The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington, D.C., think tank
(Assessments) released a report in January that said China has three major military weaknesses that the U.S. and its allies should seize on to stop China from going global. Pictured is the USS Macon, a missile destroyer. (From the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet Facebook page)
According to a report released in January by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington think tank, China has three major military weaknesses that the United States and its allies should The U.S. and its allies should seize on these weaknesses and allow the People’s Liberation Army to divert resources to looming land, offshore and maritime disputes to stop China from going global.
Pressuring with allies to form a geo-enveloping network
The report, entitled Seizing on Weakness: Allied Strategy for Competing with China’s Globalising Military, states that in light of the U.S.-China strategic plan, the U.S. and China have been working together to build a geopolitical encirclement network. Given that the U.S.-China strategic competition will continue and be comprehensive, Washington and its foreign allies should pressure the PLA to increase the cost of overseas bases and deployments as a way to put pressure on Beijing‘s layout, the paper says.
With rapid development and modernization, the PLA will move across the Western Pacific to project power in distant theaters, which could challenge and threaten the United States in both peace and war, the report said. The United States must exploit China’s strategic weaknesses to counter this expansion. And China has several unique weaknesses that make it particularly vulnerable to external pressures. First, China’s geographic location is a clear weakness, surrounded by large and medium-sized countries on land and sea.
Second, the PLA must remain flexible enough to respond to complex crises on China’s periphery, which would prevent it from fully focusing on its global mission.
Frequent Peripheral Conflicts Drain Continental Resources
In addition, China’s need for overseas logistical forces to project power globally is a third key vulnerability, namely the logistics of China’s overseas infrastructure network, which involves political, diplomatic, legal, economic, and operational requirements.
The report notes that China must balance both land and maritime strategies to deal with complex territorial and maritime disputes with its neighbors, such as the Sino-Indian territorial dispute, the Sino-Japanese Diaoyutai dispute, the South China Sea dispute, and the Taiwan independence movement, and that related emergency contingencies consume significant Chinese resources and will come at the expense of global plans.
The report recommends that the United States and its partners should promote strategies that force Beijing to disperse scarce resources offshore, far offshore, and, where possible, to the continental margin.
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