For years, most experts believed that China’s military challenge to the U.S. was regional in nature — that it was confined to the Western Pacific. After decades of tacitly free-riding on America’s global power-projection capabilities, however, Beijing now is seeking the capabilities that will allow it to project its own military power well outside its regional neighbourhood.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivering the keynote address at the Shangri La Dialogue, in Singapore on June 1, 2018. Photo/PIB
With Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy set to boost India’s role in the region, New Delhi is working hard to avoid being caught in the middle of the growing rivalry between China and the United States, observers said. That might have explained why Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi appeared to avoid mentioning the “quadrilateral strategic dialogue” – a US-led grouping of four regional powers including Australia, Japan and India, also known as “the Quad” – during his speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue, a regional security summit, in Singapore over the weekend.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi meeting the Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Hsien Loong, at Istana – Presidential Palace, in Singapore on June 01, 2018. Photo/PIB
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for equal access at sea and in the air for all Asian countries at a major defence conference on Friday, but avoided singling out China’s claims to the hotly contested South China Sea. Modi outlined his regional vision at the annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, attended by defence chiefs from over 40 countries, including U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.
Read text of Modi’s speech here
China has insisted that it will not succumb to US pressure to change its industrial policy nor offer major concessions on the bilateral trade deficit. A Chinese government official close to the high-level trade talks with America said that Washington should not set any preconditions for negotiations, adding that China had sufficient strength to fight to the end if a trade war broke out.
Xi’s confidence is not without grounds. In the past five years, the Chinese leadership has made notable progress on a number of its priorities. Its much-heralded anticorruption campaign has accelerated, with the number of officials disciplined for graft increasing from some 150,000 in 2012 to more than 400,000 in 2016. Air quality in many of China’s famously smoggy cities has improved measurably.
China has transformed the Indo-Pacific region’s strategic landscape in just five years. If other powers do not step in to counter further challenges to the territorial and maritime status quo, the next five years could entrench China’s strategic advantages.
Despite its long coast along the South and East China seas, much of China is landlocked and far from any port. Traditionally, the country has focused on strengthening its army. Now, however, it is prioritising a naval buildup that could allow it to rival the U.S. at sea.
China started building its third aircraft carrier, with a hi-tech launch system, at a Shanghai shipyard last year, according to sources close to the People’s Liberation Army. One of the sources said Shanghai Jiangnan Shipyard Group was given the go-ahead to begin work on the vessel after military leaders met in Beijing following the annual sessions of China’s legislature and top political advisory body in March.
As Singapore is the chairman of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations next year, how Beijing manages its ties with the city state will be crucial to the relationship between China and the Southeast Asian nations – some of which have their own claims to the South China Sea.
China is engaging in a nearly trillion dollar play for the future of Afro-Eurasia—called the Belt and Road Initiative—and has so far caught the United States flat-footed. Unless the United States works with key allies and partners to craft a forward-leaning response, it risks replicating the strategic failure that occurred in the South China Sea. The result could be a China-centric economic and security order extending across Eurasia and along the Indian Ocean rim.
