The US Department of Defence said in a report released on Thursday, 02 May 2019, that China has exploited the period of ‘strategic opportunity’ offered in the first two decades of 21st Century to enhance China’s Comprehensive National Power. ‘Made in China 2025’ and ‘One Belt One Road’ (OBOR) have been the guiding mantra through which China is rigorously articulating its economic development and security agenda. The report outlines that China’s strategy is to reform the global governance system so that it can shift the balance of power towards multipolarity. Active Defence remains part of military strategy and China has been using coercive approach to test the threshold of the countries operating in the Indo-Pacific region by employing tactics ‘short of armed conflict’. The China’s military modernisation has been designed to support its global interest and thus seek power projection capabilities by expanding its military basing requirements in Middle East, Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific.
According to the report Taiwan remains the PLA’s main “strategic direction” and enunciates possible scenarios where Beijing might use military force including a comprehensive campaign “designed to force Taiwan to capitulate to unification, or unification dialogue”. Recognising the yawning military capabilities gap existing between the two countries, Taiwan plans to “develop new concepts and capabilities for asymmetric warfare” the report said.
The report has five chapters and two special topics. The report covers the issues pertaining to China’s strategy, analyses PLA force capabilities. However, it is the two special topics of ‘Influence Operations’ and ‘China in Arctic’ which attract special attention. The report on “Influence Operations” outlines how China is using its three warfare strategy (psychological warfare, public opinion warfare, and legal warfare) against ‘cultural institutions, media organizations, and the business, academic and policy communities’. The three laws implemented by China shows how it looks at plugging its vulnerabilities through legal recourse. The National Security Law (July 2015), Counter terrorism Law (December 2015) and the Cyber Security Law (June 2017) have provisions which prevents cyber penetration and data diversion.
The report on ‘China in Arctic’ highlights how China is promoting “Polar Silk Road,” as part of its Arctic Strategy published in January 2018. This prompted concerns from Arctic states over Beijing’s long-term objectives, including possible military goals. China, a non-Arctic state, became an observer member of the Arctic Council in 2013. The United States, Canada, Russia, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Sweden make up the Arctic Council, while China, India, South Korea, Singapore, Italy and Japan have observer status. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who will be attending the meeting of the eight-nation Arctic Council in Rovaniemi, Finland, from 07 May 2019, amid growing concerns over China’s increased commercial interests in the Arctic have already fired the salvo which very categorically says that “the eight Arctic states conduct governance of the Arctic region and we reject attempts by non-Arctic states to claim a role in this process”.
The United States policies and strategies like National Security Strategy (2017), National Defense Strategy (2018), Nuclear Posture Review (2018) and Missile Defense Review (2019) have fuelled the military competition in an ever evolving security environment. The report adds to the existing list of literature for the defence analysts.