China is preparing for a conflict with the United States by taking steps that include military reforms and drills, a stockpiling of oil and food, increased spying and military appointments.
Despite what critics say are the mounting danger signs, the Pentagon insists that conflict with China is neither imminent nor inevitable.
The Defense Department’s assurances are increasingly tough to sell to many in Congress. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, Alabama Republican, said U.S. military commanders and intelligence officials warn that Chinese military forces are getting ready for military action as soon as 2027.
CIA Director William J. Burns, whose agency’s primary mandate is to ferret out foreign threats over the horizon, said the Chinese military has doubts about a successful invasion of Taiwan. Still, he warned in a recent speech that “the risks of conflict are likely to grow the further out you get into this decade and beyond it.”
An open-source analysis of war preparation measures indicates a conflict with China may not be imminent, but indicators that war can be avoided indefinitely are more obscure. Large-scale Chinese military exercises near Taiwan have triggered one warning light.
“I’m very concerned these escalatory military exercises are a pretense for an invasion,” Mr. Rogers said in a recent hearing.
Nerves are clearly on edge in the region. On Tuesday, China launched a satellite atop a rocket that passed over Taiwan and set off warnings throughout the island after some of the alerts mistakenly identified the craft as a Chinese missile.
The provocative launch was carried out days before Taiwan’s presidential election, which U.S. officials say is a target of Chinese influence operations to boost more Beijing-friendly candidates in the field.
Worrisome signs
Retired Navy Capt. Carl Schuster, a China expert with intelligence experience in the Pacific, compiled a list of what he sees as troubling indicators that China’s People’s Liberation Army will be prepared for warfare soon, topped by a surge in China’s intelligence-gathering operations.
“The expanded intelligence collection is the most serious” indicator, said Capt. Schuster, who teaches Chinese military doctrine at Hawaii Pacific University.
Since Dec. 7, China has dispatched five surveillance balloons that traveled over Taiwan airspace, according to the Taiwan Defense Ministry. Capt. Schuster said the balloons are part of an intimidation campaign and serve as “a significant intel-gathering operation.” PLA balloons could be what China calls “near-space” reconnaissance for targeting hypersonic missiles.
The People’s Liberation Army is also rapidly building up conventional and nuclear forces at a pace that U.S. military officials say is unprecedented in size and technical sophistication. Pentagon officials say the key factor in China’s military buildup is to support operations against Taiwan.
The Taiwan operation could take many forms, including cyberattacks, a naval blockade and multiple types of kinetic military attacks, according to the Pentagon’s latest annual report on the Chinese military.
China’s objective in war would be to force Taiwan to capitulate to unification with the mainland or to compel Taiwanese leaders to negotiate on Beijing’s terms before the U.S. and its allies can come to Taipei’s defense, the report said. China’s large-scale nuclear buildup of up to 1,500 nuclear warheads would deter Washington from any major move to aid Taiwan.
Flashpoints
Large military exercises around Taiwan and growing friction with the Philippines, a U.S. treaty ally in the South China Sea, are two flashpoints that could set a U.S.-China conflict into motion.
In 2018, the PLA began conducting exercises around the island democracy that incorporated China’s rocket force. Missiles fired in 2021 and 2022 during exercises near Taiwan were integrated with a drill that the Pentagon said was practice for a blockade of Taiwan and maneuvers to prevent foreign forces from intervening.
China has increased the use of chartered merchant ships in military exercises to facilitate the movement of Chinese troops across the 100-mile Taiwan Strait in the event of a shooting war.
Capt. Schuster said recent appointments signal that military planners are putting China on a war footing to challenge the U.S. and its allies in the region. The appointments include a new defense minister with extensive experience in joint operations and specialists in the South China and East China seas, where Beijing is pressing maritime claims.
A new navy commander has an extensive background in submarine and anti-submarine warfare. The selection is aimed at fixing weaknesses in those warfare areas.
On the economic front, China has been expanding its state-held petroleum reserve since 2016 — a possible sign of shoring up supplies to withstand a cutoff of oil shipments during a conflict. Reserves of crude oil in China reached the highest levels in three years, according to industry reports. Large purchases and storage of pork and beef have strengthened food supply chains.
