China as a Twenty First Century Naval Power | Michael McDevitt

[Music] well good afternoon everybody i'm steve orleans president of the national committee on u.s china relations and i'm thrilled today to be joined by admiral mike mcdivitt mike has just completed a book which i will hold up for all of you to see china has a 21st century naval power theory practice and implications and i was just talking to mike and telling him that i'm a layperson i don't really understand the pla navy but this book does an extraordinary job of laying out in the clearest terms i have ever read what the plan is about why it is what it is and what its capabilities are and what we think its plans are um it's a remarkable read it's it's it's fascinating um i mean i hesitate to say there's a book about the navy but it's riveting um let me just talk one second because this the discussion is going to revolve somewhat around mike's background normally i don't go over bios of people um but in this case you know admiral mcdivitt had a 34-year career in the navy and he had four at-sea commands including command of an aircraft carrier battle group he spent all of his operational time in the pacific including a two-year assignment in japan he was chief of naval operations and strategic study strategic studies group fellow at the naval war college and the director of the east asian policy office of the secretary of defense he also served as director for strategy war plans and policy for us sinpak subsequently became pacom and now indo paycom but i knew it in the days when it was sink pack um he concluded his career as as uh commandant of the naval war college in washington dc and i do that because i think that expertise really informs what this book um talks about so let me kick off by asking a question which is why this book now and who is the intended audience are lay people like me the intended intended audience or is the office of the secretary of defense the intended audience and thank you so much for doing that one other thing thank you for being such an active participant in our track two maritime dialogue with the south china seas institute where you have been a stalwart and a very productive participant but mike thank you so i won't call you admiral mcdivot because i'm too used to calling you mike but you have two stars that we remember well thanks steve that was a terrific and very uh warm uh introduction that i much appreciated one minor correction only to keep folks at the naval war college off my back i was come down to the national war college uh in uh in washington d.c um let me answer the question first about who was it written for i when i started i think my main audience was is essentially have in mind is people who are interested in what's going on with china and they read about the chinese navy and what have you and the whole idea was to provide something that uh and captured the totality as i understand it from a chinese more or less from a chinese perspective of what uh what uh is going on with china's navy um and i of course i've been writing about the pla navy people's liberation army navy very awkward title uh for a number of years doing papers for conferences and in seminars and what have you since i've retired but the genesis of this book actually took place uh about seven years ago when i was uh of all things reviewing the text of uh that tediously long 12 2012 work report to the 18th party uh chinese communist party congress by hujin chao and like unlike our familiar uh state of the union addresses in which every you the incumbent president talks about not only all the great things he's done but all the great things he wants to get done this report also talks about the last five years of what the chinese communist party has accomplished but it also lays out not a want list but an agenda list in other words it actually talks about what is in train what the plan is what their objectives are and so i was looking through that and i came across the fact that uh hujin chao said something i don't think that was ever has ever been said by a leader of china uh uh before that time uh to 2200 or so members of the chinese communist party senior members of the party saying that we are going to build china into a maritime great power so that struck me as significant and it seemed to me for this was for the first time in china's history that the leader announced that china has a traditional continental power aspire to also become a maritime great power i thought this was a dash is audacious as well and it had no equivocation but the more i dug into did some research on this because i was working at the center for naval analysis which is a research institution i came to realize that the objective announced in 2012 china was not really starting from a clean sheet of paper in fact uh it had also been thinking it was not a bold out of the blue they had been thinking about this notion of how dependent it become on the maritime domain economically both for security uh and what have you and so the idea and then i did a little more research and had a conference and found out that among other things china is already the with the in 2012 was a global leader in shipbuilding it had the largest merchant marine of some 5 000 merchant ships that are owned by chinese uh it was the has the large world's largest coast guard far and away the world's largest fishing fleet and it's a leader in maritime research and exploration time so what in the world was who talking about the thing going to become a great maritime power when you look at the rack up all of the components of maritime power as i just did china was already a leader it already was a great maritime power well the answer is all of those things china ranked either first or second maybe third in one case depending upon how you account in terms of the different aspects of maritime power the broad aspect except in one case the navy the pla navy was not yet in 2012 uh one that we would call a global a global maritime power or a certainly not the world-class navy that xi jinping wants so the focus of the book became not china as maritime power but china as a naval power because the pla was navy was the final piece and if you will in the ambition but it's also the keystone of the whole edifice of maritime power without the navy they the chinese argue