The Middle Kingdom Rises

Introduction:

• The People’s Republic of China (PRC) intends to become the world’s dominant military and economic power by mid-century and to soon supplant the U.S. as hegemon in the Indo-Pacific. Admiral Davidson, the Commander-in-Chief, USINDOPACOM stated in April 2018, “China is now capable of controlling the South China Sea (SCS) in all scenarios short of war with the United States.”[i]  The UN estimates 1/3rd of global commerce including billions in U.S. imports and exports passes through the SCS which is now under de facto control of the PRC.  All the other seas and strategic maritime chokepoints in the region are under similar threat from the PRC.  The risk of military conflict over economic competition is high.  Some PRC Admirals have openly called for the sinking of U.S. carriers to take control of the SCS.[ii]
• America has been under attack by the PRC for years. This attack is aimed at our institutions...economic, diplomatic, international finance, education, medical, media, military, and our government institutions at the federal, state and local level.[iii] 
• Americans are largely unaware of the PRC’s threat to their personal and economic security. A Chapman University study in 2018 does not list China as something Americans fear although both North Korea and Iran made the list.[iv]   
• To prevent PRC domination of the Indo-Pacific, the U.S. must dramatically increase our military presence in the region. Our on-scene presence is essential to deter the PRC’s  regional dominance goals and to maintain freedom of navigation for our ships and to support and protect our treaty allies Japan, South Korea, Australia, Thailand, and the Philippines and continued support for the Republic of China to full extent authorized by the Taiwan Relations Act.  The Navy’s fleet is too small with only 299 ships versus a requirement of 355.[v]  GEN Paul Selva, USAF, former Vice Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff said “Any fight with China, if it were to come to blows, would be a largely a maritime and air fight”.[vi]  The 2019 U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission’s report says, “China is developing key capabilities necessary for force projection centered on a sophisticated blue-water navy that Chinese naval leadership plans to use to combat the U.N. Navy in the far seas.” 

The PRC’s Preparations for World Domination:

• The PRC is buying up ports and other facilities (land and ocean terminals, gas and oil pipelines, roads, rail lines, airports) worldwide and will use these assets in critical locations to strongly influence other nations.[vii] This is occurring in Asia, Africa and Europe, and also in the U.S.’s back yard in Central and South America, including critical facilities in the Panama Canal.
• Through One Belt and One Road (OBOR), the PRC is building or financing transportation and other infrastructure all over Asia and elsewhere in the world, with projects now in 71 countries. However, the predatory loans it makes through OBOR[viii] are designed so that the countries receiving them frequently default, allowing the PRC to take ownership of the projects.[ix]  OBOR has already resulted in the PRC taking control of facilities in Sri Lanka and Djibouti and threatening to do so in Pakistan and other countries.  OBOR is expanding the PRC’s power base for both military and commercial activities.
• Senator Rubio’s Report on the PRC’s “Made in China 2025” plan says the PRC plans “to become global leader of in innovation and manufacturing.”[x] The plan funnels billions into 10 industries, everything from biopharmaceuticals to aerospace and telecom devices.  It calls for 70% of related materials and parts to be made domestically within a decade.  A separate document details their strategy to lead in artificial intelligence by 2030.”[xi]  The PRC arguably already leads the world in Information Technology including supercomputing, quantum computing/communications, chip manufacturing, and computer manufacturing.  It is also a leader in shipbuilding, STEM education and patent applications.  Initiatives in all of these areas are part of a deliberate plan to lead the world in commerce and ultimately gain military and political power.  The U.S. military depends on imported sophisticated technological equipment, steel and other metals, and other critical commodities for shipbuilding and aircraft construction.  With the PRC controlling these key industries and commodities and threatening availability for the U.S., serious impacts on our defense industries will res[xii]   The PRC unleashed the coronavirus on the world, causing death and despair worldwide along with devastating economic impact.  The pandemic also starkly revealed the U.S.’s dangerous dependence on the PRC for pharmaceuticals and Personal Protective Equipment.[xiii]   
• The PRC has a virtual market monopoly on rare earth metals. Technology Metals Research says, “China supplies at least 95 percent of the world’s rare earths”.  If the PRC restricted exports of the raw materials or devices containing rare earths, military and civilian high-tech industries would be devastated.[xiv] 
  

The PRC’s Behavior:

