South Korean-government funded organization, later tweeted out that there were “no unusual signs” of Kim’s health. But even if he is not on his death bed, Kim does have health issues and his exit from the stage would create turmoil. Without a designated heir there will be “chaos, human suffering, instability,” retired South Korean Lt. Gen. Chun In-Bum, the former head of his nation’s special operations forces, told Military Times. “It’s bad news for everyone” (Altman).
A North Korean collapse for any reason would be chaotic and would drive hundreds of thousands of Korean refugees to Chinese borders in search of food and safety. Presently, according to the Human Rights Watch, China continued to arrest and forcibly returns hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of North Koreans, to North Korean state security services, who have a long history of torturing, sexually abusing, and imprisoning them upon return. Beijing refuses to consider fleeing North Koreans as refugees and will not grant UNHCR access to them or areas on the North Korea-China border, further violating its obligations as a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention.
According to Altman’s article in the Military Times, destabilization in the region would jeopardize the security of the North’s weapons of mass destruction and missiles. David Maxwell, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank said “Since North Korea is a Guerrilla Dynasty built on the myth of anti-Japanese partisan warfare, we can expect large numbers of the military (1.2 million active duty and 6 million reserves) to resist any and all outside foreign intervention to include from South Korea.” (Altman) A South Korean and American alliance must be prepared to handle whatever mass confusion that will arise if North Korea ever collapses. David Maxwell has two decades of military service in Asia said a U.S. and South Korean military reaction to that upheaval could require an effort that “will make Afghanistan and Iraq pale in comparison" (Altman). During a time of crisis in North Korea, South Korean and U.S. Forces actions would most definitely be countered by a reaction/overreaction by China for which they are underprepared to counteract.
India
This year, 2020, marks the 70th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and India. Ties between Beijing and New Delhi have been fraught throughout those decades. As highlighted in “China’s Strategic Assessment of India,” military conflict between the two nations has occurred on multiple occasions over their long-contested common border including: a border war in 1962, the Sikkim skirmishes in 1967, the Sumdorong Chu Valley skirmish in 1987 (Sun). In one of the most recent incidents, the Doklam standoff in 2017, the Chinese did not believe India would respond to its road construction. India responded and the conflict resulted in the Chinese backing down. As a result, China’s policy toward India in the past two to three years has shifted. China has been shifting to closer ties with India the since the Doklam standoff, while it continues to closely watch the emerging alliance between the America and India as part of the Indo-Pacific Strategy.
China promotes closer relations with India, but sometimes the country’s actions undermine this goal. Some of the continuing disagreements between India and China include shared borders (as mentioned above), China’s increasingly positive relationship with Pakistan, trade agreements, economic issues, and regional control. While trying to appear friendly, China and India remain economic competitors for limited markets and dwindling natural resources throughout the area. These two countries are the world’s two most populous nations (Sun). They are projected to have approximately the same population by 2024. Both countries view each other as geostrategic rivals, and they are both striving to be the region’s preeminent leader. In April 2020, India took control and opened a new all-weather access bridge in a disputed part of its border with China to enable faster movement of troops and artillery. The bridge was built in Arunachal Pradesh in India’s remote northeast, a region that’s claimed by China and near the scene of previous clashes. In describing China’s pattern of behavior, Ryan Hass, a Brookings scholar focusing on China and Asia, explains in a recent Twitter post how China “Push(es) until (they) hit steel, escalate public rhetoric, (and then) quietly look for (an) off-ramp.” These smaller incidents make it clear that India and China continue to harbor disagreements over a variety of issues.
China and India have announced 70 events throughout the year to celebrate the 70th anniversary of their diplomatic relations. Despite all outward appearance at rapprochement between these two global giants, “China remains profoundly suspicious of India’s strategic ambition and intentions. Such duality — formal rapprochement on the surface versus distrust and hedging in private — will continue into the foreseeable future with major implications for the region’s peace and stability” (Sun). To further exacerbate the situation, both sides are armed with nuclear weapons and very suspicious of each other’s strategic desires and intensions.
