China’s naval expansion outpaces the world, fuelling tensions in the Pacific. Experts warn of rising conflict as the PLAN’s fleet grows rapidly and aggressively…reports Asian Lite News
China is building naval vessels at a fantastic rate, eclipsing any other nation on earth by far. If the metric of the sheer number of naval hulls is used, then the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is already a larger navy than its US counterpart. Of course, this is a poor measure of naval capability, but the fact nonetheless remains that the PLAN is growing at a tremendous clip.
Beijing is well within its rights to do so, but Thomas Shugart, Adjunct Senior Fellow for the Defense Program at the Center for a New American Security, warned, “The problem fundamentally comes down to the fact that, although China is ultimately attempting to defend its regional waters, defend itself from attack from the Pacific and so on, it’s doing that in a coercive way towards other nations … The way that China is approaching this is in a very harassing and coercive manner, and it’s that behavior that I think is going to be what drives the march towards conflict,” Shugart was speaking at a webinar discussing the growing might of the PLAN, held by the Brookings Institute in the USA on 26 July.
Using satellite imagery of China’s principal shipbuilding yards, Shugart revealed the stunning capacity of its naval shipbuilding. China builds nuclear-powered submarines at Huludao, and he believes a new Type 093B attack submarine was visible there a couple of months ago. Three similar nuclear-powered submarines were also docked there, though it is difficult to differentiate those returning from repairs and others that are new-builds. However, Shugart believes he may also have identified a stern section for the new Type 095 class, since its hull had a larger diameter than existing designs.
Moving to Dalian Shipyard, Shugart pointed out that five Type 052DL destroyers are simultaneously under construction there. “Pretty amazing,” he exclaimed. At the nearby Lushun Shipyard is a new advanced corvette, possibly a test platform. Farther south in Shanghai’s Jiangmen Shipyard are five surface combatants in various stages of construction. Shugart believes this is where China’s next Type 004 aircraft carrier will be built. “I’m not able to find it yet, but still looking there,” he related.
In various shipyards, Shugart highlighted how China is utilizing dual civilian and naval shipbuilding. “People should understand that it’s Western companies that are, to a significant extent, funding these shipyards.” For example, when China was constructing its Shandong aircraft carrier in 2021, right next to it was a massive Taiwanese container ship.
“We have to have no illusions about what this allows the Chinese to do,” he said. China’s fungible workforce can shift between naval and civilian ship construction, the latter in a fiercely competitive international market. “I worry that they may be even more efficient than our naval shipyards are. Because they’re having real competition all the time, that’s honing their edge.”
Nearby, at the new Hudong Shipyard in Shanghai, three frigates are under construction alongside what appears to be a Type 076 landing helicopter dock (LHD) ship optimized for drone operations thanks to an installed catapult. “This is the kind of thing that – when people say, ‘Oh, well, the Chinese just copy what we do and there’s nothing new there’ – well, this is a class of ship that has no equivalent in the US. We have LHDs, we don’t have any that have catapults for drones. I mean, that’s a new thing the Chinese are doing.
Quite frankly, I wish we saw more of that from our navy…” Wuchang Shipyard in Wuhan is “pumping out their conventional submarines and also civilian vessels,” including a Type 039 for Pakistan. Next, at Huangpu Shipyard in Guangzhou are five frigates under construction at the same time.
Emma Salisbury, a Seapower Research Fellow at the Council on Geostrategy in the UK, added, “The thing that really strikes me is to see a shipyard with five destroyers being built at the same time, five frigates being built at the same time, five submarines being built at the same time. That does not happen in the US. It does not happen anywhere else.”
She described the PLAN as “arguably the second most-capable blue-water navy, after that of the United States”. Salisbury also noted the PLA “has the ambition of fully transforming into a world-class force by 2049, which is the centenary of the establishment of the People’s Republic. While the Chinese leadership has not publicly defined what this means in practice, the strategic context implies that China is aiming to develop military forces which are at least equal to those of the great powers it views as a threat, most notably those of the United States.”
From China’s point of view, the so-called First Island Chain is a barrier around its adjacent waters that constrains its access to the Pacific Ocean. This chain is dominated by US allies such as Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines. Salisbury said, “Control of the seas within the First Island Chain serves a dual purpose, to defend China from external attack through those waters, and to prevent others from being able to deny China access to the high seas beyond. Gaining control of Taiwan, the Senkaku Islands, Paracel Islands, Spratly Islands and other land features within the First Island Chain is viewed as the best way to secure those objectives.”
Nor does the PLAN work alone. The China Coast Guard is the largest maritime law enforcement fleet in the world, with an estimated 500+ vessels. Salisbury said, “China has tended to use the Coast Guard and the maritime militia in regional maritime disputes so far, and this trend is likely to continue given the close links between the PLAN, the Coast Guard, the militia and civilian vessels, plus their interwoven use in the maritime domain.” She said full consideration of overall Chinese naval buildup must cover all these forces.
