Navies Calm Dangerous Waters Beneath The Political Storms

THE RECENT ‘FREEDOM of navigation’ passage by the US Navy’s destroyer, the USS Lassen, through the Spratly islands was sandwiched between a visit by 27 US naval officers to the PLA-Navy’s aircraft carrier, the Liaoning (seen above), and the first visit by the PLA-Navy to an East Coast US Navy station when three PLA-Navy warships of Escort Task Force 152 led by the guided missile destroyer Jinan called at Mayport in Jacksonville, Florida.

That was far from the first visit by Chinese military officers. The chief of the PLA general staff, General Fang Fenghui, toured of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier the USS Ronald Reagan in San Diego in May last year. Also last year China was invited for the first time to participate in the biannual RIMPAC exercises, the 22-nation maritime warfare drills organized by the US Navy’s Pacific fleet.

Beyond the political rhetoric, military-to-military cooperation between China and the U.S. is on the rise, and particularly between their respective navies over the past two years.

Military-to-military contacts have long been a staple of U.S. diplomacy to prevent wars of words becoming anything more deadly. They build trust and transparency between two groups of professional military men who often have more in common and more respect for each other than they do with and for their political masters.

China and the United States undertake similar technical contacts in the realms of trade and financial affairs. The military contacts, however, and especially the naval ones given the increasing political tensions between the two countries over the South China Sea, have raised concerns in the U.S. Congress that they are yielding too much military information to the PLA without restraining Beijing’s increasingly assertive actions off its shores and beyond.

Fang’s visit, in particular, raised questions of whether the US Navy had broken Congressional rules that forbid exchanges with China that could involve ‘force projection’. In December, Randy Forbes, the Virginian congressman who heads the seapower and projection forces subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee sent a letter to the civilian bosses of the Pentagon calling for a review of America’s current military-to-military engagement policy with China.

Forbes’s letter did not fall on entirely deaf ears. Attitudes towards China in many parts of political Washington are hardening to a degree.

There is no evidence that those shifts are being felt among the military, although they will keep a weather eye out for shifting political winds. And the Pentagon continues, if perhaps slightly more circumspectly than before, to pursue the so-called new model of military-to-military relations between the two countries that reflects the broader framework of a relationship that China wants to put more on a partnership footing.

The Obama administration let President Xi Jinping write the rubric for that — “no conflict, no confrontation, mutual respect, and win-win cooperation.” It is language that Washington is showing less enthusiasm for now than before. But it is the tone that is changing rather than the overall narrative.

The working model is now cooperation where interests overlap, careful management where they do not. As relations go through a rocky patch, the priorities are avoiding accidents that turn into crises and establishing lines of communications if they do happen.

The risk is real. Last year a PLA fighter buzzed a US Navy plane, coming within 10 meters of it. The year before, a Chinese amphibious transport vessel escorting the Liaoning forced the USS Cowpens, a guided-missile cruiser, to take evasive action to avoid a collision.

That there have been no further mishaps is down in part to the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea, known by its acronym, CUES, that China, the United States and other Western Pacific nations agreed last year. The Code sets out ground rules for safe speeds and distances that vessels should keep, the language to be used in communications between navies, and actions to be taken in case a ship becomes disabled.

However, the rules do not apply to coast guard or other civilian vessels such as fishing boats. Nor are there enforcement mechanisms.

A third issue is that the rules apply “at sea.” They do not specify it that means international and territorial waters, or just international waters, which makes the disputed waters of the South and East China seas huge grey areas.  Washington and many other regional nations do not recognize Beijing’s maritime territorial claims.

It is the same disagreement as Washington and Beijing have over the United Nations’ Convention on the Law of Sea (UNCLOS), to which the Code is subservient.

Nonetheless, any code is better than none. Even the process of creating it was a confidence-building measure in its own right, as is the joint practice drill on using the Code that the two navies held in February. The USS Lassen was warned by China using the CUES protocols when it sailed passed the Spratlys last month.

Beijing and Washington signed a further bilateral memorandum of understanding that was a follow-up to the Code and in October this his year added a codicil. The two countries have also set up a military crisis hotline.

Is this all enough to prevent anything untoward happening? Probably not if one side or the other is set on a deliberately provocative act or even if a citizen-patriot becomes recklessly overzealous. But it does provide an often overlooked counterpoint to the currently testy political narrative.

Washington Lays Out Its Annual View Of China’s Military Capabilities

The U.S. military’s newly released annual assessment of China’s defense capabilities will surprise no one in saying that Beijing is improving its military training, weapons and surveillance so as to be able to conduct more sophisticated attacks against Washington and other adversaries closer to home. Neither is it any surprise that this is a result of China’s two-decades-long drive to modernize the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

If anything, this report to the U.S. Congress is a restatement of the justifications for Washington’s ‘Asian pivot’ announced in 2012. It is also perhaps the clearest statement to date of how that doctrinal shift is being tempered by U.S. budget cuts — and provides an implicit counterargument for curtailing them.

