United States Concerned about Rising China's Military
Administration officials are worried about China become a second superpower to the United States. They cite Beijing's efforts to add submarines, missiles, fighter planes, and other high-tech weapons to its arsenal. Its People's Liberation Army (PLA) is the world's largest fighting force with 2.3 million soldiers.
Its reported military budget has increased 14 percent this year to $35.3 billion dollars, but analysts believe that China's true spending is three times that.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said "there are concerns about China's military buildup. It's sometimes seemed outsized for China's regional role."
Regional role? Has the U.S. started defining what should be the range of influence for other nations? Military planners at the Pentagon are worried that China can challenge their pre-eminence in the Pacific. Rightly so. It is quite obvious that Beijing frowns upon the American presence in South Korea and Japan, as well as their efforts to supply Taiwan with military supplies. It also does not help the fact the Australia and New Zealand are U.S. allies too.
Rice refuses to directly answer questions of whether U.S. foreign policy toward China consists of containing its military power. Instead, she praises their efforts to develop and expand their economy.
A congressional advisory panel is a bit more blunt calling for China to be a more responsible international player and that it should abandon its single-minded pursuit of its "own narrow national interests."
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission calls on the United States to impede Chinese efforts to isolate Taiwan. It also criticised the intelligence community for not setting up an effective program to gather more detailed information about China's military buildup and development.
Some analysts have predicted that by 2025, China's navy could rule the waves of the Pacific. Chinese submarines could outnumber their U.S. counterparts by as much as five to one.
Back in March, Admiral Gary Roughead, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, commented:
I’m always asked about the Chinese threat and I say, ‘It’s not a threat,’ because you have to have two things to have a threat, and that’s capability and intent. There is no question that the PLA navy is modernizing and building its capability and is moving very quickly, but what is the intent?
Why is this a difficult question to answer? From time to time, every nation's military needs to upgrade their ships and weapon systems to make them more effective and efficient. China believes that it needs to modernise its military to counter the technology gap with the U.S. and its allies. It does not want to regard itself as a second-rate power anymore. With a $1 trillion foreign cash reserve, it has the ability to expand itself militarily.
A larger Chinese submarine fleet is ideal to counter the U.S. aircraft carrier. This will happen soon. China has already increased production to 2.5 boats per year of their Song-class diesel-electric sub. For the U.S., it hopes to return to producing two submarine boats per year no later than 2012, but it could be too late. Already, the U.S. sub fleet is in decline, and the per-unit cost of producing a sub is surpassing $2 billion dollars, impelling further cuts in the fleet.
Rice: U.S. Concerned About Rising China (AP)
Heritage Foundation - China's Submarine Challenge
Comments
Posted by: Gregory Conen
Posted on: November 17, 2006 01:45 PM
I concur that the Chinese want to compete with the US militarily, at least more than they do now. However, I think you miss a few points, or at least place the wrong emphasis.
It is unlikely that China will be able to control the pacific via a primarily submarine fleet. An aircraft carrier battlegroup provides a unique ability to project power over a large area, far more than an attack submarine, and with far more endurance than a ballistic missile submarine. I haven't seen anything to suggest China is working on aircraft carriers.
While a submarine can almost certainly evade a carrier group, attacking it successfully is another story. The approach on the Kitty Hawk battle group would be more difficult in a conflict, when dedicated ASW techniques would more comprehensively employed. Furthermore, it's far from clear that it would be able to do significant damage before it was driven off or destroyed if it attacked.
Instead, it's likely that China wants to minimize the effect of the US navy, especially in the waters near China. Having to focus on ASW will impede the ablity of carrier groups to respond quickly, even if they are not at risk of significant damage. If the area of conflict is Taiwan or Korea, or to a lesser extent Japan, and certainly if it's the Chinese mainland, China can project power with groundbased missiles and planes instead of missile submarines and aircraft carriers.
The comment about the United States' aging submarine fleet is accurate, but a little out of context here. Submarines are a terrible way to protect surface ships from other submarines. Especially if, as I hypothesize above, the battle will be near China, where Chinese submarines know the terrain of the sea floor, and passive listeners, planted listeners can help them locate US submarines.
Instead, the aging submarine fleet is a concern if the US and China ever end up in a Cold War situation where a nuclear strike is a serious concern. Aging attack submarines may not be able to track Chinese ballistic missile submarines, and aging ballistic missile submarines may have trouble evading Chinese detetection.
I don't think that's as much of a concern, as 1)A nuclear escalation with China seems unlikely, 2) The US still has a singnificant advantage in ballistic missile submarines (in numbers if nothing else) and 3) The endurance of US nuclear submarines is an advantage over diesel in the slow, prolonged tasks of submarine vs. submarine warfare.
Posted by: lldiaz
Posted on: February 13, 2008 08:14 PM
war w/ china would suck
Posted by: china
Posted on: November 25, 2008 02:48 AM
People just keep doing that. Too much spend on military.