In recent years there has been a rapid rise in China’s military and economic development, with growing global influence. Much uncertainty surrounds China’s future course, in particular in the area of expanding military power and how that power may be used. This has significant implications for Australia, our region and the world. China has long-term goals, joining economic growth to military power. The Japanese slogan meaning “rich country, strong arms” was transformed into China’s 16-character policy, which states: “Combine the military and the civil; combine peace and war; give priority to military products; let the civil support the military.”
China’s peaceful rise and its economic development attract widespread acclaim around the world. Unfashionable as it may be, however, I want to focus on its rapid and non-transparent growth in military power. China is transforming its forces into a full-spectrum military capable of military operations and remote power projection. It has recently acquired advanced foreign weapons and it has continued high rates of investment in its domestic, defense and science technology industries, as well as making substantial organizational and doctrinal reforms to its armed forces.
This expansion, as well as improving its military capability, is changing the military balance in East Asia. The improvement of China’s strategic capabilities has implications for Australia, East Asia and beyond the Asia-Pacific region. Only recently, the construction of a vast new naval base has become known via commercial satellite imagery. The opening of the Sanya base will enable China’s new type 094 ballistic missile submarines to find a safe 5,000m deep operating area south of Hainan Island.
The apparent strategic purpose of this base is to protect these nuclear submarines and to defend China’s growing interest in securing sea lanes to critical resources in distant areas like Africa, the Persian Gulf and Australia.
In the May issue of Jane’s Intelligence Review, Richard Fisher says Sanya can be expected to host future Chinese aircraft carrier battle groups, given the size of its piers. The size of the openings of the piers and tunnels that the submarines go into gives it the capacity to host eight nuclear submarines. This has been detected by commercially available satellite imagery.
According to the Wall Street Journal Asia, in mid-November last year, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) held major naval and air exercises south of Hainan Island. In conjunction with this exercise, or soon after, the first type 094 nuclear submarine moved into Sanya.
China has the most active ballistic missile program in the world. It continues to develop and test offensive missiles and upgrade missile systems. It has deployed an increasing number of short-range ballistic and cruise missiles opposite Taiwan. In addition, China is modernizing its long-range ballistic missile force and it is in the process of developing a new submarine-launched ballistic missile. China is modernizing its nuclear force, presently fielding the new DF 31 and DF 31A intercontinental range missiles, which has increased its strategic strike force capabilities.
From the point of view of strategic stability in our part of the world, it is of concern that China is developing advanced cruise missiles and anti-ship missiles designed to strike ships including aircraft carriers from great distances. Moreover, in January last year, without warning the international community, China successfully tested a direct ascent anti-satellite weapon, destroying a defunct Chinese weather satellite.
This unannounced test raised concerns internationally and demonstrated China’s ability to attack satellites as well as posing a danger to space flights. In addition, in November last year, China successfully launched its first lunar orbiter. Together they demonstrate China’s ability to conduct complicated space maneuvers that have far-reaching military implications.
Moreover, China is increasing its army and ground forces as well and equipping them with modern tanks, APCs and artillery. According to the Pentagon’s assessment and analysis “Chinese Military Power,” its ongoing military reforms and modernization emphasize the need for highly qualified officers and soldiers trained in modern and key technologies.
This military modernization emphasizes the need to equip them with new and high-tech weaponry, making them capable of advanced military operations as well as directing and participating in what is called “informatized warfare.”
In addition, the PLA emphasizes the role of modern information technology as a force multiplier to enable their forces to conduct military operations with precision at ever greater distances from China. Because of the modern battlefield and the need for high technology and equipment, which it does not have itself, many governments say, China is running an aggressive effort to acquire advanced technologies, particularly from the US. Investigations have revealed there has been considerable illicit export of US arms and technologies to China. Last year, many computer networks around the world, including US information systems, were intruded upon, and they appeared to be targeted from the PRC. This is of great concern to many governments around the world.
Continuous and steady economic growth is the basis of China’s future development. As China emerges as a regional and global power, its continued economic development remains the foundation of the power of the Chinese Communist Party and leads it to further military expansion and modernization because of the prestige it gives the party in nationalistic sentiment within China.
According to Mark Helprin in a speech given to the Hoover Institution, a country with restrained population increases and a high rate of economic expansion can over time dramatically improve its material lot while simultaneously elevating military spending almost beyond belief. The crux is to raise per capita income significantly enough that diversions for defense will go virtually unnoticed. China’s average annual growth of roughly 9 percent over the past 20 years has led to an absolute 10-fold increase in per-capita GNP and a 21-fold increase in purchasing power parity of its military expenditure.
As far as China’s nuclear forces are concerned, the Chinese leadership and the Chinese defense paper of 2006 reiterate their commitment to a declaratory policy of no first use. The main purpose of its nuclear force is to deter other countries from using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against China.
However, doctrinal material suggests additional purposes for its forces, like deterring conventional attacks against nuclear assets or conventional attacks with weapons of mass destruction, in order to reinforce China’s great power status.
Last year, Beijing announced an astonishing 19.47 percent increase on the previous year’s military budget to approximately US$45.9 billion, which surpasses the growth of its overall economy.
Moreover, its defense budget does not include other large categories of expenditure, such as the expenses for strategic forces, foreign acquisitions, military related research and development and paramilitary forces. Therefore, the actual military expenditure of China is hard to estimate because of its lack of transparency.
Even though its actual military expenditure is not apparent, it is certain internationally that China significantly under-reports its military spending. The US Department of Defense estimates China’s military spending last year was between US$97 billion and US$139 billion. The US and other nations continue to urge China to increase the transparency of its military expenditure.
US nuclear reductions and China’s acquisition of ballistic-missile submarines, multiple warhead mobile missiles and modern Soviet air fighters (the SU series), the expansion of the Sanya base and the increase in China’s ballistic missile preparations and its mobile nuclear missiles will eventually lead to the two countries becoming level in strategic nuclear weapons. Moreover, US military force reductions are not only nuclear but conventional as well. As the world is occupied with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, this shift in the Pacific, identified by Helprin and others, goes largely unnoticed.
Australians welcome China’s peaceful rise and we all want good relations with the People’s Republic of China. We want Australia and East Asia to continue to have good economic relations with China and to benefit from its economic development. But we have to note these fundamental shifts in strategic power that are taking place in our region.
The now obvious sensitivity of the operation of this base in Sanya was emphasized to us a few years ago by the apparently overboard decision of the Chinese military to impound a US reconnaissance aircraft on Hainan island. It was obviously because of the Chinese preparations for this vast submarine and naval base, which, as Fisher argues, will have piers that can host potentially future Chinese nuclear powered aircraft carriers.
These projections of power that are far beyond the coast of China are something that countries like Australia and all the countries in the Pacific have to note. We have to view Chinese growth with equanimity but we should at the same time note its exponential military growth, prepare for it and understand it. Above all, we should not ignore this Chinese growth in military power.
Michael Danby is a federal member of the Australian parliament for Melbourne Ports. This is an edited version of a speech delivered in parliament on June 16.
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