Tag Archive for: PLA

Pressure Points: The importance of Australia’s military presence in East and Southeast Asia

This week ASPI launched Pressure Points, an interactive website that analyses the Chinese military’s use of air and maritime coercion to enforce Beijing’s excessive territorial claims and advance its security interests in the Indo-Pacific.

The project highlights and analyses open-source data, military imagery, satellite footage, official government responses and other resources to provide the public with a reliable and accurate account of Chinese regional activity, from its intercept tactics to its excessive claims. It analyses China’s unsafe military interactions with a range of countries, and looks at the way countries use (or don’t use) their military forces to challenge China’s excessive claims in the South China Sea.

A powerful Chinese task group recently circumnavigated Australia, energising debate among Australian commentators and politicians. Canberra was provided a close-up view of Beijing’s rapidly expanding military capability and intent to deploy forces that could—under different circumstances—threaten our cities, population and vital supply routes.

Coupled with growing anxiety around the US alliance and the state of our own aging fleet, the circumnavigation led some to question the activities of Australia’s military, including our commitments within the Indo-Pacific region. Why is Australia deploying military forces to China’s backyard? Aren’t our forces better used closer to home? Why are we provoking our largest trading partner?

These anxieties discount three important facts:

First, Australia’s economic and security interests are intertwined with the Indo-Pacific region. The Indo-Pacific has prospered for decades on the back of international law and rules and norms that have helped to shape the behaviour of states, both large and small. As outlined on Pressure Points, China is increasingly using its military and tactics below the threshold of war to challenge these rules and norms, coerce and deter other countries, and advance its strategic interests.

Regional deployment of Australia’s military helps push back on China’s unwanted advances and protect existing rules and norms, especially when our military conducts activities that challenge China’s excessive territorial claims (such as transits through the Spratly or Paracel Islands). International law is only likely to hold if countries such as Australia are willing to physically enforce it. But, as we have seen on five separate occasions since early 2022, these activities are not without risk. We should expect China to continue to use aggressive and unsafe behaviour to deter our military presence.

But the risk is worth it. Australia cannot afford the continued expansion of China’s excessive claims and the development of a Sinocentric order, which prioritises laws that favour Beijing’s interests, rather than an agreed set of international rules and norms. A continued military presence that supports international law and Australia’s partnerships is firmly in our interest.

Second, we should take stock that it is Beijing’s behaviour that is changing, not our own. Australia’s military has a long history in the Indo-Pacific region. Our warships have been sailing through the South China Sea since World War II. Our defence force has worked with partners across East and Southeast Asia (including China) for decades to increase common understanding and build military interoperability. Our military presence has been longstanding and consistent, and it is founded on longstanding regional partnerships with countries that want Australia to remain militarily engaged in the region.

In comparison, since late 2021 China has used unsafe military manoeuvres to coerce and deter the armed forces of the United States, Australia, Canada, the Philippines and the Netherlands. The actions of China’s Coast Guard and maritime militia have mirrored this increase in aggressive military behaviour, but they rarely project beyond the first island chain.

We are not provoking China—China is provoking us. Beijing seeks to disrupt and deter our longstanding military presence, as well as the presence of other militaries. Thankfully, the tide isn’t necessarily flowing in China’s favour. We have seen more countries deploy military forces to East and Southeast Asia in 2024 than in the previous decade. This presence acts as a bulwark against China’s aggressive behaviour.

Third, China has shown its ability to project military force into our region. We can expect this to continue. The circumnavigation was not a quid pro quo—Beijing was not trying to say ‘if you stay out of our backyard, we’ll stay out of yours’. China’s development of a blue-water navy capable of undertaking extended deployments in our region is part of a broader strategy of national rejuvenation, in which China becomes the pre-eminent global military and economic power.

The pursuit of this strategy will increasingly challenge Australia’s interests. But if we are going to challenge military actions from China, this is best done transparently with partners in the South China Sea, rather than on our own doorstep. China has demonstrated its ability to employ multifaced and flexible tactics to achieve incremental advances over time.

It is necessary to challenge China’s excessive claims in the region, while also responding to its increased military presence in our immediate vicinity. But to do both, Australia must dramatically boost the currently depleted capacity of the Australian Defence Force.

Public opinion and PLA loyalty: objects of the Information Support Force

The court of public opinion is now a critical battleground in modern warfare, according to China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

China’s newly established Information Support Force is not just responsible for the PLA’s vast information network but also for spreading offensive disinformation, countering perceived foreign disinformation and ensuring loyalty across the military. 

The US and its allies need to take this seriously. China’s intentions and capabilities in the information domain are a military issue, not just a matter of public diplomacy.

The PLA now views the media as a ‘combat weapon’. It believes hostile disinformation is damaging command capabilities and could affect political and military outcomes

In April, China’s senior body of military decision makers, the Central Military Commission (CMC), disbanded the PLA’s Strategic Support Force and announced establishment of a new Information Support Force (ISF). This new force is tasked with engaging China in an information war with the United States and US allies.

But the ISF isn’t just about modernising information warfare. Its major mission is ensuring the PLA never turns against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

In establishing the ISF on 19 April 2024, President Xi Jinping called on the new service to ‘adhere to information dominance’, ‘strengthen information protection’, ‘consolidate the foundation of the troops’ and ‘ensure that the troops are absolutely loyal’.

With recent corruption scandals threatening the integrity of PLA leadership, Xi has doubled down on suppressing internal dissent in the PLA.

It is clear he sees the ISF as not only a tool for modernising warfare capabilities but also as a mechanism for reinforcing the CCPs ideological control within the military. Since 2021, the PLA has an expressed intent to defend ‘against the enemy’s [psychological warfare] and incitement to defection’. This emphasis reflects a broader strategy to preserve power within the CCP by ensuring that its military remains a loyal pillar of the party’s authority and by countering foreign attempts at swaying Chinese public opinion.

The PLA claims the United States and its allies have deliberately used media and other communications tactics to fabricate discrediting information about their adversaries’ leaders, politicians and senior military officials. It calls this leadership-debilitating tactic ‘beheading with public opinion’ (舆论斩首) and says it can damage the prestige of China’s leaders and military officials, undermine their resolve and damage their decision-making capabilities.

