Senior U.S. officials warn that countries around the world can no longer hide from the implications of an increasingly ambitious and aggressive China.
They also said Beijing is increasingly confident in its demonstration of military power far from Home.
“We’re getting a taste of what it means to be led by China or to be heavily influenced by China,” Rear Adm. Michael Studeman, chief of intelligence for the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said Tuesday (March 2) at an online conference.
“You’re going to find a very global, expeditionary Chinese military that will step in wherever they think Chinese interests are threatened,” he said. “Anywhere around the globe where China feels its development interests are threatened, you’ll find that they end up sending the PLA more and more frequently.”
Stallman is not the first U.S. military official to warn about the threat from China.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has repeatedly called China a “pacing threat” to the Pentagon, meaning the pace of China’s military development affects the pace of military development the United States must take to maintain its own advantage. U.S. Central Command officials similarly warned that China is increasingly trying to exert influence in the Middle East. U.S. Southern Command has also expressed concern about Chinese activities in Central and South America.
Even U.S. President Joe Biden is rallying international support for topping back to Beijing.
“How the United States, Europe and Asia work together to ensure peace, defend our shared values and promote our prosperity throughout the Pacific will be one of the most important efforts of consequence as we unfold,” he told world leaders at the Munich Security Conference, held by video last month.
But Gen. Stallman of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said Tuesday that U.S. officials believe China has established a clear pattern in how it seeks to assert its dominance based on developments that have occurred in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
“What you’re seeing is basically the strangulation of freedom, the death of autonomy,” the top intelligence officer said.
“This has occurred because China has crushed dissent through structural, legal security measures that have effectively suppressed it,” he added. “That’s the China of today. That’s what you get.”
Stallman also described how China has steadily increased its pressure on Taiwan, sending Drones and what he described as aircraft on special missions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone on a daily basis.
The purpose of this, he said, is to make the Taiwanese military feel the pressure and “establish a new normal around Taiwan through their military presence.”
The U.S. has also seen signs of increased Chinese military activity around The Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands, which China calls the Diaoyu Islands and their affiliated islands. Stallman called it a “creeping presence” designed to slowly build control of the region while increasing military activity in the South China Sea.
There is also some concern that current efforts to push back against China, such as the recently described freedom of navigation operations, have little impact on Chinese decision-making.
“They’re not backing down,” Stallman said. He called China’s military assertiveness under President Xi Jinping “alarming.
Stallman’s comments come just a day after the commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command also issued a warning about a reckless China.
“The greatest danger we face in the Indo-Pacific is the erosion of conventional deterrence against China,” Adm. Philip Davidson, commander of Indo-Pacific Command, said Monday at the same online conference.
“Without effective and convincing conventional deterrence, China will become more audacious,” Davidson said. “We must convince Beijing that the cost of using force to achieve its objectives is simply too high.”
The Pentagon on Monday held the first meeting of the newly formed China Working Group, which is charged with considering Washington’s current strategy toward China and making recommendations over the next four months.
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