By David Axe
Don’t reflexively fear China’s growing naval prowess--there’s plenty of good it could end up doing, David Axe says.
Foreign observers of China’s growing naval prowess might be worried by what they’ve seen in recent years. Around a hundred new warships have come off the country’s slipways since 2001, while another dozen are under construction. Chinese ships are, on average, getting bigger and more powerful as well as more numerous as Beijing builds what is shaping up to be the world’s biggest submarine fleet, as well as new types of anti-ship missiles and the nation’s first aircraft carriers. One older Russian carrier is being refurbished and US analysts expect the first fully home-built Chinese carrier to enter service by 2015, with the possibility of more to follow.
All this is a far cry from the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s status even a decade ago as a coastal weakling, and has come at a time when the US Navy has actually shrunk by around 10 percent, as several new ship classes arrived late and over-budget. As a result of China’s rise and its own budgetary problems, ‘the United States will inevitably have to face…a progressive loss of maritime supremacy in the South China Sea and its environs,’ Andrew Davies, an analyst with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told The Diplomat.
But observers say a shifting balance of power doesn’t have to mean high tensions, let alone open warfare. Much of what China does in the maritime realm amounts to an elaborate, and expensive, form of diplomatic theatre. Carriers, especially, are more for show than for practical military use, analysts say. Where the People’s Republic of China is building real naval capabilities, most are actually best suited for cooperating, rather than competing, with other world powers.
Indeed, there are signs that China intends to be a full partner in a loose, emerging alliance of developed world navies aiming to suppress piracy and seaborne terrorism and to provide rapid relief in the wake of coastal natural disasters.
China’s rush to build amphibious ships and to deploy vessels to Somali waters both support this theory, while even the carriers could potentially be part of Beijing’s plan for a peaceful naval rise, inasmuch as they help boost the PLAN’s reputation and facilitate a leadership role alongside the United States in future naval alliance.
‘There’s much more reason to be positive’ says Eric Wertheim, an independent US naval analyst and author of the authoritative Combat Fleets of the World. ‘I do think China wants to fit into the “global commons.” We just have to be careful make sure they see we are trying to treat them as equals.’
What’s the PLAN for?
It’s not easy assessing the Chinese navy. Many state functions in Beijing are closely held secrets and none more so than the grand strategy and planned force structure of the Chinese military. Such secrecy means there’s a significant element of guesswork among analysts hoping to understand what China’s leaders actually intend their navy to do.
But for every analyst, Taiwan is the starting point. The Chinese navy is ‘still being modernized to deal with possible US intervention in a Taiwan scenario, in which Beijing uses the PLA against the island,’ says Bernard Cole, a professor at the US Naval War College. ‘But PLAN planners are clearly looking at “post-Taiwan” scenarios, as well.’ These might include disputes with Japan over East China Sea resources and defending shipping lanes to the Middle East.
Some analysts, though, say China’s military is still incapable of mounting an invasion of Taiwan. History suggests a successful beach assault against a well-armed, concentrated enemy like the Taiwanese army would require around 60,000 assault troops. But even after a decade of rushed production, the PLAN has enough sealift ships to haul only 15,000 troops in a single wave–and that’s assuming no losses to Taiwanese and American ships, planes and subs.
Photo Credit: Uniphoto Press
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Jon
Rosy though this take of Chinese naval expansion might be, at least it does not take the naive position (apparently widely held in some circles) that a war with China is impossible due to our deeply intertwined economies.
On the other hand, it seems to me that someone could have written a very similar article about the expansion of the Japanese navy in the early 1930s. In fact, the case would have been even easier to make, in that Japan had at that time a more tangible history of international navsal cooperation (with the Allies in WWI), and was nominally complying with international naval arms control treaties (which don’t even exist today). Let’s hope the optimism expressed here is not similarly misplaced.
Kat
A war with China is less LIKELY because of our economies. Personally, I don’t think we’d go to war with the Chinese over Taiwan, even if the Chinese invaded. There’s no way you would get a UN coalition to assist, and the US is not in the position to launch a war with it’s largest rival over an island that is, in essence, of little strategic value to us. That having been said, it probably won’t come to that, mainly do to China’s economic entaglements with Taiwan. Beijing’s kept Taiwan from being able to sign any regional FTAs except the ECFA. China is Taiwan’s largest market and it’s largest importer. In another 30 years I’ll be very surprised if Taiwan is still autonomous.
John Chan
It is Winter Sweet not White Sweet.
Derrick
No one can stop China from investing in its navy…they have a nuclear deterrent and their simple argument will be : if the US can, why can’t I?
However, China should learn from the mistakes of the Japanese during World War 2 and the collapse of the Soviet Union during the Cold War and adopt a peaceful, transparent and slow military buildup if it intends on so doing.
Japan’s aggressive use of its navy to expand its empire over-exhausted its resources and exposed long and vulnerable supply routes to harassment by US naval forces. The Soviet desire to catch up with the US military led to exhausting their economy on a fruitless arms race.
Finally, if the US wanted to invade China, they could have done it decades ago, and there would have been nothing China could do about it.
So if China is smart, they will play things quietly and coolly, and let Asia naturally fall into its orbit. And China should look at Open Skies and Open Waters treaties with the US in order to build trust so the US will be more accepting towards a Chinese military buildup of any sort.
