China is a country with more than a billion people, but as Ross Terrill observed, when we ask what China wants, we are really attempting to discern the goals of the seven “male engineers” who make up the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party. This clarification makes the answer straightforward: Like […]
Just when the memories of anti-Chinese protests and rioting have started to fade among the Vietnamese, the Chinese are stoking the fires again with another salami-slicing maneuver. Last Thursday, Beijing announced the redeployment of the deepwater oil rig Haiyang Shiyou-981 to the waters near the disputed Hoang Sa (Paracel) Islands. The placement of the rig […]
This May, China’s Ministry of Defense published a white paper, “China’s Military Strategy,” only a few months after the United States’ most recent National Security Strategy (NSS) was released. It is revealing to compare the two documents, both to see how each nation envisions the other in a strategic context, and because it adds to […]
The past few months have been a strategic roll coaster for Asia. Earlier this year, China dealt a huge blow to the United States’ leadership in the region when it managed to enlist leading European economies as well as American allies in Asia as founding members of the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which will […]
China’s construction of new islands in the South China Sea has attracted a great deal of entirely predictable criticism and controversy. Surely no-one connected with this decision can be surprised at this outcome. One assumes that China’s military planners run just the same sorts of simulations and contingency exercises as their counterparts in the West. […]
China issued its first white paper on military strategy on Tuesday, stressing the “active defense” guideline and pledging closer international security cooperation. The strategy adheres to the unity of strategic defense and operational and tactical offense, according to the white paper “China’s Military Strategy” issued by the State Council Information Office. “We will not attack […]
Some analysts argue that China’s new artificial land formations in the South China Sea are not worth worrying about as they could be easily “taken out” if war broke out. But those who take that view are failing to see how these islands fit into China’s slow motion strategy to achieve regional hegemony in the […]
A U.S. Navy warship was closely trailed by Chinese navy vessels in the South China Sea during a rare patrol close to where China has been dredging sand to turn submerged reefs and shoals into islands it claims as sovereign territory, according to the Pentagon. China’s close surveillance this month of the Fort Worth, a […]
This week the annual report to the US Congress on China’s Military Power was released. It noted Beijing’s use of ‘low-intensity coercion’ across the South China Sea and East China Sea. Its assessment stated that: China often uses a progression of small, incremental steps to increase its effective control over disputed territories and avoid escalation to military […]
In a remarkable public speech at ASPI’s Future Surface Fleet conference last month, the Commander of the US Pacific Fleet—Admiral Harry B. Harris—criticized China for engaging in an “unprecedented land reclamation” effort, creating a “great wall of sand” in the South China Sea (SCS). He went on to point out: “When one looks at China’s […]