China's maritime moves prove a game-changer

Andrew S. Jackson

For much of the Cold War, China's navy was little more than an elaborate coast guard. It was barely a blip on the maritime horizons of Australia, Japan and South-East Asia.

Today the Chinese armed forces are in the midst of an intense and sustained modernisation program and the navy has emerged as a key service for protecting and advancing national interests. It gets more than a third of the declared military budget.

China's navy, like those of other leading nations, aims to protect vital trade routes, project power and influence, and deter potential adversaries. What makes the Chinese navy significantly different is its role to secure control for China over far- flung islands and vast sea zones in South-East Asia and North-East Asia that are contested by several South- East Asian countries and Japan.

China says that, like Taiwan, these areas in the South China Sea and the East China Sea are a part of its territory and were taken away when China was weak. Control of these places is contested not just for reasons of national pride, but also because they contain valuable undersea oil and gas, fisheries and some of the world's busiest and most important shipping routes, used extensively for trade and naval operations by Australia and many other countries, including the United States.

The Chinese navy reportedly plans to have a refurbished former Soviet aircraft carrier in operation by 2012 for training, with a made-in-China carrier to take to the seas after 2015.

Even this advance in power projection is expected to have predominantly regional implications.

The US Office of Naval Intelligence completed a study last year of the People's Liberation Army Navy, the official name of the Chinese navy. It noted that although aircraft carriers were viewed in the US as instruments of global force projection, Chinese officials had stated carriers were necessary to protect China's maritime territorial integrity.

Shortly after a series of incidents at sea off China's coast between Chinese military and civilian vessels and two different US Navy surveillance ships just over a year ago, the official Xinhua News Agency said China would not "build an offensive navy cruising the globe".

Instead, the Chinese navy would concentrate on its offshore area.

"In order to defend China's territory and sovereignty, and secure its maritime rights and interests, the navy decided to set its defence range as the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea, and the South China Sea," Xinhua reported. "This range covered the maritime territory that should be governed by China, according to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, as well as the islands in the South China Sea, which have been its territory since ancient times." With around 260 naval vessels, not far short of the 286 ships in the US Navy, China now has 75 destroyers, frigates, amphibious transports and submarines. This makes it the largest force of major warships in Asia, according to the Pentagon's latest report to Congress on Chinese military power.

An increasing number of these ships are technologically advanced and well-armed. However, the Chinese navy still faces challenges and is far from matching the US Navy in terms of capability. The Japanese and Indian navies can also do some things better at sea than China.

To discourage the US or other foreign navies from intervening in Bejing' s declared sphere of influence around Taiwan and in the South and East China Seas in a crisis, Chinese military strategists have developed a set of weapons and tactics to deny hostile forces access.

Among the weapons are submarines that are increasingly difficult to detect and an array of long-range, anti-ship missiles that are increasingly difficult to defend against. The latter include what would be the world's first operational ballistic missile and maneuverable warhead guided by satellite and land-based, over-the-horizon radar to strike aircraft carriers at up to 12 times the speed of sound far out at sea. US military officials and analysts regard it as a serious threat to American naval operations in the Western Pacific.

The US Defence Secretary Robert Gates warned earlier this month "the virtual monopoly the US has enjoyed with precision guided weapons is eroding especially with long-range, accurate anti-ship cruise and ballistic missiles that can potentially strike from over the horizon."

China's anti-ship ballistic missile, with a range of 1500km, would be fired from mobile launchers on land.

Admiral Robert Willard, commander of US forces in the Pacific, told Congress in March China was "developing and testing" the missile.

He added it was "designed specifically to target aircraft carriers".

Gates said such a weapon could put at risk a modern nuclear- powered US carrier with a full complement of the latest aircraft an asset worth as much as $US20billion ($A22.6billion). A combination of lethal missiles and stealthy submarines "could end the operational sanctuary our Navy has enjoyed in the Western Pacific for the better part of six decades". It is not the first time Gates has spoken about this threat. Last September, he said China's "investments in anti-ship weaponry and ballistic missiles could threaten America's primary way to project power and help allies in the Pacific particularly our forward bases and carrier strike groups".

The US Naval Institute cautioned a year ago that "the mere perception that China might have an anti-ship ballistic missile capability could be game-changer, with profound consequences for deterrence, military operations and the balance of power in the Western Pacific". For South-East Asian states such as Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia, that actively contest China's claims in the South China Sea such game-changing developments will only reinforce their concerns about rise of the Chinese navy and its regional role.

Australia, although not directly involved in any maritime dispute with China, is a close ally of the US.

It is also a security partner of Japan, another key Asia-Pacific ally of the US. Australia is also a long-standing partner of Malaysia and Singapore in the Five Power Defence Arrangements, with New Zealand and Britain. Set up in 1971 to buttress the external security of Malaysia and Singapore, the FPDA include a mechanism for consultations in the event of an attack against either.

The balance of power in the region appears to be shifting in ways that make it much less stable and less comfortable for peripheral countries like Australia which have strong interests in continuing growth and security in Asia.

The writer is Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of South East Asian Studies in Singapore