Beijing has gained great progress in achieving military and commercial trade control of the world’s oceans through massive state-financed shipbuilding and maritime port infrastructure investments at the expense of U.S. national security and economic competitiveness.
According to the Congressional Record Service, China is projected to have 435 warships by 2030, outnumbering the U.S. fleet by more than one-third.
The comparative U.S. shipping trade market is shrinking as well.
Whereas the U.S. had a commercial fleet of more than 5,000 ships at the end of World War II constituting 40% of the world’s total, only about 90 ships involved in international trade sail under U.S. flags today.
Since the end of the 1970s, even the U.S. has increasingly relied on other nations for commercial shipping services, with 98% of America’s shipping trade depending upon foreign-flagged ships for exports and import supply chains that fuel our economy.
China’s naval growth is nourished by government subsidies — an estimated $132 billion between 2010 and 2018 — which have secured nearly half the world’s shipbuilding market, along with control over the ports and shipyards.
This conservative estimate doesn’t include direct subsidies to unlisted firms, indirect subsidies, state-backed fundraising, preferential borrowing rates, and other nonmarket advantages.
Meanwhile, the U.S. which doesn’t subsidize commercial shipbuilders has lost 300 shipyards between 1983 and 2013, with only 20 capable of producing oceangoing vessels, and most of these exclusively for the U.S. Navy.
China has also invested nearly $60 billion into port projects around the world, including in such countries as Peru.
In addition, Beijing makes the vast majority of cranes in these ports, including 80% of those in the U.S.
The Chinese Communist Party readily weaponizes such commercial investments as a means to intimidate and coerce weaker nations. China has seized more than a dozen islands claimed by its neighbors in the South China Sea waters as military outposts to choke off the region’s economic and natural resources lifelines and potentially drag us into war in their support.
Of special concern is Beijing’s intent and ability to surround, blockade, and isolate the self-ruled island of Taiwan, possibly provoking a U.S. military response.
China has already been testing the waters for just such a strike force action.
Last October, according to Taiwan’s defense ministry, a record 125 military aircraft, including jet fighters, helicopters and drones, took part in a large-scale simulated air-and-sea blockade of the island.
December exercises deployed more than 90 Chinese military ships and coast guard vessels accompanied by several thousand personnel in waters surrounding Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea.
China’s coast guard provides the military with close-to-shore support, while civilian vessels can fill in gaps as submarines lay mines in harbors at Taiwan’s main ports.
Beijing’s fleet of 59 submarines reportedly includes six nuclear-powered ballistic-missile vessels.
According to our Pentagon, China’s air force currently has about 1,900 jet fighters and 500 bombers, along with more than 3,000 missiles capable of reaching Taiwan.
While China’s aircraft carriers are reportedly less capable than America’s, they are working to catch up after adding one in 2019 and are expected to launch another this year.
Nearly all Chinese military drills around Taiwan have been accompanied by a surge in cyberattacks which in the case of a full-out blockade might include cutting the subsea fiber-optic cable that connects them to the internet.
And since Taiwan relies upon oil, coal and natural imports for 96% of its power, a prolonged blockade could soon plunge the island into darkness and suffocate its economy.
The new Trump administration recognizes that ceding control of the seas to China’s expansive commercial and military ambitions also poses unacceptable threats to American prosperity and security and is taking preemptive initiatives to prevent this from happening.
We can expect that President Trump has played a strong role in orchestrating a proposal for a U.S. investor group headed by Blackrock to purchase strategic ports at each end of the Panama Canal from CK Hutchison, a Hong Kong company, for more than $19 billion.
Although Reuters reports that CK Hutchison has delayed part of the sale process after state broadcaster CCTV said China had significant national interests in the transaction and the sale was "tantamount to handing a knife to an opponent," and while the deal is on hold, it apparently isn’t dead.
Trump is likewise determined for the U.S. to deprive China and Russia of taking control of Northwest Passage shipping lanes along Greenland between the North Atlantic and Pacific that can be used to bypass the Panama and Suez canals.
Greenland’s military importance centers upon its strategic siting of the U.S. Pituffik Space Base (formerly Thule Air Force Base) missile warning, missile defense and space surveillance operations for America and NATO along with coastal monitoring of Russian naval movements.
During his March 4 speech to a joint session of Congress, President Trump pledged to “create a new Office of Shipbuilding in the White House and offer special tax incentives to bring this industry home to America, where it belongs.”
That announcement came weeks after a Congressional Budget Office report outlined the U.S. Navy’s proposed plan to spend $1 trillion over the next three decades to raise its current total 296-ship battle force fleet to a goal of 381 ships.
Meanwhile, there’s no time to waste in countering China’s quest for global military ocean dominance and shipping trade dominion.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.
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