Infographic: Representation in CCP Leadership

China's full-steam-ahead military modernization, in historical context

As China assumes the mantle of the world's second most powerful nation, its tiptoeing towards an arms race with the US.  Recently, investigative reporters from Reuters have published deep-dive looks into the situation after interviewing military experts and officers (both retired and active) from both sides of the Pacific.  The report is divided into four parts: Xi Jinping's consolidation of personal authority in the military, China's development of its rocket program, its investment in the PLA navy, and China's nuclear strike capabilities.

I usually associate the term "arms race" with the Cold War.  For that reason it almost feels out of date.  My brain automatically links it to the Powerpoint slides and homework handouts from my high school history classes, as though such high-stakes competition was only possible between the US and USSR.  But this report makes it clear that China has no intention of being second-best when it comes to military might.

In recent decades the US has enjoyed military supremacy in the Indo-Pacific, ensuring the security of shipping lanes and asserting its right to navigate through contested waters like the South China Sea and the Taiwan Straits.  But the report argues that China could soon reach a level of power at which it could credibly challenge and ultimately replace the US as the preeminent power projector in the region.

A look at the numbers shows that the US still has significant advantages on the naval side. The US has 11 aircraft carriers, the backbone of its naval power, on which it relies heavily to exert its power abroad.  China has only one deployed, one on the brink of deployment, and, according to a recent report from CSIS, a third in the works.  The US also has its amphibious assault ships, basically miniature aircraft carriers that can deploy helicopters and certain other aircraft; China have no equivalent to this type of vessel.  But as the report points out, in conflicts near China (such as potential action around Taiwan), "the Chinese mainland would function as a vast, unsinkable aircraft carrier."  In such a context, relatively cheaply produced Chinese missiles known as "carrier killers" could prove fatal for the hugely expensive US aircraft carriers.

According to the report, the US navy has 14 Ohio-Class nuclear deterrent submarines, from which it can launch long-range ballistic missiles distances up to 12,000 km.  Meanwhile, China has only four analogous Jin-Class subs, and the ballistic missiles they launch only have a range of 8,000 km.

These examples of US superiority notwithstanding, China's PLA navy now has a total of 400 warships and submarines compared to, at the end of march, the US's 288.  According to the report,  "Some American naval experts believe China could achieve rough parity with the U.S. Navy in numbers and quality of major surface warships by 2030."

China's progress on its missile capabilities seems to be moving even faster than its navy.  China has a virtual monopoly on land-based intermediate-range missiles, as the US and Russia are currently barred from deploying them under the 1988 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty (Trump recently announced the US would exit the treaty, citing Russian non-compliance).  China is on the way to producing hypersonic missiles which can travel at five times the speed of sound, and the Pentagon says the US currently has no defense against such weapons.  China already has supersonic cruise missiles such as the YJ-18 (540km range) and YJ-12 (400km range), which can reach speeds up to three times the speed of sound.  To counter these missiles, the US has Cold War era Harpoon missiles, which have significantly shorter range (240km) and travel at less than a third of the speed.

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The prominence that the Reuters report gave to naval developments stuck out for a couple of reasons.

First, it's difficult to read this report and not think about it in the context of historical narratives of China's century of humiliation (1839-1949).  During these years, China was subjected to invasion and imperialist exploitation from Western powers and Japan.  Western nations won the First (1839-41) and Second (1856-1860) Opium Wars in large part because of their naval superiority, and consequently were able to economically exploit China.  After the Second Opium War, Qing reformers pushed for development of a Chinese navy, and made some progress during the 1860s, 70s and 80s.  But when the time came to test the mettle of China's new navy in the first Sino-Japanese War in 1894, the fleet failed spectacularly and China was humiliated even further. China had traditionally viewed Japan as a subordinate state, and losing the first Sino-Japanese war was a new low.

Even after the century of humiliation ended, China has remained behind other countries, notably the US, in terms of naval power.  This has led to episodic humiliations, perhaps most notably the Third Taiwan Straits Crisis in 1996, when China fired missiles into waters around Taiwan in an attempt to intimidate Taiwanese voters during an election.  As a result, the US dispatched two aircraft carrier battle groups and an amphibious assault ship to the region in order to intimidate China.  China did indeed back down and, having lost face on the international stage, Beijing was freshly reminded of the importance of naval power.

Now, more than 150 years after the First Opium War, China's navy is on track to match that of the world's foremost power.

