Why, as China grows more powerful, does it become more bellicose?
by Steven W. Mosher
Editor’s Note: This
testimony was submitted to the Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and
Emerging Threats for a hearing on "China’s Maritime and other Geographic
Threats."
Mr.Steven Mosher testified at
I commend the Chairman for this timely hearing. Less than
72 hours ago, Chinese vessels recklessly entered Japanese territorial
waters around the Senkaku Islands.
Seemingly everywhere we look, we see evidence of China’s
increasing aggressiveness and it is past time to ask, Why this ongoing
military buildup when China faces no external threat? Why these
provocative acts?
What, after all, does China want?
Since last September, China has been vigorously asserting
its new—and historically groundless—claim to the Senkaku Islands by
sending a constant stream of naval vessels and planes to harass Japanese
patrol boats there. The most recent such encounter, as I mentioned,
occurred a mere two days ago. No only that, but a top Chinese general
has questioned the legitimacy of Japanese claims not just to the tiny
Senkakus, but to the entire Ryukyu Island chain, including Okinawa with
its US military bases.
Then in May, Chinese troops intruded nearly 12 miles into
Indian territory, withdrawing only after India agreed to withdraw its
own troops from the area. The high-altitude frontier dispute, which has
been simmering since the Sino-Indian War of 1962, involves territory the
size of Greece with a population of over a million. India is
apparently prepared to sign a border cooperation agreement on Chinese
terms, an exercise in coercive military diplomacy that Brahma Chellaney,
an Indian analyst, calls bullying.
And then there is the South China Sea, where China has been
aggressively asserting its sovereignty over the 1.4 million-square-mile
stretch of open ocean. Last November, Beijing announced that Chinese
authorities will board and seize control of foreign ships that
“illegally enter” the area that it claims is part of the province of
Hainan. Seizing ships in international waters is an act of war under
international law.
China has also sowed new seeds of conflict by continuing to
expand its military presence in the area. Last year it seized the
Scarborough Shoal, which lies off the coast of the Philippines, by
force. When that country protested, the PRC (People’s Republic of China)
reacted by saying that the Philippines' claims were illegal, and that
it would never agree to international arbitration over the Shoal or any
other claims. In January it issued a new map that, for the first time,
precisely delineates its grandiose new claim. What is shows is the
largest attempted land grab since the Second World War. It is rather as
if Nazi Germany had claimed the entire Mediterranean Sea as sovereign
territory.
And so it goes. Nearly every month China is making a new
territorial claim or bullying its neighbors over an existing one. Worse
yet, it is defining these new claims, like its longstanding claims to
Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang, as “core interests,” vital to national
survival and are emphatically not up for negotiation.
The Obama administration has proven extremely reluctant to
back U.S. allies in the face of such Chinese aggression. US Secretary
of State John Kerry, for example, offered only tacit backing to the
Philippines' efforts to seek UN assistance against China, saying only
that all countries had a right to seek arbitration to resolve competing territorial claims.
Perhaps they had imagined that China’s opening to the West would
result in a modernizing, democratizing China that would willingly take
its place in the existing international system. A younger,
foreign-educated leadership would renounce force in favor of
negotiation. The kinds of armed conflict that marred the PRC’s first
three decades would be a thing of the past, and any remaining
territorial disputes would be resolved peaceably.
But China’s integration into the world economy has
apparently not defanged the Chinese Party-State, nor led it,
metaphorically speaking, to beat its swords into plowshares. Instead, it
is taking the money that it has made from selling cheap,
state-subsidized “plowshares” around the world and using it to make
“swords,” which it is now brandishing with increasing frequency.
I see China’s behavior as reflecting something fundamental
about the nature of the Chinese Party-State. A government that rules its
own people by brute force—remember Tiananmen—is naturally inclined to
treat its smaller, weaker neighbors the same way. Especially if they
were, in the past, tributary states. This accounts in part for the
palpable distain with which it treats the other claimants in the South
China Sea dispute, including Vietnam and The Philippines, both of which
have stronger claims to the Spratlys and Paracels than does China
itself.
Only the continued presence of the US Seventh Fleet in the
Far East stays China’s hand. Were that force to be withdrawn to Hawaii,
as China has suggested, there is little doubt that China would then
occupy the remaining islands in the South China Sea by force, ejecting
the garrisons of other nations, and begin to demand that ships
transiting its “interior waters” first seek permission to do so or run
the risk of being boarded and quarantined.
Deng Xiaoping once advised his immediate successors, who
ruled a much weaker China, to “bide your time and hide your
capabilities.” But that was then. Now China capabilities are on track
to approach parity with the US in the Pacific theater in a few years,
and already far, far exceed those of all of its nearest maritime
neighbors except Japan.
Continuing double-digit increases in the PLA’s (People’s
Liberation Army) budget are fueling China’s military buildup. While the
exact amount that China spends on its military is unclear, what is
obvious is that the more funding the PLA receives, the sooner it will
achieve parity with the US military. China is building a nuclear
arsenal, along with a range of delivery systems, that could match or
even exceed that of the United States in the coming decades. A blue
water navy, along with components of China’s first indigenously produced
aircraft carrier, is under construction, and naval bases in Burma,
Pakistan, and Sri Lanka will enable its resupply. As the latest
Pentagon report confirms, China already “has the largest force of major
combatants, submarines, and amphibious warfare ships in Asia.”
Moreover, China is constructing its own GPS satellite network, has
developed a ground-launched anti-satellite missile to improve its
counter-space capabilities, and is building the Shenlong spaceplane with
advanced propulsion characteristics for possible military use.
Emboldened by their new capabilities, and firmly in control
of the Chinese polity, the next generation of Chinese leaders have
apparently decided that it it no longer has to bide its time, although
it still prefers to hide its capabilities.
I have long believed that the Chinese leadership holds an
expansive view of Chinese place in the world, and that it is interested
in reestablishing its historical role as the Hegemon of Asia. It is
imperative that we educate the American people in this regard.
An open society relies on comprehensive and accurate
information to inform both its citizens and its allies of the common
threats that they face. The annual Pentagon Report on Chinese Military
Developments does not go far enough in this regard. In a time of
economic uncertainty, and in the face of an ongoing Chinese military
build-up, it is especially important that US taxpayers understand the
importance maintaining both a quantitative and qualitative lead in
military capabilities over China. It is equally important that allied
and friendly governments, along with their citizens, be informed of
military developments in China. China needs to know that its continuing
military buildup has not gone unnoticed, and that the US and its allies
are well aware of its larger designs.
Ascertaining both China’s capabilities and its intentions
is critical. I therefore recommend that the US Congress establish a
commission to review, evaluate and, if necessary, correct any
shortcomings in the Pentagon Report, especially where China’s intentions
are concerned. Such a “check” on the current administration consensus
on China would be invaluable, as such reviews proved to be during the
Soviet era when a number of independent commissions reviewed Soviet
military capabilities and intentions.
The pro-life Population Research Institute is dedicated to ending human rights abuses committed in the name of "family planning," and to ending counter-productive social and economic paradigms premised on the myth of "overpopulation." Find us at pop.org.
