U.S. Report Decries Beijing’s Sea Tactics

From the Wall Street Journal (May 15): U.S. Report Decries Beijing’s Sea Tactics  

Pentagon calls reclamation actions in South China Sea ‘coercive’

 China has reclaimed more than 3,200 acres of land in parts of the disputed South China Sea over two years, according to a Pentagon report released Friday that accused Beijing of using “coercive tactics short of armed conflict” to advance its interests while stopping just short of provoking war.

The U.S. report—an annual review of China’s military power the Pentagon prepared for Congress—also said Beijing’s overhaul of its armed forces had resulted in new capabilities that could diminish the U.S.’s core advantages in military technology.

It pegged Chinese military spending in 2015 at more than $180 billion, about $40 billion more than China’s official defense budget for the year, and predicted China would be able to continue increasing military spending at about 9.8% annually for the foreseeable future despite its economic challenges.

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“The United States will seek cooperation in areas of mutual benefit and manage competition with China from a position of strength,” Abraham M. Denmark, deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia, said at a briefing. He said the U.S. would stay focused on maintaining military superiority. The Obama administration wants about $583 billion for military spending for 2017.

Zhu Haiquan, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said in a statement that China has “indisputable sovereignty” over the Spratly Islands, which he called the Nansha Islands.

“China’s construction and deployment of facilities on its own soil in defense of its territory are legitimate acts of peaceful construction and exercise of its right to self-preservation,” the spokesman said. “The U.S. has been deliberately playing up the South China Sea issue to beef up its forward military deployment and flex its muscles. These coercive and dangerous actions are serious threat to peace and stability in the South China Sea”.

China’s defense ministry in a statement on its website late Saturday expressed “strong dissatisfaction” with the Pentagon report, saying it deliberately distorted China’s military policies and had severely damaged trust between the two countries.

The U.S. report comes as President Xi Jinping attempts to transform China’s military focus from defending the country to potentially projecting power outside its borders.
China also has become more aggressive in asserting its claims in the disputed South China Sea, with its reclamation operations rising steadily to more than 3,200 acres of land in the Spratly Islands chain where it is building infrastructure including harbors, communications and surveillance systems, three airfields and logistics facilities, according to the report.

The Pentagon study said other countries besides China had reclaimed approximately 50 acres of land in the Spratly Islands over the same period. It didn’t say how much land China had reclaimed in other parts of the South China Sea outside the Spratlys.

China’s actions in the South China Sea have unnerved U.S. allies with competing claims in the area, including the Philippines, which relies largely on Washington to counter Beijing. The U.S. has stepped up its military activities in the Philippines in response and continued conducting freedom of navigation exercises in the disputed waters.

The Pentagon outlined China’s modus operandi in the South China Sea in the study. “China often uses a progression of small, incremental steps to increase its effective control over disputed areas and avoid escalation to military conflict,” the report said. “China has also used punitive trade policies as instruments of coercion during past tensions and could do so in future disputes.”

The Chinese are seeking “to advance their interests in ways that are calculated to fall below the threshold of provoking conflict,” the study found.

Friday’s report included a series of satellite images showing how China built infrastructure on reef formations in the South China Sea. By late 2015, China had excavated deep channels to improve access to the sites, created artificial harbors and constructed new berthing areas for larger ships, in addition to building three airfields, each with approximately 9,800-foot runways, the report found.

China claims sovereignty over all of the South China Sea’s islands and adjacent waters, and says its actions there are for peaceful purposes, including support for its fishermen. The U.S., however, sees Beijing’s actions as a creeping attempt to take de facto control.

“Additional substantial infrastructure, including communications and surveillance systems, is expected to be built on these features in the coming year,” the Pentagon report said of the largest outposts in the Spratly Islands.

The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague is expected to rule this summer on a legal challenge the Philippines has brought against China’s expansive claims to the South China Sea’s islands, rocks and reefs.

Even as China’s military broadens its ambitions, it continues to focus on contingency planning related to Taiwan, which Beijing considers a Chinese province gone astray and Taipei considers an independent country. The U.S. doesn’t support Taiwanese independence but sells arms to Taipei to help the island keep up its defenses and maintain the status-quo balance with China.

“China’s multidecade military modernization effort has eroded or negated many of Taiwan’s historical advantages,” the Pentagon report found.

The U.S. is urging Taiwan to continue to increase its military spending and invest in so-called asymmetric capabilities—technologies or military innovations by which Taiwan could outmatch China in a potential conflict despite being much smaller.

“We focus on asymmetry because of the obvious and unavoidable imbalance in the sheer size of the two sides,” Mr. Denmark said. “Because of that, we believe that Taiwan does need to increase its spending but also needs to make investments in asymmetric capabilities that would account for that natural disparity in size."

http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-report-decries-beijings-sea-tactics-1463182533