NOT CLASSIFIED China Newsletter N. 1 – May 2021
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
China newsletter n. 1 – May 2021 In this newsletter: Seeking Serenity: A New American Influence Strategy for Southeast Asia And Beyond, War on the Rocks; Biden leaves China a Xinjiang terrorism problem with US exit from Afghanistan, South China Morning Post; Tianhe Launch Marks a Key Step in China’s Growing Space Ambitions, The Jamestown Foundation Global Research and Analysis; The PLA Navy’s ZHANLAN Training Series in 2021: Growing Emphasis on Joint Operations on the High Seas, The Jamestown Foundation Global Research and Analysis; Watch Out: China’s Type 093A Attack Submarine Has Powerful Upgrades, The National Interest; Non-Nuclear EMP Weapons: How to Deter China's Growing Military Might? , The National Interest; China Wants To Revive A Strategically Located Airfield Deep In The Pacific: Report, The Drive Shifts in Diplomacy undermine China’s international standing, Clingendael Netherlands Institute of International Relations Seeking Serenity: A New American Influence Strategy for Southeast Asia And Beyond (10 May) War on the Rocks The Authors propose a Serenity Prayer-type approach, aimed at proposing a valid US’s strategy in Southeast Asia and beyond. The core of the approach relies on de-prioritizing bilateral relationships in countries predominately influenced by China, focusing more intentionally on strategically important relationships with countries where China has approached the United States as a peer competitor, and supporting the member- states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The approach begins with accepting that China’s dominance in Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar is unlikely to be substantially diminished soon. (China is by far Cambodia’s most significant provider of arms transfers; the United States sends none). China’s arms transfers to Laos are also significant, though outpaced by Russia. And while U.S. foreign aid is substantial, it fails to compete with other official financial flows from China. U.S. policymakers should cede this ground to better focus material allocations elsewhere, like in the Hub of Singapore, framed as U.S.-dominant state by the authors. Although Singapore continues to maintain its position of strategic non-alignment, the U.S. State Department describes its longstanding mutual security and economic partnerships with the country as “expansive and enduring.” More challenging cases are what the Authors call competitive states — Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Brunei — where recent years’ trends have tilted in China’s favor. Meanwhile, a potentially more difficult diplomatic task is identified in the promotion of stronger ties within Southeast Asia. Indeed, a more cohesive and single-minded ASEAN could ensure its own regional intra-dependence far outweighs its member countries’ reliance on China or the United States. Key Points: The authors rely on the Formal Bilateral Influence Capacity Index for their analysis: it is a composite measurement of influence capacity between states developed by the War on the Rock’s team at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures, informed by surveys of U.S. government analysts, and soon to be launched in a forthcoming report in collaboration with the Atlantic Council’s Foresight, Strategy, and Risks Initiative. The index can be used as a practical tool to monitor China-dominant states in Asia. As the authors suggest, the US and its Allies efforts in deterring China could be focused on US-dominant States, by increasing arms shipments and military coordination via training exercises; leveraging the overlap in each country’s demand for imports and supply of exports, particularly in the materials and information and NOT CLASSIFIED communications technology sectors, to increase the exchange of goods and services. In the case of competitive States, the US could coordinate partnership strategies with Allies and Partners to take competitive advantage on China. For instance, in Vietnam, Washington could gain ground with the aid of its allies in Seoul, which is currently positioned as the top influencer in Vietnam since 2017, according to the team’s index. To sum up, by using these metrics to size up the competition in Southeast Asia, U.S. policymakers could recognize where American influence is significantly outmatched by China, identify opportunities where the trend of relative losses in American influence can be reversed, and direct resources accordingly. Biden leaves China a Xinjiang terrorism problem with US exit from Afghanistan: (1st May) South China Morning Post In April, US President Joe Biden said the United States would withdraw its remaining troops from Afghanistan before September 11, the 20th anniversary of the al-Qaeda terrorist attacks. While some reports have suggested that Washington’s retreat might allow China to establish its influence in the region, Mark N. Katz, a government and politics professor at George Mason University in the US, said this was unlikely due to the poor security situation in the country, where the weak government in Kabul was likely to be overthrown by the Taliban within a year or two of allied forces departing. According to Elizabeth Wishnick, a political-science professor at the Montclair State University in the US, although China always criticised the presence of NATO forces on its Western border, NATO’s security role actually suited Beijing fine. China has few investments in Afghanistan in contrast to the billion it had invested in Pakistan by the same year. Therefore, Beijing’s risk profile was quite limited, which meant China was likely to adopt a wait-and-see approach after the US withdrawal, said Nishank Motwani, an independent analyst based in Kabul. Motwani said the withdrawal of US forces would create a political and security vacuum for actors including China to play a larger role in influencing foreign and security policy decisions in the country. Given the shared 90km border between China and Afghanistan, Beijing is worried that the East Turkestan Islamic Movement – which it has repeatedly blamed for violent acts in Xinjiang – will move to Afghanistan and threaten China’s security. Key points: The article well reflects Chinese’s conflicting sentiment around the planned military withdrawal of the United States and its allies from Afghanistan. The Chinese government over the years has declined to contribute combat forces or logistical assistance to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan (ISAF) and has refused to commit to support any NATO-led follow-on force, with the intention to avoid antagonizing the Taliban, which could retaliate against China’s growing economic interests in Afghanistan and perhaps again stir up trouble among China’s Muslim minority. However, now that the withdrawal is imminent it remains to be seen how Beijing will deal with the security vacuum left with the US’ forces pullout, which might provide feasible ground for extremist groups to develop and lunch cross-border attacks in China proxy territory. Either Chinese leadership decide to step up its military engagement in support of the instable Kabul government and the Afghan security forces, or to strengthen its military presence across the all-region, Beijing ’s re-think of its strategic approach in Afghanistan is something that NATO should keep eye on. Tianhe Launch Marks a Key Step in China’s Growing Space Ambitions: (7 May) The Jamestown Foundation Global Research and Analysis On April 29, a Long March 5B heavy rocket carrying the Tianhe 1 core module of China’s space station was successfully launched into low earth orbit from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site, Hainan Province. It marks the first step in the construction of the China Space Station (CSS), long seen as the culmination of a national manned spaceflight program that will aid in “realizing the shared vision of a community of destiny for the benefit of all mankind” in international space cooperation. The successful construction of a “long-term” and “large scale” Chinese space station is the third and final step of a “three step” development program for manned spaceflight (Project 921) that was laid out by the Politburo Standing Committee in 1992. NOT CLASSIFIED According to the long-time China space watcher Andrew Jones, China plans a “high-density, highly challenging launch cadence with complex equipment and operations” completing 11 CSS-related launches over the course of 2021 and 2022. The CSS would allow China to conduct sustained scientific research in space, as well as giving it a leading edge in cooperation with other existing and emerging national space programs. Following the Tianhe 1 launch, People’s Daily published a congratulatory message from Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping which said that “building a space station and national space laboratory is an important goal…of China’s manned space program”. U.S. policymakers have grown increasingly concerned about plans to safely deorbit the ISS at the end of its lifetime, which is expected to be sometime after 2028. Chinese onlookers have rather cynically pegged the ISS’s endpoint to 2024, at which point the CSS could be the only international space station in low earth orbit, making China—by at least one metric—the de facto global leader in space. Key Points: Xi’s message in the aftermath of the Tianhe 1’s launch was a reminder that Chinese space programs is closely tied to issues of national security and global prestige. Alongside the Beidou satellite navigation system and the associated Belt and Road