US military faces 'most transformative year' to counter China in Indo-Pacific, says Pentagon

Next year will be the most important in recent memory in transforming the US military to counter China's increasingly assertive and coercive military behaviour in the Indo-Pacific region, deter in no uncertain terms a Taiwan attack and grapple with Beijing's nuclear build-up, senior US military officials said on Thursday.

While the US firmly opposes Russia's war in Ukraine, China remains America's greatest military "pacing challenge", particularly around Taiwan, and that will be the case for decades to come, added authors of the China Military Power Report released last week.

"2023 is likely to stand as the most transformative year in US force posture in the region in a generation," said Ely Ratner, Assistant Secretary of Defence for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs.

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The US presence in the Indo-Pacific will be "more lethal, more mobile, more resilient and exactly reinforcing that kind of deterrence that we were talking about that make some of these rapid, low-cost invasions nearly impossible", Ratner added.

China has set forth three key benchmarks for the People's Liberation Army. By 2027, the centenary of the PLA's founding, it should largely complete its modernisation. By 2035, it aims to field a world-class military. And by 2049, it plans to be a dominant global military force.

This has led military analysts and US defence officials to speculate that President Xi Jinping could be preparing to invade Taiwan as early as 2027. But officials on Thursday said they believed nothing was set in stone and the timing on any attack on Taiwan would heavily depend on the vigilance of US forces.

"The urgency question that Xi Jinping is ready to push a button on 2027 and say 'go' no matter what, our answer to that is no," Ratner said. "Our goal is to ensure that that is never easy for them to do rapidly or cost-free."

China's military ambitions are expanding as its forces extend their global reach, with aggressive aircraft carrier and cruiser building programmes, overseas bases, and a nuclear arsenal now estimated in the low 400s - a near doubling in two years - towards a projected 1,500 by 2035.

"They haven't been transparent about the intent behind the sort of change and trajectory that's leading them to these much larger numbers," said Michael Chase, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for China. "They have been very reluctant to engage in discussions about strategic stability or strategic risk reduction issues."

While the US and Russia are signatories to a treaty placing verifiable limits on nuclear weapons, China has balked at joining. According to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Russia has a nuclear stockpile of about 4,477 weapons while the US has some 3,708 warheads.

US defence officials claimed Beijing has been less than cooperative in sharing information or its intentions and is doing little to prevent accidental conflict, as happened in 2001 when a US Navy EP-3 spy plane collided with a Chinese J-8 interceptor fighter aircraft. The Chinese pilot and aircraft were lost while the EP-3 was forced down on Hainan Island.

As tensions and sabre-rattling have escalated across the Indo-Pacific, other countries in the region have voiced concern over potential mishaps.

"Even our closest partners want us to be at least communicating with the PLA in a way that will prevent miscalculation, and other forms of inadvertent conflict," said Ratner, speaking at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

"On the whole, the PLA is not yet willing or serious about trying to manage this competition in a way that we would expect a responsible or aspiring major power to do so," he added. "And we think that's a huge problem."

American officials on Thursday said China's response after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan in August was excessive. Beijing fired missiles into Japan's exclusive economic zone, 22 Chinese jet fighters crossed the median line between Taiwan and the mainland, and 100 fighters and bombers deployed near the island.

But if the People's Republic of China thinks this effort at intimidation will deter the US from patrolling in international waters, it is mistaken, the officials added.

"The concern that we have is that not only about what the PRC is saying, but what it is doing," Chase said.

China views self-governing Taiwan as a breakaway province to be reunited by force if necessary. Few countries, including the US, recognise the island as an independent state. But Washington is required by law to support Taiwan's military defence capability.

The China Military Power Report, mandated by the US Congress and issued annually for the past two decades, is the Pentagon's most comprehensive unclassified report detailing China's defence capability and the US' response.

Beijing on Tuesday slammed the most recent edition as gross speculation, a distortion and interference in its internal affairs. China is committed to peaceful development, a defensive military posture and defending the international order, said Senior Colonel Tan Kefei, spokesperson for China's Ministry of National Defence in Beijing.

The report "is the US' old trick to hype up the so-called 'Chinese military threat'", Tan added. "China is strongly dissatisfied with and firmly opposed to the US' move."

At a separate event at the Cato Institute on Thursday, experts sought to tease out the actual size of the PLA budget. In March, Beijing announced an annual budget of 1.45 trillion yuan, or US$207.7 billion, although outside estimates peg the actual figure at anywhere between US$250 billion and $US600 billion.

The US House of Representatives on Thursday passed a 2023 US military budget totalling US$847 billion.

But military budgets are notoriously difficult to compare, even between Western nations with relatively transparent reporting. By any measure, China's spending and capability are growing rapidly, analysts said.

Even American and British military budgets amount to an apples-to-bananas comparison, said Frederico Bartels of Pantheon Integrated Solutions. "When you get to China, it's probably going to be, I don't know, apples to chicken."

How they choose to employ those resources is crucial for stability and international order, US officials said. Recently PLA jets have flown within 10 feet of US and allied aircraft jets, releasing flares and chaff and making other provocations - a pattern that has become more commonplace over the past year.

"This is really dangerous behaviour that I would liken to driving with road rage in a school zone," Ratner said. "It is tempting a crisis that could have geopolitical and geoeconomic implications."

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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