In recent weeks, China has expanded its fleet into both surrounding and more distant waters.
Most importantly, the People’s Liberation Army Navy deployed two battle groups to the South China Sea. The larger one, which focused on the Shandong aircraft carrier that operated off the Philippine main island of Luzon before moving to the Western Pacific to conduct high seas operations. The other is an Expeditionary Strike Group led by a Type 075. Yushen-class amphibious assault ship, one of China’s largest and most modern. Four Chinese Type 055 ships RenhaiThe two attack groups were escorted by USS Michigan-class cruisers, described as “the world’s deadliest surface combat ships.”
China’s newest aircraft carrier, the Fujianis currently in its third series of sea trials.
China and Russia have begun the “Joint Sea-2024” exercise at the port of Zhanjiang in the southern province of Guangdong, the headquarters of the Chinese Navy’s South Sea Fleet.
In total, 56 aircraft – the most ever in a single day, according to Taiwan’s Defense Ministry – flew into Taiwan’s air defense zone, with some coming within 33 nautical miles of the southern tip of the main island of Taiwan. Another 10 Chinese aircraft flew outside the zone at the same time.
Chinese Coast Guard Ship 5901, nicknamed “the Monster” because of its 12,000-ton displacement, was spotted near Sabina Reef in the Philippines in the South China Sea.
Finally, four Chinese warships passed the nearby Alaskan islands, staying outside of territorial waters but entering the US Exclusive Economic Zone, the strip of water between 12 and 200 nautical miles off the coast. As James Fanell, co-author of Embracing Communist China: America’s Greatest Strategic FailureGatestone said this was the fifth time since 2015 that China had sent warships into the American EEZ.
“Over the past few weeks, the Chinese Communist Party has demonstrated to the region – and more importantly to Washington – that the People’s Republic of China is the ruler of the seas in the Indo-Pacific,” said Fanell, a former U.S. Navy captain who served as director of intelligence and information operations for the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
Why is Chinese President Xi Jinping moving so quickly to expand control over the surrounding waters right now? Noted China analyst Willy Lam wrote last October that China’s leader may see a closing window of opportunity and is therefore in a hurry to annex territory.
At a conference of military officers in June in one of China’s most famous revolutionary bases, Xi reportedly made dire statements. “We are here in Yan’an to hold a military conference and prepare for civil war,” he said in one version of his speech. The wording of his remarks, now widely circulated, remains unconfirmed.
Whether he goes to war or not, he is preparing for it. Both the Financial Times and CNN have reported that companies are creating military units within their organizations. “Chinese companies are setting up militias like it’s the 1970s,” the cable channel reported.
Xi is conducting the fastest military buildup since World War II. He is also purging anti-war officers, trying to make his regime sanctions-proof, stockpiling grain and other commodities, monitoring the US for possible nuclear strikes, and mobilizing civilians for war. At the same time, he is reasserting state control over the economy, financial markets, and virtually every other aspect of society. In short, he is returning totalitarian control to China.
These controls are, among other things, choking the economy. On July 15, Beijing reported second-quarter GDP growth of 4.7 percent year-on-year, but that figure is difficult to reconcile with signs of a stagnating economy. The country is facing deflation, for example, which contradicts the reported robust growth.
The problem is that Xi refuses to give consumers more power to build a consumption-based economy. Why would he reject the nearly unanimous advice to give ordinary Chinese people more money? For other reasons, among others, that would undermine his efforts to build a war economy.
“Xi Jinping’s propagandists are desperately trying to cover up the fact that there is a growing crisis of confidence in his regime’s ability to reverse the economic decline caused by the reinstatement of Mao-era neo-Stalinist policies,” Charles Burton of the Prague-based think tank Sinopsis told Gatestone. “His rejection of the progressive ‘opening and reform’ agenda of Deng Xiaoping and his successors has led to a severe downward spiral, matched by increasing popular dissatisfaction with Xi’s repressive personality cult leadership.”
Xi has one chance – perhaps his last – to reverse the trend. The Communist Party’s Third Plenum, which began on July 15, is held every five years and is traditionally devoted to economic issues. Optimists had hoped Xi would announce new policies, but now expectations are extremely low as it appears he will instead double down on government initiatives to boost manufacturing and infrastructure spending.
His economic policy focuses on war preparations, and he seems determined to drag China into battle, regardless of the prospects. “Even if we cannot win, we must fight,” Xi is reported to have told military officers in 2017 in connection with Taiwan.
Why would he say such a thing? After all, a war, especially a war against Taiwanese “compatriots,” would be extremely unpopular with China’s dissatisfied people at the moment.
I believe that Xi wants a war – or at least an escalation of tensions – to prevent senior Chinese politicians from moving against him. He does not want to rouse the Chinese people by provoking or even attacking them; he wants to undermine his political opponents in the Communist Party.
“If the upcoming Third Plenum of the Communist Party fails to take dramatic action to restore confidence in the party’s ability to turn things around,” said Burton, who also previously served as a Canadian diplomat in Beijing, “then Xi’s only option will be to avert his inevitable impeachment, put China on a nationalist war footing, and take hasty action against Taiwan or another neighbor.”
Xi’s hero, Mao Zedong, mobilized the Chinese people with the Cultural Revolution not to gain their support but to use them to overthrow senior politicians who plotted to depose him. Xi could adopt that tactic, but this time with the goal of quickly seizing territory or perhaps just keeping regional tensions high.
However, the situation could spiral out of control and spark conflict in the region – or the world. Unfortunately, Xi could become desperate, and if the situation continues to deteriorate, he may not care about the odds.
Xi may not have decided to go to war yet, but he has clearly decided to risk war. That means he can strike when we least expect it.
Gordon G. Chang is the author of The impending collapse of China And China goes to wara distinguished senior fellow of the Gatestone Institute and member of its advisory board.
