CHINA: THE THREAT IS REAL

China is busy, very busy. Despite atrocious climate disasters and huge floods its eye is focused on its primary objective: Taiwan. One way or another China is going to take Taiwan back, and the clock is ticking. The Party wants it done before the 100th anniversary in 2049, and preferably far sooner than that, because China has other interests it also wants resolved by then.

In order to mount an amphibious invasion China must prepare – if that’s what it comes to, because they would much rather the pro-Chinese Kuomintang walk the errant province (as China sees it) back into Chinese rule (which historically is a dubious claim at best), without firing a shot. Why go to war when you can get it for free?

From the coast of China, along the borders of all of its neighbors, along its southern border right the way around the western border and up to the intersection with Russia and Kazakhstan, China has built a massive road system, a dual carriageway that in places runs less than 60km from the Indian border. Twelve airports have been upgraded to dual use civilian and military running through the region, close to the road, extending as far as Tajikistan. Along the road especially close to the disputed border with India, a railway line is ready, with spurs mysteriously heading south towards the demarcation line – because that’s what it is. There has never been a treaty defining the actual border between China and the Indian provinces either side of Tibet. Control is achieved through literal physical presence. Where that physical presence resides can cause instant tensions to flare up – and they do, often.

Just to make India & Bangladesh more uncomfortable China is building a massive dam, the Medog – twice the size of the monstrous and generally regarded as environmentally disastrous Three Gorges, right at the source of the Brahmaputra in Tibet. It’s a vital waterway for both the downstream countries. When China did just this to the Mekong river it caused a 50% reduction in water levels and massive problems in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. The dams are a means of silent control, but their primary purpose is to provide China with masses of desperately needed hydro-electric power. It isn’t just one dam either, across the Tibetan state 15 new dams are going up. The Medog is another scale though. The valley it’s being built in is twice as long and deep as the Grand Canyon, it will cost $127 billion.

Global power demands for electric cars and data centers, as Ai models use electricity at a staggering rate – are enough to double global demand by 2028 – China wants to be on the right side of this requirement. Its belief that Ai is the ultimate way to exert control and a subject it must lead in, is a national priority. Taiwan produces the microchips that will make that possible – just another reason its ‘return’ to China is so important to Beijing, but it’s the political and geopolitical that are the real reasons. Taiwan is unfinished business the revolution never managed to deal with.

The work to shore up China’s western and southern borders is to ensure that if it becomes embroiled in a military conflict in the east – over Taiwan – then India will not be inclined to take advantage of China’s likely weakened position, and attempt to press for gains in the vast disputed border regions, especially Arunchal Pradesh (half or which China claims). India is no match for China militarily, either numerically or qualitatively, but it could get away with something if the vast bulk of China’s forces were dealing with a larger conflict elsewhere. Not anymore.

China has isolated Russia into little more than a second rate economic vassal, and it has eyes on much of what Russia would say belongs to them. The Amur River dispute has never been resolved. China has openly made it clear it thinks Russia is occupying its historic lands – including Vladivostock. For now, convenience and expediency puts that to one side.

Taiwan is the real goal, the crown jewel in the communist party’s cabinet of achievements. It doesn’t matter who is in charge of China, be it the now diminished Xi Jin Ping or some other wannabe. Taiwan is what matters.

To seize it militarily, will take a huge undertaking from the Army, and its has been given everything it needs to make it possible. The Air Force has the latest fifth generation fighters in the J-35 many regard as every bit as capable as the F-35, and China late last year deliberately publicized what appeared to be the words first flight of a sixth generation fighter. Its Air Force is huge, has the advantage of local bases and penetrating the air shield China could place around Taiwan is a massive issue for any opponent.

But to secure Taiwan China needs a navy, and in this area it has gone about providing a force of such scale and power, given its air power dominance locally, the two combined frankly, seem impossible to beat.

The naval buildup has rarely reached such a scale. Historically Kaiser Wilhelm-II and Grand Admiral Tirpitz set about trying to compete with the Royal Navy – and failed, but it was a major catalyst towards WW1. Post WW1 a new naval race between the British, Americans and Japanese looked almost inevitable despite none of them being able to afford it and it was headed off by the first arms reduction treaty in 1922.

