Troubled waters: China’s blue water PLA-N

On April 23, China threw one helluva party. And guess what? Everybody came.

Well nearly everyone.

While the Defence Minister, Joel Fitzgibbon, couldn’t make it to the festivities, he sent the Chief of the Navy, Vice Admiral Russ Crane in his stead. Wise call indeed. After all the revelations of his hobnobbing with one Ms Helen Liu, attending the party would be most ill judged, wouldn’t it?

On a crisp spring morning, in the cool waters off Qingdao, in northeast China, military observers from around the world stood cheek by jowl in their Sunday best, marking the 60th anniversary of the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLA-N). In an exercise considered “transparent” by the Chinese, the Motherland put on a jaw dropping display, showcasing 25 warships - ranging from nuclear submarines to modern amphibious assault crafts to a monstrous sized hospital ship. Twenty-one ships from 14 foreign navies joined the spectacle. It was a humbling experience for all 14 navies.

Australia was represented by HMAS Success (a replenishment oiler) and HMAS Port Pirie (a patrol boat). Even the Kiwis were there, looking sharp were the lads of HMNZS Te Mana (an ANZAC-class frigate whose Maori name approximates to “Invincible”).
 
China’s President and Commander-in-Chief Hu Jintao supervised the review from atop the Chinese destroyer Shijiazhuang (a Luzhou class air-defence missile destroyer).

The ceremony marked the first public display of some of the Motherland’s most advanced naval assets and was organised around the theme of promoting “harmony”. President Hu constantly reassured foreign visitors that the Motherland was not seeking naval domination, nor was it interested in arms races with other nations. You can be sure the Taiwanese - those considered denizens of the “renegade province” - on hearing that, almost choked on their pig’s feet soup.

On cue, foreign dignitaries smiled politely and nodded obediently, sipping their oolong teas and deigning not to unwrap their fortune cookies, lest the truth (of China’s naval prowess) scare them half to death. The truth being that what was on show was merely the first episode in the greatest mini series yet to be screened this decade: the impending handover of global maritime supremacy from the United States of America to the People's Republic of China.

Xinhua, the larynx of the Chinese Communist Party, shrieked that day that the Navy's 60th anniversary amid a recession can restore national pride in the waters where the Qing Empire left a legacy of humiliation for bending to British interests aboard gunboats. This was a reference to the Anglo-Chinese Wars, where China’s fleet was crushed in the early 1840s by Her Majesty’s Navy, which in turn forced the Chinese to accept opium imports, to grant Britain unencumbered access to four Chinese gateways and to cede Hong Kong to Queen Victoria.

Not unlike politicians in the West, Beijing will doubtlessly milk the glut of festivities planned this year - marking 60 years since the founding of the People's Republic - to divert attention from the economic woes facing Chinese working families. It will do so by manufacturing nationalism, and then stoking it.

The recent east African deployment of PLA-N ships (off Somalia) joining the global effort against maritime terrorism (wrongly called “piracy” by most of the West’s media) must be seen in this light. Two Chinese destroyers, the Haikou and Wuhan, along with the supply ship Weishanhu, in late December left the Yalong Bay Naval Station on Hainan Island (just south of Macau’s casinos) bound for east Africa. After escorting more than 100 vessels off the Somali coast in the first 100 days of 2009, the destroyers returned safely to the Motherland and were relieved by the Shenzhen (a destroyer) and the Huangshan (a frigate). The supply ship, Weishanhu remained in place off east Africa, proudly flying the PLA flag of a shiny gold star on a red background.

That deployment highlights China's growing maritime prowess and explains the PRC’s defence spending, officially stated as US$70 billion (A$100 billion) in 2008, but estimated by western agencies at anywhere from US$110-150 billion (A$160-$215 billion).

The Motherland is moving quickly to raise its fighting ability in regional conflicts by employing the latest in information technology. And according to the Commander of the PLA-N, Adm. Wu Shengli, in a mid April interview said: “it is also researching and building new-generation weapons”. Among the inventory promised, will be huge combat ships, extremely accurate long-range missiles, stealth submarines, supersonic aircraft, very high-speed smart torpedoes and improved mid-ocean and mid-air logistics.

It is reasonable to expect that China will employ these new military enhancements and increase her long distance naval manoeuvres in coming years, following the success of its Somali experience. Chinese ships popping up near the Straits of Malacca (within cooee of Club Med’s resort at Ria Bintan), in the Arabian Sea (off Mumbai) or even skirting Pearl Harbour, hopefully won’t catch Canberra, Jakarta, New Delhi and Washington napping.