In light of those budget-cutting pressure, the Pentagon sees an opportunity for offshoring some of the cost of its increased Asian presence to its Asian allies. In every region of the world, the Pentagon says, it will seek to build the capacity of partners’ forces so that they, not Washington, can take the lead in providing security. That should also provide a bonus for America’s arms manufacturers who should see increased export demand for their wares as a result.

Equally predictably, Beijing has dismissed the report as a holdover of Cold War thinking, and says that its armed forces are still 20-30 years behind those of the U.S., which spends more than another nation on its military at 4% of GDP. Beijing also asserts that its military build-up is solely for defending its own sovereignty, though as the continuing conflicts in the South and East China Seas testify, sovereignty can be in the eye of the beholder.

“Probable” drone reconnaissance in the East China Sea was among the most significant military developments of last year identified by the Pentagon in its report. Others include:

• air-defense upgrades to destroyers and frigates;
• test flights of China’s Y-20 transport planes to move ground forces quickly across great distances;
• at least eight launches to expand intelligence and surveillance from space;
• integration of anti-radar missiles into the PLA Air Force’s fighter-bomber fleet; and
• the PLA Navy’s development of long-range, over-the-horizon radar as a targeting mechanism for DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missiles carried on new Jiangdo-class corvettes, which previous Pentagon reports have identified as a threat to the U.S. new Littoral Combat ships.

The Pentagon’s assessment is couched in terms that suggest its working assumption for any future China-U.S. military conflict is that it would be a high-tech naval and missile fight. Thus the U.S. military’s need is to invest in technology more than capacity, and to ensure that its partner militaries in Tokyo, Manila and elsewhere in the region are willing and able to undertake U.S.-led training.

They may want to wait until after 2016 when the U.S. will have a new administration which may have a new set of priorities. Beijing will be quite happy to continue its PLA modernization in the meantime.

China’s First Aircraft Carrier To Head For The High Seas

China’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, will make its first blue-water voyage within a year, state media report. Xinhua did not say where the Liaoning would go or how long the sailing would last, but the trip is likely to include flight-landing exercises on the high seas. Since being formally handed over to the PLA-Navy last year, the refurbished carrier has been undergoing tests and conducting training operations from its home port of Qingdao.

China’s Navy Gets Its First Stealth Frigate

The PLA-Navy has taken delivery of the first of 20 Type 056 frigates (above). They are called stealth frigates because of their ability to evade radar detection thanks to a sleek design and some of the same technology that goes into stealth fighter jets. The ships are so narrow there is only room for a third the crew carried by the earlier 053 generation of frigates. Their size might make them a corvette more than a frigate, but the difference is one without much distinction these days. Xinhua says the vessel was handed over in Shanghai earlier this week. The video below comes from there.

The fleet will be used on escort duties, anti-submarine patrols and what are called “operations against sea targets”. While it comes with the usual disclaimer about “weaponry research and development is solely for national security and not aimed at any specific country or goal,” the stealth frigate marks another substantial step in the upgrade of China’s naval forces and their capability to project force in coastal and regional waters. Not uncoincidentally, this Bystander suspects, China’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, docked in Qingdao this week, too, the first time it has berthed in a military port .

China’s Navy Sails Its New Aircraft Carrier

It is a symbolic departure as much as anything, but China’s first aircraft carrier has sailed from its berth in Dalian for the first time formally under the PLA-Navy’s command. The vessel, a converted half-built Soviet-era carrier, the Varyag, was handed over to the Navy and renamed the Liaoning on September 25. Xinhua reports it slipped out of port on Friday evening.

Xinhua also reports that new pictures show a J-15 carrier-based fighter aircraft practicing take-off and landing on the craft, though the one that Xinhua publishes with its report was taken in May during another sea trial. We assume from this that the purpose of this voyage would be to start the serious business of training carrier pilots in real conditions.

China’s Navy Commissions Its First Aircraft Carrier

There was a certain symbolism to the timing of the formal commissioning of China’s first aircraft carrier into the PLA-Navy (above, with more pictures of the ceremony at a naval base north of Dalian here). It came as Beijing is embroiled in maritime sovereignty disputes with most of its neighbours in the East and South China Seas. Carriers project the epitome of naval power, and as many officials have repeated, are “symbols of a great nation”.

It is worth remembering, however, that China’s first carrier–a refitted ex-Soviet carrier, the Varyag, now renamed the Liaoning–falls into the class of light aircraft carriers. As a “ski-jump” not “catapult” carrier, it can’t launch the most advanced fighters. It is as much an aviation-capable patrol ship as a carrier of the line. It is primarily intended for the PLA to learn the ropes of carrier operations.

At the 58,500-tons, the vessel is small by carrier standards. It is about half the size of U.S. carriers, even if still large enough to dwarf the coast guard boats and fishing vessels now increasingly plying the more sensitive disputed waters off the coasts of China and its neighbours. This year was always the intended date of its commissioning, but state media have previously reported that the carrier won’t be ready for active service until 2017, which is not to say it won’t be available for flag-waving duties before then. But it is also worth remembering that two larger and more advanced carriers are under construction in yards in Shanghai planned for launch in 2014 with a first nuclear powered carrier scheduled for launch by 2020.