that they don't have strategic support for all the other aspects of naval power so that's a very long answer to your question but that was that's the genesis of of the book and why it's focused on on the navy you know one of the things that's really interesting is this has happened uh in terms of historical terms almost overnight it's a fascinating case study as well uh at least in contemporary times of the navy going from a relative insignificance to being a major naval force in just slightly more than two decades and so if you're interested in the chinese navy and how it what it where it is today and why it has gotten there uh take a look at the book how much did your experience at see you know being a commander of a carrier group for instance effect you know you're not an ordinary scholar you're not somebody who's who sat in there in the in looking at that stuff you know in the archives so to speak you've been out there commanding how did that inform your writing well actually i did look in the archives too but now my operational my operational experiences um when you take a destroyer and sail off in my case from san diego and go off to the northern arabian sea where the chinese have been doing their anti-piracy patrols and what have you and then you're at sea for 50 or 60 days sometimes you're worried about things breaking down you're worried about it my case looking for a soviet submarine and all of those sorts of things i could i could envision what these what what the chinese navy was going through as they were starting to become globally operational where they were suddenly thousands of miles away from home as opposed to two days steaming time or three days away in the in china's near seas and all of the problems that are associated with keeping a ship operating and doing what it's supposed to be doing for a very long period of time and so that really did inform the way i looked at how the pla navy has been developing the um the book talks about the national security strategy um that was put out in 2017 and it says that china seeks indo-pacific regional hegemony in the near term this is the strategy not the book and ultimately global preeminence in the long term what does your book tell us about these conclusions well my view is that china certainly does want to be the predominant power in east asia at least in the maritime region of east asia uh perhaps up to through the philip to include the philippine sea but certainly the east china sea and the south china sea but it's not the entire i mean they may have ambitions but they certainly are not going to be the predominant power in the indian ocean for example nor are they going to be the predominant naval power globally uh once once the chinese navy sails out from underneath the umbrella of its land-based air power both the chinese air force as well as the naval air force or its land-based ballistic missiles and goes in in leaves sails out let's say a thousand miles or 1200 miles away from china it is very vulnerable it has it has no air cover it has no long-range missile cover it's totally dependent upon what the ships bring with them to defend themselves and so when it goes ventures out into the indian ocean for example on the three ship task groups and what have you it's running into the area where the entire indian navy is obviously in the indian ocean right on either coast of india the u.s fifth fleet is in the far reaches of the indian ocean um where it was going where it is going for its anti-piracy patrols in the gulf of aden and what have you so it it at least in the navy the navy it is not going to be a global predominant navy for a very long period of time at least in terms of predominance that's not to say operations they have the ability to go they built have built as of today about 135 what i call blue waterships warships that can sail anywhere in the world and stay there and operate so they during peacetime they can certainly go show the flag conduct naval diplomacy virtually anywhere in the world but when you talk about predominance i'm thinking in terms of military terms they are definitely once they get away from home they are not the predominant force by any by any uh measure that's their ambition in the eastern uh east so what's this concept of you know the haiyang chang the great maritime power it does it mean the greatest maritime power does it mean equal to the greatest maritime what is it you know because it's repeated constantly both in chinese and in english you know hai yang chang and kind of they're they're those who say oh it means global predominance when you look at the first thing is when you it's either i've either seen it translated either as great maritime power or maritime great power uh i tend to use them interchangeably unfortunately but when you look at what the chinese meant by maritime power they were talking about the entire maritime enterprise so they were as i mentioned they were talking about their merchant marine their coast guard their fishing fleet uh their ship building industry they use the term maritime power the way uh westerners use the term maritime power which is very broad it it gets confused it is maritime power if to be strict about it is not talking about naval power naval power is just about navies maritime power uh is the entire maritime enterprise unfortunately they are used interchangeably uh c power naval but when talking about i was talking about the collective uh if you will the entire maritime enterprise and so what he meant by that um he never said nor has xi jinping said ipso facto this is what it means but what you hate to judge where how they see it is you have to look at what they've done as i said they've built the largest uh merchant marine and and so forth so what they've done they are clearly at the top level of ever in every category and today including the navy either one or two or the top three across the board and so when you look at every other maritime nation in the world and look at that and look at the totality of their capabilities shipbuilding and uh or or merchant marine or sizes or navy whatever china outmatches everybody including the united states as a maritime power not a naval power but as a maritime power i'd be lest i be understood the us is still number one as a naval power in terms of tonnage and what have you but again