China’s military modernization program has entered a new phase marked by “sweeping reforms” that improves its ability to fight short-duration, high-intensity regional conflicts at greater distances, while strengthening the Chinese Communist Party’s control over the military, according the Pentagon’s latest assessment of China’s growing military might.
In particular, the report details the massive Chinese military buildup on islands, some man-made, in the East and South China Seas, where China now claims sovereignty over more than 3,200 acres of land it has added to seven features it occupies in the archipelago.
“China continues to focus on preparing for potential conflict in the Taiwan strait, but additional missions such as contingencies in the East and South China Seas and on the Korean peninsula are increasingly important to the PLA [People’s Liberation Army],” said Abe Denmark, deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia, on Friday.
The Pentagon’s 2016 Annual Report to Congress on the Chinese military notes that China is carefully avoiding open warfare, instead using “coercive tactics” to advance its interests in ways that are “calculated to fall below the threshold of provoking conflict.”
“China’s strategy is to secure its objectives without jeopardizing the regional peace that has enabled its military and economic development, which in turn has maintained the Communist Party’s grip on power,” Denmark told reporters at a Pentagon briefing Friday.
The report highlighted China’s military buildup on man-made and disputed islands.
“Although these artificial islands do not provide China with any additional territorial or maritime rights within the South China Sea,” the report notes, “China will be able to use them as persistent civil-military bases to enhance its long-term presence in the South China Sea significantly.”
China claims its enhancements on the reefs and other features it has occupied, including the disputed Spratly Islands, are mainly for improving the living and working conditions of those stationed on the outposts, as well as safety of navigation and research.
But the report says the extensive land-reclamation projects include excavating deep channels to improve access, creating artificial harbors, and dredged to allow access for larger ships. Infrastructure improvements make it clear China is militarizing the outposts, with the addition of communication and surveillance systems, logistical support facilities, and runways almost 10,000 feet long.
“Most analysts outside China believe that China is attempting to bolster its de facto control by improving its military and civilian infrastructure in the South China Sea,” the report noted.
China’s 2015 military budget is estimated at more than $180 billion, according to the Pentagon report, less than one third of U.S. defense spending, but the rate of increase in China’s budget is outpacing the U.S., growing at almost 10 percent a year for the past decade.
The spending has allowed China to field significant new weapons systems.
“For instance at China’s military parade last year China unveiled the DF-26 missile, a system capable of precision ground strikes in the Asia-Pacific,” Denmark said.
The report says China is also taking steps to expand its footprint overseas and become a global power.
“The most prominent example in 2015 of the PLA’s expanding ambitions was the November announcement that China’s establishing a military facility Djibouti,” Denmark said. “This is a big step forward for the PLA, which has never had an overseas facility before.”