The constantly evolving power equilibrium and alignment among the United States, China, India, and Pakistan has a critical impact on the crisis dynamics of South Asia. Despite the warming of ties on the surface, the suspicion and embedded hostility between China and India have in fact deepened since the introduction of the Indo-Pacific Strategy (Sun). Regional dynamics have shifted, leaving the United States and India on one side with China and Pakistan on the other. These changing dynamics will have important implications for U.S. policy toward South Asia and crisis management moving forward, and they should be monitored closely.
South China Sea
Six countries share claims to the East and South China Seas, an area that is rich in hydrocarbons and natural gas and through which trillions of dollars of global trade flow. As China expands its maritime presence and constructs military outposts on artificial islands, it has been met by growing assertiveness from other regional claimants, including Japan, the Philippines, and Vietnam. The increasingly frequent standoffs span from the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, on China’s eastern flank, to the long stretch of archipelagos in the South China Sea that comprise hundreds of islets.
According to Altman’s article in the Military Times, destabilization in the region would jeopardize the security of the North’s weapons of mass destruction and missiles. David Maxwell, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank said “Since North Korea is a Guerrilla Dynasty built on the myth of anti-Japanese partisan warfare, we can expect large numbers of the military (1.2 million active duty and 6 million reserves) to resist any and all outside foreign intervention to include from South Korea.” (Altman) A South Korean and American alliance must be prepared to handle whatever mass confusion that will arise if North Korea ever collapses. David Maxwell has two decades of military service in Asia said a U.S. and South Korean military reaction to that upheaval could require an effort that “will make Afghanistan and Iraq pale in comparison" (Altman). During a time of crisis in North Korea, South Korean and U.S. Forces actions would most definitely be countered by a reaction/overreaction by China for which they are underprepared to counteract.
India
This year, 2020, marks the 70th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and India. Ties between Beijing and New Delhi have been fraught throughout those decades. As highlighted in “China’s Strategic Assessment of India,” military conflict between the two nations has occurred on multiple occasions over their long-contested common border including: a border war in 1962, the Sikkim skirmishes in 1967, the Sumdorong Chu Valley skirmish in 1987 (Sun). In one of the most recent incidents, the Doklam standoff in 2017, the Chinese did not believe India would respond to its road construction. India responded and the conflict resulted in the Chinese backing down. As a result, China’s policy toward India in the past two to three years has shifted. China has been shifting to closer ties with India the since the Doklam standoff, while it continues to closely watch the emerging alliance between the America and India as part of the Indo-Pacific Strategy.
China promotes closer relations with India, but sometimes the country’s actions undermine this goal. Some of the continuing disagreements between India and China include shared borders (as mentioned above), China’s increasingly positive relationship with Pakistan, trade agreements, economic issues, and regional control. While trying to appear friendly, China and India remain economic competitors for limited markets and dwindling natural resources throughout the area. These two countries are the world’s two most populous nations (Sun). They are projected to have approximately the same population by 2024. Both countries view each other as geostrategic rivals, and they are both striving to be the region’s preeminent leader. In April 2020, India took control and opened a new all-weather access bridge in a disputed part of its border with China to enable faster movement of troops and artillery. The bridge was built in Arunachal Pradesh in India’s remote northeast, a region that’s claimed by China and near the scene of previous clashes. In describing China’s pattern of behavior, Ryan Hass, a Brookings scholar focusing on China and Asia, explains in a recent Twitter post how China “Push(es) until (they) hit steel, escalate public rhetoric, (and then) quietly look for (an) off-ramp.” These smaller incidents make it clear that India and China continue to harbor disagreements over a variety of issues.
China and India have announced 70 events throughout the year to celebrate the 70th anniversary of their diplomatic relations. Despite all outward appearance at rapprochement between these two global giants, “China remains profoundly suspicious of India’s strategic ambition and intentions. Such duality — formal rapprochement on the surface versus distrust and hedging in private — will continue into the foreseeable future with major implications for the region’s peace and stability” (Sun). To further exacerbate the situation, both sides are armed with nuclear weapons and very suspicious of each other’s strategic desires and intensions.