With the creation of the ISF, the PLA is now determined to neutralise these supposed Western tactics. To do so, PLA strategy authors Sun Jian and Mei Zhifeng are calling on the PLA to ‘attack and defend at the same time’ on the information battlefield.

To defend against the foreign tactics, the PLA plans to dispel what it calls ‘rumours’ and the US’s ‘sinister intentions’ by cutting off their dissemination chain and strengthening Chinese public opinion countermeasures. The PLA also wants to counterattack by exposing ‘the false veil of democracy and freedom [the United States] has constructed’, and to sway Chinese public opinion against the US by creating a situation in which China has the moral upper hand. They say this can be done by highlighting contradictions in US foreign policy and domestic issues, such as political divisions and social inequality, to create an image of moral superiority for China.

China has even said it intends to sow public discord and ‘incite separatist and confrontational activities’ in its adversaries. It may be thinking of acting much as Russia does. There is compelling evidence that bots backed by Russia are disseminating disinformation in the United States.

Creating a separate information support force within the PLA shows China’s seriousness in operating within the information domain. In CCP documents, the PLA views the information domain as equal in importance to the physical domains of air, land, sea and space. It even talks about conducting operations in these physical domains to enable operations in the information domain.

This way of thinking about information warfare as a battlefield itself is at odds with the way the United States and their allies view the concept. They instead see it as mainly a means to support conventional operations. In US doctrine, information operations—such as cyber warfare, psychological operations and propaganda efforts—are often used to enhance the effectiveness of traditional military strategies.

In a speech on 8 October 2024, Xi expressed a desire to ‘improve the ability to guide public opinion’. By manipulating the information domain to manage the public’s perceptions, Xi can better influence public opinion and prevent any challenge to the monopoly power the CCP has over China.

The ISF will likely play a significant role in PLA information warfare in the future, and the US and its allies should watch intently to see how the organisation shapes up.

‘Four services and four arms’ lifts CCP control over information warfare

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has undergone its largest restructure in nearly a decade, with Chinese President Xi Jinping placing key military organisations responsible for information warfare directly under the control of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Military Committee (CMC).

On 19 April, the PLA Strategic Support Force (SSF) was officially disbanded. Established in December 2015, the short-lived SSF was focused on bringing together space, cyber and electronic warfare capabilities. Reporting directly to the CMC, it sought to achieve synergies between roles and capabilities related to the information domain. Now, three new forces have been created to replace it: the Aerospace Force (ASF), Cyberspace Force (CSF), and Information Support Force (ISF).

Xi also officially launched the ISF on 19 April. It will be responsible for construction and implementation of joint information support for the PLA (that is, communications facilitation rather than intelligence-related capabilities). While they are yet to be formally unveiled, the new Aerospace Force and Cyberspace Force are likely to be redesigns of the former SSF Aerospace Systems and Network Systems departments.

Together the three organisations will manage offensive and defensive PLA information capabilities, including communications networks, global and space-based ISR capabilities, offensive and defensive cyber and electronic warfare. They will operate alongside the Joint Logistics Support Force, which was established back in 2016.

Highlighting the concept of ‘four services and four arms’, PLA spokesman Senior Colonel Wu Qian said ‘with the latest reform, the PLA now has a new system of services and arms under the leadership and command of the CMC. There are four services, namely the Army, the Navy, the Air Force and the Rocket Force, and four arms, including the Aerospace Force, the Cyberspace Force, the Information Support Force and the Joint Logistic Support Force.’

So what does this all mean? Is this a change in nomenclature or does it represent something more significant? Typical for the opaque military system in China, no real explanation has been provided. China’s defense ministry described the creation of the three forces and disbandment of the SFF as ‘part of efforts to optimise the PLA’s overall force structure’.

While breaking down PLA intra-agency stovepipes is a likely motivation, the restructure also represents an effort to raise the profile of key PLA capabilities in an era in which information, space and cyber operations are increasingly important. The disbandment of the SSF has removed a level of bureaucracy between the CMC (which Xi chairs) and the three new forces (arms). It allows the CMC direct visibility, management and resourcing of space, cyber and information capabilities in the PLA.

An article published in the PLA’s official newspaper on April 20 outlined that ‘victory in modern warfare is dictated by information dominance. Modern conflicts are competitions between systems and structures, where control over information equates to control over the initiative in war.’ Perhaps learning lessons from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the PLA no longer sees information warfare as a tactical or operational resource but as a strategic outcome, in which military operations support goals in the information domain. Placing the three new forces directly under the control of China’s Central Military Commission reflects this emphasis.

The fact that Chinese President Xi Jinping personally presented the ISF with a military banner at its inauguration demonstrates his personal interest and investment. He described the ISF as ‘a new, strategic branch of the military’ and said it will ‘play a crucial role in advancing the Chinese military’s high-quality development and competitiveness in modern warfare’.

Commentators have suggested other motivations for the reorganisation. This includes CMC dissatisfaction with the performance of the SSF, including its failure to deliver expected efficiencies. Others have pointed to possible corruption within the SSF or suggested that the SSF may have always been a transitory organisation, intended to develop disparate elements of the PLA. Any or all of these factors could be at play.

It will take time to fully understand the impact of the redesign and the exact activities that each new force will undertake. Regardless, we can remain assured that dominance in information warfare will remain a key goal for Xi Jinping, the CMC and the PLA. This is important to consider as Australia looks to its own interactions with the PLA, including the recent unsafe interactions in the East China Sea.

Beijing watches from across the strait as Taiwan heads to the polls

Tomorrow, the 24 million citizens of Taiwan will vote in an election with implications extending far beyond the Indo-Pacific. Beijing will be watching closely from across the strait as the election unfolds against a recent history of intense military brinkmanship and tensions.

Wielding its considerable economic and political heft, the Chinese Communist Party has sought to isolate Taiwan on the international stage, not least by preventing Taiwanese participation in international organisations. Since 2016, Beijing has influenced the attrition in states that have diplomatic relations with Taipei—from 22 to 13. The aim is to convince the Taiwanese population that global integration is achievable only after ‘reunification’ with the People’s Republic of China.

Taiwan has four-year general and local election cycles. Voters cast three votes: one for the president, one for their district representative (73 in total), and one for party-list representatives (34) in the Legislative Yuan, Taiwan’s parliament.

