Crossover Point: How China’s Naval Modernization Could Reverse the United States’ Strategic Advantage

Date01 April 2017
Published date01 April 2017
DOI10.1177/2347797016689217
Subject MatterArticles
Crossover Point:
How China’s Naval
Modernization Could
Reverse the United States’
Strategic Advantage
Shane C. Tayloe1
Abstract
Nearly every important measure of the US–China competition demonstrates
broad-based US primacy but trend lines that favour China. The military aspects of
the intensifying competition for hegemony will be borne chiefly by navies oper-
ating in the increasingly crowded Indo-Pacific—the great artery of global trade.
Primacy will belong to the power that controls the sea. China’s Navy, which is
in the late stages of a significant modernization effort, poses an acute challenge to
the US. Without vigorous engagement and investment in deterrent capability, the
US may lose its regional predominance, presenting grave strategic consequences.
This article explains the strategy animating Chinese actions and makes the case
for why continued American leadership is benign and beneficial. The hyperbolic
assertions regarding the defence balance, familiar to China watchers, are tem-
pered by often overlooked, but important, indicators including comparative
order of battle, military logistics capabilities, global basing infrastructure, alliance
military power, personnel quality (including per-soldier spending, outfitting and
education), stocks of modern military equipment and perhaps most importantly
projectable military force.
Keywords
China, Peoples Liberation Army Navy, Pacific security, Asia, naval modernization
Introduction
‘Keep a low profile’, ‘bide our time’, ‘never claim leadership’—such was the
advice of one of China’s greatest leaders to his successors in the relatively meagre
Article
1
Washington, DC-based Operational Security, Foreign Policy, and Anti-Terrorism Afloat Analyst
supporting Naval Sea Systems Command, Expeditionary Missions Program.
Corresponding author:
Shane C. Tayloe, 543 Country Club Dr. P.O. Box #7 Simi Valley, CA 93065, USA.
E-mail: sctayloe@gmail.com
Journal of Asian Security
and International Affairs
4(1) 1–25
2017 SAGE Publications India
Private Limited
SAGE Publications
sagepub.in/home.nav
DOI: 10.1177/2347797016689217
http://aia.sagepub.com
2 Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs 4(1)
days of the early 1990s. Deng Xiaoping had initiated the programme of ‘reform
and opening up’ in 1978 that put into motion the most impressive economic take-
off in world history (Kaplan, 2014, p. 33). In four decades, China’s economy has
grown at an average annual rate of 9.8 per cent, lifting millions from poverty and
vaulting China to the forefront of global politics. Henry Kissinger summarized
Deng’s counsel in On China—‘do not evoke unnecessary fears by excessive
assertiveness’ (2011, p. 439). In the tradition of Deng, Chinese elites have consist-
ently emphasized the concept of a peaceful rise—namely, how China will diverge
from historical patterns by avoiding conflict with the US, even while it gradually
replaces it as the world’s leading power. Yet, as China nears the ‘crossover point’
where it will surpass the US economically, and perhaps will enjoy peer competitor
status politically and militarily in decades to come, it may eschew its meek dispo-
sition and seek the trappings of great power (Lai, 2011). The Central Committee
may find itself incapable of maintaining a ‘low profile’ so incongruous to China’s
new-found international stature—particularly if domestic nationalism mounts
(National Intelligence Council, 2012). Perhaps indicating a shift from the old
ways, a 2013 Chinese Ministry of Defence White Paper announced the intention
to ‘build a strong national defense and powerful armed forces which are commen-
surate with China’s international standing’ (Information Office of the State
Council, 2013a).
The US–China relationship is perhaps the most important of the twenty-first
century, with critical implications for the future of the international system.
The military aspects of the intensifying competition for hegemony will be borne
chiefly by navies operating in the increasingly crowded Indo-Pacific—the great
artery of global trade. Primacy will belong to the power that controls the sea.
The eminent international relations theorist John Mearsheimer has noted that ‘there
is no equivalent of the Eastern Front in the Asia-Pacific’ favouring manoeuvre
warfare by large numbers of US ground troops (Mearsheimer, 2013). Instead,
‘the Asia-Pacific … is a region in which the geography appears to favor the Air
Force and Navy over the Army’ (Mearsheimer, 2013). Indeed, the conceptual frame-
work guiding the US war fighting doctrine in East Asia—Air-Sea Battle (2013)—
reflects this new emphasis when compared to its Cold War predecessor AirLand
Battle (Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2014; Haddick, 2014a; Till, 2012). In a high-end military
competition of this nature, only a very modern military force can hope to seize the
preverbal high ground. While the US has ‘pivoted’ its dwindling military forces and
ageing legacy platforms to Asia, China is many years into a major military moderni-
zation effort that has bolstered its relative military capability. This analysis will
focus on the maritime aspects of that programme and what it might portend for
China’s wider aspirations and the prospects of a ‘peaceful rise’.
While the US–China competition is often framed as one for global primacy,
China’s ends are less expansive—though with sobering potential to erode the US
strategic position in the long term. Rather than challenge the US in every domain
it exerts influence, as the Soviet Union did, China will pursue local balancing,
incrementally attaining hegemony in its region while carefully avoiding a contest
for global power with the US. China’s endeavour to subjugate its ‘near seas’ is
analogous to the US domination of the Caribbean in the nineteenth and early

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