Cyber And Space, More Than Blue Water, Next Theatres Of War

 

CHINA HAS BEEN reclaiming land for the deployment of dual-use facilities such as radar stations and landing strips in the disputed waters of the South China Sea for a while. Long-standing readers may recall this 2012 photograph of a radar station at the Zhubi reef in the Nansha Islands (the Subi Reef in the Spratly Islands to much of the rest of the world).

However, the rhetoric around the reclamation — and the reclamation itself — has been ratcheted up in recent weeks. Washington’s new defense secretary, Ashton Carter, is among those recently weighing in to air his concerns. Those of China’s regional neighbours have also been well and repeatedly advertised.

Beijing’s recently released new defense strategy document will do little to calm those concerns. While to this Bystander’s eye, the document does little more than codify developments that have been in train for sometime, explicitly laying out the greater priority China is placing on its navy and “open seas protection” makes a statement in more senses than one.

There is no doubt that China is modernizing its navy to ensure its access to open sea and its ability to defend its sea lanes beyond. Plans for new aircraft carriers, destroyers and nuclear-power subs bear ready witness to that. But for all its rapidly rising defence budget, Beijing still has a long way to go before it can match the capabilities of Washington’s blue-water fleet.

The United States will continue its Asian ‘pivot’ and, more particularly, military overflights to undermine the notion that land reclamation establishes sovereignty over the artificial islands created in those waters — ‘meddling in South China Sea affairs’ by Beijing’s lights, which is one of the risk factors for ‘security and stability along China’s periphery’, as the new strategy document puts it.

However, it is easy to be distracted by China’s naval build-out from the the other priority areas that the new strategy document highlights. The new frontiers of military competition are, to Beijing’s mind, outer space and cyber warfare. The new strategy document puts it thus:

The world revolution in military affairs is proceeding to a new stage. Long-range, precise, smart, stealthy and unmanned weapons and equipment are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Outer space and cyber space have become new commanding heights in strategic competition among all parties. The form of war is accelerating its evolution to informationization. World major powers are actively adjusting their national security strategies and defense policies, and speeding up their military transformation and force restructuring. The aforementioned revolutionary changes in military technologies and the form of war have not only had a significant impact on the international political and military landscapes, but also posed new and severe challenges to China’s military security.

We have noted before China’s ambitious space plans, and the opportunities they provide for developing dual use technologies. The new strategy document promises:

China will keep abreast of the dynamics of outer space, deal with security threats and challenges in that domain, and secure its space assets to serve its national economic and social development, and maintain outer space security.

Earlier this year, there was confirmation of the poorly kept secret that China has both military and state-security-services run cyber-warfare units. Previously Beijing had dismissed all suggestions made in Washington and Brussels that China was behind repeated cyber attacks on U.S. and European targets. Indeed, its sees itself as more hacked than hacker:

Cyberspace has become a new pillar of economic and social development, and a new domain of national security. As international strategic competition in cyberspace has been turning increasingly fiercer, quite a few countries are developing their cyber military forces. Being one of the major victims of hacker attacks, China is confronted with grave security threats to its cyber infrastructure. As cyberspace weighs more in military security, China will expedite the development of a cyber force, and enhance its capabilities of cyberspace situation awareness, cyber defense, support for the country’s endeavors in cyberspace and participation in international cyber cooperation, so as to stem major cyber crises, ensure national network and information security, and maintain national security and social stability.

In the case of international cyber cooperation, China has already been working more closely with Russia on cyber operations further extending Beijing’s strategic cooperation with Moscow.