A further six seats in the Legislative Yuan are reserved for Taiwan’s indigenous population, bringing the total to 113 legislators. A first-past-the-post system is used to elect both the president and parliament.

Thus, the executive and legislative branches can be controlled by opposing parties, complicating the crafting of long-term policy and fostering partisan polarisation. The traditional bifurcation of Taiwan’s politics between the two major parties, the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), has ended with the emergence of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP).

Since the early 1990s, there has been a significant increase in the percentage of Taiwan’s population who identify as ‘Taiwanese’ (now 60%), and a corresponding decrease of those who consider themselves to be ‘Chinese’ (2.3%) or hybrid Chinese-Taiwanese (32.3%).

The latest polls show that less than 6% of Taiwanese support independence or unification, and that over 88% would like to maintain the status quo.

So, Taiwan’s political parties are divided not by familiar left–right distinctions but by their approach to relations with the PRC. The KMT is seen as more pro-engagement with Beijing (characterised as ‘blue’), while the DPP is more PRC-sceptic (‘green’). The TPP, associated with cyan and white, attempts to straddle both positions.

Beijing’s efforts to influence the Taiwanese electorate stretch back to the island’s inaugural presidential election in 1996, when the People’s Liberation Army launched ballistic missiles near Taiwan to deter voters from supporting former Taiwanese president Lee Teng-hui.

This time, the PRC has employed a multi-pronged strategy of grey-zone aggression.

Known in the PRC military lexicon as ‘political warfare’, grey-zone activities fall within the Chinese doctrine of the ‘three warfares’.

The first, public opinion warfare, moulds favourable public perceptions of the PRC and the benefits of unification, while discrediting independence narratives. Beijing co-opts social media influencers and traditional pro-PRC media conglomerates, or ‘red media’, to disseminate PRC-friendly content and bolster its favoured political candidates. PRC agents flood Taiwan’s media ecosystem with disinformation, and bots artificially amplify journalism that promotes scepticism over US security commitments to Taiwan.

Throughout October 2023, for example, disinformation purporting to show the conflict in Gaza was circulated to highlight the horrors of war and promote a KMT narrative that peace can only be sustained through closer ties with the PRC.

In the same month, the PRC extended a trade barrier investigation against Taiwan to the eve of Taiwan’s presidential and legislative elections—a pointed reminder of the mainland’s importance to Taiwan as its dominant trading partner.

An example of the PRC’s ongoing legal warfare against Taiwan is its 2005 Anti-Secession Law, which mandates Beijing’s desire to bring Taiwan under its own jurisdiction, and, if nonviolent avenues to ‘reunification’ fail, sanctions the use of force.

Psychological warfare includes invasive military exercises by the PLA around Taiwan’s periphery, ballistic missile overflights, and incursions into Taiwan’s air defence identification zone (ADIZ), all of which have increased markedly in frequency since 2022. PLA sorties into Taiwan’s ADIZ now take place on a near-daily basis. Psychological warfare aims to sap the Taiwanese people’s will to resist, sow societal confusion and discord, and instil a perpetual sense of crisis.

The battlefield of these three warfares is Taiwanese hearts and minds. The ideal, to ‘win without fighting’, would be for ‘Taiwanese compatriots’ to concede willingly to annexation. For the 2024 election, this translates to ‘anyone but the DPP’.

As of 3 January 2024, an aggregate of nationwide polls shows the DPP’s presidential nominee and current vice president, William Lai, leading the presidential race at 38.9%. Lai is a Harvard-educated former physician. His ratings have increased since the announcement as his running partner of Hsiao Bi-khim, whose ‘cat warrior’ diplomacy—developed in response to the CCP’s aggressive ‘wolf warrior’ diplomats—emphasises Taiwan’s commitment to human rights and democratic values, and distinguishes its international identity as separate from the PRC.

Beijing has labelled the DPP ticket a ‘union of separatists’ and has threatened that an administration under Lai may ‘bring war to Taiwan’. If Lai becomes president, Beijing will continue as it has since 2016: official channels of communication will remain frozen, and it will pursue a carrot-and-stick approach combining economically preferential policies to attract young Taiwanese talent to the PRC with punitive sanctions to target Taiwanese industry and individuals.

The PLA will likely intensify military activities around the island to signal Beijing’s displeasure.

A KMT administration would see Taiwan return to the ‘1992 Consensus’, likely taking the spotlight off the independence issue and leading to a temporary thawing in cross-strait relations. Cross-strait trade and tourism might experience a temporary flourishing. It would also afford the PRC greater economic leverage and cultural influence in Taiwan.

Any possible rapprochement, however, would be constrained by a fundamentally irreconcilable conflict: that the Taiwanese public do not wish to cede autonomy to Beijing, and the CCP’s singular interest in friendly relations with Taiwan lies in its ambitions to annex it.

A TPP victory appears unlikely. But, if the party’s leader, Ko Wen-je, were able to find a mutually acceptable framework for resuming dialogue with Beijing, the countries may be able to open channels of trade and cooperation, leading to a cooling of cross-strait tensions.

‘The Thucydides trap’ becomes the Asia–Pacific theme song

Thucydides trap: from the Greek historian’s statement that the alarm of the established power at the challenge of the rising power makes war inevitable.

The Asia–Pacific ponders the growing chances of war.

Australia’s policy community shares the region’s unhappy understanding ‘that nations can sleep-walk into war, even when rational, objective self-interest on all sides cries out against it’. That nightmare scenario is described by Gareth Evans in the Australian chapter of the CSCAP Regional Security Outlook 2024, produced by the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific.

The editor of the annual survey, Ron Huisken, writes that the ‘relentless intensification of tension and animosity’ between China and the US has ‘deflated the regional spirit, inflamed quarrels, replaced optimism with trepidation and made Thucydides Trap into something of a regional theme song’.

With that tune in their ears, Huisken notes, prominent commentators around the Asia–Pacific ‘speak openly about the risk of major power war’.

Taking the temperature of the Australian ‘policy community’, former Labor foreign minister Gareth Evans reports broad areas of Canberra agreement:

  • the ‘fragile and volatile’ regional security environment
  • the most formidable international challenge is ‘negotiating a course between the two neighbourhood giants, China and the United States’
  • the need for more resources for defence and foreign policy than ‘in more complacent decades past’
  • ASEAN continues to be a ‘supremely important defuser of cross-border tensions’ in Southeast Asia, but has proved incapable of ‘any kind of collective resistance to overweening behaviour by China’
  • the Quad commands ‘quite strong support’ in Canberra, albeit ‘more for its optics than any real military substance’.