But caught napping the United States Navy was in November 2007.

During a secret battle fleet exercise in the Pacific, the US Navy tasked over a dozen ships to provide the manoeuvres with a physical guard, while the technical brilliance of the world's sole military superpower supplied an invisible screen to detect and deter any intruders.

Or so the Americans thought.

American military chiefs were left speechless as an undetected Chinese submarine bobbed up at the heart of the exercise and near to the giant USS Kitty Hawk - a 320m aircraft carrier with nearly 4,500 personnel on board.

By the time it surfaced, a mere 9km away, the 50m long Song Class diesel electric attack submarine was well within range to launch torpedoes (whose range is 15km) and send 4,500 Americans to their watery mass graves.

Clearly, the Americans had no idea just how hard to detect and how silent China’s submarines were.

Reflecting on this incident, Commodore Stephen Saunders, editor of Jane's Fighting Ships, and a former Royal Navy anti-submarine specialist, said the US had paid relatively little attention to this form of warfare since the end of the Cold War.

Hopefully not any more.

And maritime incidents between China and the West will grow even more complex in the next few years.

Putting to one side China’s ongoing disputes with its eastern and southern neighbours over contested regions of the East China Sea and the South China Sea, home to vast undersea deposits of fossil fuels, a more sinister development could involve China sending its armed forces to physically secure natural resources in third countries - such as oil in Sudan or natural gas in Iran - when it deems them to be under threat from “Western imperialists”.

The new Yuzhao-class amphibious assault ship, which was on show at the naval parade on April 23 and whose job is to convey troops and helicopters abroad, would certainly play a key role in such an operation. While China was selling the building of such vessels for their defensive potential, it’s pretty clear few foreigners in attendance were buying.

Among other naval assets flaunted by the Motherland for the first time that day were nuclear-powered submarines. Alas, on show were the two ageing war-horses: the Long March 6 and the Long March 3 submarines. The more modern Jin-class (nuclear powered and nuclear armed) submarines were conspicuously absent.

China’s military build up, like most other activities the communist state engages in, is very, very difficult to gauge, given an absence of transparency. Many foreign intelligence agencies and private institutions do their best to estimate China’s military might, from which the following table - comparing present and forecasted fleet sizes for the RAN and the PLA-N - is an estimation.

When, not whether, the United States and her allies will comprehensively lose maritime dominance to China is the question.

While the Chinese and the Americans shift from 20th century technology (for example, diesel powered non stealth fighting vessels), the Australian Labor Party - if the Collins class fiasco and the White Paper’s focus on submarines that are neither nuclear powered nor nuclear armed are any guide - is looking to build overpriced, underperforming, non-lethal, antiquated, shiny big black, most likely unseaworthy dinosaurs. Not that the RAN could do much against the might of the PLA-N, even if the dinosaurs proved to be ocean going.

China’s rapid development of guided missile destroyers, state of the art submarines, as well as over-the-horizon radars, not to mention next-generation anti-ship cruise missiles, should take the breath away of every single Australian. But doesn’t.

The Japanese Maritime Self Defence Force (pointedly excluded from the list of 14 nations whose ships were invited to Qingdao) is convinced that the PLA-N will complete construction on two conventional aircraft carriers by 2015, and will begin construction on a further two nuclear carriers soon thereafter. This makes the Filipinos and the kimche eaters to their north very, very uneasy.

That said, China’s effort to develop a modern and deployable fleet is not unreasonable. And Australia surely welcomes that. So long as the world’s fastest growing economy relies heavily on seaborne trade, she has every right to secure her sea-lanes.

But it’s when her behaviour is no longer benign and starts to conflict with Australia’s interests, that’s the fear.

When it comes to safeguarding Australia’s interests, the two keys are to prevent regional conflict and to enhance our security. These twin challenges are most efficiently realised by maximising our “deterrence capacity”.

This means having the wherewithal to influence the political and military choices of an adversary and dissuading her from taking a course of action, by making her leaders understand that either the cost of that course is too great or is of no use.

Deterrence is based upon credibility: the ability to prevent an attack on us, and our capacity to respond decisively to any attack. Ideally, our reputation to respond must precede us and our capacity to respond must be understood to be so powerful as to discourage an enemy even contemplating an attack on us.

While the White Paper is long on canvassing potential sources of future concern to Australia’s peaceful enjoyment of life and liberty, the Paper is very short on detailing a credible deterrence capacity.

And that’s a pity.