The constantly evolving power equilibrium and alignment among the United States, China, India, and Pakistan has a critical impact on the crisis dynamics of South Asia. Despite the warming of ties on the surface, the suspicion and embedded hostility between China and India have in fact deepened since the introduction of the Indo-Pacific Strategy (Sun). Regional dynamics have shifted, leaving the United States and India on one side with China and Pakistan on the other. These changing dynamics will have important implications for U.S. policy toward South Asia and crisis management moving forward, and they should be monitored closely.
South China Sea
Six countries share claims to the East and South China Seas, an area that is rich in hydrocarbons and natural gas and through which trillions of dollars of global trade flow. As China expands its maritime presence and constructs military outposts on artificial islands, it has been met by growing assertiveness from other regional claimants, including Japan, the Philippines, and Vietnam. The increasingly frequent standoffs span from the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, on China’s eastern flank, to the long stretch of archipelagos in the South China Sea that comprise hundreds of islets.
China is claiming some degree of sovereignty over several disputed areas in the South China Sea, through which 80% of its energy imports and close to 40% of its trade pass. According to the Council on Foreign Affairs’ presentation about China’s Maritime disputes, there are several potential trouble spots to monitor for escalating tensions. With Japan, China’s dispute is over the Senkaku Islands. In Indonesia, the Natuna Islands waters are being disputed. These disputes are not restricted to the strategic control of the shipping lanes, but they also include the rights to natural resources (natural gas, oil, and fishing rights) in the area. Additionally, China has been working hard to improve better political relationships with the Philippines, an ally of the United States. The disputed areas of the Paracel and Spratlyi Islands have led to various clashes that started back in the 1970s. Recently, China has resorted to building up these islands in spite of the international condemnation and tribunal rulings.
In the past, China and Vietnam have gone to war over disputed claims about various boundaries in the Gulf of Tonkin. As recently as May 2020, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus explained that the United States "call on the PRC to remain focused on supporting international efforts to combat the global pandemic, and to stop exploiting the distraction or vulnerability of other states to expand its unlawful claims in the South China Sea” (Panda). It is clear that China is willing to manipulate global circumstances to meet their ulterior motives in regard to gaining control of the South China Sea, even the world’s latest pandemic. Ortagus went on to say, “Amid the global focus on fighting COVID-19, China has ramped up self-described research stations and landed special military aircraft in the dispute-rife sea” (Panda). Experts say that China’s artificial island building and infrastructure construction are increasing its potential power projection capabilities in the region.
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China’s behavior in the region demands close scrutiny at all times. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, the United States has ramped up its military activity and naval presence in the area, signaling America’s heightened response to the disputes, but if this area is not managed wisely in the future this maritime region could transform from a thriving trade channel into an arena of conflict. At the very least a crisis management system for the region is crucial.
Current COVID-19 Pandemic
The social and economic effects of COVID-19 are presently disrupting the ability of the United States to function as a stable world leader. The economy of the United States has tumbled into a bear market; its citizens are on lockdown in various phases throughout the nation, and a large portion of the nation’s valuable infrastructures (manufacturing, supply chain, medical, communications, agricultural, and education) are crumbling under the unprecedented pressures created by a nation in turmoil. America’s fissures are cracking under the added stress of a pandemic with no end in sight. President Trump has been criticized for highlighting the Chinese origins of the current coronavirus crisis, but the statement warrants exploration. Whether such comments are constructive or not, the crisis has provoked a broader debate about the role that China played in the failed containment efforts of this present-day, global pandemic.