In the early 1960’s after the disaster of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Admiral Sergei Gorshakov persuaded the Soviet Union that only a world class global fleet would ever prevent such a thing happening again. For the best part of the next 18 years the Soviet Fleet expanded in a multitude of advanced, novel and frankly shocking ways that threw NATO navies into panic mode, and resulted in a major US naval buildup. When the Soviet Union collapsed, that fleet pretty much evaporated with it. It was soon wreckage and dozens of nuclear submarines lay rotting in dockyards and arctic bays, where governments from around the world paid to have their reactors removed and made safe in storage.

China, some twenty years ago realized that if it was to ever take Taiwan, it too would have to embark on the only thing it knew it required, if it was ever to face down the might of the US Navy: its own battle fleet. Just as the Soviets realized only a fleet could challenge the Americans and the west at sea – their natural first line of defence – then China must do what it had never done and compete.

This came about at time when the Chinese economic miracle – making the West utterly dependent on it for almost everything manufactured from toys to TV’s to clothes and even food, went into overdrive. Then came the hi-tech companies like Apple as the smart phone boom burst on the scenes. China has made itself the world’s largest steel producer and the largest ship builder.

It looked at the way the US produced warships and laughed. Naval yards devoted to naval ships have proven to be cramped, physically and fiscally, let alone technologically. The whole approach to building warships was nonsense, rooted in the past and had no place, especially for smaller combatants such as cruisers and below – which make up the vast bulk of any military fleet.

The Chinese applied and continue to apply civil shipbuilding practices to military ones and they can produce four destroyers to every one that America can build. The expansion in Chinese naval production was shocking and what came as a greater shock, as quantities reached levels that caused military concern in Washington, was that these ships appear to have a technical and quality level that is equal to the best America can deploy.

Take the Arleigh Burke Class of DDG – guided missile destroyers. Now 30 years on, the same basic design still hasn’t changed even while the latest ‘Flight-3’ versions are way head of their older siblings technologically. The fact is they have been constrained by the same basic hull design which has zero stealth characteristics, for three decades. The next destroyer, DDG-X is ten years away even now. By then the Chinese will have gone far beyond in equivalent numbers let alone potential. Even producing two per year, the US is only keeping up with the expiring hulls from the ‘Flight-1’ series. They’re not even starting to match China in numbers and the Congressionaly mandated 355 ship rule is a fantasy, so unreachable that it has become almost an unspeakable joke. China now has the world’s largest navy and its available major combatant surface fleet is more than equal to taking up the challenges.

The Chinese knew they would have to build carriers, but their first approach was to use the ancient hulls of old Soviet ships and modernize them, surprisingly effective for what they achieved, but no match for a US carrier and the Chinese knew it. They have now embarked on their first (and the second is already under construction), of a new type of super carrier every bit as advanced as the US Ford Class in terms of what it aims to achieve and the numbers of aircraft it can field. All the way down to the EMALS catapults. Admittedly just having the carrier doesn’t give you operational experience – and what American carrier hasn’t fought in a war? But you cannot rely on lack of experience as the only edge. The Chinese have observed US carrier operations for decades – they have ideas on how to proceed.

In nuclear submarines the Chinese again, knew they would have to learn, and they did from the Russians, who in their day operated one of the world’s largest submarine fleets. Early SSN’s are noisy and easily tracked. Their first SSBN’s so bad they were kept only in the confines of the Yellow Sea. But the second generation is much better, the third will be better still. The latest SSN’s are a huge improvement over their predecessor, but again operational experience is lacking, but they will learn.

Its not just the basic fleet types either, its the innovation and solutions to unique problems such as landing on Taiwan with special ships designed to lower pillars into the sea and operate as roll-on roll-off bridges, for ferries carrying army vehicles directly onto Taiwan’s west coast roads. Even Chinese ferries are designed to carry at least three tanks abreast for when they might be needed to change role.

New drone mother ships for underwater operations have been spotted. The extraordinary reappearance of WIGS – more often known as Exkranoplans, which if used in large numbers offer a fast way of transporting men in an invasion, or dominating a region such as the waters around Taiwan.

Technology has always been the advantage the US held over its near-peers. That and the size of its fleet, its deployable air power, were always the pillars on which its power resided in the Pacific.

That is absolutely no longer a reliable measure. The Chinese navy operating close to Chinese waters in and around Taiwan has an air power advantage the US simply cannot match. Given that its technology is not that much better and may even be inferior in many areas, there’s isn’t a US fleet on the planet that can fight its way to Taiwan and stop a Chinese invasion.

