Recently, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has suddenly initiated economic sanctions against Australia, while also threatening Malaysia in the high seas of the South China Sea, near the southernmost point off the coast of Malaysia. What does this move by the Chinese Communist Party mean? An article in Dove News of December 4, “China Knocks Australia, ‘Choosing a Side’ is Better than ‘Standing on the Sidelines’,” stated: “By knocking Australia, China is taking a hard look at other countries that may cooperate with the U.S. in its efforts to blockade Australia. The countries that are pressuring China have issued a warning. This can also be seen as a prestige move in China’s rise to become a world power.”
First, from the South China Sea to Australia: the new “rise” of the Chinese Communist Party’s military preparations for the expansion of the United States
Following the month-long underwater standoff between U.S. and Chinese nuclear submarines and naval anti-submarine forces in the waters southwest of Taiwan from September to late October (see my November 23rd posting on this website, “U.S.-China Underwater Military Confrontation”), the U.S. and China have set their sights on Malaysia, Indonesia, and even the equatorial waters of Australia. The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) blatant and comprehensive blockade of Australian exports to China, its attempts to use this as a weapon against the Australian economy, and its harassment of the Malaysian coast may seem unrelated on the surface, but they are both important components of the CCP’s southward military threat against the United States. The Chinese Communist Party’s military challenge to the United States is generally thought to be oriented toward the East, and the United States, after all, is not in the southern hemisphere. In fact, the CCP is opening up a naval attack route in equatorial waters, so why is it taking such a detour? The story behind this is a game of “chess” for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Navy.
For years, the CCP has been sharpening its knives and determined to expand its military preparedness in order to exert military pressure on the United States. However, the Chinese Communist Party’s carrier fleet has not yet been built, and even if several carriers were to form a surface fleet in the future, their carrier strength would not be able to compete with the U.S. Navy’s large and skilled carrier fleet. Therefore, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has always placed its strategy for a nuclear attack on the United States on a nuclear submarine force. At the end of the last century, through military espionage in the United States (see Wikipedia for the McDazi case), the CCP stole the nuclear reactor, underwater weapon launch, and drive train silencing technology of U.S. nuclear submarines, and has since greatly narrowed the technology gap with U.S. nuclear submarines.
The Chinese Communist Party’s nuclear submarine force currently consists of several Type 094A strategic nuclear submarines, each carrying twelve Jumbo-II submarine missiles with a maximum range of 8,000 kilometers, which, if launched underwater from the waters east of Pearl Harbor and navigated by the Beidou satellite system, can strike the entire U.S. territory with precision. It is the first time that a nuclear-powered submarine has been used in the U.S. Navy.
The Chinese Communist Party’s international hegemony to build a nuclear submarine “deep-sea fortress.
The Chinese Communist Party has implemented a “three-step” plan over the past few years to build a safe “nest” for its nuclear submarines. The first step is to build an underwater cave submarine base at Yulin Harbor in Sanya, Hainan Island, toward the South China Sea, where nuclear submarines can dive in and out at any time.
This is the real purpose of the Chinese Communist Party’s seizure of international waters in the South China Sea: to turn the deep water area into a so-called “deep sea fortress” for nuclear submarines.
The third step is to open up underwater channels from which nuclear submarines can threaten the U.S. The underwater channels must have underwater geological and hydrographic data so that the submarines do not hit submarine reefs and sink; the underwater channels must also be highly secretive, with no enemy underwater detection devices, in order to exclude as much as possible the threat of nuclear submarine surveillance by countries around the channels.
The Chinese Communist Navy’s concept of “deep-sea fortress” was adopted from the Soviet Union. The Soviet “deep-sea fortress” was a small, hilly underwater “fortress” built in a small bay within the territorial waters to provide a solid and secure back-up for the submarines. The Chinese Communist Party’s “deep-sea fortress” has a huge appetite, occupying more than 300 square kilometers of international waters in the South China Sea, with the Central South Peninsula to the west, Indonesia to the south, the Malay Archipelago to the southeast, and the Philippine Islands to the east. In other words, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has openly built military bases on the doorsteps of other countries, using foreign land as the outer land wall for its nuclear submarines, and has turned the international waters of the South China Sea into a so-called “deep-sea fortress” by the CCP.