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) manipulation of the current crisis highlights the approach used by the CCP to control the narrative. China manipulated and changed vital information about the outbreak through the suppression of medical doctors on the front lines, misinformation that was spread by the Chinese press and government officials, and the restriction of its citizens’ open internet usage. A recent Forbes article, written by Ewelina Ochab, states that “the Chinese government’s (early) handling of Covid19 and failure to adequately report information to the World Health Organization (WHO) allowed Covid19 to spread uncontrollably, first outside of Wuhan, and then, worldwide.” In order to avoid global criticism, the CCP misrepresented critical research and under-reported the numbers of infections/deaths, while delaying proper interventions that could have slowed or contained the virus. Ochab goes on to explain that “Even after the first death on January 9th, [Chinese officials] continued to downplay the dangers and assured the public that the situation was not serious and that everything was under control [...] They knew COVID-19 was spread human to human by January 3rd, but told the public otherwise, and would not confirm the ease of human to human transmission until January 20th, after the virus had already spread beyond China.” By the beginning of February 2020, “Huang Kunming — China’s chief propaganda director — was leading damage control and propagating an aggressive disinformation campaign that a willing media obediently distributed” (Perry). It is hard to believe that the virus was totally contained, especially when it is known that China “Allowed 5 million people to leave Wuhan before imposing the lockdown on 23 January 2020 despite knowledge of human-to-human transmission” (Ochab). It is the belief of this analyst that it is absolutely incredulous to believe that with one of the world’s largest populations and 15 megacities (all larger than New York) that the only places infected by COVID-19 in China were Hubei Province and Wuhan City. To believe that the virus did not spread within China, when at the same time it was beginning to spread globally, is foolish.
China’s manipulation and disinformation allowed the virus to spread worldwide, delaying the World Health Organization’s global response, and allowing several prominent government leaders to misunderstand the severity of the situation. Unfortunately, concerns regarding China’s behavior during this pandemic do not end there. There is ample evidence of China’s exploitation and deception regarding COVID-19 throughout the whole pandemic. According Myers and Rubin of the New York Times, credible reports are emerging that Beijing has taken donations of personal protective equipment from various countries, which Chakraborty of Fox News later reports that China then resold to Italy (and possibly other foreign countries) for a profit. Further, China’s dubiously low official infection and death figures are being juxtaposed with the United States much higher infection and death rates in order to reinforce the narrative that China is the more competent nation and should, therefore, be regarded as the preeminent global leader (Green). China lied, covered up, and attempted to blame America for the coronavirus (Perry). Only time will uncover the true extent to which China has manipulated the pandemic’s narrative and the country’s ulterior motives while doing so, but one thing is clear—a robust investigation must occur as the world moves forward. According to Scott Perry, a U.S. representative for Pennsylvania, a combat veteran, a former Army aviator and retired brigadier general who formerly served on the Homeland Security Committee and presently serves on the Foreign Affairs Committee, “What we do about [China] will determine whether we long endure — or survive at all — as a nation and culture. Make no mistake: Our adversaries see how easy it’s been to bring the ‘lone superpower’ to its knees. They’re all watching.”
Conclusion
In a world based on a global economy, the United States is engaged in a new era of great-power competition, unlike any other before it. America’s national security issues must now be considered through a more complex lens that includes a competitor’s military strength and economic capacity, as well as its cyber capabilities, information networks, guiding ideas, and political ideologies. After the devastation of 9-11, America’s focus shifted towards its proactive Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). While America was mired in never-ending wars on many fronts, the convergence of technology and world events enabled the two most populated countries of the world (China and India) to leverage the global supply chain with an additional three billion consumers for the imported and exported goods and services of the world. This economic predominance created an explosion of wealth in both of their middle classes and allowed them to leverage power within global politics. America must now develop a cohesive way forward that considers these two emerging players in relation to America’s best interests. As of today, the world finds itself forever changed by an unpredictable global pandemic. As of the middle of May, over 5,500,000 global citizens have been infected by the COVID-19 virus and over 346,000 have died. It is imperative that governments, research centers, and health care specialists around the world work together to minimize the impact of the pandemic. The sooner vaccines and reliable testing are available, the sooner the world can start its recovery. As a result of COVID-19, countries around the world have literally had to pause their economies while attempting to prevent the catastrophic spread of the virus. The Pandemic has resulted in the International Monetary Fund’s announcement that the global economy is in its deepest slump since the Great Depression. The world GDP was projected 3.3% growth in 2020, but it will most likely shrink to three percent. The economic impact of Covid-19 will be so devastating that it could well lead to a lengthy world-wide depression and recovery. Throughout the United States, there will be many small businesses that will be forced to close permanently, and unemployment will continue for a significant amount of time. As a result of this economic depression, various tax revenues will provide far less income to local, state, and federal governments. There will be overwhelming demands for recovery-based projects, and many pre-existing government programs will be reduced to cover the ever-increasing social recovery demands. The effects of the global pandemic will be felt for years to come. The global pandemic and recovery will restructure pivotal aspects of global, national, and local policies dramatically over the next several years.