With these chapters of history in mind, reading reports of China's military advances becomes a bit alarming.  The century of humiliation and other recent shameful episodes still play a role in Chinese public discourse.  This is in part thanks to the grip the Communist Party has over China's media (and increasingly academic) environment, and the interest the Party has in fomenting nationalism as a way to curry public support in the face of an economic slowdown.

Second, viewing current trends in the Chinese military as a creep into an arms race brought to mind the naval arms race between Germany and Great Britain in the lead up to World War I.  Around the turn of the 20th century, prominent figures in the German government and aristocracy, including Kaiser Wilhelm, became convinced of the importance of catching up to Great Britain in terms of naval power.  They rightly saw a navy as key to power projection and world influence, and they made huge strides in naval development.  While they never did fully match the British, some historians consider the arms race to be an important cause of WWI (others don't).

It appears that China is investing much time, energy, and money in its military, in a challenge to the predominant world power.  One can understand why certain people would want to see the fruits of that investment come to some meaningful use.  And taking into account the possibility that, from time to time, unstable or impulsive individuals hold positions of extreme power, the prospect of war seems frighteningly possible.  In the case of WWI, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany seems to be such a person.  According to Wikipedia, "Wilhelm annoyed his ministers by publicly declaring one motive [for naval development] to be his childhood admiration of the [British] Royal Navy, which he had visited 'with kind aunts and friendly admirals.'"

I don't want to overstate the similarities between the current developments and the pre-WWI arms race.  Those who contributed to the long lead-up to that war hadn't witnessed modern warfare and had no way of knowing what kind of hell they were going to plunge the world into.  Now, the potential stakes of war between two great world powers are hopefully sobering enough to prevent even the most impulsive from making rash decisions.

With that in mind, however, I wonder what motivates top decision-makers in China to push for full-steam-ahead military expansion.  Desire to replace the US as number one in the world?  Desire to simply defend China's current interests and nothing more?  Desire to check and rollback the US's global hegemony which serves US political and economic interest?  Desire for vengeance against real and perceived wrongs of neo/imperialism?  A general and directionless sense of patriotism?  It could be any, all or none of these, and that uncertainty alone is rather disconcerting.

Making Sense of Leica's "The Hunt" Ad

For a camera company, Leica isn't very good at optics.

Chinese netizens flooded the German camera company's Weibo account with critical comments this week after an ad associated with Leica was released depicting some of the events of the Tiananmen Incident.  The ad shows a western photographer outmaneuvering Chinese officials in a hotel near Tiananmen Square in order to capture the famous "Tankman" photo.  The Chinese government subsequently stepped in and banned posts with the word Leica in Chinese or English.

The debacle made me wonder: is it possible for a brand to tackle Tiananmen, or another highly sensitive topic, and not receive significant backlash from the Chinese public?  Was there a better version of the ad, where Leica was able to both pay homage to the memory of the victims and also avoid a image crisis in China?

It's clear to see why Chinese people may be genuinely upset by the advertisement.  Nationalism is generally on the rise in China, and as the country begins to become a more active player on the world stage it's natural that citizens may feel an urge to defend their government when they feel it's being attacked.  Many commenters also pointed out that Leica partners with Chinese telecom giant Huawei, and that this advertisement could potentially put the Chinese company in a very awkward position.  These factors aren't really in Leica's control, and thus any ad that touches on Tiananmen is, to a certain extent, doomed from the get-go in China.

But were there aspects of the video that Leica could have changed to make it more palatable?  I think the identity of the photographer in the Tiananmen portion of the ad stood out to me as the major potential point of contention that could have been avoided.  Why is the photographer white?  It doesn't seem as though he is based on any real person who was at the event (especially seeing as this photo was, in fact, shot on a Nikon, and not a Leica camera).  Ethnic Chinese journalists were present at and reported on the Incident.  To depict the photographer as white seems tone deaf, and plays into narratives of Westerners as the primary advocates of transparency and freedom in China.  The protests in Tiananmen, of course, were about Chinese citizens standing up for these values themselves, and paying a heavy price.  It may have been better to have the photographer be a native Chinese citizen.  As the ad currently exists, the only Chinese people visible are soldiers and CCP officials.  It does very little work to draw the distinction between China, the nation, and the Chinese government.

