In recent years, China has invested heavily in building up military facilities and naval ports in the small but strategically located Indian Ocean state of Sri Lanka.
It has spent more there than most of its allies because a close military alliance, and possibly People’s Liberation Army presence, would fundamentally challenge India’s dominant influence in the Indian Ocean.
Also, one of the world’s most important sea lines of communication passes through Sri Lanka.
China’s lavish spending on Sri Lankan military facilities reached a new height last week when visiting Chinese Defense Minister Gen. Liang Guanglie offered another $100 million specifically for the island’s armed forces to “improve the Sri Lankan military’s infrastructure and logistics equipment,” according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.
But India’s Hindustan Times reported that Gen. Liang’s grant would be used to woo the Sri Lankan military by building “Army welfare projects initiated by the Sri Lankan Ministry of Defense.”
Starting Aug. 29, Gen. Liang and his military entourage of 23 generals and staff members from the headquarters of five of China’s seven front-line military regions roamed Sri Lanka for five days, conducting substantial talks and signing multiple agreements with the country’s military authorities.
In fact, the hobnobbing between the Chinese military and its Sri Lankan counterpart was so extensive that Gen. Liang himself was asked to teach an impromptu class at Sri Lanka’s National Defense University, located at Sapugaskanda, in addition to receiving an inspection tour of the Sri Lanka army barracks in Panagoda that were financed and built by the Chinese military.
China has eyed Sri Lanka for its geographic location and its excellent naval ports as a strategic wedge that can provide a check on India and help it exert stronger influence in the Indian Ocean and the adjacent Persian Gulf.
At the top of China’s list of influence-peddling designs on Sri Lanka is a plan to exert control over its seaports along one of the world’s busiest sea lines, with 200 to 300 mega-vessels passing by every day en route from the Persian Gulf to and from China, Japan, Australia, South Korea, Southeast Asia and the United States.
In 2007, China obtained the right to finance and build a huge seaport capable of accommodating the world’s largest merchant and naval ships at Hambantota. It took Chinese naval and maritime engineers and Chinese port construction workers five years to complete.
In June, after China had spent $1.5 billion on the project, the deep-sea Port of Hambantota began operations, serving as one of the most significant logistics hubs for all transoceanic shipping vessels in the Indo-Pacific region.
But that’s not all. China appears determined to dominate the buildup of Sri Lanka. The Colombo government announced in June, with enthusiastic glee, that China had agreed to spend $50 billion over the next 10 to 15 years to construct key civilian and military infrastructure projects for the small nation, including a second seaport at the capital, Colombo.
The Sri Lankan government, for its part, has not been shy about asking for more from the extraordinarily generous Chinese. Last week, according to official Chinese press reports, Colombo formally asked China’s Import and Export Bank for another loan, of $1.12 billion with preferential terms, to build more facilities at the brand-new Port of Hambantota and a new railway line in the south of the nation.
Curiously, the construction company that will build those projects is also a Chinese one.
Mobile-launch missiles
China now can launch all of its strategic missiles from mobile launch vehicles, the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece newspaper the People’s Daily reported Friday.
“As the high-tech unit of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the Second Artillery Corps (SAC) has fully completed the transition from ’troops in the mountains’ to ’troops on the wheel’ over the past 10 years,” the report said.
The SAC is China’s strategic rocket and missile force, the most lethal and secretive of all PLA units.
Founded in 1966, the SAC is charged with handling all of China’s land-based missiles, including ground-to-ground strategic nuclear missile forces, conventional operational-tactical missile forces and their support units.
All countries’ missile forces share a common distinction of secrecy, but China’s secretiveness is extreme. No outside sources are permitted to have access to the size, numbers or classes of missiles deployed by the PLA, while such information is openly available in most other countries.
This ultrasecretive nature has stimulated outside efforts to closely monitor China’s missile units through aerial and space surveillance, and that in turn has made China’s silo-based missiles vulnerable to a first strike, thus greatly reducing China’s strategic deterrence.
“Missile forces are always a focus of other countries’ satellite reconnaissance,” the People’s Daily stated. “Mobile launch is an effective way to deal with such reconnaissance and escape possible attacks.”
“At present, all of [the SAC’s] missiles can be launched by vehicle-mounted launchers, making it possible to conduct strikes in all terrains, all directions, and all weathers,” the report said. “The SAC’s First Conventional Missile Brigade has launched missiles more than 100 times, and never missed its targets.”
The People’s Daily report ended with this intriguing news: “Last year, the SAC’s first all-female unit made its debut on a plateau, where 35 female artillerists launched missiles that all hit their targets.”
The report made no mention of recent Western news reports that China recently conducted flight tests of DF-41 and DF-31A road-mobile missiles and a JL-2 submarine-launched ballistic missile.
• Miles Yu’s column appears Thursdays. He can be reached at mmilesyu@gmail.com.
• Miles Yu can be reached at yu123@washingtontimes.com.
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