Debt (Page 79)

Which country is the greatest threat to the United States? The answer, according to a large proportion of Americans, is clear: China.

Half of all Americans responding to a mid-2023 survey from the Pew Research Center cited China as the biggest risk to the US, with Russia trailing in second with 17%. Other surveys, such as from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, show similar findings.

Senior figures in recent US administrations appear to agree with this assessment. In 2020, John Ratcliffe, director of national intelligence under President Donald Trump, wrote that Beijing “intends to dominate the US and the rest of the planet economically, militarily and technologically.”

The White House’s current National Defense Strategy is not so alarmist, referring to China as the US’s “pacing challenge” – a reference that, in the words of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, apparently means China has “the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the power to do so.”

As someone who has followed China for over a quarter century, I believe that many observers have overestimated the country’s apparent power. Recent challenges to China’s economy have led some people to reevaluate just how powerful China is.

But hurdles to the growth of Chinese power extend far beyond the economic sector – and failing to acknowledge this reality may distort how policymakers and the public view the shift of geopolitical gravity in what was once called “the Chinese century.”

In overestimating China’s comprehensive power, the US risks misallocating resources and attention, directing them toward a threat that is not as imminent as one might otherwise assume.

Let me be clear: I’m not suggesting that China is weak or about to collapse. Nor am I making an argument about China’s intentions. But, rather, it is time to right-size the American understanding of the country’s comprehensive power.

This process includes acknowledging both China’s tremendous accomplishments and its significant challenges. Doing so is, I believe, mission-critical as the United States and China seek to put a floor underneath a badly damaged bilateral relationship.

Headline numbers

Why have so many people misjudged China’s power? One key reason for this misconception is that from a distance, China does indeed appear to be an unstoppable juggernaut.

The high-level numbers bedazzle observers: Beijing commands the world’s largest or second-largest economy depending on the type of measurement; it has a rapidly growing military budget and sky-high numbers of graduates in engineering and math; and oversees huge infrastructure projects – laying down nearly 20,000 miles of high-speed rail tracks in less than a dozen years and building bridges at record pace.

But these eye-catching metrics don’t tell a complete story. Look under the hood and you’ll see that China faces a raft of intractable difficulties. The Chinese economy, which until recently was thought of as unstoppable, is beginning to falter due to deflation, a growing debt-to-gross domestic product ratio and the impact of a real estate crisis.

And it isn’t only China’s economy that has been overestimated. While Beijing has put in considerable effort building its soft power and sending its leadership around the world, China enjoys fewer friends than one might expect, even with its willing trade partners.

North Korea, Pakistan, Cambodia and Russia may count China as an important ally, but these relationships are not, I would argue, nearly as strong as those enjoyed by the United States globally. Even in the Asia-Pacific region, there is a strong argument to say Washington enjoys greater sway, considering the especially close ties with allies Japan, South Korea and Australia.

Even though Chinese citizens report broad support for the Communist Party, Beijing’s capricious Covid-19 policies paired with an unwillingness to use foreign-made vaccines have dented perceptions of government effectiveness.

Furthermore, China’s population is aging and unbalanced. In 2016, the country of 1.4 billion saw about 18 million births; in 2023, that number dropped to about 9 million. This alarming fall is not only in line with trends toward a shrinking working-age population but also perhaps indicative of pessimism among Chinese citizens about the country’s future.

And at times, the actions of the Chinese government read like an implicit admission that the domestic situation is not all that rosy. For example, I take it as a sign of concern over systemic risk that China detained a million or more people, as has happened with the Muslim minority in Xinjiang province. Similarly, China’s policing of its internet suggests concerns over collective action by its citizens.

The sweeping anti-corruption campaign Beijing has embarked on, purges of the country’s military and the disappearance of leading business figures all hint at a government seeking to manage significant risk.

I hear many stories from contacts in China about people with money or influence hedging their bets by establishing a foothold outside the country. This aligns with research that has shown that in recent years on average as much money leaves China via “irregular means” as arrives as foreign direct investment.