The international waters of the South China Sea have been transformed into a so-called “deep sea fortress” for nuclear submarines, and the International Court of Justice in The Hague has ruled that the Communist Party has violated the law but has no power to enforce it. In addition, because the CCP wants to maintain this “deep-sea fortress” of nuclear submarines, it tries to force the neighboring countries in the South China Sea not to cooperate with the United States by various political, economic, and military means. This is, in fact, a new international hegemony that disguises the inclusion of the neighboring countries in the South China Sea into the Communist Party’s sphere of influence. This hegemonic act even extends to the countries along the route of the “deep sea fortress”, such as Australia.
The “Deep Sea Fortress” sailing waters: a key area for the U.S. military to prevent the Chinese Communist Party’s nuclear threat.
To be truly secure, the “Deep Sea Fortress” is, of course, as closed as possible, because it is surrounded by land on all sides and cannot be easily accessed by U.S. nuclear submarines, and CCP nuclear submarines in the “Deep Sea Fortress” are like animals in a safe nest, not having to worry at all times. Threats from enemy submarines could come from above, below, left, right, and in all directions. With the security of a “deep sea fortress” comes the natural disadvantage of limited access to the water.
During the Cold War, at the two Soviet “deep sea fortress” exits (one in an arctic-facing cove on the northern border of the Soviet Union and Norway, the other on an island in the Bering Sea), U.S. attack submarines often waited underwater, waiting for the Soviet nuclear submarine to depart. Launching nuclear missiles. Communist Party nuclear submarines, of course, fear this tactic of the U.S. military.
The depth of the water and the topography of the seabed are critical factors for a nuclear submarine to navigate underwater: five years ago, the Chinese Communist Party nuclear submarines were operating in the Bohai and Yellow Seas, where the water was shallow, only a few dozen meters, and where they had to be equipped with vertical launch tubes for nuclear missiles, themselves about 30 meters high, making them difficult to hide in shallow waters and easy to hit. Therefore, if the U.S. and U.S. forces locked onto it with satellites or anti-submarine aircraft, the CCP strategic nuclear submarine would become a turtle in a jar, with nowhere to escape in the shallow waters. This is why the Chinese Communist Party had to occupy the deep waters of the South China Sea, where it could build a “deep sea fortress” for its nuclear submarines.
The waters in which CCP strategic nuclear submarines operate means that the U.S. is exposed to the extent of the CCP nuclear threat from somewhere in the ocean. The underwater topography of the oceans, which had little impact on economic development and could not be contested, became a major focus of the Cold War after the threat of nuclear submarines became a major tool of the Cold War. The Chinese Communist Party’s use of nuclear submarines as the primary means of threatening the U.S., and its control of the “deep sea fortress” of the South China Sea, has completely changed the definition of the front line of the Cold War; that is, the front line of the Cold War is not on the ground, but underwater. In other words, the front line of the Cold War is not on the ground, but underwater. As long as the Chinese strategic nuclear submarines can enter the vast deep waters of the Pacific Ocean from the Deep Sea Fortress, they will expose the United States to the threat of a nuclear strike by long-range submarine-launched ICBMs. Therefore, the U.S. must focus its efforts on detecting and interdicting the activities of CCP strategic nuclear submarines in all areas of the ocean where the “deep sea bastion” of CCP strategic nuclear submarines sails.
As I explained in the article “U.S.-China Underwater Military Confrontation,” the northeast shipping lanes in the waters southwest of Taiwan and the Bashi Channel from the Deep Sea Fortress are the closest to the U.S., and therefore the northeast shipping lanes are where the U.S. Navy’s anti-submarine forces are focused on preventing submarine activity. The Chinese and American fleets have been engaged in a month-long underwater and over-water anti-submarine standoff in the Bashi Channel in September and October of this year, and CCP nuclear submarines may be easier to spot in that area in the future. The Chinese Communist Party is also pursuing “Option B,” which is to open up alternative shipping lanes to the “Deep Sea Fortress,” all of which are associated with Australia. This economic sanction was ultimately not for economic gain, but rather as a means to overwhelm Australia and force it to relax its national defense by inflicting economic losses on the country.