china is working hard to gain on us but in every other category across the board they are in the in the top tier so they're already there they are a great maritime power the book talks about the four objectives um that that china's you know the plan has defending china from attack from the sea protecting sea routes three pursuing the global political and security interests that china's global economic interests have created and for recovering sovereignty over its claimed maritime territory especially taiwan is this normal for a rising power or is this something we really should be deeply concerned about i don't make any pretenses to being a scholar that can talk about um normality for all or historically of all rising power but i would say in the case in china's case a country with a sense of grievance the century of uh humiliation um all of these objectives are makes sense china doesn't want to be attacked from the sea how did the century of humiliation started started by the british coming by sea in trading and then the opium war kicked off and started that start of the century and so this and then subsequently the second opium war and then the arrow war with the french how did all those come all those folks come they came by sea in fact they came via the south china sea and so there is this sense of grievance that uh china has plus the strategic reality that their number one potential foe is the united states and if the united states is going to attack china how are you going to come i see so and then you combine those security interests with sovereignty interests taiwan the unoccupied islands are the occup in the south china sea the islands that china does not occupy uh or in the east china sea those are maritime in nature and so again it drives you to and finally of course the biggest driver i believe uh is the going out strategy that deng xiaoping started in terms of their trade and economic development now the belt and road initiative and what have you so they have tremendous economic interests which have created political interests abroad and so all of those things together layered on top of if you will a sense of grievance in a sense of never again never again will buy and be and be invaded and defeated uh by forces coming from the sea have all contributed to i think uh fewella waltersong of making sure that we are really really capable of defending our maritime approaches by those who want to i've already got a dozen questions but those who want to ask questions please use the q a function at the bottom of your screen and send in a question and please identify who you are so i can announce that as i ask the question the book talks a lot about the plan participating in the anti-piracy campaign how much they learned about the ability to kind of as you were describing to sustain themselves far from shore was that a mistake did the united states make a mistake in allowing china to participate or asking china to participate well the truth of the matter is we didn't get a vote uh this was china decided to participate based upon u.n resolutions passed in 2008 one called resolution 1816 and the other one called number resolution 1838 in combination one permitted naval forces to enter some highly coastal waters and pursuit of pirates and to conduct uh anti-piracy and the second one uh in october of 2008 was essentially a plea from the united nations to all maritime countries who were dependent upon maritime trade what have you to contribute to the anti-piracy patrol and it was thanks to those two u.n resolutions uh essentially tugging on among other a lot of countries but certainly china's sleeve to say hey you've got a lot of ships coming through here we would like you to participate so that's when china beijing made the decision uh to dispatch uh two destroyers and an oiler uh to the uh gulf of aden and they they left china in 2008 and they're still at it now 12 years later one and i think this is the number the 36th tax group and since that first one china has essentially created a rotation where there's constant presence of chinese warships in the uh i call it the far reaches of the indian ocean the gulf of the arabian sea uh non-stop but now instead of what they did at the first two or three when they're when the next group shows up the group that's being relieved then takes off on a three-month tour of port visits to east africa west africa into the mediterranean showing the flag conducting naval diplomacy demonstrating bright clean shiny new chinese warships very squared away sailors uh that china has arrived and each each task group is assigned a different package of countries to visit and so by the time they get home they on average they've been gone about seven months which is which is the standard deployment length that i grew up with which is quite quite a long time away from home port um uh and and uh they've been doing as i say now for the last 12 years so this has been a a tremendous accelerant to their capabilities because one they actually as i said they had to learn how to take care of ships a long way from home two they got to they were out mixing it up with and or sailing around with ships from other great navies around the world so they could watch they observe best practices and they also began to exchange uh operational uh uh communications on a very basic level but so many of those warships out there were flying helicopters somebody had to be able to deconflict so you didn't have mid-air collisions of one helicopter chase or two helicopters from two different ships from two different countries all closing in on the same piracy attack uh and so china has learned lots of those kinds of practical operational details it's learned how to do underway replenishments that see day and night uh two or three ships uh one on either side of the oiler and one astern uh refueling so they have become quite quite proficient looking out for themselves again in a peacetime environment out there and of course now they've built a base of djibouti to where they can actually pull in and um and take some time alongside to do repairs if necessary and that sort of thing did we get a benefit from the burden sharing of the united states get a benefit but i think the united states i think all of the all of the uh that the european union had uh forces out there nato had forces