• What makes the PRC’s long-term goal of global domination even more worrisome is that its totalitarian regime has no moral compass to temper its behavior. The 2019 U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission’s reports in detail China’s malevolent behavior.[xv]   The Executive Summary pulls no punches in describing the PRC’s behavior......“Decades of unfair economic practices”, “forced technology transfer”, “industrial subsidies”, “illegal activities of Chinese technology firms”, “uses....illicit means to achieve its goals”, “use of military force to intimidate its neighbors”, “interferes with other countries’ political processes”, “trade distorting practices”, “U.S. companies are disadvantaged in China’s domestic market”, “China’s ability to capitalize on new technology has been enhanced by what it stole from foreign firms”, “intellectual property theft”, “predatory pricing”.  The PRC has thousands of spies that conduct industrial espionage against the U.S. including theft from our corporations that undermines our technical advantages.[xvi]   These often illegal and always unfair tactics have enabled the PRC to dramatically close the gap in technical and military capability in most areas and has even led to superiority in hypervelocity weapons.[xvii] and in worrisome space capabilities such as anti-satellite weaponry.[xviii]
• The PRC’s ruthless tactics began with control over its own citizens. Estimates are that 65 million Chinese people died during Mao’s “Cultural Revolution” in 1966-1976.[xix]  More recently, millions are being affected by attacks like those against Chinese Christians and their churches,[xx] members of the Falun Gong, Tibetan Muslims, and the Uighurs[xxi].  Jay Nordlinger of National Review says about the Uighurs, “...the current horror is a gulag.  Even cool professionals, China hands who have seen it all, have a hard time talking about this, so horrific is the subject.”[xxii]  A million+ Uighurs have been thrown into this gulag the PRC denies even exists. 
• Given the PRC’s record of human rights violations against its own citizens, they are likely to treat citizens of other countries even worse. The Human Rights Watch report of 2019 documents violations against their own citizens and violations against non-citizens who are in China and concludes the situation is getting worse and worse.[xxiii]  Evidence exists that the Chinese have a core belief that they are superior.[xxiv]  They believe they are the “middle kingdom”, the vaunted center of everything and destined to rule the world.  If they achieve their goals of military and economic domination it will lead to abuses against other cultures including Americans.  Yet most Americans do not view the PRC as a serious threat.  Much of the U.S. populace enjoys one of the world’s highest standards of living and believes that affordable products from China are essential to maintain their way of life.  Our citizens also believe that we are living in a time of unprecedented national security, and thadefense spending is more than adequate.  The public is unaware of the PRC’s true nature, through a combination of their own apathy, neglect by our media, and their many disinformation strategies.  Confucius Institutes on 70 U.S. college campuses obfuscate the PRC’s true agenda[xxv], teaching Chinese history but completely suppressing negative information about atrocities like the Cultural Revolution or the massacre at Tiananmen Square.  The PRC threatens American corporations such as airlines and hotels if they do not refer to Taiwan as “Chinese Taipei”, a tactic designed to make Americans think that the whole world recognizes Taiwan as part of China.[xxvi]  The PRC has gone to great lengths to obfuscate what is going on in Hong Kong.[xxvii]  The PRC promised “one country, two systems” in 1997, but the reality has been a steady erosion of citizens’ civil liberties and an attempt to pass an extradition law that was widely viewed as the most serious threat to their freedom yet.[xxviii]  In recent days, while the world has been focused on the global pandemic, the PRC has moved to stifle dissent and restrict freedoms even more in Hong Kong.[xxix]

Public Ignorance the PRC, Defense Needs and the Importance of Trade:

• The Public’s widespread ignorance of the PRC’s misbehavior and its strategies to hide its true nature and intentions undermines our citizens’ view of the needs of the Defense Department. Would Americans still believe that we are spending enough on defense if they knew that the PRC represents a near-term risk to their personal safely? The U.S. is spending far less for defense as a percentage of GDP than has been typical for most of its history.  As recently as the end of the Cold War in 1991, the defense budget was 5.18% of GDP versus 3.5% for 2019.[xxx]     Sadly, 72% of Americans believe that we are spending too much or spending enough on Defense versus only 25% who think we should spend more.[xxxi]
• The American public needs understand that national security and defense organizations believe a crisis is just ahead. One way to do that would be for Defense-related media to more widely publicize the findings and recommendations of the National Defense Strategy Commission.  Every American should be alerted to their view:  “Today, however, our margin of superiority is profoundly diminished in key areas.  There are urgent challenges that must be addressed if the United States is to avoid lasting damage to its national security.  Some observers have noted—and we agree—that the United States will soon face a national security emergency.”[xxxii]  And, “The security and well-being of the United States are at greater risk than at any time in decades.  America’s military superiority—the hard-power backbone of its global influence and national security—has eroded to a dangerous degree. Rivals and adversaries are challenging the United States on many fronts and in many domains. America’s ability to defend its allies, its partners, and its own vital interests is increasingly in doubt.  If the nation does not act promptly to remedy these circumstances, the consequences will be grave and lasting.”
• Maritime commerce is vital to our national well-being. Transportation costs by sea are far more economical than by other means.[xxxiii]  90% of goods worldwide are transported over the oceans.[xxxiv]  The U.S. economy depends specifically on imports and exports from Asia.  In 2018 the U.S. exported $510B and imported $1,131B from Asia, 39% of the total U.S. trade.[xxxv]  If the PRC were to disrupt maritime commerce or a conflict erupts due to PRC aggression, there would be an immediate adverse impact on our economy, with ripple effects that would transmit worldwide.  1973 OPEC’s embargo of oil, a single commodity, caused tremendous harm to the U.S. economy.[xxxvi]  Imagine the chaos that would ensue from the interruption of the flow of many commodities or our trade to Asia.
• U.S. international trade depends on the U.S. Navy guaranteeing freedom of navigation for merchant ships of any natithat move our cargo. The vast majority of U.S. imports and exports are transported by foreign flags.  According to Maritime Executive, the U.S. merchant fleet accounts for less than 4% of the ships and less than 1% of the deadweight tonnage of the top ten merchant fleets in the world.[xxxvii]  In recognition of just how important trade is to our nation, our national policy dating back to our founding makes freedom of navigation a prime mission of the Navy.[xxxviii]  According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 39 million U.S. jobs depend on trade, 300,000 U.S. companies engage in trade and exports of U.S. goods amounted to $1.4 trillion in 2018.[xxxix]   For our own economic well-being the U.S. must maintain a Navy that can guarantee freedom of navigation for the world’s merchant fleets and especially in the Indo-Pacific where 4 of top 10 GDP’s are represented and whose cumulative GDP’s represent 53.5% of the entire world GDP.[xl] 

Recommendations:

• The President should appoint an Executive Task Force of key members of the Administration to ensure the truth about the PRC’s intentions and actions is getting to the American public. Included should be the Vice President, and the Secretaries of Commerce, Defense, State, Treasury, and Homeland Security along with the President’s Economic Advisor and the U.S. Trade Representative.  These officials should be jointly tasked to develop and implement a comprehensive public information campaign to educate the American public about the looming threat to our economy and national defense posed by the PRC.  The PRC’s sophisticated propaganda, disinformation and intimidation techniques are fooling Americans into thinking that they are not an enemy.  The truth is China ruled by a cruel dictatorship, a totalitarian Marxist state who brutalizes its own citizens, abuses and intimidates any businesses naïve enough to do business in China, manipulates the world economy for its own advantage, effectively hides its true intentions to rule the world and who is waging a silent war against the U.S. to devastating effect. 
• The President should propose creation of a Secretary level position to focus on negating the threat from the PRC. The incumbent of this position should have broad authority across the entire government to focus an “all of government” response to any and all actions by the PRC that are damaging to or threatening to the U.S. or our institutions.  Since the PRC is using an “all of government, all of country” effort to undermine and defeat the U.S., we must respond in kind.  This new Secretary must ensure every aspect of the U.S. government implements effective plans and actions to defeat the PRC’s plans to dominate the world.
• The U.S. military, in particular the Navy/Marine Corps/Coast Guard team, must be built up in size and capability and forward deployed in the Indo-Pacific prepared to fight and win the war for the SCS and to ensure freedom of navigation for the U.S. and our allies is guaranteed. The Administration and DOD should urgently seek expedited Congressional support for Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO), Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO), and Littoral Operations in a Contested Environment (LOCE), the groundbreaking new warfare concepts advanced by the Chief of Naval Operations and Commandant of the Marine Corps.[xli]  To defeat the PRC, it is critical that DMO, EABO, and LOCE be perfected, and that forces trained and equipped for these new operational concepts be rapidly put into place in order to be able to fight and win against the PRC’s aggressions.   This team must be in place “over there” to defeat the PRC when and if that becomes necessary.

Captain Brent Ramsey (ret.) served 30 years in the Navy and 23 years in the Navy Civil Service. He commanded Cargo Handling Battalion TWELVE, was Operations Officer/Business Manager, CBC Gulfport, and was Navy Emergency Preparedness Liaison Officer to Mississippi. He currently serves as Senior Advisor, Center for International Maritime Security, and Member/Secretary of the Meadows Military Advisory Group.

Notes:

[iv] Chapman University, America’s Top Fears 2018, October 16, 2018, https://blogs.chapman.edu/wilkinson/2018/10/16/americas-top-fears-2018/.