This paradigm shifting pandemic will cause Americans to realize that the United States’ national security priority is not solely dependent on the Department of Defense, but that America’s security must also include protection of America’s key homeland infrastructures. Rather than a dependence on more traditional military institutions for national security, a key takeaway from this experience will be America’s newly recognized dependence on front-line workers to keep America safe during times of trouble. The pandemic has highlighted weaknesses within several of America’s most integral infrastructures, including but not limited to health care, cyber security, pharmaceutical development, educational institutions, food production and distribution, power supply chains, and social protection programs. America is going to have to redefine which services and workers are truly essential within its new post pandemic environment. As the American government looks to cut budgets to reappropriate national funds towards necessary recovery programs, the DoD will most likely be considered for reduction because of its significantly sized budget. As the active-duty armed forces draw down, there will be an increase National Guard and reserve units that can be utilized quickly during domestic crises. During this pandemic, like many natural disasters before, America’s National Guard and reserve forces rallied when called upon to help Americans in need and demonstrated their speed, agility, and effectiveness in accomplishing their domestic missions.
While America has been distracted by both 9-11 and COVID-19, China has increased its activities in the South China Sea with the construction of three artificial islands. These artificial islands are now military facilities consisting of runways, hangars, anti-aircraft batteries, and missile defense systems that significantly expand China’s power. An international tribunal has rejected China’s claims and stated that China violated the Philippines’ maritime rights with the construction of these islands. Adm. John Aquilino, Pacific Fleet commander, recently stated that “The Chinese Communist Party must end its pattern of bullying Southeast Asians out of offshore oil, gas and fisheries. Millions of people in the region depend on those resources for their livelihood.” China recently sank fishing vessels from Vietnam and Malaysia in spite of international commendations over their illegal claims. Adm. Aquilino went on to say that “Through continued operational presence in the South China Sea, the U.S. Navy supports transparency, the rule of law, freedom of navigation and over flight, the principles that underpin security and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific, so that all nations in the region may benefit.” This sentiment was closely echoed by the Prime Minister of India, during Narendra Modi’s keynote address when he stated recently that “….rules and norms should be based on the consent of all, not on the power of the few.” America’s longstanding advantage in the Pacific has been based on alliances and partnerships in the region. These relationships must be maintained and strengthened to achieve America’s strategic objectives in the Pacific Region.
On a side note, writing this paper has been a lot like trying to build an airplane while flying it. So many significant events have transpired that several of the scenarios discussed throughout this paper have been constantly changing in real time. Each daily news review created evolving complications that, although they are addressed throughout the paper, might be resolved or transformed into different problems by the time of reading. Regardless of the volatility of the daily news reports, it is absolutely clear that relations between the world’s largest military and economic powers (America and China) are taking new and dangerous turns recently. Chinese President Xi Jinping seems to have concluded that the United States is preoccupied enough with the COVID-19 pandemic, its dire economic conditions, the reopening of the country, and its upcoming Presidential election that he can use America’s distraction as an opportunity to attempt to subdue Hong Kong. It is impossible to predict whether tensions will cool down or further escalate between Hong Kong and China, or what responses from President Trumps’ administration and/or Congress will emerge in the upcoming weeks. Despite the situation’s unpredictability, I believe the three most dangerous flash points remaining at this time are Hong Kong, South China Sea, and Taiwan. Cheng Li, Director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution, also believes that “We are really in a very, very dangerous period, extremely dangerous for confrontation, and I will say for a possible war.” Currently, the economic dependency between America and China may be so great that in future negotiations a logical compromise will be possible; however, my assessment is that there will be tipping point in American and Chinese relations and that America needs to develop a strategy now in order to be adequately prepared for what tomorrow brings.
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