japan had forces i think everybody who has watched the chinese in action during the last 12 years have have uh realized that they have made up they have been professional and have made a a contribution to the suppression of piracy now there isn't much piracy going on right now and of course uh people like the indians are very concerned about the fact that china still keeps hanging around uh there uh in the arabian sea uh when there aren't any real pirates to chase they're not very many at the this day and age but the rotation continues yep the book talks about china's kind of lack of transparency in how many ships it's failed it tends to build submarines it tends to it intends to build with transparency by the military china military commission the cmc address some of the problems we have with with china's rise you know that's a that's a very good question when i when i wrote the book i i was making the point that while the us and virtually every other country in the world that has to go to a parliament or a diet or a congress or somewhere for money for appropriations to build ships which are expensive warships which are expensive has to essentially say here's what we want to use it for this we want to buy and this is how many ships or submarines or whatever it is i want to buy to make the contrast the china doesn't have to tell anybody they and they don't in fact it's a state secret i've been told and so we don't know how big but it really matters is what does it mean in terms of what's china's end state for example the united states the the trump administration approved a goal of 355 ship navy and that's now people are debating oh it needs 400 anyway needs a bigger number but the point is uh we don't know and nobody knows the chinese know presumably but nobody else knows how large the uh chinese navy is going to become now would it if they told us would that make a difference uh a few years ago i think it would have and now when we're in the mode of strategic competition i think that the number because it it clearly where they are right now is not where they want to be because xi jinping has said we need to build to a world-class navy the numbers might be so alarming that it would scare the bejesus out of their neighbors and it would throw gasoline on the already incipient naval arms race between the united states and china when it would i certainly would arm uh everybody who said we need a u.s navy of x number of ships if you had because look at how many ships china is going to build we can count what they have built but that that degree so i'm not sure if it would make the situation any better quite frankly interesting talk about you know we we have the liaoning and now we'll soon or we've seen a second aircraft carrier yeah and how many aircraft carriers does the united states well we we have we have uh 11 uh 10 plus the the uh bush which is uh exceeding the uh um good grief i'm having a senior moment uh the forward uh is yet to be commissioned but we will have a force of roughly 11 maybe it passed through 12 and then back down to 11. is china going to build towards that number well we don't know what that well that's a good question you know based on the last question we have no idea we can speculate i don't they're not i don't think they're trying to match his ship for ship in other words if we have 11 carriers they want 11 carriers i don't think that's what they have in mind i think i think they're building the carriers because remember i was talking earlier about sailing out into the indian ocean for example whether all of a sudden no air cover they're at the mercy of of uh anybody with an airplane with a cruise missile they have a if they're going to operate ships around the world they would they would like to have air cover so that they're not totally vulnerable to to attack from the air from aircraft land-based aircraft and so you know the the conventional wisdom seems to think that maybe six the first two that they have are placed because they jump where airplane takes off and uh and uses the ramp if you will like a ski jumper uh to jump uh to getting to get airborne uh and they're then the third one that they are building is gonna be larger about eighty five thousand tons and it apparently is going to have catapults but to me the more interesting thing is they're really behind the power curve in terms of the airplanes to fly off those aircraft carriers now the current jet uh that they fly off the two that they have is called the j-15 the flying shark uh and they only have around 25 of them and they that's not enough to fill out the air wing on both of these ships simultaneously and they don't they don't seem to be spitting out anymore so i think that this airplane has probably proved to be less than satisfactory it was a knockoff of a former soviet aircraft and i think they may be finding tr having trouble with it in terms of particularly low landing speeds and danger dangerous landing and as a result they're working on a new carrier aircraft so meanwhile they're building ships but they really don't have a very good airplane to fly off of those ships so uh it's kind of stay tuned and do they have the training to run it there's one of your success i was with one of your successors another aircraft carrier battle group commander who said building of it is one thing but that ain't the toughest part well the toughest part is in fact operating them safely integrating the air wing and the ship's company together uh you know they are the ship was the airport and then the air wing has to do things once it takes lead once it leaves the airport but he has to come back and so so they um now they have practice they've been practicing now for what five years i guess with the first one allowing maybe six years um and they've got the basics down uh and they're trying to be trying to train up more pilots um uh and but they have not demonstrated a a a long-term deployment they've gone off into the philippine sea for a couple three days uh sailing around and whatever and sailing back and what whatever but they have not used it not employed them on any kind of a sustained basis so i still think they're in the very much in the walk before they run stage the chapter on uh near seas combat is is is just riveting i mean it's you know it lays out these various scenarios that