I am well aware that even two years ago when the US wargamed this – twice – they lost a carrier in each game and over half the entire US Air Force. And they only just saved Taiwan. Project that to 2030, when the US Navy is no better if not more poorly equipped and maintained than it is now given current trends and realities, and how does anyone think such an undertaking would be possible? The loss of even one carrier would be a crushing blow to the morale and prestige of the county, let alone the navy. And losing half the Air Force?

What I have also not yet mentioned is China’s truly huge arsenal of regional medium range missiles, that no defence on Guam is ever going to be capable of defending from. The quantities are simply overwhelming – and that’s the point of them. They have the means to strike at every major US base from the get go, including the US forces in Japan and South Korea, along with key bases like Okinawa. Even with Japan and S.Korea playing an active role in the defence of Taiwan, the sheer quantity of Chinese weaponry is going to be difficult to resist.

Then of course there is the nuclear option. But China has even dealt with that. It has spent the past four years – and it’s not stopped since, building hundreds of new missile silos for strategic weapons in the desert. China used to work on the basis of the way Britain and France saw their nuclear forces. You just need enough to convince the enemy that any attack will be met with such force it won’t be worth their while. Nuclear weapons were not a priority. Now they see it not as desirable but necessary to increase that force dramatically. The reason is simple. They need to be able to field enough weapons that the US could never first strike what they have or threaten them sufficiently with such a strike, that they would back down. China doesn’t want to use them, it wants to make sure the US won’t dare to.

From under the sea to space, China is aiming to dominate. Its space based radar satellites are unmatched for revealing ship movements in the Pacific. It’s been testing ‘dog fighting’ with satellites designed to disrupt those of its enemies.

China’s coasts and its seizure of maritime assets, the creation of military bases that dominate vital shipping lanes, everywhere is one more step to China achieving its goals and the fact is there’s nobody in the immediate environment to its maritime east and south that represents the slightest threat to it.

You might notice a theme here. Everything China does is to block the advantages of its enemies. Where it is deficient, it becomes sufficient, and then superior. When the time comes to roll the dice, China intends that each side is a number six and it doesn’t matter what they roll, it will always end in their favor.

The failure of the US to build and create the solid alliances, the ships, the defences it needs to protect its interests – even as it pontificates over China being he next big threat, is a symptom of the failure of the US political system, the self interest of its military industrial complex, lack of understanding in Congress and the absolute failure of the navy particularly, but the military in general, to manage its affairs and to get things done when it comes to dockyards, construction, design and capacity. Add to that their endless misbehavior when it comes to specification and requirements and lack of management of the nations assets. Mind boggling amounts of money are thrown at problems to fix them only to seemingly vanish into a miasma of incompetence.

Despite China’s terrible corruption and its political shenanigans, in the end they never take their eye off of the primary goals. Despite economic and banking issues, climate driven floods and disasters, they still build what they need to achieve long term political and military goals. We are amateurs in comparison. Our short-termism the exact opposite of their ‘long game’ approach to winning and getting what they want.

America especially needs to wake up to it – because near frozen defence budgets suggest it hasn’t, and the rest of Europe needs to keep out of a scenario it can only lose in if it chooses to get involved.

I’m not being defeatist, because I can see what China has done and is doing. I would be less concerned if this was Ronald Reagan’s America dealing with an implacable enemy. But it isn’t. It’s a clown in the White House who followed a semi-senile old man whose acolytes failed to make the slightest impact on the defence issues the country faces. Years of ineptitude, years of neglect, years of stupid wasteful wars that achieved a big fat zero, sapped America. Now political ideology and dysfunction are doing their own dirty work.

I fear Taiwan is lost. Not because of what the west did, but what it, especially the US, failed to do. Perhaps it will be the low point in our century and we will bounce back only after we have lost it.

Yet bizarre as it may seem, China is watching how the Russians fare over Ukraine. They fear it will lose and they have said that Russia losing would be a disaster for their new world order. If we propel Ukraine to victory we may yet avoid the fall of Taiwan, at least by disastrous military means. That would be a major win for everyone, oddly enough even for China.

Frankly I suspect the die is cast. America has failed. The consequences we will all have to live with. Ukraine effectively defeating Russia simply by stopping it gaining what it wants – which we in Europe can make possible, may be the one way out. China IS watching for American and western resolve to harden and its contributing more and more to make sure Russia doesn’t lose. It’s up to us here in Europe to make sure neither of them get what they want. Time has nearly run out.

The Analyst

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