Similarly, the fact that this ad is for a German company, and yet focuses in large part on China, could be part of what is causing the heated reaction.  A Chinese person may be open to having a candid conversation about Tiananmen with a fellow citizen, but may react negatively when viewing an ad from a foreign company leveraging the Incident to turn a profit.  I think a defensive reaction is normal, if not "right".

So maybe it's possible for Chinese citizens to both have a nuanced and honest understanding of the Tiananmen Incident, and to also have a gut-level problem with this video, which can come across as condescending.

But, as always with pro-Beijing Internet commentators, other things may factor into their motives.  The Chinese government encourages its younger members to post content generally supportive of the Party and government policy.  The Party also employs a large group of bureaucrats known as the "50 Cent Army" (because the members were alleged to receive 50 cents per post, a theory now debunked) to post similar content when they're not performing their daily duties as officials.  It may well be that some of the backlash to Leica's ad was made by these kinds of commenters.

Thanks to that backlash, Leica has now distanced itself from the ad, saying that it was not officially sanctioned by the company.  It now joins the ranks of many other companies that, having been forced into awkward positions vis-a-vis China because of their perceived political stances (or in some cases, simply for being American).  And, partly thanks to its own lack of foresight and a black-and-white depiction of the Tiananmen Incident, it now serves as just another example of why it may just be easier to go along with Beijing when marketing in China.

How does the Chinese Government Work?

This post was the basis for a video essay of the same name. 

One of the things that makes the Chinese government so interesting is how different it is from our system here in the U.S.  And on a fundamental level, I think most Americans get this.  I'm going to zoom in on a few of those basic differences, and hopefully give a slightly deeper understanding of how the Chinese government really works.

The Chinese government can be understood as having three main branches, kind of like how we understand the U.S. government. The three branches in China are the Communist Party, the state (sometimes also called the government) and the military.  But unlike the American system, where the judiciary, congress and executive are designed to check and balance one another, in China, one branch holds significantly more power than the other two:  the Communist Party.

The Party is able to wield its power in a variety of ways. The top decision making body in the country is the Party's Politburo Standing Committee, made up of seven high ranking officials.  Although this body is theoretically supposed to report to the Politburo, the standing committee makes the final decisions on the most important central policies.

Another way the party exerts its influence is through the Organization Department.  The Party's organization department has control over all personnel appointments, promotions and demotions within the Party and the government bureaucracy, as well as in public universities and hospitals.  Imagine if the U.S. government controlled personnel appointments at the head of Walmart, AT&T and the other leading U.S. companies, as well as at Harvard, Yale and the other major American research universities.  This gets at the idea of the influence of the Organization Department.

On top of that, there are also party secretaries at every level of government, and they're basically the top dog in their jurisdiction.  So, for example, there's a Party secretary of the northeastern province of Heilongjiang, and then every county in the province has a party secretary, as well as every township, all the way down to the village level.  These local governments also have a government head that is not technically part of the party structure, but the party secretary has more power and authority than these governmental heads; the local party secretary makes the final important policy decisions.

The highest governing body in the government is the National People's Congress, but it's simply a rubber-stamp parliament that has passed every single piece of legislation that the party leadership has drafted and put to it.  The other major body in the government is the State Council, headed by the Premier, currently Li Ke Qiang.  The State Council is made up of various ministries and bureaucracies that do the day-to-day work of governing the country.  The top members of the State Council are often high-ranking members of the party as well.  This makes the line between the state council and the Party rather blurry, and is just another way in which the Party is effectively able to influence governance in the country.

As for the military, China's People's Liberation Army is under complete control of the Central Military Commission, which is part of the Communist Party.  In other words, the party controls the military.

To top it all off, the same person is at the head of all three of these branches:  Xi Jinping.  It is actually pretty normal in China for one person to hold the three separate titles of President of the Nation, General Secretary of the Party, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission; Xi is the third leader in a row to hold all of these positions at the same time.

Implications of One Belt One Road on the South China Sea Territorial Disputes

Implications of One Belt One Road on the South China Sea Territorial Disputes

This post was the basis for a video essay, China's Bid for the South China Sea.

Even for the avid follower of world news, it's been tough to keep up with China's involvement in infrastructure projects in Malaysia.  

Originally, the contract to build the Kuala Lumpur-Kelantan line had been awarded to Chinese state-owned enterprise, Chinese Communication Construction Company (CCCC).  But after elections in 2018, the newly elected Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad declared that the project would be scrapped, only to later flip-flop and announce that the project was back on, but to be renegotiated down to smaller cost and scale.  Mahathir had voiced worries that Malaysia couldn't pay for the project, that the original contract negotiations had been tainted by corruption, and that there was reason to be concerned over China's growing influence in Malaysia.  Apparently he is less worried about these problems now.

