China’s Two-Pronged Maritime Rise

[Valin]

The Diplomat:

China is following a two-prong strategy with its impressive maritime build-up. The West is making a mistake if it underestimates the implications.
Robert C. O'Brien
7/24/11

For the past decade, while the West has been consumed battling Islamic extremists in the Middle East and Central Asia, China has been engaged in a rapid and impressive effort to establish itself as the supreme maritime power in the Eastern Pacific and Indian Oceans.

For years, China focused its military spending on the People’s Liberation Army, while the Air Force and Navy served as little more than adjuncts to the Army. But with the launch of its first aircraft carrier next month, the rest of the world – and especially the United States’ Asian allies – is taking note of how dramatically things have changed. China has big maritime ambitions, and they are backed up by a naval build-up unseen since Kaiser Wilhelm II decided to challenge British naval power with the building of the High Seas Fleet at the turn of the last century.

(Snip)

The officially reported Chinese military budget for 2011 is $91.5 billion, a massive increase from its $14.6 billion budget in 2000. China acknowledges that a third of its spending is now devoted to its Navy, yet even this big leap is almost certainly understated. China is notoriously non-transparent with its military expenditures, and most analysts believe that it spends significantly more on its armed forces than the publicly reported number. Further, Chinese military labour costs for its soldiers, sailors and airman is a fraction of what Western governments spend, where salaries, benefits and pensions are usually the largest share of defence budgets. This allows China to devote more of its budget to building weapons systems than its competitors. Unlike Western governments, which are slashing defence spending, China will continue to increase spending in coming years.

(Snip)


A. While I would never say the DoD budget is sacrosanct and should be immune to cuts, it would pay for us to look at the nature of the world today, and in the near future.

B. For a another view of what is going on may I suggest Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power
Robert D. Kaplan
Booklist
An inveterate traveler and author, Kaplan recently toured the rim of the Indian Ocean to inspect its geopolitics. Perspectives on the balance of power vary from country to country and speaker to speaker, but most agree that India and China are the ascending powers in the region. As Kaplan’s passages about Indian Ocean history reflect, the two countries can refer to tradition (to the fifteenth-century fleets of Zheng He, in China’s case) for their contemporary activities in the Indian Ocean, but the plain fact is they are busy for one reason: access to resources. As Kaplan journeys from Oman to Pakistan to Burma and Indonesia, the specific raw material comes into focus, as does the geopolitical angle of safely shipping it to the interested country. Touching on what could threaten maritime traffic, such as piracy, ethnic conflicts, or hostile control of choke points like the Strait of Malacca, Kaplan is guardedly optimistic that interested powers, including the U.S., can benignly manage their Indian Ocean affairs. A better-informed world-affairs reader will be the result of Kaplan’s latest title.

I highly recommend this book! If you don't read this book at least....
Google: robert d kaplan monsoon

[Casino67]

 

"Promote Sino-American Friendship Maintain World Peace" per the banner. They only want peace.

[Valin]

Hugh Hewitt Show: GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman on China

 

(Snip)

HH: You know, Governor, they’re about to launch their first aircraft carrier, it’s a Ukrainian one, it’s rehabbed.

 

JH: Right.

 

HH: They’ve got this new J-20, they’ve got their anti-ship ballistic missiles, they’ve got submarines, and against the backdrop of Dr. Kissinger’s theory that they believe in strategic blows, sudden, sharp, table-changing, table-turning over events, what’s your level of concern about the aggressiveness, especially in the South China Sea, but internationally and cyber land with China?

 

JH: I’m going to give you a statistic that I think is important for you and your listeners to know. Let’s take a look at who they actually fear most. Is it people within in the country? Or is it people on the outside? Just take a look at their budget most recently, and look at how much money has been spent on the Defense side. Now we outspend them about five to one in terms of our Defense dollars. Their Defense dollars, though, are focused laser-like on things like maritime expansion, a blue water navy, submarines you mentioned. The aircraft carrier, which I’ve seen, it’s parked in Dalian. They haven’t done an arrested landing, which you need to do on an aircraft carrier, although they’re training for that. They don’t have a carrier battle group, yet, that they can deploy with the carrier. And you’ve got to remember that when you deploy a carrier battle group, you’ve got to have at least a couple of others that can rotate along with that one carrier battle group if it’s going to be at all effective. And then remember as well that the first time that carrier battle group sets sail through, you know, the East China Sea, and down through the Yellow Sea, East China Sea, and down to the South China Sea, imagine how the neighbors are going to start responding to that, which provides a real diplomatic opening for the United States. So the spending on Defense is targeted, and it’s directed at maritime capabilities, and two, it’s directed at their missile program. Now take a look at what they’re spending on domestic security. So the money that goes into, say, the ministry of state security and the ministry of public security, which are the two big organizations that basically keep a lid on everything domestically, and keep an eye on folks. The money is far more that they’re spending on their domestic security than they are on external threats. That should tell you something. That should tell you that they’re more concerned about the years ahead, and what could be a very restive population as they make this economic transition, as inflation gets out of hand, as corruption begins to boil over, as you see a huge, rural population that still isn’t getting a lot of the economic uplift that we see in the big cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. There’s some real concerns on the domestic front, to say nothing of the external side.

(Snip)