is that are really quite scary in truth and let me quote it directly and then ask you to talk about where you say it is also likely that this is once china elected to use force against taiwan and the u.s opted to respond the war at sea would likely spread globally very fast after which whenever and wherever around the world the u.s navy and plan encountered one another combat would ensue talk about that eventuality and what that all means well it it it means that there there would no there would not be any uh haven any excluded zone that war at sea if i find a ship that uh you know the us is busy fighting the the pla navy uh around the first island chain or in the philippine sea that chinese ships in the indian ocean wouldn't get a pass that in fact the fifth fleet would would be told to take care of them and they would or try to and so uh why do i believe it would go quickly go global uh history mainly the most recent example is what is sometimes called the phony war at the beginning of world war ii from september 1st 1939 until germany invaded france in this may of 1940. hardly anything happened in fact there are people in the uk were calling it the sith cream because we were sitting facing each other not much going on before the invasion of france well the war at sea went global instantly the british navy was the royal navy was after the the german navy in the south atlantic in the pacific wherever they could find them they went after them and took them on and took and sunk them and the the u-boats that from for the german side they went global uh and in fact when we started when yeah when we the day after pearl harbor the u.s declared unrestricted submarine warfare against japan wherever we could find a japanese ship we were willing to think it and so it seems to me that uh the maritime domain that that just because ships are hiding or not hiding but operating somewhere else that is not at the immediate uh scene of conflict that they get a free pass that would be it but but i hate i hated to add that would be a presidential decision the the white house and the secretary of defense would have to decide to give that those orders but my guess is that's sort of what happened i've been on both sides of the taiwan trade both in xiamen and in jinmen so where you know i always joke if you had a good arm you could throw a ball from ginman to the mainland what's the risk there that that we would see some you know i think you lay the consequences of a real attempt to take taiwan as so catastrophic that it's unlikely it would occur but taking over jinmen which you also discuss is a much more limited uh operation which probably could be accomplished well you know gin men is i think the biggest island and there's i guess there's uh 15 total granite islets that compose genmen um it would be they're so close six miles two miles away from the mainland that they would be uh the the pla the army and the air force and the navy would quickly try to overrun them and take them out now and i think they could probably do it quickly but it would be bloody i you know provided that the that the taiwan military garrisons on those features or are well armed or have lots of extra ammunition they've you know they've been digging they have tunnels and caves and what have you that that have been put in place since the mid 50s and i i don't want to overdraw the comparison but everybody sees movies i think about iwo jima and how hard it was to to get the japanese out of those caves and what have you well it would be a tough fight there's no doubt that it would that the pla would win but they would take some casualties doing it let me go to the audience questions uh first is from isabel hilton from china dialogue hi isabel part of the naval strategy is building capacity for submarine warfare how would you assess the current capability and read the navy's capacity to sustain longer distance operations should we not take note of the acquisition of port facilities across the pacific or the south sure to the last question absolutely yes they already have uh one base as i mentioned djibouti and and they have uh a place that they've used even before djibouti was open they have places all along uh in holland and africa and what have you that and certainly bri any of the facilities that are being built that could be lumped into the bri process for improving harbors and ports and what have you in fact some chinese management all of those are available for peacetime access i make the point that it's peacetime access and certainly that but in wartime the countries have the ability to say you are not allowed or permitted or welcome to come now whether they would or not is another matter but if there was a conflict going on there is the possibility that the government that these many countries would exercise their sovereignty and say you're not permitted to come in here europe you're a belligerent you're a hostile belgian fighting a conflict and we don't we're not going to allow you to stay or come or maybe only stay for 24 hours to get replenishment it's not a base these are not bases there are access points where you can go in ship can get in come and get fuel get fresh food stay for a couple days let the sailors go on liberty make make visits to dignitaries etc etc have a reception on the ship so you invite all the notables from the town or the capitol if they're nearby and why have you to come to the so all of that goes on but those countries have the right to say no if they have the courage to so the base the base issue is is different in the sense that uh you know djibouti is a base the others are actually all access absolutely submarines uh china has invested it continues to invest a lot in submarines they they uh have a very large conventionally powered and that in the sense that these are not nuclear powered which has a big makes a big difference in terms of their endurance and their operational speed and what they can do with the submarine but they have they're building modern uh conventionally powered submarines in numbers and it's clearly a key part of their layered defense the submarines and and they are going to be building more nuclear powered attack submarines which will even improve their capabilities so particularly as a defensive strategy to keep the us navy away uh or uh they their submarine forces