By Bill Gertz
China has been quietly taking steps to encircle the United States by
arming western hemisphere states, seeking closer military, economic, and
diplomatic ties to U.S. neighbors, and sailing warships into U.S.
maritime zones.
The strategy is a Chinese version of what Beijing
has charged is a U.S. strategy designed to encircle and “contain” China.
It is also directed at countering the Obama administration’s new
strategy called the pivot to Asia. The pivot calls for closer economic,
diplomatic, and military ties to Asian states that are increasingly
concerned about Chinese encroachment throughout that region.
“The Chinese are
deftly parrying our ‘Pivot to the Pacific’ with their own elegant
countermoves,”said John Tkacik, a former State Department Asia hand.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to question President Barack Obama about the U.S. pivot during the summit meeting
set to begin Friday afternoon in California. Chinese state-run media
have denounced the new U.S. policy as an effort to “contain” China and
limit its growing power.
The Chinese strategy is highlighted by
Xi’s current visit to Trinidad, Costa Rica, and Mexico where he
announced major loans of hundreds of millions of dollars that analysts
say is part of buying influence in the hemisphere.
U.S. officials
say the visit to the region has several objectives, including seeking to
bolster Chinese arms sales to the region amid efforts by Russian arms
dealers to steal market share.
States including Venezuela,
Ecuador, Bolivia, and Mexico recently purchased Chinese arms but are
said to be unhappy with the arms’ low quality. For example, Chinese YLC
radar sold to Ecuador in 2009 did not work properly and sales of Chinese
tanks to Peru also ran into quality problems. Both states are now
looking to buy Russian weaponry, a U.S. official said.
Venezuela, a key oil-producing U.S. adversary, announced Thursday that China agreed to a $4 billion loan for oil development.
And in Mexico this week, Xi announced China is extending a $1 billion
line of credit for oil development and pledged another $1 billion trade
deal.
A joint Mexico-China statement said Mexico pledged not to
interfere in China’s affairs on Taiwan and Tibet, a reference to the
previous government of Mexican President Felipe Calderon who in 2011
invited exiled Tibetan leader the Dalia Lama, a move that angered
Beijing.
U.S. officials say there are concerns that the
pro-Beijing shift by the current government of Mexican President Enrique
Pena Nieto, who visited China in April, will be exploited by China for
such political goals, and could be used to generate support for China’s
claims to Japan’s Senkaku Islands.
U.S. officials said there are growing fears that some type of military confrontation
could break out between China and Japan over the disputed islands that
are said to contain large underwater gas and oil reserves.
North
of the U.S. border, Canada this week concluded a military cooperation
agreement with China during the visit to Beijing by Canadian Defense
Minister Peter G. Mackay. The agreement calls for closer cooperation
between the two militaries, including bilateral military exchanges.
Chinese
ambassador to Canada Zhang Junsai said China is deepening ties to
Canada for infrastructure development, in Calgary last month. Chinese
state-run companies have spent $30 billion for Canadian oil sands and
natural gas, he said.
At a security conference in Singapore last
month, the commander of U.S. military forces in the Pacific, Adm. Samuel
Locklear, confirmed the earlier disclosure by a Chinese military
officer that China’s military has been conducting naval incursions into
the 200-mile U.S. Economic Exclusion Zone around U.S. territory.
The locations of the incursions were not given but they likely
included submarine or warship visits to the western Pacific island of
Guam, a key U.S. military base.
A Chinese military official
initially stated at the conference that the incursions were part of a
People’s Liberation Army Navy effort at “reciprocating” for frequent
U.S. Navy transits through China’s 200-mile EEZs along the coasts. The
zones are technically international waters and China has claimed U.S.
transits are “illegal” under international law.
It is not clear why China is conducting naval operations it considers illegal for its maritime boundaries inside U.S. EEZs.
“They
are, and we encourage their ability to do that,” Locklear said, without
explaining why the activity was encouraged or where the Chinese vessels
had transited.