Capt. Schuster said whether the Chinese are stockpiling rice and wheat reserves is unclear, but “I suspect they may be locking down sources.” He noted China’s diplomatic outreach to Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and other countries.
China is also acquiring strategic materials, such as cobalt, needed to prevent a disruption of industry during a conflict and increasing pipeline use to reduce dependence on vulnerable sea-lane oil and natural gas shipments. Drilling for energy has been expanded in offshore fields in the Bohai Gulf and Pearl River Basins. China is working to lock down oil and natural gas exploration and production in the disputed South China Sea.
China has been shifting electric power production to nuclear and back to coal-fired power plants after attempting to transition to natural gas and renewables from 2005 to 2015.
On the cyberspace front
Capt. Schuster said a key war indicator is a marked increase in cyberespionage and cyberattacks in the past five years. China has also begun dispersing data storage hubs around the country to reduce their vulnerability to attack and exploring the use of underwater data storage hubs.
In preparation for space warfare, the PLA is expanding its satellite networks and experimenting with orbital debris removal and “soft kill” options for disrupting satellites — a key U.S. military advantage.
Capt. Schuster said China is expanding its intelligence gathering in the Western Hemisphere from a base in Cuba and could seek intelligence gathering bases in Venezuela or Nicaragua.
Pentagon officials say China faces significant weaknesses in a direct fight with the U.S.
Army Maj. Gen. Joseph McGee, vice director for strategy, plans and policy for the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, told Congress that Beijing’s current forces would have difficulty crossing the Taiwan Strait.
Still, the two-star general warned that “the risk of a [People’s Republic of China] attempt at forceful unification with Taiwan is a significant threat against which we must be prepared.”
The PLA would have to mobilize tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of troops. That “would be a clear signal” of an attack, Gen. McGee said in House testimony in October.
China recently launched its fourth Type 075 large-deck helicopter assault ship in three years, yet another indicator of growing readiness for a cross-strait assault.
President Xi Jinping, who also chairs the ruling Communist Party’s Central Military Commission, has set the tone for war preparations in a string of speeches to the PLA, including a call for more realistic training and exercises. China’s harsh rhetoric depicting the United States as an aggressive troublemaker has been only modestly toned down since Mr. Xi’s November meeting in California with Mr. Biden.
In June, the Chinese leader told a national security commission, “We must adhere to bottom-line thinking and worst-case-scenario thinking and get ready to undergo the major tests of high winds and rough waves, and even perilous, stormy seas.”
Ely Ratner, assistant defense secretary for Indo-Pacific security affairs, acknowledged at the hearing with Gen. McGee that China is waging a campaign of military, political and economic pressure against Taiwan.
Mr. Ratner said the risk of a U.S.-China war is minimal despite the warning signs. “We do not believe that conflict is imminent or inevitable because deterrence across the strait today is real and strong,” he said.
Retired Navy Capt. Jim Fanell, a former Pacific Fleet intelligence director, said taking over Taiwan is a key element of Mr. Xi’s strategy of national “great rejuvenation.”
Mr. Xi’s recent appointment of Dong Jun as defense minister makes him the first PLA senior officer with experience in joint command and control over such an operation.
Conquering Taiwan “would appear to be a ‘capstone’ event for Xi, culminating three years of intense effort to prepare the PLA for such an operation.”
China prefers to take over Taiwan peacefully, but “the indicators are that they are prepared to execute an invasion,” Capt. Fanell said.
Presidential elections in the United States and Taiwan are likely to be critical factors influencing Chinese calculations on the timing of an invasion.
If the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party retains its hold on Taiwan’s presidential office and Donald Trump is returned to the White House, “then it seems increasingly likely that Xi will see his window of opportunity to take Taiwan closing sometime in early 2025,” he said.
A Biden reelection might forestall a Taiwan invasion for a few more years “as America’s national defense capabilities continue to be degraded by the current administration,” Capt. Fanell said.
• Bill Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.
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