– China, Growing Superpower

China's military threat continues to grow
Written by Richard Scamehorn

During the week of June 12, China once more conducted naval exercises in the Spratly Islands, a wide ranging archipelago in the South China Sea. This sea stretches a thousand miles south from the Chinese mainland, west along edges of Vietnam and east along the edges of the Philippines.

This highly disputed area has portions claimed to be a part of China, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei. It largely consists of volcanic rock formations. Most are quite small, and many are under water at high tide.

Notwithstanding their apparent uselessness, the area is located above the world's largest natural gas bed and is the central area of the Pacific Ocean's largest shipping lanes. It is this factor that gives these islands strategic value.

Because of such multi-country disputes, in 1982, the United Nations brokered the Convention on the Law of the Sea. This gives a country the right to claim waters up to 200 miles off-shore for economic purposes.

China signed the agreement; President Reagan would not.

To minimize the potential for conflict, all the claimants signed the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea. The signatories pledged to take no action(s) which would "heighten any tension."

But, the Chinese roam about the islands from time to time in an effort to support their claim that they own the entire South China Sea. This past June, they performed live-fire exercises using one island as a target. They also staged antisubmarine and beach landing drills, aimed at "protecting the atolls and protecting their claimed sea lanes."

Beach landing drills? That is about as offensive as you can get.

Among this growing conflict, the U.S. maintains the most dominant naval force in the Pacific and proclaimed that freedom of navigation in these waters to be "of U.S. national interests." The Obama administration has called for all the claimants to sit together and work out a solution. China has refused this and insists it will only negotiate one-on-one with each of the other claimants. China clearly does not want the U.S. involved in such negotiations and wants to force us to butt out.

Military forces in Asia-Pacific have one dominant force -- the U.S. 5th Fleet. This is dispersed with ports in mainland Japan, Korea and Okinawa.

China's strategy -- as carefully defined in the latest Department of Defense report analysis -- is to build a much greater naval force to achieve dominance by 2020.

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, "Our Asian footprint is too small." In light of that, former Pentagon Chief Admiral Mike Mullen announced a plan for joint naval exercises in the South China Sea.

U.S. defense spending in 2010 (excluding all wars) was $550 billion. China's was Y(yuan) 160 billion. It is difficult to compare the value of Y160 billion to $550 billion because they get more bombs for one Yuan than we get for $1. The prestigious "Economist" organization developed data, which makes a rough estimate. Using what is called the Purchasing Power Parity of the Yuan yielded an equivalency of Y160 billion to be between $450 to $650 billion -- i.e. they are, plus or minus, about at our level.

The Department of Defense Intelligence Agency, in an unclassified report, said China is developing an aircraft carrier-killing ballistic missile.

China's first aircraft carrier -- bought as just a hull from the Russians -- has completed its initial sea trials.

Their weapons developments are broad-ranged and create a concern for another weapons build-up race, although most of the build-up would be China's since we already have 10 Nimitz-class super carriers.

To neutralize China's new muscle, in mid-November, President Barack Obama announced a strategic agreement to base U.S. Marines on Australia's north shore at Darwin. The announcement said there would be about 2,500 personnel, which is just larger than one of the Corps Marine Expeditionary Units. These units integrate the military capabilities of air, land and sea into a highly mobile, quick response unit headed by a senior colonel.

As expected, this drew sharp rebukes from China. The government controlled Global Times responded with the following: "If Australia uses its military bases to help the U.S. harm Chinese interests, then Australia itself will be caught in the crossfire."

An MEU in Darwin establishes a strategic link to the MEU stationed on Okinawa -- i.e. South West Pacific to North West Pacific.

By so doing, the U.S. will re-establish our Asia-Pacific footprint which has been lost since the end of the Vietnam War.