Three-dimensional view

The perception of China’s inexorable rise is cultivated by the governing Communist Party, which obsessively seeks to manufacture and control narratives in state media and beyond that show it as all-knowing, farsighted and strategic. And perhaps this argument finds a receptive audience in segments of the United States concerned about its own decline.

It would help explain why a recent Chicago Council on Global Affairs survey found that about a third of American respondents see the Chinese and American economies as equal and another third see the Chinese economy as stronger. In reality, per capita GDP in the United States is six times that of China.

Of course, there is plenty of danger in predicting China’s collapse. Undoubtedly, the country has seen huge accomplishments since the People’s Republic of China’s founding in 1949: Hundreds of millions of people brought out of poverty, extraordinary economic development and impressive GDP growth over several decades, and growing diplomatic clout.

These successes are especially noteworthy given that the People’s Republic of China is less than 75 years old and was in utter turmoil during the disastrous Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, when intellectuals were sent to the countryside, schools stopped functioning and chaos reigned. In many cases, China’s successes merit emulation and include important lessons for developing and developed countries alike.

China may well be the “pacing challenge” that many in the US believe. But it also faces significant internal challenges that often go under-recognized in evaluating the country’s comprehensive power.

And as the US and China seek to steady a rocky relationship, it is imperative that the American public and Washington policymakers see China as fully three-dimensional – not some flat caricature that fits the needs of the moment.

Otherwise, there is a risk of fanning the flames of xenophobia and neglecting opportunities for partnership that would benefit the US.

Dan Murphy is Executive Director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, Harvard Kennedy School

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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China now has 369 satellites, three times as many as in 2018, according to General Stephen Whiting, head of the US Space Command.

“China and Russia,” Whiting told the Senate Armed Services Committee on February 29, are “moving breathtakingly fast.” He warned in particular about “counterspace” weapons that can destroy American satellites

With perhaps 3,000 advanced anti-ship missiles in its inventory and the capacity to hit moving targets at great distances, China now has an overwhelming firepower advantage in its home theater.

Nothing in the American arsenal can defend US military assets against massed barrages of Chinese missiles. That makes the buzzword “prioritize Asia” – sending more weapons to Taiwan rather than Ukraine – a matter of shifting the deck chairs to the other side of the Titanic.

China has underfunded its large land army and concentrated military spending on coastal defense.

The US national security establishment is struggling to keep its credibility above water after the Ukrainian rout last month at Avdeevka, where Ukrainian units refused orders to deploy in the besieged towns and Ukrainian soldiers reportedly bolted, leaving their wounded as well as their weapons behind.

Volodymyr Zelensky’s government now warns that its defense could crumble by next summer; in fact, this could happen much sooner as the beleaguered Ukrainians run short of artillery ammunition, air defense missiles and frontline manpower.

It’s hard to find a Western defense think tank that has not called on Washington to “prioritize Asia” during the past year. But China has such an overwhelming advantage in firepower, including ballistic and cruise missiles, that whatever additional weapons America might shift to Asia would have negligible impact. 

As Brandon Weichert wrote in The National Interest on February 29, China’s “carrier killer” Dong Feng-26B intermediate-range ballistic missile can sink US aircraft carriers. Weichert estimates that China has 1,000 of these advanced systems.

Its inventory of cruise missiles is unknown but Chinese state media have published a video of automated factories producing cruise and anti-ship missile components, with one facility reportedly producing 1,000 missile engines per day. The Wall Street Journal reported on January 3 that it takes the US two years to make a cruise missile.

The Pentagon warned in its November 2022 assessment of the Chinese military that enhanced satellite coverage enabled China to target American surface ships at a range of 1,500 kilometers from its coast, rendering most of the US Navy vulnerable in any prospective confrontation. China’s satellite count at the time of that report had doubled since 2018.

Pentagon analysts wrote that the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force’s ground-based missile forces complement the air and sea-based precision strike capabilities of the PLA Air Force and the PLA Navy. They added:

DF-21D has a range exceeding 1,500 kilometers, is fitted with a maneuverable reentry vehicle (MaRV) and is reportedly capable of rapidly reloading in the field.

