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Analysis: China's nuclear secret exposed

By Richard Spencer
The Telegraph, UK
1 May 2008

China bills the tropical island of Hainan as a new Hawaii. Its sparkling beaches are lined by hotels patronised by western expatriates, Russian package tours and China's new middle classes.

Sanya, the town on its southern tip, is best known for hosting Miss World in recent years. But right next door, China's forward-looking naval strategists are putting a different vision of international relations into effect.
Of all China's technological deficits with the West, the one that hurts most acutely is its military dominance by the United States - and above all the fact that even off its own coast America rules the waves.

No programme has been more important to the People's Liberation Army in the last decade than the development of new submarines.

The issue of aircraft carriers is more complex - China has no realistic hope of matching America's 11, and although many analysts claim it is currently trying to build one this is by no means certain.

But its strategists believe that under the principle of asymmetric warfare the presence of advanced submarines in the western Pacific is enough to ensure their first goal - deterring the United States from intervening should they decide to invade Taiwan.

No occupant of the White House, they argue, would risk losing a US aircraft carrier to torpedoes or submarine-launched missiles for the sake of an island so far away from the concerns of the American people.

Beyond Taiwan, a "blue-water fleet" characterised by nuclear-powered submarines with or without aircraft carriers could stretch itself further, to protect shipping routes in south-east Asia. Its economy is increasingly dependent on oil supplies from the Middle East and Africa, as well as its huge export industry.

Of most concern to its immediate neighbours, though, are the waters in the immediate vicinity of Hainan. The South China Sea is dotted with small islands disputed by a number of countries - the Spratleys are claimed not only by China, but Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, and Taiwan.

Their current value is small, but their potential, if rumours of underwater oil fields prove to be vindicated, is large.

Further afield there are China's even more sensitive relations with Japan to consider: the sea border between the two is also disputed, and also crosses a natural gas field.

In November 2006, a Chinese home-built Song-class diesel submarine suddenly surfaced, undetected, in the middle of a US battle group off Japan. It was a clear warning that its naval weakness could not be taken for granted.

China's navy is still dwarfed by America's, and will be for years if not decades to come. But in the light of events in Iraq, it knows that in any coming confrontation the psychology of threat is as important as actual size.

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leduc

|05-01-2008 15:15:38

We must not be alarmist about China

2 May 2005
Telegraph, UK

Three decades ago, Deng Xiaoping became the ruler of a country reeling from the horrors of Mao's misrule. The reforms he introduced opened up China to the world - and in doing so, reshaped both.

Until now, the story has been told largely in economic terms; China's GDP has increased tenfold since 1978, and growth is still racing along at double-digit rates, lifting millions out of poverty and filling the coffers of both people and government.

This official wealth, however, has been spent on more than just stations and stadiums for the Beijing Olympics. China's military budget - or at least that part of it that is made public - has been raised by 18 per cent in successive years.

Much of this funding seems to have been used to construct the naval base in Sanya that we expose today: a vast, James Bond-style edifice capable of concealing up to 20 nuclear-powered submarines, which will enable China to project its power across the region.

Should we be concerned? Perhaps not by the fact of the base itself; China has a perfect right to spend as much on weaponry as it likes, and such a fleet represent a logical safeguard against the hegemonic power of the US.

Similarly, there has been alarm over China's growing diplomatic influence in other parts of the world. But while we might not like the regimes China treats with in its quest for markets and raw materials - notably Burma and Sudan - such resource-based mercantilism is both legal and, to the Chinese mind, rational.

And although it is building up its military, China has toned down its sabre-rattling over Taiwan and the Spratly Islands.

The conciliatory policy of a "Peaceful Rise" has not just brought Beijing vast rewards - it has handed it economic tools, particularly its vast foreign-currency reserves, that could do just as much damage to the West, and far more easily, as a military confrontation.

Yet there is still reason to worry about what this base represents. It is a sign of China's secretive side, of a regime that goes its own way and makes its own choices. China had no need to tell us about Sanya - but it could have outlined its military strategy in a way that made us understand and accept why it was built.

In a recent piece for our sister paper, The Sunday Telegraph, the Chinese ambassador to London rightly asked Britain not to "demonise" China, and to offer it more respect and understanding.

All should agree that such a process has to be built around openness; too often China seeks to conceal its activities, and becomes defensive when questioned - for example, over its treatment of Tibet, or its incarceration of political prisoners, or its many other breaches of human rights.

We must not be alarmist over China's increasing power, but we must urge that it behaves in a moral fashion towards both its people and its fellow nations. Otherwise, however great its economic and military might become, its remarkable people will never enjoy the recognition and respect they undoubtedly deserve.

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