Insight into China's East and South China Sea Strategy.
 

It would appear that the deployment of the DF-21D ASBM in association with other developments represents a major shift in power in the Western Pacific and beyond.

The possibility of negotiations towards a strategic arms limitation agreement with China does not seem out of place if this updated document is to be taken at face value. China Naval Modernization: Implications for U.S. Navy Capabilities (6Mb PDF)

Comment?

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Nothing new, really. It was an ongoing topic when I was in the DIS 25 years ago ... it's just being recognised more generally now ;)

Expansion was always their objective. Whether you visualise it as a defensive barrier against the US, or just expansionism, is irrelevant. They ARE a World Power, like Russia, and have a need to stretch their wings.

I doubt that China wants to expand in the manner of Japan or Germany, however my experience with them tells me that they do want to expand the area of their littoral that is completely under their control. And they certainly want the undersea oil between China/Vietnam and the Phillipines

Fisher Militia and Giant Clams - 我们的海

It no longer seems to matter whether expansion is the objective, or only the means to other objectives. PRC seems to have (re-) discovered a very effective way of circumventing the status quo ante in the South China Sea. It’s possible they never forgot their history. The current expansion programme did not start yesterday and is now almost complete.

Their recent achievements do not seem to have been addressed in any detail in the OP’s subject article and I wonder if this is because it was outside the author's intent, or because there doesn’t seem to be much of an obvious, coherent or acceptable counter to the methods being used.

The self-righteous and confident, even aggressive assertiveness, the divisive coercion and the maritime ecocide all seem to be working AOK without having to resort to DF-21s or any other kind of lower-tech shooting. The rest of the world falls to their money and other forms of ne-kulturny or venal diplomacy.

I’m not sure if the annotated plan for Huangyan (below - now widely available on the internet) is a spoof or a genuine invitation for bids to do the work. First dredger inside the Scarborough lagoon will mark the critical point in time, because it will have to be forced to leave, as opposed to being prevented from arriving. Once it’s there, with most other SCS developments already achieved, that’ll be the first part of the SCS plan pretty much completed and not a lot anyone can do about it. They can then proceed unhindered with the other objectives.


http://i1271.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1463509614


I’m afraid there’s not much current European interest in the subject. The President-elect of the Philippines has some hot questions to ask the outgoing administration but he doesn’t take office til June 30. The upcoming UNCLOS ruling may be ignored or even pre-empted. I haven’t referred to the similar East China Sea situation, because that seems to involve rather different considerations.



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Agreed, the appetite of Western Governments for limiting the PRC's expansion or any form of confrontation is practically non-existent. As someone said many years ago, "You can either do something about it now, or wait until the final cost is exponentially higher.

Freedom of Navigation in SCS international waters has been circumvented simply by unilateral redefinition of land borders. The parallels with events on the Crimean Peninsula suggest similar strategic objectives.

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The Law of Unintended Consequences?
 

I don't know why military people get their knickers in a knot over a bit of Chinese sabre-rattling - when they already have substantial world control via economic means.
The Chinese have been investing their massive surplus of funds in mines all around the world - to ensure substantial control of commodity pricing, plus ensuring their raw material supply. The Chinese effectively control all the world zinc supplies (as just one example), because they own nearly every zinc mine in the world.
The Chinese dominate the worlds steel production, with around a billion tonnes in annual production. They stockpile large amounts of strategic minerals and commodities to ensure they can't be held to ransom by suppliers.
They have invested in large amounts of strategically-placed property around the world, of every type, all around the world - from ports to other infrastructure.
The only thing they would like to get better control of, and more supplies of, is oil and gas. Thus the drive into the SCS.
These people are not only very long-term planners, they are particularly shrewd business people, and they can run rings around any Western politician or so-called industry leader - and many Western military leaders as well.
Westerners plan 5 yrs ahead, the Chinese plan 50 yrs ahead, and move steadily and incrementally towards their goals.
The major difference with China, as compared to the West, is that the political, business and military leadership of China Inc, is fully integrated.

The Chinese like to play the long game, hence buying a cow rather than a glass of milk. Incidentally, the opposite to how short term capitalist societies work. As the previous poster has mentioned, they now own or control a lot of the critical raw materials needed for future manufacturing. I gather a number of western companies have already starting complaining about shortages of rare metals being sold for microchip and hi capacity battery manufacture.

@hunterboy. You are several years out of date. About 5 years ago China used its monopoly of rare earth element production to try to leverage some kind of controlling position in electronics manufacturing. Rare earths aren't ''rare'', just expensive to extract in low concentrations.

Result was it became profitable for non-Chinese operations to extract and market rare earths.

Result: China has lost its monopoly market as clients prefer to pay a premium for reliable non-Chinese (politically motivated) supplies.

looks like the Chinese built some big fixed targets.

In order for some place to become a credible target, do you not need to find someone willing to put their finger to a credible trigger ?


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Oh, yes.
China's playing a pretty clever game, alright.

Some months ago, they bought (well it's only a 99 year lease, so that's OK then) Australia's northernmost port, Darwin.
Of course, the fact that the port is also used by Australia's military is neither here nor there, innit?

Just recently, a Chinese bid for one of this country's largest pastoral leaseholdings was deemed to be "Not in the National Interest".
(You can have everything else you fancy, just not that one - because a mate of mine has his eye on it.)

They've been buying up, in the past number of years, a considerable amount of both Australia's (and New Zealand's) pastoral, agricultural, mineral
and infrastructure assets.

The line from certain politicians and their clients who are, in the short term, benefiting from all this is ... "We welcome overseas investment".

One could weep.