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2 China puts the focus on the
navy By Adam Wolfe
On
December 27, at a meeting of delegates to a
Chinese Communist Party meeting of the PLA
(People's Liberation Army) Navy, Chinese President
Hu Jintao said, "The navy should be strengthened
and modernized," and, further, the navy should be
prepared "at any time for military struggle".
Two days later, Beijing released a white
paper outlining its military posture, which also
emphasized the importance of developing a powerful
navy. While the modernization of the Chinese navy has
been
progressing at a rapid pace for several years, the
recent emphasis given to its development has
raised concerns from Washington and other regional
powers.
China aims for "blue water"
status, or deep-water power-projection
capabilities, for its navy, but it has little
experience beyond its coastal regions. Its current
fleet is hampered by obsolete units, which it
plans to replace in the coming years with modern
ships. It is upgrading its surface fleet by
bringing Russian Sovremenny-class destroyers into
service, while also pursuing two new
guided-missile destroyer classes.
For its
underwater fleet, China is working with Russia to
upgrade its existing diesel-powered submarines,
while progress on the construction of its
domestically designed units has progressed slowly.
Its pursuit of nuclear-powered submarines and
aircraft carriers is also progressing slowly,
because of both technical difficulties and a lack
of strategic imperative behind the projects.
In its recent white paper, Beijing's plans
for its navy were not altered significantly;
however, the importance of gaining the ability to
project force away from its coastal areas was
given more prominence. China has released white
papers on its defense plans sporadically for the
past eight years, in part to calm nerves about the
military aspects of its rise in power.
The
focus on the navy is largely due to the importance
of securing natural resources, namely oil, to fuel
the continuing expansion of its economy. China's
reliance on foreign energy means that it is more
important for its navy to be able to protect sea
lines of communication and keep open the "choke
points" relevant to its trade.
Other goals
for its navy include the ability to control areas
of uncertain sovereignty (the Spratly Islands),
protection of the exclusive economic zones it
claims (most significantly in the East China Sea),
and the development of a fleet capable of
overpowering any other Asian country (with the
exception of Japan and India, which it will
attempt to counterbalance rather than challenge
directly).
Still, the ability to retake
Taiwan by force if necessary remains the main
focus of the PLA Navy. A fact not mentioned in the
white paper is that much of Beijing's plans for
its navy seem to include developing the ability to
deter the United States from protecting Taiwan in
such a conflict. To this end, China does not
appear to be pursuing a direct arms race with the
US, which it would have little hope of winning.
Rather, Beijing's development of diesel-
and nuclear-powered submarines appears to be an
attempt to gain the ability to form a submarine
blockade of Taiwan. This would put pressure on
Taipei while possibly avoiding the potential
consequences of a full-scale invasion, namely a US
counterattack.
Much of the reaction to the
white paper focused on China's 15% increase in
defense spending. In 2006, China claims to have
spent US$36 billion on its military; although the
US Defense Intelligence Agency believes the actual
figure may be two to three times that amount.
Beijing defended this increase by noting that its
military spending only accounted for 1.4% of its
gross domestic product in 2006, while the United
States spent 6.2% of its GDP on its military.
China at times seems at pains to ensure
its neighbors that its rise does not constitute a
threat to the region, and it has similarly sought
to dissuade Washington from believing it is
pursuing an arms race. Many interests in
Washington are quick to dismiss such notions, as
China's modernization of its military is often
cited as a strategic rationale to increase
military spending on new technologies and
large-scale defense projects.
Nevertheless, military cooperation
improved incrementally between China and the US in
2006. A Pentagon report on China released last May
described China's military modernization in many
of the same terms as Beijing's latest white paper,
although it repeated the argument that "China has
the greatest potential to compete militarily with
the United States". Chinese and US forces staged
their first joint search-and-rescue maneuvers in
the Pacific and the South China Sea last year, and
Washington played down an unexpected surfacing of
a Chinese submarine near a US aircraft carrier.
Officials in Beijing and Washington were
also both quick to point out the overlapping
security concerns that the world's largest oil
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