The PLARF continues to grow its inventory of DF-26 IRBMs, which it first revealed in 2015 and fielded in 2016. The multi-role DF-26 is designed to rapidly swap conventional and nuclear warheads and is capable of conducting precision land-attack and anti-ship strikes in the Western Pacific, the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea from mainland China.

In 2020, China fired anti-ship ballistic missiles against a moving target in the South China Sea.

More satellites mean more precise targeting of Chinese missiles against surface targets.

The US Navy’s performance in recent operations against Houthi rebels in the Red Sea does not augur well for its survivability against Chinese missile forces that are orders of magnitude more powerful. In one case, the destroyer USS Gravely had to deploy its Phalanx Gatling guns to destroy a cruise missile only a mile – four seconds – from the ship.

China has the capacity to fire dozens of cruise missiles simultaneously at US targets, not to mention the more powerful DF series ballistic missiles, which rain down vertically from the stratosphere.

“The conventional arm of the PLARF is the largest ground-based missile force in the world, with over 2,200 conventionally armed ballistic and cruise missiles and with enough anti-ship missiles to attack every US surface combatant vessel in the South China Sea with enough firepower to overcome each ship’s missile defense,” Major Christopher Mihal wrote in The Military Review, a US Army journal, in 2021.

Some prominent US defense analysts argue that despite China’s massive missile advantage, US arms could still defeat a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. An example is former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby, a prominent Asia-prioritizer.

He might just as well say that the US could deter an invasion of moon men by dusting the Washington Monument with confectioner’s sugar. China is not stupid enough to mount a D-Day-style invasion of Taiwan across 70 miles of the Taiwan Strait.

It could blockade the island with little effort, as it did for two days in August 2022 when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi conducted a sort-of state visit. Taiwan has less than two weeks’ storage capacity for natural gas. One Chinese missile strike on an LNG carrier bound for Taiwan would potentially turn out the lights.

A Chinese blockade of Taiwan, to be sure, would risk confrontation with the US, and might prompt a counterblockade of oil tankers headed to China, followed by a counter-counter-blockade of oil headed for South Korea and Japan. China produces 80% of its BTUs with domestic energy sources.

South Korea and Japan have next to no domestic energy sources. The same and worse would happen if China invaded. 

For the US to regain the advantage around China’s coast would require a massive investment in missile defense, including directed energy weapons. Hypersonic missiles cannot be stopped by ordinary missile defense because the attacking missile flies as fast as the pursuing missile.

Lasers are effective against slow-moving targets like drones but not against missiles speeding at Mach 5. Washington would have to commit to a multi-year R&D program costing hundreds of billions of dollars with an uncertain outcome.

That in effect is how the US responded to the Soviet advantage in air defense firepower, demonstrated during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. It succeeded then but there is no guarantee of success in any such program.

Congress is in no mood to increase government spending given the explosion of federal debt during the Covid slump. Politicians and defense wonks, though, have to look like they are doing something useful. Shifting the deck chairs away from the Ukraine side of the Titanic is the most credible ploy at their disposal.

Follow David P Goldman on X, formerly Twitter at @davidpgoldman

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Australia has announced an ambitious naval shipbuilding plan aimed to check China’s expansion in its maritime peripheries and enable it to play a more significant role in a potential war over Taiwan.

This month, the Australian government unveiled its Enhanced Lethality Surface Combatant Fleet initiative, which aims to substantially bolster the Royal Australian Navy’s (RAN) surface fleet in light of the current fleet’s perceived inadequacy in fulfilling strategic requirements.

The document recommended building a fleet with enhanced lethality capable of operating effectively in Australia’s strategic environment and complementing the capabilities of conventionally armed nuclear-powered submarines.

The proposed fleet includes a mix of Tier 1 and Tier 2 surface combatants. The Tier 1 combatants consist of three Hobart class destroyers and six Hunter class frigates to provide essential advanced air defense, long-range strike, presence and undersea warfare.