Port In A Storm

Quite what is going on with Gwadar, the Pakistani blue-water port and natural-gas terminal that China may or may not have been asked to run and develop as a naval base during Pakistan prime minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani’s recent visit to Beijing?

This Bystander noted last year that China is already developing a deep-water port and naval base at Gwadar, which is on the Gulf of Oman close to the border with Iran, along with other strategic transport and energy links in Pakistan, which, to Beijing’s eyes, looks a lot like a corridor from the high plateau of China’s western reaches to the shores of the Arabian Sea and thus shipping routes to the Middle East, Africa and Europe.

First, the Financial Times reported that Gilani had asked the Chinese to take over running the port (which at least everyone agrees the Chinese helped build and are now helping expand) when the Singapore Port Authority’s management contract expires (though that is not until at least 2027). He was also reported to have asked Beijing to build a naval base. Then, Pakistan’s Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar said China had agreed to take over running of the port. Now, the foreign ministry says the issue, as it understands, wasn’t touched upon during Gilani’s visit.

The foreign ministry’s understanding of China’s international affairs often does not run as broadly as is customary with other nation’s foreign ministries, especially in military and security matters. It could well be the case that there were conversations that it knew nothing about. It could also be the case that the ministry has no particular interest in China being seen to be nestling even closer to Pakistan and so complicate further its relations with the U.S. and India at a sensitive time. Confirmation of what would be China’s first overseas naval base wouldn’t do anything to reassure those in Washington, Delhi and Southeast Asia’s capitals who are nervous enough of Beijing’s growing abilities to project regional power. Hence foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu playing a straight bat of carefully worded plausible deniability.

To answer our own question, the expansion of the port’s deep-water facilities and development of a base for the Pakistan navy are to all intents and purposes the same project, which China is already working on and helping to pay for. Expanding the naval base to accommodate the PLA-Navy, which needs a base to support its anti-piracy operations off the Horn of Africa and generally to secure sea lanes from the Middle East used by oil tankers and Chinese-flagged merchant shipping, isn’t much of a stretch. There wouldn’t really be anything much to ask.

Footnote: There is stiff local opposition in Balochistan to the Pakistan government’s plans for Gwadar. Last week, construction work on a new international airport there had to be stopped because of what was described as a worsening security situation. A senior official from the Civil Aviation Authority told the defense committee of Pakistan’s Senate that “the law and order situation as well as continuous resistance by locals in the acquisition of land has halted work at the [airport]”. The airport is now unlikely to be completed by the end of this year as planned. As a historical aside, Gwadar was an Omani enclave that Pakistan bought in 1958. Some residents still harbor feelings of being “colonized” by Karachi. Might as well have two foreign navies there as one.

Four Points On China’s Military Build-Up

This Bystander takes four highlights away from the latest edition of The Military Balance, the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies’ (IISS), annual global defense spending  review (summary here).

• ‘The global redistribution of military power now underway’ as a result of contracting defense budgets in developed nations and expanding ones in developing nations, means that Western arms manufacturers are facing strong and growing competition from non-Western defense industries, such as China’s, in markets for basic military equipment.
• The attention to the build-up of Beijing’s aircraft-carrier and submarine fleets is misplaced. The IISS reckons that the PLA-Navy’s “new landing platform docks and its deployment of more effective anti-ship missiles hold greater strategic significance”. Similarly with the attention being paid to the PLA Air Force’s J-20 ‘stealth’ fighter. That may be an indication that China “is gradually closing the gap between itself and the West”, but it is the addition of Sukhoi Su30 multirole fighters, in-flight refueling tankers and AWACS aircraft that is “significantly strengthening China’s air capability”.
• Beijing’s unremitting modernization of its military forces, which includes the development of anti-satellite and cyber-war capabilities, means that “that the balance of power across the Taiwan Strait is gradually changing in favor of the PLA.”
• China’s increasingly assertive naval presence in the East and South China Seas has prompted a build-up of the defense capabilities of Japan and its Southeast Asian neighbors, while anti-piracy patrols in the Indian Ocean and  funding of port construction in Pakistan and Sri Lanka have provided a justification for India’s own naval expansion plans.

China’s Navy, Unusually, Sails Forth

A necessary but not sufficient condition of being a superpower is not just the possession of power but also the ability to deploy it around the world. This week a Chinese warship was in the Mediterranean. PLA Navy ships have been in those waters before on goodwill visits but not on active duty. Now, one swallow does not a summer make. The 4,000 ton missile carrying 054A class frigate, the Xuzhou, seen above in April last year during a naval parade off Qingdao, was on a humanitarian mission to evacuate Chinese nationals from civil war-stricken Libya and had been redeployed from international anti-piracy patrols off the coast of Somalia.

Yet those patrols in turn are the first deployment of a PLA Navy group of warships outside of China’s regional waters. We imagine it was no coincidence that one of the navy’s most modern missile carrying frigates was deputed to the evacuation task. It is equally notable that a Chinese warship can enter these waters without causing alarums and excursions, a testament to the general lack of global military deployment of the country’s military power hitherto. And there is no doubt that Beijing’s swift evacuation of its citizens from Libya is driven by domestic political concerns rather than any about its international standing. Yet every journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.