Evans says the ‘alarming vagaries’ of US domestic politics creates concerns about its ‘will and capacity to stay the course in its long self-appointed role as regional security stabiliser and balancer’.

Once a deputy leader of the Labor Party, Evans detects growing tensions in this Labor government over Australia’s relationship with the US, although he sees ‘no serious inclination anywhere to walk away from the ANZUS alliance’.

Evans describes Prime Minister Albanese as ‘an instinctive straddler’, while ‘comfortable enough talking Washington talk’. Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles is closest to an alliance ‘true believer’, Evans judges, and Foreign Minister Penny Wong ‘while always cautious, is more inclined to scepticism, particularly on the attractions of continued US primacy’.

Offering an American perspective, Gregory Poling, of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, judges that a ‘US-China conflict over Taiwan does not seem imminent, and any escalation would almost certainly be intentional.’ What worries Poling is the chances of an unintentional clash, especially in the air.

He quotes a US count that on 300 occasions over the last two years, Chinese aircraft have ‘performed reckless manoeuvres or discharged chaff, or shot off flares, or approached too rapidly’ to US or allied aircraft: ‘This means that PLA aircraft are intentionally creating risks of mid-air collision about every 2.5 days. At that rate, an eventual accident is a mathematical certainty.’

China’s tactic of ‘violating international law and norms of safe conduct at air and sea to intentionally create risks of collision’ increases the chance of unintended escalation. Poling writes that with virtually no communication between the US and Chinese military, the two sides would struggle to deescalate such a crisis.

The choice facing India is to forsake strategic autonomy for strategic alignment, according to Sourabh Gupta, of the Institute for China-America Studies. India is driven by an ‘anti-China fixation’, Gupta writes: ‘A single point agenda—the obsessive need to countervail any advantage that could accrue to China on the Indo-Pacific’s geopolitical canvas—was the common thread that tied together India’s diplomatic strategy in 2023.’

A ‘combustive test of wills’ with China means India’s room for strategic manoeuvre has crumbled, Gupta judges: ‘Strategic autonomy has effectively given way to strategic alignment with the US and the West in the Indo-Pacific region – an outcome not entirely of New Delhi’s choosing.’

From Singapore, Joel Ng, of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, writes that the 2020s are shaping up to be the bloodiest decade since the end of the Cold War, as ‘more and more states appear to be anticipating and preparing for conflict’. Ng says the vicious spiral of the China-US relationship is the great challenge confronting the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and ASEAN’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC).

Created amid the hopes that followed the end of the Cold War, the ARF was designed to evolve from confidence building measures to preventive diplomacy and conflict resolution, offering a framework for cooperative security. Yet the ARF still struggles on that first confidence-building rung, and Ng notes that ‘managing regional conflicts is no longer a hypothetical contingency. The onset and risk of conflicts regionally requires more proactive action. ASEAN might consider convening a conference of TAC signatories as a suitable high-visibility first step to initiating a new round of confidence building measures between all actors.’

Chiming in on that thought, Outlook editor Ron Huisken writes that if the language of ASEAN centrality has meaning, then ASEAN must ‘move beyond quiet diplomacy’ to push the ‘giants toward a workable accommodation and a joint commitment to a more constructive regional security agenda’.

An assertive ASEAN, Huisken says, would ‘encourage, provoke, require—whatever the circumstances seem to require or allow—an earnest dialogue with and between the US and China on the preferred character of the region’.

As a small example of the problems in getting that earnest dialogue, the 2024 security outlook carries no contribution from China. That’s a repeat of last year, when for the first time in 15 years there was no chapter offering China’s view.

The absence suggests that the second track strategists of China’s CSCAP are cautious in writing about where China’s leader Xi Jinping is heading on the first track. A dark interpretation is that China is not interested in talking about stabilising the ‘rules-based system’ in the Asia–Pacific because Beijing views the ‘system’ as a euphemism for Western dominance. Certainly, that’s the Russian perspective offered in the CSCAP Outlook.

The chapter from by Ekaterina Koldunova, of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, reports that the ‘political and military crisis in Ukraine’ and US and EU sanctions have ‘triggered transformative change’ in Russia’s foreign policy, security outlook and economy.

‘In reality rather than just in words, Russian political and economic decision-makers finally became serious about developments in Asia, seeking opportunities to cooperate and addressing shortcomings in Russia’s relations with the region,’ Koldunova writes. Those who ‘cautioned that Russia’s pivot to Asia was a pivot to China’ got more evidence as relations with Japan and South Korea continued to deteriorate.

Western sanctions ‘galvanised’ Russia’s search for ‘alternative global governance instruments’, Koldunova judges, and Moscow sees the swing away from Western rules as the ‘hidden aspiration of many countries in Asia’.

The Asia–Pacific frets about the health of the international system and the weakening of rules. And the growing danger of conflict. The sleep-walking fear is the unintended clash that nobody wills but galvanises the will to fight.

Whatever hidden aspirations Asia may have, what it hears and fears is that tune by Thucydides.

Be alert to China’s military weaknesses

Some of those who want to appease Beijing assert that China’s military superiority would enable it to defeat the US over Taiwan. Like the supposed superior strengths of the Chinese economy, these arguments are based on false premises. The fact is China’s military strength is entirely unproven in practical terms and, like its ally Russia, China has serious military weaknesses.

As the well-regarded Swedish Defence Research Agency has recently observed, a rethink of Moscow’s military capability is clearly warranted to understand the causes of the current malaise in Russia’s military capabilities. The agency says that is needed both for the West to adjust to its demonstrable shortcomings and weaknesses and, equally importantly, to understand their causes and long-term strategic implications. In my view, Western intelligence analysts and policymakers have consistently overrated Russia’s and the Soviet Union’s military strengths. And precisely the same mistakes are now being made about China’s PLA.

What are the reasons for this? First, as Professor Zoltan Barany of the University of Texas has argued: when the adversary is a totalitarian state it is easier to make judgements based on quantitative assessments of counting weapons—tanks, jet fighters, and missiles—and raw manpower, rather than on the qualitative and psychological characteristics that often determine the military’s performance on the battlefield.