The plan mentions the acquisition of six Large Optionally Crewed Surface Vessels (LOSVs) with 32 Vertical Launching System (VLS) cells, providing enhanced lethality through additional multi-domain strike capacity and directly increasing survivability, lethality and endurance while increasing distributed fleet lethality with a lower cost and crewing impact.

The Tier 2 combatants consist of at least seven and optimally 11 ships for undersea warfare to operate independently and in conjunction with the Tier 1 ships to secure maritime trade routes, northern approaches and escort military assets. The Tier 2 ships will consist of retained Anzac-class frigates until replaced by newer combatants.

It also mentions acquisition plans for 25 minor war vessels consisting of six Arafura class Offshore Patrol Vessels (OPVs), eight Evolved Cape class patrol boats (ECCPBs) and 11 ECCPBs for the Australian Border Force (ABF).

Fears of China’s rising naval presence in the South Pacific likely drove Australia to embark on this massive naval expansion, providing a highly visible, pre-emptive presence against the potential establishment of Chinese bases in the region.

In February 2022, Asia Times noted China’s efforts to establish a presence in Pacific Island countries including the Solomon Islands.

The Solomon Islands have a crucial geographical position in the South Pacific that connects Australia and the US to Asia through critical sea lanes.

However, the Solomon Islands and other small and remote Pacific nations face significant challenges including overpopulation, poverty and climate change that have hindered their development and progress.

The US, Australia and New Zealand, traditional partners of South Pacific states, prioritize promoting good governance practices. However, South Pacific states are more interested in receiving practical economic assistance, infrastructure development, and measures to address climate change.

China has several key concerns in the South Pacific, which include diplomatically isolating Taiwan, safeguarding the interests of its expatriate community in the region and protecting its fisheries and mining-related enterprises.

China has repeatedly denied any intentions of expansion or an overt military agenda. Nevertheless, its strategies of elite co-optation, coupled with its increasing economic and military power, have prompted security concerns among South Pacific nations and their traditional partners.

There is a worry among some critical analysts that China might be able to establish a military base in the South Pacific by using tactics such as trade, bribery, corruption and debt.

Tulagi Island, which has a deep-water harbor that is highly desirable to the military, was sought after by China Sam Group for leasing in 2019. However, the Solomon Islands government ultimately rejected the proposal.

Building such a facility would separate Australia and the US, leaving the country without the support of its primary ally and requiring it to protect its maritime interests alone.

Despite that setback, China continues to expand its footprint in the South Pacific, with Nauru being the latest regional state to cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan in favor of China last month.

Nauru’s past hints at its military value. During World War II, Japan built an airfield and substantially fortified the island as a link in its chain of defenses in the Central Pacific.

Cleo Paskal notes in an August 2023 Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) podcast that Nauru is trying to diversify its economy and has acknowledged that an international port would be helpful, with its location being a strategic transshipment point to other Pacific islands.

Paskal says that the China Harbor Engineering Company won the port bid and mentions suspicions that China may have been slow-walking the port project to coerce Nauru economically and not to compete with its port infrastructure project in the Solomon Island’s capital of Honiara.

Apart from checking China’s potential expansion in its periphery, Australia’s naval buildup may enable it to play a more significant role in a US-led coalition over a potential Taiwan conflict, although under certain constraints.

While Australia’s naval buildup of 51 warships over the next few years may seem paltry to the People’s Liberation Army – Navy (PLA-N), which, as of 2023, was the world’s largest navy in terms of hull numbers with 370 ships and submarines, it is designed to fight as part of a larger coalition with the US and Japan. 

Wu Su-Wei and Jonathan Chin note in a May 2021 Taipei Times article that Australia could provide logistical support to the US Navy in a conflict over Taiwan, with the RAN protecting sea lanes of communication, providing sealift and airlift capabilities, and engaging in combat under certain conditions.

Su-Wei and Chin say Australia would be obliged to send forces to aid the US as a US treaty ally. However, they argue that Australia would be unlikely to send ships in the Taiwan Strait and would more likely operate on the periphery of a conflict.

The writers say that since Australia lacks formal diplomatic and security ties with Taiwan, any Australian military action supporting the self-governing island would have to be done under the former’s alliance with the US.

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