BillT
I think China is being very smart about it all.
They proved that they can take out our satellites and cut off the communications between our fleets and home base.
They build missiles like we build cars, by the thousands but don’t advertise how many or what their max capabilities might be.
They are buying this new navy with our Walmart dollars, before the dollar becomes toilet paper, making our Walmart shoppers complicit in their plans.
They are getting ready for the day that the US slips and falls down that rabbit hole Alice visited…or maybe it has already.
Besides, they have economic interests on every continent and need to insure the safety of their supply lines, like any smart country does. The US will soon not be able to afford to patrol the whole world and they know it, as does any rational, thinking American.
John Chan
The national flower of Japan is Sakura which blossoms in a short burst then drops off suddenly. China’s national flower is White Sweet which flowers in Winter and lasts through the winter harsh environment. Japan’s naval venture during the WWII is like Sakura. China will take an approach like the White Sweet to develop its navy. China has gone through hundreds of years of poverty, the current prosperity is very dear to the Chinese, they will fight to the teeth to keep it. Fighting wars and rapid military expansion are totally contrary to the path of building prosperity for a nation. As long as China’s sovereign is not threatened, nobody will get hurt. China wants to rise peacefully. I think China will keep its military buildup as transparent as the USA.
Andrew
@John Chan
So bullying its neighbours saying all the South China Sea is theirs and contesting oil and gas rich islands and waterways recognised under international law as being Vietnamese, Japanese and Korean, is peaceful is it?
Now they’re bullying the Norway government for the Nobel peace prize, which it has no control over. All of this is peaceful is it?
Chinese businessmen open fire on Kenyan protesters who are paid slave labour wages (according to the BBC) and the Chinese government does nothing and does not condemn their actions. This is a peaceful government is it? At the same time a sea-captain is arrested for ramming two Japanese vessels and all hell breaks loose.
Chinese citizens violently protest against Japan and all the government says is to protest rationally and within the law. Yet anyone protesting against the Chinese government is locked away or just disappears or is shot at from soliders or the police (Tienanmen Square).
These are the actions of a peaceful, cooperative government promoting mkutual understanding is it?
The Chinese government may control evrything in its own country down to the minute detail, but has to recognise it has no powers outside of its borders. If it doesn’t, and a lot of countries are getting a little pissed of with them now, they may just find businesses relocating to Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia, as is being discussed here in Europe. Then where will the Chinese growth be?
Charles
Like any other country would do, Chinese Foreign Ministry only reiterates its country’s stand over contentious issues be it the dubious Nobel Prize winner or sovereignty over disputed territories. This pretty much falls under present international norms (you just don’t like it because it so happens that it is the Chinese who are doing it). Anyway, I am sure the Nowegians won’t stop handing out awards to Chinese dissidents in the future (it’s just about all the West and the US can do to piss the PRC off these days). If you are really against bullying then you should really spare a thought for countries like Cuba, which I think is still being bullied by the US or more recently, Iraq. I don’t recall the UN ever actually sanctioning the US invasion of that country…
As for the South China Sea, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, Philippines, and even Taiwan all claim part of, or, all of the Spratlys. So it’s not just China alone you know… And you seriously think the rest of the claimants would actually cosy up with each other? I am sure the Taiwanese don’t mind the PRC taking the lead in protesting Japanese claims over the Diaoyutai. Just go to their Coast Guard website and you will see that the Taiwanese quite vehemently state that the islands are an inalienable part of China (ok, in their case the ROC).
Also, businesses just don’t have that much of a choice of leaving China for other countries that you mentioned because the latter just don’t have the infrastructure and full business cycle to support that kind of investment or manufacturing base. After all, China is already the ‘factory of the world’? Who on earth would really want to pay US$800 for an I-phone these days? Get real, manufacturing has all but left the US. Thanks to ‘quantitative easing’, the Americans are effectively saying that it’s ok for them to devalue the Dollar but not the Chinese or anyone else for that matter. That’s a lot of nerve coming from the No.1 culprit who caused the Global Credit Crisis in 2008. Anyways, the Germans, French, even the Japanese(!) and Koreans and emerging economies at the G20 in Seoul aren’t buying Obama’s sales pitch. I read that the Germans are really pissed off with the Yanks in Reuters yesterday.
So Andrew, please get the background and historical context of the issues correct first before you champion the causes of so called ‘downtrodden’ countries. At least, I don’t see Chinese carrier battle groups roaming the seven seas or them forming ‘coalition of the willing’ looking for weapons of mass deception (sorry, I meant destruction)in other people’s countries…
Kat
Seriously? Decades ago we were more concerned with the Soviets and China was a third world nation whose major military strength was the size of its population. The situation is entirely different now. China is an economic juggernaut these days, in case you forgot, and that carries it’s own brand of soft power.
Beijing isn’t looking to rock the boat, so to speak, but with the U.S. still fighting a decade long war there’s no way Washington would get the domestic political support to attack China over a military build up. Broad international support would also be lacking, not only because the rest of the world is experiencing its own economic hardships, but also because their relationship with China is almost as vital to them as their relationship with the U.S. Add to that our severe deficits and the economic crisis, and there’s very little we can do to stop them from boldly expanding however they want.