is quite capable and they're trained mainly to to attack ships as opposed to attack other submarines their their their their goal is to either shoot a torpedo or a cruise missile at a ship and so yes now the other side of the submarine issue is how good are you at finding them or anti-submarine warfare uh the cop it's conventional wisdom whether it's true or not i really don't know but it's conventionalism that china still has a long way to go when it comes to anti-submarine warfare i.e finding and attacking the us or somebody else's submarine um but again they are putting a lot of money and effort into this their ships are superbly equipped they have every possible their destroyers and frigates and corvettes every possible anti-submarine device that you can load on a ship they've got and so uh they're now whether those things work as well as they would hope whether they are good enough deciphering the acoustic signals that they may get i don't know but they have all of the they've equipped themselves now the question is have they trained themselves and i don't know the answer to that which leads nicely into the next question which is from charles jang from uspto who asks about innovation and naval power how will ai and drone and technology on the horizon change the balance of power what is the role that innovation plays in both the u.s and chinese navies well the moral innovation has played over the years and the u.s navy has been is is remarkable data length for the very first time at sea and uh it's right three dimensional radars etc so all of the other all of the innovations that have made the current u.s navy the navy it is today has largely been based upon technical advances or renovations um after all nuclear-powered warships and that was the u.s navy innovation um many of these innovations are too expensive for anybody else to afford except a country like china or russia or maybe the uk or japan but many are not and so they these innovations tend to proliferate and spread it's hard to have a have a really cool neat little capability that only you have and nobody else can can get their mitts on that china is particularly good at getting their hits on things that are that people want to close hold uh hold close and and so china is innovative in a way but it's also uh they are quite good at replicating and elaborating on proven designs proven systems for example their early sonars all came from france russian combat systems missile systems and what have you are very derivative uh that's not to say that china isn't working hard at being innovative but many of the systems on their ships uh are not necessarily what i would consider innovative but i would consider derivative uh but once again they're working hard at it moving into the ai world uh and what have you in in in unmanned vehicles both talk make them practical is a problem that none of them none of us have solved yet let me combine a question that carl lichenberry asks um which is with uh questions two questions that i want to ask does the ccp political control system imposed on the pla discourage the mid and junior leader initiative required for a modern navy to be effective which leads into two of my questions which is you say that a world-class navy for china is still 15 to 20 years away and also in terms of the counter-intervention strategy you say it requires a joint force which the pla does not have so kind of talk about those three related questions okay let me first of all let me say hi to carl uh and um that the dual command um system that the pla has uh for those who don't know what i'm talking about it's essentially not only the navy but throughout the people's liberation army they have a commander and then they have a political commissar who is of he may either be of equal rank maybe even senior who who are the share dual command in theory or in practice they're both there now in terms of uh stifling uh in uh initiative and junior officers i'm not sure that [Music] party organized militaries are necessarily fonts of initiative to begin with officers in the chinese navy don't know any other way to do it they've never done it and this is the only way they've ever experienced and so it seems very peculiar to us uh or to most western military but it doesn't seem peculiar to them because it's how they grew up how they have learned to succeed and and be promoted and so if that allows them a certain amount of initiative it has to be i think within the framework of the party committee on the ship uh what in in making sure that uh you're not beyond the bounds of what is acceptable and this is certainly even more difficult for them today in in xi jinping's china than it was in charlotte china is she has continued to clamp down and emphasize uh that in reminding everybody and just let me mention to everybody who was listening it's important to remember that the pla navy is not a national navy it is the naval arm of the chinese communist party it's a party navy and so uh it's under it and it makes no bones about it in fact she goes out of his way to remind everybody that about their need to be loyal to the party and stamp out any uh naval officers or army officers or air force officers or whoever would suggest that we ought to be a national army or a military not a party that is that is verboten the party controls the military and so i suspect that uh carl and carl knows more about this than i do really from his experience in china uh is that junior officers have a if they're really have bright ideas and what have you they have to be very careful on how they and how they promote those and we'll move those ideas ahead unless they be squelched because it's not uh it's not doctrine you asked two good other good questions steve the world class military objective was set by xi ji ping in uh in his 2000 his 19th party congress uh presentation in 2017 when he said that china should become a world-class military by by the 2049 or 2050. and then he said and but by the way by 2035 i want the modernization to be largely completed so he's suggesting that there's 50 there's a 15-year window right now the clock is ticking that um china all of the services this is not just the navy now mind you all of the services whatever they intend to whatever their final end state is going to be in terms of size and mix and composition