The three exports of the Chinese nuclear submarine “Deep Sea Fortress”
So, how many exits are there from the “deep-sea fortress” of Chinese Communist nuclear submarines? In the era of nuclear submarine standoffs, one cannot look at a plain map to judge the situation. Nuclear submarines need to take the deep-water shipping lanes underwater, not the shipping lanes of surface ships. A nuclear submarine, on the other hand, is safe in deep water, but dangerous in shallow water. In order to understand the basic tactics to prevent nuclear submarines between China and the United States, it is necessary to look at the topographic map of the ocean floor, especially the underwater shipping lanes leading from the exit of the so-called “deep sea fortress” in the international waters of the South China Sea, which is occupied by the Communist Party, to deeper waters.
From an ordinary map, there are four main outlets in the entire South China Sea: the Strait of Malacca to the southwest, the Bashi Channel to the northeast, the Philippine Islands to the due east, and the Java Sea to the south. The Strait of Malacca in the southwest is the main shipping lane for East Asian countries, with frequent ship traffic and a depth of only 25 meters at the shallowest point, making it impassable for nuclear submarines. Therefore, in addition to the northeastern waterways of the Strait of Bashi Channel and the waters southwest of Taiwan, the Eastern Waterway and Southern Waterway, both of which pass through the coasts of Malaysia and Australia, are safe routes for nuclear submarines to travel underwater.
What would happen if a CCP nuclear submarine took the eastern exit of the “Deep Sea Fortress”? The underwater channel must pass southeast through the Philippine archipelago, which is shallow and has a series of islands that act as a chain, running northeast to southwest, locking the waters between Luzon and Kalimantan. During the Pacific War, the U.S. Army fought the Japanese in this area, and the hydrographic survey before the war was sufficient to understand the undersea terrain. If the CCP nuclear submarines find a suitable underwater passage through the Philippine chain of islands, they will be able to sail eastward to the Sulawesi Sea, a deep water area between Indonesia and the Philippines. This area is also a key area for the U.S. military, which is planning to deploy anti-submarine warfare from the Palau Islands east of the Sulawesi Sea, an island nation that former U.S. Defense Secretary Jesper visited on August 28, 2012.
As a result, the only remaining “deep-sea fortress” outlet for Chinese submarines that the U.S. military does not currently defend is the southern one. This is the most detouring of the underwater shipping lanes, and much of the ocean is limited in depth. It would first have to head southwest around the Malaysian and Indonesian islands of Kalimantan (the waters where the Chinese Communist Party recently harassed Malaysia); then south straight down into the Java Sea of Indonesia, thus heading east into the waters between Australia and Papua; then continue east until it crosses the waters between Australia and Papua and enters the Coral Sea northeast of Australia, where it would be safe. The deep-water area of the sea.
China-Australia Relations Worsening: Communist China Uses Economic Strikes to Force Australia to Abandon Defense
Those who are familiar with the history of the Pacific War may have some idea of the names of places and waterways in the South Pacific, but most Chinese are not familiar with this area. However, from now on, this area will become more and more important, as it was before the outbreak of the Pacific War, and there will be more and more friction. The eastern and southern destinations of the Chinese nuclear submarine Deep Sea Fortress are oriented toward Australia, with the former passing through the northern side of Papua, and the latter taking the southern side of Papua, both close to Australia’s northern gate. Australia is well aware of the war clouds approaching as the Chinese Communist Party occupies international waters in the South China Sea near the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia as a “deep sea fortress” and “launch site” for its nuclear submarines. If Chinese nuclear submarines are diverted to the eastern or southern waterways because of the U.S. Navy’s surveillance in the Bashi Channel, they will end up outside Australia’s gates, so they have to be defended.