Second, because of Russia’s and China’s autocratic systems and pervasive corruption, it has proved difficult for them to bring the kinds of innovation, adaptability, and versatility that tend to produce the best outcomes on the battlefield. The fact is it is easy to concentrate on the material strengths of both China and Russia that can be counted by overhead means of intelligence, while neglecting crucial intangibles such as the quality and experience of their troops.

Third, one of the most serious intangible defects of China’s and Russia’s military forces is that they lack a critical mass of professionally trained NCOs. The dearth of professional non-commissioned officers means that totalitarian armies are unable to fight effectively because NCOs provide the vital link between officers and soldiers about battlefield decision-making. Military command and control culture boils down to trust, including at the operational level.

Trust is not one of the strengths of authoritarian states like China and Russia. As the US Center for Security and Emerging Technology has observed, military command and control in such authoritarian regimes have rigid and fragmented command and control structures because the political leadership does not trust the military leadership, and the military does not trust the rank-and-file. Such systems fail to successfully share information, discourage initiative, and prevent battlefield lessons from informing strategy or being incorporated into future military doctrine. These critical structural deficiencies are part of both China’s and Russia’s military DNA.

Fourth, there has been far too much focus on weapons systems and new technology and endless claims that each new Chinese or Russian weapon is so much superior to those of the US. An example of this recently was when an ‘expert’ in Canberra proclaimed that China’s latest nuclear attack submarine was quieter than the US Virginia class. That sort of ill-informed judgement is typical of those who have never had the security clearance for close-quarter covert submarine operations or an understanding that the US still dominates war under the seas. For example, China’s strategic nuclear submarines (SSBNs) do not provide Beijing with an assured nuclear second-strike force because they are very vulnerable to US attack submarines (SSNs).

Fifth, few in the West pay close attention to the actual composition, training, and preparedness of Russian and Chinese troops themselves or their ability to operate as a joint force outside of artificial planned exercises.

And sixth, authoritarian leaderships in both China and Russia are typified by deep-seated despotism that typifies military politics, and pervasive corruption that saps the fighting strength of their armed forces.

Finally, it is little understood in the West that the oath of allegiance of PLA soldiers is to the Communist Party of China, whereas that of the Soviet Army was to defend the USSR. Chinese troops must waste much of their time studying and regurgitating Communist Party propaganda, which further detracts from their military expertise. Long may they continue to waste their military training spending countless hours on such irrelevant ideology  as Xi Jinping’s Thought!

None of this is to argue that the weaknesses and deficiencies of both China and Russia are identical. But the fact remains that much more so than Russia, China has no practical combat experience worth talking about. Its last serious use of force overseas was in 1979 when it sought to teach Vietnam a lesson—and failed miserably.

The believers in Australia of China’s military superiority seem to accept that China has the means and the will to escalate indefinitely and thereby defeat the US and that China is also prepared to pay any price because it enjoys escalatory dominance and cannot be deterred. My view is that the hypothetical of a defeated US in Taiwan (and perhaps at the same time NATO in Europe) increases the risks of nuclear war. Those who argue that we should surrender Taiwan to China or risk nuclear confrontation fail to understand China’s military weaknesses.

In conclusion, we need much more serious and in-depth analyses of China’s military weaknesses and deficiencies. I reject the arguments of those who proclaim that the risks are too high of resisting and deterring a China that allegedly has superior military forces to those of America. Those who carelessly assert that the US is finished, that China inevitably will be the dominant military power over the entire Asia-Pacific region, and that our only survival will be to get out of the ANZUS Alliance need to think again. Their argument is based on very shaky views of China’s military superiority which is a superficial and untested assertion.

The fact is that China shares many of the fatal weaknesses of Russia’s military, which is performing so abysmally in Moscow’s war in Ukraine. I believe that the prudent defensive policy of the US and its allies in the Asia-Pacific region, including Australia, must be to acquire the military capabilities to constrain, check and deter any expansionist ambitions of the PLA.

(A version of this article was published in The Weekend Australian.)

The PLA Strategic Support Force: future-proofing China’s military

It’s technical, it’s growing and it’s secretive. Unlike the People’s Liberation Army air force and navy, which frequently feature in Chinese state media headlines, comparatively little attention is paid to the fifth branch of China’s military—the Strategic Support Force. But the SSF is incredibly important. If the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Military Commission is the brain and the major military branches the arms and legs, then the SSF is both a striking arm and the nervous system that connects it all.

Yet, while Chinese President Xi Jinping boasts of the PLA ground force’s historic power and highlights its rocket force as the core of China’s great-power status, he says little about the SSF beyond that it’s ‘an important improvement in force integration and military–civil fusion in the PLA’s novel ways of war’. So, what exactly is the SSF?

As early as 2013, the PLA has sought to transition from being a primarily land-based force to a global power in what it deems the ‘strategic frontiers’ (战略边疆) of space, cyberspace and the sea. Stronger emphasis on information warfare (信息化战争) and joint operations (联合作战) has been the heart of a major reorganisation and modernisation of the PLA since 2013 that included the creation of the SSF three years later. The PLA says the SSF was built with ‘brick, not clay’—assembled from cyber, space, electronic warfare and other strategic support units previously scattered across the military.

Although independent, the SSF works with the rest of the PLA to provide accurate, high-quality and reliable intelligence support to bring the entire military under an ‘information umbrella’ (信息伞). Two departments make up the SSF: a space systems department (航天系统部) and a network systems department (网络系统部). Each is commanded by deputy-theatre-grade (副战区及) lieutenant generals, indicating that they may enjoy more autonomy than the departments in the PLA’s other four branches, which are usually headed by major generals.

Aiming to achieve cyber, electronic and psychological superiority over an enemy, the SSF is designed to deliver blows of its own. Chinese state news sources claim the focus of capabilities within the SSF make it more effective than the US military system where each branch has separate strategic support units that compete for resources.

As one of the newest branches of the PLA, it is not surprising that the SSF is growing in influence and size. In 2019, the SSF debuted in the Chinese Communist Party’s 70th National Day Parade. It also inherited Base 311 (三一一基地), the site of the PLA’s ‘triple warfare’ (三战) innovation and training centre, which supports public opinion warfare, psychological warfare and legal warfare (舆论战、心理战、法律战).