he wants that to be largely achieved in the next 15 years leaving himself another 15 years if you will to to hone operational and tactical and training issues that's not to say they're not being honed on now they're being harped on now about realistic training so 2035 is a magic year and it fit nicely with 15 years down the road in the 15 for the previous 15 years how fast china's navy has commissioned ships so there's a cemetery there to that argument now the counter intervention i'll try to do this quickly um we the u.s department of defense calls has a term for what they decl uh call what china is trying to do in terms of defeating america if it comes to a fight a fight in east asia there's called area denial or a.d which means they have to deal with the ships the u.s military that's already there the seventh fleet all of the the ships and the air force and the fifth air force that are already in home station in japan largely um and then there is the issue of what about all the rest of the u.s military that will be coming in case there was an attack on taiwan would be crossing the pacific to come to the rescue if you will and that part is called anti-axis or sometimes it shows a squared and so the us talks about china's being ada it talks about uh both of those uh playing a role in counter intervention with the chinese talk about that too and what it is again is derivative of what the soviet union wanted to do during the cold war it's a process of layering defensive forces out across the pacific starting with range of their anti-ship ballistic missiles that can maybe reach out to 1200 to 13 1400 miles from china where it can attack approaching ships then a layer of submarines waiting and perhaps as a wolf pack laying in wait for approaching ships probably through somewhere through the philippine sea and then is it the forces got a little closer land-based aircraft and shorter-ranged missiles being able to be shot launched from uh from china's mainland to attack uh attack approaching ships all of this depends on the ability to find them so you can shoot them right and that depends upon this open ocean surveillance system uh satellites over the horizon radar and what have you to help locate approaching forces so you can tell the missile ballistic missiles okay here's your aim point so you can vector the aircraft okay here's where you need to go so you can tell the submarines all right you need to move from here to here remember those those are confessionally powered submarines for most cases they don't move real fast so you have to give them a heads up okay you need to go over here to intercept the americans and so that's a layered defense and that's what i mean by the counter intervention intervention all of those are that's not a navy game alone it's the rocket force it's the air force and it's the navy and it's the strategic support force all of those have to work together in a joint campaign and china is just now in the beginning stages of learning how to be a joint warfight started in 2015 when xi jinping decided to to break all of the iron rice bowls and say okay we're going to break down these service stove pipes we really are going to have a joint capability and they're still working on it but they've reorganized the entire chinese military to do this to force feed uh the ability for all of the services to operate together in a combined campaign so that's a kind of another one of those stay tuned they're working yeah what i love mike is you can break it down so a layman like me actually understands the answer that's that's terrific um south china sea we're running low on time so let me uh combine a bunch of questions on the south china sea the book says collectively the combination of claims to land features and historic research resource rights makes the south china seas as the chinese put it a core national interest is that the view of the chinese government or nationalist media could the chinese increase coercion in the south china sea what prevents them from doing that did pompeo's statement the state department statement change on the south dynasty change anything and nelson dong one of our directors asks if does america's failure to have ratified the law of the sea convention affect our naval presence in the south china sea well that's a big mouthful here to to deal with here um but we've got to do it shortly because i got one more aesthetic question okay well let me start from the back first certainly the ratification of of unclass or the lack of a ratification of this who uncles uh gives china a great talking point they beat us over the head with it every time and they remind everybody else that the americans are preaching to you but they haven't seen fit to sign uh unclass does it has it affected how we've done things like uh freedom of navigation operations or not no because the us and we make make this perfectly clear to china and or anyone else for that matter that well we haven't ratified it we we have followed we are following all of the uh the rules of of the law of the sea in terms of uh territorial seas and freedoms of navigation and different maritime rights and responsibilities so so it's awkward yes it's awkward but but the reality is in terms of practice uh we we practice it uh religiously um the pompeo statement uh i i am not a great fan of the secretary of state but i think he's on to something with his statement in this past july where he said he took existing u.s policy and what i can think he did is he clarified it he wanted to make clear that the u.s policy for many many years has been we take no position on sovereignty claims in other words the u.s is not it does not uh want to involve itself in deciding whether china or vietnam or philippines or malaysia's claims overlapping claims to the spratleys who has a better claim we say we're not in that name we don't want to take a position on who has sovereignty but we are in the game of saying taking a position on maritime rights that are based upon the law of the sea like exclusive economic zones and a claim of historic rights by the chinese to say that everything inside the the earthwell nine-dash line that they or actually taiwan put on chinese nautical charts uh 50 years ago somehow and they uh allows china to claim that everything inside that dash line those resources of the ocean