Therefore, on July 1 this year, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced a $270 billion investment over the next 10 years in defense, including upgrades to offensive weapons, increased cyber capabilities, and the addition of high-tech underwater surveillance systems. Prime Minister Morrison said the Australian Defense Force now needs to strengthen its deterrent capabilities to deter attacks on Australia and help prevent war; the strategic rivalry between the United States and China means that tensions are high and we must be prepared to do all we can to protect and defend Australia. The reason Australia’s 10-year defense plan includes a high-tech underwater surveillance system is to protect Australia from the threat of Chinese nuclear submarines.
The Chinese Communist Party is annoyed that Australia is preparing for this defense buildup and has threatened Australia with disguised economic sanctions in an attempt to force Australia to give up its national security guarantees and allow Chinese nuclear submarines to freely carry out nuclear threats on Australia’s doorstep. Australia’s economy has close ties to China, with 35% of its exports oriented towards China and 24% of its imports from China. Over the past few months, the Chinese Communist Party has begun a de facto unilateral economic sanction against Australia, and most of Australia’s exports to China have been subject to import bans imposed by the Chinese Communist Party, which of course has had some impact on the Australian economy.
On November 27, Dove News published an article titled “Between China and the U.S., has Morrison learned the hard way? The author writes in a very strong tone: “It is clear that China does not shy away from the Australian accusation that ‘China uses trade as a political weapon’, but from the Chinese point of view, the recent series of attitudes of the Australian government and media have worsened the relationship between the two countries, and problems in the trade relationship between the two countries are an inevitable consequence. .” The December 4 article in Dove News, mentioned at the beginning of this article, is even more hegemonic: China’s “bashing” of Australia is simply the result of the spillover of the recent Sino-American power struggle. In the course of the inevitable “collision of the century” between China and the United States, for countries like Australia, which are generally much smaller than Australia, “choosing sides” is actually better than “standing aside”.
Australia and the United States proceed to defend Australia
Australia is no stranger to military threats from the north. After the Japanese occupied the South Seas during the Pacific War, they fought the Allied surface fleet in the Java Sea; then they sent their carrier fleet to the Coral Sea northeast of Australia to cover the Japanese landing in Papua as a springboard to capture Australia. Port Darwin. Australian troops rose up to defend their homeland, fighting alongside American troops and winning the war against Japanese forces on land, sea and air in Papua New Guinea.
Australia was not alone in the face of Chinese hegemony and military threats, and on December 2 U.S. Secretary of the Navy Kenneth Braithwaite announced the establishment of the 1st Fleet (U.S. 1st Fleet) in the Western Pacific and Eastern Indian Ocean regions, under the command of Indo-Pacific Command, to curb the growing threat and power of the Chinese Communist Party in Asia. The Pacific Fleet is under the jurisdiction of, and together with the 7th Fleet, forms the core force in the Indo-Pacific region. It defends the area between the Pacific and Indian Oceans as a more agile and mobile maritime command than the 7th Fleet, “which will reassure our allies and partners of our commitment to the region, while ensuring that any potential adversaries are aware of our commitment to guarding the rule of law and freedom of the seas.
The U.S. Navy’s 1st Fleet has been vacant since 1973, and this new 1st Fleet is set to defend the area where the Pacific and Indian Oceans meet, which is actually the sea area from Indonesia to Australia discussed in this paper. The U.S. military’s decision to establish a defensive perimeter at the southern exit of the Communist Chinese nuclear submarine “Deep Sea Fortress” is apparently intended to prevent Communist Chinese nuclear submarines from moving eastward out of the Central Pacific through this underwater channel to approach the U.S. nuclear threat. According to the latest deployment of the U.S. Navy fleet, its Pacific Fleet will now include the 1st Fleet in addition to the 3rd and 7th Fleets, and the new 1st Fleet will be temporarily transferred from the 7th Fleet based in Yokosuka, Japan.
The Chinese Communist Party has an obedient “little brother” in Southeast Asia, Cambodia, but the Chinese Communist Party’s attempts to get Australia to do its bidding would be whimsical and presumptuous. The CCP’s military “rise” to hegemony and self-proclaimed “prestige move” will force neighboring countries to establish a new international cooperation system against the CCP threat in order to protect themselves.
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