Dragon Ships: China's Naval Threat
by Peter Schweizer
March 8, 2021 at 5:00 am
China's navy is now the world's largest. It has been for some time. The U.S. Navy may still rule the oceans, but the Chinese rule the vital trade routes in the South China Sea.
China means to threaten the economic security of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, and others. America must remain resolute in the face of this build-up in order to maintain freedom of commerce in the Asian seas.
They would say their naval buildup is "for defensive purposes," but their neighbors do not buy that for a minute.... [China's] clear intention, for now at least, is to overwhelm anything in its vicinity that threatens its expansion and domination of the Asian sea lanes.
As the Pentagon also noted in its report, the Chinese Communist Party does not intend for its navy to be merely "a showpiece of China's modernity or to keep it focused solely on regional threats." It will grow with China's ambitions.
Its fourth aircraft carrier, however, is expected to be China's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, and its first to use advanced launching and landing systems.... Thus, China intends to have a blue-water navy to challenge the U.S. in several years.
All the force investments in the world won't matter if the US fails to impose enough diplomatic and economic costs to alter Chinese behavior." — Gregory Poling, director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Deutsche Welle, October 21, 2020.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17159/china-naval-threat