Information on the units commanded by the SSF is scarce and frequently redacted from accessible sources, but we can be relatively certain that it’s rapidly growing, mostly through military–civil fusion.

While  a branch of the PLA, the SSF has extensive ties to civilian expertise and the party leadership, but it also draws heavily on the civilian sector for talent and technology. It recruits from top Chinese universities for technical experts in information technology, engineering and computer science, and in 2018 it signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the China Railway Engineering Corporation, the China Railway Construction Corporation, the China Communications Construction Group and the Power Construction Corporation of China (PowerChina).

These connections are to allow these central enterprises to rapidly integrate their key projects with SSF operations. PowerChina plays a large role in Belt and Road Initiative projects throughout Asia, and its overseas brands include Sinohydro, HydroChina and SEPCO Electric Power Construction Corporation.

However, the SSF’s reliance on civilian industries comes with risk. It’s no secret that China faces a severe deficit of cyber professionals—to the tune of 1.4 million personnel. That skills shortage, combined with China’s struggle to replace foreign technology with domestic alternatives, will severely hinder the PLA’s cyber capability. Exactly how that will affect the SSF and the PLA over time remains unclear.

For the rest of the world, but especially democracies in the Indo-Pacific, the rise of the SSF should spur action. It’s apparent to both sides of the Pacific that the branch is destined to play a pivotal role in the wars of tomorrow, and the PLA certainly hopes that the ostensibly better efficiency of the SSF could give it an asymmetric advantage over the US. Ultimately, however, a branch that consolidates a whole military’s strategic support is an untested novelty in modern military strategy. There’s plenty of room for weaknesses and vulnerabilities, especially given its dependence on civilian industries.

But as the PLA prepares itself for joint operations information warfare, it’s time to get behind the SSF’s thick shroud of secrecy and examine how effective this neural network of the PLA war machine might be. Concerned parties cannot afford a false sense of security when it comes to the SSF—it’s integral to the PLA. The SSF remains extremely under-researched, with frustratingly little written on its details and intricacies, and there’s rich potential for future investigation of its strengths and weaknesses. Building a clearer view of the SSF itself could also reveal how the world’s largest military will react in a future conflict.

The Chinese military’s skyrocketing influence in space

At the end of May, China conducted its first crew handover for its recently completed space station, Tiangong. That included China’s first civilian taikonaut (astronaut). Alarmingly, Tiangong is expected to soon be the world’s primary space station with the International Space Station’s decommissioning in 2030. Then the US and its partners may only operate commercial platforms under NASA’s commercial low-earth-orbit destinations program.

The passing of this baton comes after the success of China’s launch of 41 satellites at once, an effort that brought it closer to SpaceX’s record of 143 satellites. China has already begun leading the world in military launches, sending 45 defence-related satellites into orbit in 2022. That was 15 more than the US sent into orbit.

While the People’s Liberation Army’s space plans are not reliably disclosed to the public, its actions make it clear that China has found its way to space, and it plans to stay.

China’s multiplying presence in ‘the final frontier’ is part of a reawakening to the importance of space around the world. The fundamentals aren’t new. In 1970, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) noted the importance of space exploration, and China is one of a growing number of countries recognising the tremendous economic, strategic, military and political potential of activity in space. The annual number of payloads launched into orbit has increased tenfold in the past decade, and the global space economy is estimated to sit at US$469 billion, with yearly revenues from space 6.4% higher in 2022 than in 2021.

It isn’t news that space is integral to modern life. Advances in technology designed for space have been used to better understand human health and biology and for faster communication. The world relies on the satellite-provided Global Positioning System (GPS) for everything from navigation to environmental and agricultural monitoring. The military uses satellites for weather forecasting, surveillance, intelligence, communications, early warning, position, navigation and timing purposes. There’s potential for even more value, with space-based mining, manufacturing and solar energy generation among possible future breakthroughs.

Space is a prime arena for international cooperation. Senior leaders such as Lieutenant General Nina Armango of the US Space Force have emphasised that the space domain underpins modern warfare in a technical and diplomatic sense. With competitive and cooperative elements, space is rapidly evolving into a strategic military domain with both economic and political ‘orbits’.

The PLA shares similar sentiments about the role of space in potential future conflicts. The 2020 edition of the PLA’s Science of military strategy (战略学) says what happens in space is ‘inseparable from the outcome of the war’. The PLA regards space power as ‘not only the glue of the modern integrated battlefield, but also the glue of the modern military power system’. Both the US and China recognise space as highly contested and requiring superiority.

The American-owned GPS is a free service and remains the world’s leading navigation system—the consequences of its disruption would ripple around the globe. However, the rapid growth of China’s space capabilities has included its own positioning and navigation system, the BeiDou satellite system, which the deputy director of the China Satellite Navigation Office, Chen Gucang, regards as comparable to, if not better than, GPS. BeiDou, too, is marketed as a system developed by China and  generously ‘dedicated to the world’ in conjunction with the Belt and Road Initiative.

In 2007, China conducted an anti-satellite test, blowing up one of its old weather satellites and creating a cloud of space debris that persists to this day. In an interview with Sinica, NASA astronaut Leroy Chiao, an expert on China’s space program, described the event as an act of defiance against US attempts to maintain amicable space conditions by reserving the right to deny space access to anyone it feels is a threat. While condemned globally at the time, this action revealed the extent of PLA counterspace capabilities and its efforts to militarise space alongside the US.

And with plans to put the first taikonaut on the moon by 2030 and to surpass American space programs by 2045, China has no intention of slowing down. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s 2023 threat assessment declares that ‘China’s space activities are designed to advance its global standing and strengthen its attempts to erode US influence across military, technological, economical, and diplomatic spheres’. Simply put, it’s plausible that the US could cede space dominance to China given the current trajectory of the PLA’s space efforts.

The security implications of this could be far-reaching. Secretary of the US Air Force Frank Kendall notes that the linking of China’s space-based capabilities to its operational forces, and its growing ability to use its satellites to track US troops and assets, may enable the PLA to invasively collect intelligence from space without any nation being powerful enough to stop them.