are theirs including since that nine dash line cuts through the exclusive economic zones of vietnam and the philippines and malaysia in indonesia for that matter that they have the right to essentially steal the fish and oil that belong to the philippines they steal the fish and oil they belong to the vietnam because so is that nonsense we side with the countries the liberal countries uh that whose exclusive economic zone is being illegally infringed upon by china so that's a good thing i think because it brought clarity to what we where we stood in terms of what we don't take a position on and what we do take a position on um remind me of the very that just the first part of the first question and we'll get interest chinese government or chinese media yes the answer i think is is first of all it is a core interest and yes uh china has said so um i know there was a debate a number of years ago when when uh uh some a chinese official uh uh said that it was a quarters and then other chinese ran around saying no uh dai going bowling right no no no well shiji ping has trumped all that um when when secretary of defense mattis went to china two years ago one of the things that said uh let me i wrote it down here thinking you might ask me um she said the secretary of defense now mind you china cannot give up even one inch of territory that the country's ancestors left behind well china thinks that the chinese against china's ancestors left behind a lot of rocks and shoals in the south china sea so and last one was the last question about the south china sea question but trying to increase coercion in the south china sea what prevents absolutely i mean in theory it could no there are 40 other occupied features in the spelling occupied by vietnamese and filipinos and malaysians that if china wanted to to tomorrow they can run them all out of dodge it could you know what what stops them what prevents them well they don't want to start a war that would be one thing uh and secondly one of those uh people that they might choose to run off of uh off the seven or eight uh rocks or shoals that they're sitting on is the government of the philippines uh which happens to have a mutual defense treaty with the united states of america and so uh so that's another reason there's no reason you know for them and finally i think they don't need to um they're they've accomplished what they want to militarily i think in in in the south and for most of the south at least in the spratlys [Music] and i think over time they believe they can either buy out the other guys or or uh make them an offer they can't refuse uh in without shooting at them uh to get them to leave their forces so i think they've been looking at trying to get hold of all of these features since since uh the uh early uh 1960s when they started moving into the paracels so and so this is a very patient accumulation of features i know we're over but let me just ask one final question uh because the book talks about the ep3 incident and the uss usn impeccable incident um we're early in new administrations which we're obviously about to experience again in the next few months should we expect something of this sort first part of the question and second part of the question is how do this how does this book inform what you think president-elect biden should do early in his administration and then we will close and i apologize but i see virtually everybody is still with us so we'll just go on for another three years uh i think that uh every indication is that i mean we hear it when we talk to them on our south china sea every indication is beijing is looking to improve relations with the binding administration and so my sense is if they want to improve relations the last thing that you would expect them to do would be to provoke some sort of an incident at sea or in the air um and so i don't certainly we should be be alert to the possibility but we should be alert to that possibility all the time because the u.s military and the chinese military routinely interact in these waters the east china sea south china sea or the in the air above those uh these these bodies of water uh and so there's always the possibility of an accident both of both the chinese military and the us military have reached memorandums of understanding on very strict rules of behavior and procedures on how ships and aircraft should should interact when they encounter one another and as long as everybody follows the rules follows the law of the rules of navigation that that both china and the us are are both members of there that there is a very low likelihood of an accident but you still you know what an accident is happens because somebody made a mistake so there is that possibility uh uh that there could be a mistake but whether i don't think that it's in china's interest to provoke an incident and i certainly don't think it's in u.s interest to to be particularly uh obnoxious to toward the chinese for the new administration so what my advice to uh president biden uh would be to um be very careful about uh allowing operations and activities that may have been routine during the trump administration be very careful at it about letting them proceed on autopilot make sure that you have that you decide this is what you want to do as opposed to being surprised because somebody said oh we've always done it this way and uh that would be my advice well that is a perfect note to end this conversation mike thank you first of all for your service to our country second of all for what you do with the national committee and third for this wonderful informative book china as a 21st century naval power i think that the stuff in this afternoon has given you a flavor for it now it's up to you to go and buy it and read it and then you can email my questions but mike thank you so much this was a fascinating fascinating discussion thanks very much for inviting me to do this steve i greatly appreciate it and uh and thank you for all those good questions great bye all have a nice have a happy it's our last program before the holidays so everybody have a happy holiday and we'll see you next year you

Channel: National Committee on U.S.-China Relations

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Length: 67min 45sec (4065 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 04 2021