Suspicion of China's growing role on the international stage is increasingly common around the world.  China's growing influence via its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) infrastructure projects, and especially the debt that countries are running up because of them, has been drawing increased attention.  Apart from its projects in Malaysia, China has been relatively restrained on its investment in Southeast Asia.  But China's activity in this area will have direct implications on territorial disputes in the South China Sea (SCS). 

Part of these implications has to do with the recent trend of governments incurring heavy debts to Chinese state-owned banks.  Ultimately, they're unable to pay off their debt to China in cash.  These countries end up using resources such as oil and iron ore to balance their books, or, in the cases of Sri Lanka and Pakistan, leasing ports to China for decades to come.  

China's investment in countries that dispute territory in the SCS has yet to truly take off, especially those countries with the most strident claims.  But it's not difficult to imagine a future in which territorial concessions or rights to resources in Southeast Asia become bargaining chips for China, taking the place of cash repayments on loans.

But what has China been up to in Southeast Asia?  Is there reason to believe that it's going to make a play for the SCS after indebting disputants to itself?

China has been slowly building up its investment activity in Southeast Asia, beginning in large part after Xi rose to his current posts within the Chinese government.  China announced its new Maritime Silk Road in Indonesia in 2013, and since then has pushed forward on its involvement in projects in that country.  These have mostly been in railway and power plant construction.  Between 2010 and 2016, Indonesia's debt to China saw a six-fold increase, a rate much higher than its debt to other investors.  

Indonesia challenges China's Nine-Dash Line and has marginal formal claims to disputed territory, most notably around the Natuna Islands.  China recognizes Indonesian sovereignty on the islands proper, but has claimed the sea area around the archipelago as traditional fishing grounds for Chinese vessels (a claim disputed by Indonesia). Despite these disputes, Indonesia on the whole aims to position itself as a bystander and objective arbiter of disagreement in the SCS.  But if China continues to gain influence in Indonesia, it will be increasingly difficult for Indonesia to maintain impartiality in discussions over territory disputes.

Malaysia occupies a somewhat similar position to Indonesia, in that it has been quite open to Chinese investment, and is less strident in its territorial claims. China originally had invested in projects in the country, as discussed above, but these projects are apparently being renegotiated and reduced.  That said, China will continue to maintain its presence in Malaysia and push for as much influence there as it can.

If Indonesia and Malaysia are parallel actors in their passivity towards China in the SCS then the Philippines and Vietnam are their more aggressive counterparts.  Both nations have major claims in the Sea.  Unsurprisingly, both countries also have yet to pursue the kinds of large-scale projects that Indonesia and Malaysia have initiated, but they seem to be slowly warming up to the idea.  Vietnam has had discussions over infrastructure development with China in the past, but has been slow to jump at the chance to partner with its neighbor to the north.

Notably, the Philippines brought a case against China's claims in the SCS to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea in 2016 and won.  However, under President Duterte, some see the Philippines as more deferential to China on issues surrounding territory disputes (When China built a rescue center on an island claimed by the Philippines this past January, a Presidential spokesperson was quoted as saying "Maybe we should be thankful").  The Philippines has also moved closer to beginning infrastructure projects with China; in November of 2018, China and the Philippines signed deals that would involve Chinese cooperation on various projects in sectors like transportation, agriculture, irrigation, and fish ports.

In a word, the Philippines and Vietnam are a bit behind on cooperation with China, but could easily be moving in that direction.  Of course, China doesn't expect all of these countries to fall under its influence at once, but is willing to play the long game, and wait for these nations to fall more under its influence, one by one.

Lurking in the background of all of these events is the specter of corruption.  It's been shown that when China makes deals with other countries on infrastructure projects, opportunities for rent-seeking abound.  It seems to only take a few high-ranking officials to cave to offerings of huge sums of money for the interests of an entire community to be compromised.

The economic pressures of debt incurred from BRI projects may be too much for some nations to handle.  Even if countries are unwilling to permanently give up control of territory, long-term leases or rights to develop oil and natural gas reserves could be adequate alternatives from a resource-hungry Chinese perspective.  More broadly, the leverage that China gains in Southeast Asia will not just affect territorial disputes, but would also substantially affect the global balance of economic and political influence.