Larry Wortzel, a former military intelligence
official and specialist on China, said the Chinese military has sent
intelligence collection ships into Guam’s economic zone and also the
zone around the Hawaiian islands.
“The EEZ transits may indicate
that in the future they could revise their position on the Law of the
Sea and military activities,” Wortzel said.
Wortzel said he does not see China’s efforts in South and Central America as a counter to the U.S. Asia pivot.
Chinese arms sales, military exchanges, investment and developmenet has been underway for a decade, he said.
The Financial Times,
which first disclosed the Chinese EEZ forays, quoted one Chinese
military source as saying, “we are considering this as a practice, and
we have tried it out, but we clearly don’t have the capacity to do this
all the time like the U.S. does here.”
On Chinese inroads in the
western hemisphere, Rick Fisher, a China military affairs analyst, said
China is moving strategically on Latin America, working methodically as
part of a decades-long effort to build economic and political clout
there.
“It has cultivated far better military relations with the
openly anti-American regimes in the region and could become a sort of
political-economic godfather to ensure the survival of the Castro
dictatorship system in Cuba,” said Fisher, with the International
Assessment and Strategy Center.
Intelligence cooperation with Cuba
is “substantial,” Fisher says, and will expand sharply in the region
through the activities of its state-run telecommunications firms such as
Huawei Technologies and ZTE in the region.
China currently is “promoting almost all of its non-nuclear weapons in that region,” Fisher said.
“It
has promoted the Chengdu J-10 4th generation fighter in Venezuela and
Argentina, and even Peru may be considering the J-10 for its future
fighter program,” he said.
A State Department spokeswoman declined to comment.
At a recent arms expo in Peru, China was selling a 22,000-ton
helicopter amphibious assault ship and an export version of its
relatively advanced Yuan-class attack submarine.
In Venezuela,
China is helping the Caracas government circumvent U.S. arms embargoes
by helping repair Venezuela’s U.S.-made gas turbine engines on frigates,
he said.
“Another company was marketing several short range
ballistic missiles—with no apparent consideration about how it might
promote a regional missile arms race,” Fisher said. “The basic U.S.
policy is to ‘welcome’ China’s growing influence in Latin America but it
is now time for Washington to use both positive and negative pressures
to limit China’s strategic military reach into this hemisphere.”
Tkacik said China is quietly evolving on the global stage and implanting itself across the map with major overseas Chinese communities.
“And
if they [Chinese nationals] get in trouble, as they did in Libya in
2011, China’s navy and air forces can coordinate to support them,” he
said. “This support of émigré Chinese communities around the world has
become an overt dictum of China’s new security policy.”
China also
has set up commercial bases in key chokepoints around the Caribbean,
through its Chinese-run port facilities in Panama, Bahamas, Trinidad,
and Venezuela over the past decade.
Tkacik said those facilities are partly aimed at drawing American attention and easing U.S. geopolitical pressure in Asia.
China also is investing heavily in Africa, the Middle East, and Indian Ocean region.
“At
bottom, however, China’s strategic targets are closer to home: East
Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific,” Tkacik said. “That’s why
Washington’s Pivot to the Pacific unsettles Beijing so. It threatens to
check Beijing’s rising new influence in the Asia-Pacific.
Tkacik said Chinese naval patrols in U.S. economic zones have been carried out for years through Chinese ocean fishing fleets.
“It doesn’t need to send out military vessels to Guam or Hawaii or the Aleutians except to ‘tweak’ the U.S.,” he said.
http://www.washingtontimes.com
Comments:
This is the biggest fear of US on China. The rise of China is inevitable. According to Huntington's theory on clash of civilizations, the west must contain the east from rising or otherwise the shift of global power will rests with east in near future. This author had indicated and the issue on cyber security which was raised recently as the indicator that the West implied preparing itself with conflict with east especially on China. The core to the global power is lies
with US. The economic inabilities make US as a weaker nation against
China. Further, US owed China quite a lot of money. Therefore US need to
rise with strong leadership to contain the rise of east. This is what
had predicted by Samuel P. Huntington in his clash of civilizations
theory.
Comments