From Beijing’s perspective, space activity is a clear way to further China’s socialist modernisation. It also reflects the PLA’s military–civil fusion strategy, which aims to utilise civilian research to enhance and revitalise the PLA by 2049. Retired US Lieutenant Colonel Thomas McCabe has written that ‘all the surveillance resources PRC civilian agencies have will be integrated into crisis/wartime military ISR [intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance]’. This effect may be executed through the employment of anti-access and area-denial techniques, which China has already proved itself capable of with its grey-zone warfare against Taiwan.

This is just the beginning. Societies would do well to monitor the progress of countries, particularly China, as they leverage the final frontier for political and strategic objectives. Without closely following this activity, governments and peoples may mistake China’s development in space as incremental instead of the skyrocketing growth it is. While PLA capabilities do not yet allow China to replace the US as the leading space power, they are rapidly expanding, alongside the threat they pose to international peace and security. Recognising the massive advantages space capabilities can provide is only the first step in protecting this domain from falling into the wrong hands.

Recent Chinese cyber intrusions signal a strategic shift

On 25 May, Australia and its partners in the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network—Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US—made a coordinated disclosure on a state-sponsored cyber hacking group dubbed ‘Volt Typhoon’. The group has been detected intruding on critical infrastructure since 2021, but the nature of recent intelligence on its behaviour hints at worrying developments in the Chinese cyber establishment. While the Five Eyes’ disclosure is direct in its attribution of Volt Typhoon to the Chinese government, there are many layers that need to be peeled away to reveal the true nature, and implications, of the threat.

State-aligned or state-sponsored cyber threats emerging from China can be grouped under two broad government structures: the Ministry of State Security and the Strategic Support Force. The MSS is China’s peak foreign intelligence, counterintelligence and political security agency, and the SSF is the joint information warfare command of the People’s Liberation Army’s, akin to US Cyber Command. While its US counterpart focuses solely on military cyber operations, the SSF has a broader mandate covering electronic warfare, strategic military cyber operations and political warfare. The SSF was founded in 2015 as part of structural reforms to the PLA spearheaded by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The most recent intrusion highlighted by the Five Eyes isn’t the type of espionage that is the veritable background noise of enduring competition among states. Chinese cyber operators have become notorious for intellectual property theft, but their cyber espionage activity has gradually shifted to meeting other strategic imperatives, as the Volt Typhoon case shows.

Offensive cyber intrusions for specific strategic effects usually require the preplacement of technical implants and long-term access to the adversary’s network well in advance of the operation. Former White House cybersecurity adviser Chris Inglis has called these implants intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms that are ‘ubiquitous, real-time and persistent’. Volt Typhoon appears to have been performing just such a preplacement operation.

The commercially available intelligence on Chinese cyber activity can be confusing. The MSS and even the SSF use the services of politically influential private contractors to develop their offensive toolchains. The contractors may also moonlight as criminals, unabashedly using the same toolchains. This operational and infrastructural overlap means that commercial intelligence analysts end up grouping China-linked cybercrime, cyber espionage and military cyber activity into big clusters known in the industry by names such as Winnti, APT40, APT41, Barium and Hafnium. That has greatly muddied the waters.

However, it is possible to unpack these clusters. The MSS and its affiliates have been spotted on global networks and linked with sophisticated political and economic espionage operations. The SSF, working with the five geographically aligned theatre commands of the PLA, has been mainly active in China’s near abroad. After the 2015 reforms, the theatre commands inherited the old, inertial bureaucracies of the PLA and their integration into the joint information warfare command of the SSF is said to be a work in progress.

The technical reconnaissance bases (previously known as bureaus), or TRBs, are the numerous detachments hailing from the legacy structures of the PLA’s signals intelligence setup. Most of them have been reorganised into the theatre commands and are responsible for various cyber missions. The TRBs rely on a mixture of bespoke toolchains and toolchains shared with contractors and the MSS. One example is ShadowPad, which is thought to be behind one of China’s first known prepositioning operations, RedEcho. RedEcho was discovered in the Indian power grid in 2021 during the height of the Indo-China border standoff and is most likely the handiwork of a TRB under the Western Theatre Command.

A de-clustering of Chinese cyber operations undertaken for groups active in China’s near abroad and associated with the PLA was able to link intrusions to TRBs. According to this analysis, which was based on commercially available and open-source intelligence, the ‘Tonto Team’ was related to Unit 65016, a TRB of the Northern Theatre Command; ‘Naikon’ was linked to the Southern Theatre Command; and ‘Tick’ was related to Unit 61419, which is likely a TRB directly under the SSF.

There has been some debate among the experts about how the TRBs fit into the joint command structure of the theatre commands and the SSF. However, the consensus is that because the theatre commanders have managed to remain the foci in a slow-changing bureaucracy, most TRBs are more closely associated with them than with the SSF.

This is the assumption that the Volt Typhoon disclosure seems to challenge. It was undoubtedly a strategic operation and its prepositioning extends far beyond China’s near abroad. Its scope is a sign that the integration of joint information warfare forces into the PLA has matured. The military cyber elements seem to have been extricated from the stovepipes of the theatre commands and are ready to produce strategic effects extending beyond the Indo-Pacific. And the integration isn’t just militaristic but also political: the PLA is the Chinese Communist Party’s army. Strategic cyber operations are directly sanctioned by the Central Military Commission and ultimately authorised by Xi.

An alternative hypothesis is that the MSS or a team of contractors were tasked with gathering intelligence to prepare for a future battlefield. The MSS and its privateers have gone beyond their remit in the past. The 2020–21 exploitation of Microsoft Exchange, for example, which aggressively targeted many Western organisations, is thought to have been orchestrated by a regional bureau of the MSS and so wouldn’t have gone through PLA channels to the top.

That said, the Chinese cyber apparatus also relies on decentralisation and outsourcing to maintain deniability. And while the Volt Typhoon intrusion could have been the result of private contractors’ reckless manoeuvring, such a move would have been deemed risky by the Chinese political establishment, which is keenly aware of the risk of escalation in cyber operations.

The intelligence that has trickled through from the Five Eyes points to interesting doctrinal and strategic developments in the Chinese cyber establishment, especially the extent and success of its integration with the PLA. A rigorous, transparent assessment by interdisciplinary experts, aided by governments, is required to fully understand these developments and their potential consequences.