Regarding the use of civilian vessels such as roll-on/roll-on ferries, Salisbury explained, “As there are no official numbers available, estimates vary wildly on how many civilian vessels could or would be made available to the PLAN during a conflict, much less how quickly they could be usefully integrated into military operations. However, some estimates contend that, if China requisitioned its entire dual-capable civilian fleet, that alone would give it more tonnage than the total American amphibious assault.”
Last year, China completed 42.3 million deadweight tons of merchant shipping, up 11.8% on the year before. This phenomenal total of ship construction equaled 50.2% of global output. China obviously has an extreme overmatch in shipbuilding, but China must be as worried as the USA about risks to its merchant fleet.
Bruce Jones, Director of the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institute, posited, “If you look at Chinese naval doctrine, if you look at what they’re thinking about, if you look at how they write, it’s clear that the first impulse, not necessarily the only one, but the first impulse, is to defend against potential foreign invasion, and to deny anybody else, namely us, from denying them the ability to flow goods through the through the South China Sea, East China Sea, to kind of choke off their imports.”
He speculated whether there will be a future of “mutually assured denial,” where China cannot deny the US Navy (USN) from operating, but nor can the USA prevent China from operating at sea. “It sounds very bumpy to get there, but whether it might ultimately be stable, since neither of us have the slightest interest in denying the flow of goods through those waters, it strikes me as sort of a little bit illogical that we’re at loggerheads over the question of denial.”
Chinese warships are generally smaller than their American counterparts. The Chinese fleet was traditionally mostly corvettes and frigates, but that is changing as larger ships are fielded. Shugart said, “If you look now where the average Chinese ship was 30-40% the size of the average American warship, now it’s more like 60-70%. So they’ve closed that gap.”
Furthermore, the Type 055 cruiser is the world’s largest surface combatant. He boldly predicted that by about 2035, the PLAN will equal the USN in terms of ship tonnage. He said the USA should therefore consider building naval hulls in Japan or South Korea if its own shipbuilding capacity cannot improve.
China does not really have allies, whereas the USA does. Countries like Japan and South Korea provide a network of support and bases for the USN, as does the US territory of Guam. NATO navies can also take up the slack in the Atlantic, to a limited degree, to free up American ships to the Indo-Pacific region too.
China does have vassals, however, and Shugart displayed a satellite image of Ream Naval Base in Cambodia. Despite China and Cambodia vociferously denying this is a base being used by the PLAN, there is evidence to the contrary. Two Chinese corvettes have been stationed there for months, and Shugart pointed out that a 140m-long dry dock built there by China is too large for Cambodia’s own patrol vessels, especially since a ramp is situated nearby that can pull Cambodian naval vessels from the water.
Interestingly, Shugart found an identically sized dry dock in Qingdao, which the PLAN uses for submarine maintenance. Referring to the Cambodian one, he said, “It’s big enough for a submarine, which I think is kind of interesting. They definitely don’t need it for the Cambodian patrol craft.” Shugart added, “I’m not saying it’s 100% sure this is going to be a submarine base, but it’s interesting to me that there are some similarities there.”
There are qualitative differences between American and Chinese submarines. Nonetheless, Shugart said “all bets are off” regarding the future Type 095. “I have no idea how loud or quiet that one’s going to be.” He continued, “Different nations’ submarine forces can be used for different things. We should remember that, whether we win or not, even in the undersea, it isn’t so much a matter of whether our submarines beat their submarines, it’s which side can more effectively use the undersea environment to achieve its defense objectives.”
He asserted that Chinese submarines could not be used to hunt American ones, describing it like hunting a deer with a Harley Davidson – “It’s not going to work, they’re going to hear you coming!” Instead China may use its submarines to blockade Taiwan, make life difficult for American aircraft carriers, or launch cruise missiles against Guam and Hawaii.
He worries about insufficient money for new American submarines, plus 40% of the USN submarine fleet is in maintenance when that figure should be closer to 20%.
However, the AUKUS fleet of submarines will help ease the USN’s workload in terms of submarines, but these are going to take decades to build. Other allies add complementary
capabilities to the USA too; Shugart said nobody would want to be in a “dark alley” against a Japanese submarine in a strategic chokepoint in the First Island Chain, for instance.
China has been sending anti-piracy naval task forces to the Gulf of Aden for the past 16 years. However, Salisbury highlighted: “This isn’t through any charitable wish to destroy pirates to the good of the international community. It’s a laboratory for them to practise blue-water operations. It’s a way for their officers to get command experience on blue water, and it’s a way to test their logistics lines and so on.
That should give you an inkling of the fact that they’re looking to expand outside of regional operations onto blue water, whether that’s in the Pacific or the Indian Oceans or beyond.”
The Houthi missile and drone attacks in the Red Sea have also exposed the hollowness of Chinese promises, “because clearly they have not helped at all with trying to protect international shipping. And their ships, by agreement with the Houthis, are getting a free pass along with the Russian ones,” warned Shugart. (ANI)
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