A symposium on the South China Sea was told on Thursday that Beijing’s naval buildup over the last decade was focused “almost solely” on Taiwan.
Bernard Cole of the US’ National War College added that this was particularly true with respect to China’s “dramatic construction program for conventionally powered submarines.”
He was responding to Marvin Ott, a public policy scholar at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center, who had asked: “Why is China building so much capacity so fast?”
Ott said that at some undefinable moment in the last 18 months, a point was passed in Chinese military and political growth that made Southeast Asia “palpably nervous.”
“It does not take much imagination to see an increasingly problematic security situation, with a very large question mark over Beijing,” he said. “What are the Chinese up to? What is their intent? What do they have in mind? In that environment, the US becomes an important guarantor of autonomy and freedom of action.”
Ott said there was a “perception that the growth of Chinese power is now becoming scary.”
“That wasn’t true before,” he said. “Why have the Chinese, who have been so diplomatically skilled over the last 20 years, suddenly become so tone deaf? The Chinese are not listening. It has suddenly become all bare-knuckle demands. How the Chinese went from being so sophisticated and skilled in this arena to becoming so primitive, I don’t have an answer.”
The symposium, organized by the Heritage Foundation in Washington, heard from Dean Cheng (成斌), a research fellow in the Asian Studies Center at Heritage, that the Chinese military perceive the US to be a “declining power.”
In addition, the West has been talking a lot about the rise of China.
Cheng said: “If you keep saying that someone else is the wave of the future they might actually come to believe you.”
And third, Cheng said, the younger generation now emerging in China has been brought up on boasts about their country’s remarkable achievements.
“They don’t think China should play a secondary role or walk softly when its capabilities are so great,” he said.
The symposium was told that there is now a “lot of swagger” in Beijing and a real “intoxication with power.”
Cole said the Chinese military was concerned about “post-Taiwan” and military planners were “seeking desperately” for military scenarios after Taiwan’s expected reunification.
The planners were concerned, he said, that it might become difficult to justify a continuing increase in military budgets. And this in turn could lead to “a harder attitude towards Taiwan.”
Asked how the new US Congress — voted into power earlier this week in the midterm elections — might change Asian policy, Walter Lohman, director of Asian Studies at Heritage, said that Taiwan would certainly become a bigger issue on Capitol Hill.
“But there is a limit constitutionally to what Congress can do. In the case of pending arms sales to Taiwan — F-16 sales — Congress can’t compel that to happen. That still has to come from the president. You will find a willing audience in Congress for it, but the president is the one who has to make the decision,” he said.
The symposium was asked if there was a chance that China would use force to back its claims in the South China Sea.
Cheng replied: “China does not seem to have much experience, nor much concern, with the issue of inadvertent escalation and accidental war. China’s wars have generally been the result of somebody deliberately choosing to go to war.”
“So, could a low-level incident involving fishing boats or rocky outcroppings spiral out of control? Could efforts at de-escalation by the US be seen as weakness?” Cheng said.
That kind of “potential for miscalculation,” Cheng said, could lead to “very significant ramifications.”
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