China military watch

During China’s high-level ‘two sessions’ (两会) meetings this year, defence ministry spokesperson Tan Kefei (谭克非) disclosed that ¥1.58 trillion ($338 billion) had been allocated in the 2023 national budget for defence, up 7.2% on the previous year. The central government allocated ¥1.55 trillion ($332 billion), continuing the trend of defence budget escalation for three consecutive years. The balance came from local-level governments.

Over the past decade, China has raised its defence spending each year by a higher percentage than its annual GDP increase as it strengthens its armed forces.

Figure 1: Annual growth rate of China’s announced defence budget, 2011–2023

Source: National Bureau of Statistics of China.

Figure 2: Annual growth rate of China’s real GDP, 2011–2023

Sources: National Bureau of Statistics of China (2011–2022); International Monetary Fund (*2023 forecast).

Beijing has portrayed its military expenditure as ‘reasonable (合理)’ and ‘moderate (适度)’ compared to that of Western powers such as the US and insisted that China is a responsible global actor committed to preserving peace. Those claims are belied by China’s militarisation of the South China Sea and extensive combat-readiness patrols and drills around Taiwan.

China’s surge in military capability, irrespective of the impact on territorial disputes, has significantly bolstered its political leverage and tilted the regional military balance in its favour. Its armed forces are ambitiously pursuing top-to-bottom modernisation and diversification that includes what Beijing refers to as ‘intelligentised warfare’, or using AI to control the will of potential adversaries at all levels.

China’s aim is to equip its military with cutting-edge weapons and to ensure that its land, air and maritime forces can work jointly with elements involved in space, counterspace, nuclear, electronic and cyber warfare. Beijing’s efforts have fuelled a progressively more volatile and competitive security landscape, forcing countries that are heavily reliant on trade with China to navigate the sometimes conflicting demands of their strategic interests and economic growth.

The eroding credibility of US conventional deterrence amplifies the risk of conflict. It increases the possibility that a more assertive and audacious China will seek to unilaterally alter the status quo in the Indo-Pacific by threatening to use, or actually using, multi-domain anti-access/area-denial strategies to curtail US power projection and operational effectiveness.

China’s military forces have two primary components: the People’s Liberation Army and the People’s Armed Police. The PLA, which includes the army, navy, air force, rocket force and strategic support force, constitutes the central and foundational element of China’s military capabilities. The PAP, which includes the internal guard, border defence, coastguard and specialised tactical units, has been excluded from the military spending equation on the premise that its operations are limited to domestic security.

While the reported percentage of China’s military spending as a share of GDP has remained relatively steady for many years, it can be assumed that additional money is being spent in classified areas.

As noted in a previous edition of ‘China military watch’, the official figures in China’s defence budget may not reflect the true extent of Chinese military spending. The lack of transparency over the levels of military spending that are acknowledged and the rapidly expanding capability of China’s forces only add to the opacity.

Historical spending patterns outlined in China’s 2019 defence white paper indicate that equipment has accounted for the largest share of the defence budget in recent years, ahead of personnel, training and maintenance. The 2017 military reforms were intended to produce a more balanced force, in part by streamlining and reducing the size of the army through cutting-edge technologies such as enhanced armour and improved logistical support. Beijing’s aspiration to become both a land and sea power has driven its pursuit of modernised battalions that surpass the capabilities of the traditional mechanised infantry battalions. Despite these efforts, however, the army has maintained its position as the primary beneficiary of military spending due to China’s longstanding continental defence history.

Chinese military scholars and experts have been talking about the seemingly lower 2023 defence budget, when it’s calculated in US dollars, compared with the previous year. They note that this is happening while most countries are scaling up their military expenditure. On closer examination, it’s not clear what accounting method was employed—purchasing power parity or the market exchange rate—and how expenditure was converted to real output or capacity.

At the root of this confusion lies China’s lower labour costs, which mean its currency’s military services purchasing power surpasses both its purchasing power parity and market exchange rate values. Estimates of money spent fall noticeably short of covering China’s military capabilities. That’s because China’s military industry operates under a predominantly state-owned model and therefore functions differently from a market-driven model in terms of costing and equipment procurement. The production and pricing of military equipment in China adhere to the principles of cost preservation, low profits and tax exemptions. Notably, research and development expenses, design changes, process improvements, equipment updates and tooling procurement all undergo separate procedures and are not included in the cost calculation.

China’s defence spending exhibits remarkable efficiency. With its formidable manufacturing and labour-intensive productivity growth during the economic reform era, the country has established a self-reliant and cost-effective industrial chain spanning the entire spectrum of weapons development, batch production and deployment of weapons and equipment. This removes the need for time- and resource-consuming purchases from abroad.

Having the world’s largest commercial shipbuilding industry enables China to acquire capital and technical knowledge from foreign contracts. This civil–military integration enables it to build increasingly sophisticated naval vessels and weapon systems. In contrast, the growth of US naval power, epitomised by the aircraft carrier USS Ford, is hamstrung by a dwindling civilian shipbuilding industry. That has led to exorbitant component costs, rendering the USS Ford nearly twice as expensive as the PLA Navy’s smaller Fujian.

A nation’s military capability is determined not only by its defence spending but also by its economic prosperity. In the almost four decades since the opening up of its economy, China has upheld the principle that defence construction must be subordinate to, and serve, the nation’s overall economic goals. Now, Beijing appears to be grappling with an array of challenges, arguably the most comprehensive and daunting since the late 1970s.

These include the repercussions of an inadequate pandemic response, a staggering economic downturn, an immense outflow of foreign investment, steeply rising unemployment, waning domestic market competitiveness, a mounting debt burden, a sluggish real estate industry and a deteriorating trade relationship with the US. If Beijing fails to act promptly, its ability to sustain high defence spending may be limited by a deteriorating balance sheet.

In the meantime, shifting demographics characterised by an ageing and declining population threaten long-term growth. A shrinking labour force and the loss of human capital will further weaken China’s international comparative advantage, making it less appealing for industrial contracts.

The world’s second-largest economy is beset with systemic problems and competing priorities that require a sweeping structural overhaul including decentralisation from Beijing to allow local decision-making, extensive redistribution of resources from the state to the private sector and significant political reforms. The Chinese Communist Party’s reluctance to cede authority makes such a transformation difficult in the extreme.