Strong China’s Message, Loud and Clear

The world is focusing on the Sino-American trade wars as the ultimate confrontation between two superpowers. As Donald Trump refuses to address the real cause of skilled blue-collar job loss in the United States – artificial-intelligence-driven automation that allows the richest in the land to keep revenues that were once paid to the now displaced workers – as a “businessman” who does not like multinational trade agreements, for every step of his policy choices, he needs someone to blame. Immigrants (particularly those without lily-white skin), greedy Canadians threatening our national security and, above-all, China with all her cheap labor.

Except that labor isn’t so cheap anymore; you can find less expensive manufacturing talent in Vietnam, Mexico and India. And while China will, sooner or later “make a deal” with the United States (inevitably less than Trump promises in a treaty that will be nearly impossible to enforce), as American businesses and consumers feel the heat from rising prices, reverse tariffs and a bureaucracy that will make doing business in the People’s Republic that much more difficult for Americans. But believe it or not, while there is a little test of wills going on (China is a dictatorship with a centrally-controlled economy, so they can tolerate more pain), the trade wars are merely a side show to a much bigger struggle between China and the U.S.

As China extends her largesse – foreign aid and multinational treaties – making connections with countries everywhere, Donald Trump has generated the greatest isolation this country has experienced in over a century. But what is most interesting is China’s heavy focus on her role in Asia. Beijing has committed to a long-term, almost one trillion-dollar, Asian infrastructure upgrade – the “Belt and Road Initiative” – by which the Asian region will be significantly interconnected under China’s unsubtle aegis. This will allow China to move raw materials and manufactured goods across that new chain of rail, roads and related infrastructure. The initiative not only creates millions of new regional jobs, it consolidates economic power with China, mostly at the expense of the United States.

Meanwhile, as China used massive landfill to build a stronghold (lots of runways and military capacity) within the Spratly Islands in the middle of the South China sea. As U.S. military aircraft and naval vessels test China’s territorial claims to the new island, China constantly meets those intentional intrusions with a show of force. Other regional nations, some of whom once claimed that China was stepping on their own territorial rights, are slowly backing off and letting China operate solidly from its new base.

“When two American warships — the Higgins, a destroyer, and the Antietam, a cruiser — sailed within a few miles of disputed islands in the Paracels in May, Chinese vessels rushed to challenge what Beijing later denounced as ‘a provocative act.’ China did the same to three Australian ships passing through the South China Sea in April.” New York Times, August 29^th.

If I were to ask you which country on earth has the greatest number of naval vessels, you’d probably name the United States. And while the quality of our naval power is clearly superior, China has the largest navy on earth today, the results of a powerful military building program that even boasts a super-modern aircraft carrier and a massive fleet of fairly quiet and sophisticated nuclear submarines, equipped with smart torpedoes, cruise and ballistic missiles that can launch while submerged, plus a host of some of the most effective “anti-access” detection systems and now the early stages of being able to deploy hypersonic missiles that are exceptionally difficult to shoot down. The message to the United States is clear. Asia is ours and only ours; there is nothing you can do about it anymore.

As you watch even a traditional Chinese enemy, Japan, slow awake to the realization that depending on the United States to protect Japan’s interests in Asia, you are witnessing a ripple of that realization throughout that community that China is slowly pushing the United States entirely out of that sphere of influence. Countries that once viewed an all-powerful American military force as their ultimate umbrella against China and Russia now realize that the United States is completely incapable of protecting them unless it is prepared to start a nuclear war. Donald Trump isolationist, go-it-alone, anti-foreign aid, flip-flopping on key issues has made it so easy for China to dominate Asia with no meaningful threats from the United States.

“While China lags in projecting firepower on a global scale, it can now challenge American military supremacy in the places that matter most to it: the waters around Taiwan and in the disputed South China Sea.

“That means a growing section of the Pacific Ocean — where the United States has operated unchallenged since the naval battles of World War II — is once again contested territory, with Chinese warships and aircraft regularly bumping up against those of the United States and its allies.

“To prevail in these waters, according to officials and analysts who scrutinize Chinese military developments, China does not need a military that can defeat the United States outright but merely one that can make intervention in the region too costly for Washington to contemplate. Many analysts say Beijing has already achieved that goal.

“To do so, it has developed ‘anti-access’ capabilities that use radar, satellites and missiles to neutralize the decisive edge that America’s powerful aircraft carrier strike groups have enjoyed. It is also rapidly expanding its naval forces with the goal of deploying a ‘blue water’ navy that would allow it to defend its growing interests beyond its coastal waters.

“‘China is now capable of controlling the South China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States,’ the new commander of the United States Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. Philip S. Davidson, acknowledged in written remarks submitted during his Senate confirmation process in March.

“He described China as a ‘peer competitor’ gaining on the United States not by matching its forces weapon by weapon but by building critical ‘asymmetrical capabilities,’ including with anti-ship missiles and in submarine warfare. ‘There is no guarantee that the United States would win a future conflict with China,’ he concluded.

“Last year, the Chinese Navy became the world’s largest, with more warships and submarines than the United States, and it continues to build new ships at a stunning rate. Though the American fleet remains superior qualitatively, it is spread much thinner.

“‘The task of building a powerful navy has never been as urgent as it is today,’ President Xi Jinping declared in April as he presided over a naval procession off the southern Chinese island of Hainan that opened exercises involving 48 ships and submarines. The Ministry of National Defense said they were the largest since the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949.” NY Times. China has enhanced its defensive circle in Asia with its heavy hacking of American military/military vendor servers, developed some of the most sensitive radar on earth and installed state-of-the art listening stations at strategic points under the ocean.

“The state-run Chinese Academy of Sciences only disclosed the pair of acoustic sensors earlier in January 2018, but had been operating them since 2016, according to a report from the South China Morning Post. One of them is in the Challenger Deep, located at the southern end of the Marianas Trench and the deepest known point on earth, and the other is situated further west near the island of Yap, part of the Federated States of Micronesia. Both reportedly can pick up acoustic signatures more than 620 miles away, putting them within range of Guam and the major strategic U.S. naval base at Apra Harbor.” The Drive.com (January 2018).

Donald Trump, hardly willing to read the lessons of history, has completely misplayed his hand with China. His bully tactics have backfired on the international stage; fewer and fewer of our traditional allies are willing to back Trump’s America in these global realities. China is winning and winning, such that they just might get tired of winning so much… at the expense of the United States.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I wonder if Presidents Xi and Putin have ever sent Donald Trump the “thank you” notes for all our President has done to enhance their global power and influence at our expense.