US President Joe Biden must confront China, not compete with it

NEW DELHI: US President Joe Biden has from time to time indicated that he wants to compete with China, not confront it. However, the passage of the Strategic Competition Act (SCA) of 2021 by the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee (April 22) makes it clear that the US intends to push back China on a variety of issues, ranging from human rights to unfair economic practices.

The 21-1 panel vote sends 'The Strategic Competition Act' to the floor for a full chamber vote. Senator Bob Menendez, who introduced the bill said the overwhelming bipartisan vote for the legislative document made it "the first of what we hope will be a cascade of legislative activity for our nation to finally meet the China challenge across every dimension of power, political, diplomatic, economic, innovation, military and even cultural".

The bill aims to implement a range of investments, including $655 million in Foreign Military Financing funding for the Indo-Pacific region and $450 million for the Indo- Pacific Maritime Security Initiative. It also expands the powers of the US Committee on Foreign Investment, which analyses international financial transactions,to pick up on any national security risks.The legislation also designates $10 million for the US State Department to promote democracy in Hong Kong and includes several measures, to boost the defence capabilities of Taiwan.

The legislation comes at a time when relations between the US and China have become increasingly strained. The US has attacked China over cyber-attacks, and intellectual property theft originating from China, human rights abuses against the Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang Province and crackdowns on pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. However, unlike former President Trump, who was willing to go to any extent against China, the present administration appears to be caught between Russia and China as its main adversary. Therefore, even though the latest Act has bipartisan support, by itself this will not stop China from rising as a global power with its domestic autocracy and external aggression.

As and when this bill is approved by the US legislature, it would give the US administration the mandate to force Beijing to honour the 2016 ruling by an international tribunal that artificial islands China had built near the Philippine coastline, including at Mischief Reef, violated Manila's sovereign rights.

The State Department spokesman Ned Price had declined to comment specifically on the Menendez-Risch bill but said: "We have spoken of competition with China as a defining challenge for this administration, that we will enjoy the greatest amount of success when we work hand in hand with Congress, and when our proposals, find support on both sides of the aisle.We have been heartened that there is a good deal of bipartisan agreement when it comes to how we should and could approach the government in Beijing," he said.

It has been clear for the last decade or so that China presents a clear and present danger to the United States and its allies. This is both on account of its growing global economic clout and rising military power, which is getting more funds each year, despite the Covid pandemic and economic slowdown within China. Of greatest concern to the global community should be China's military strength and particularly its nuclear and missile arsenal.

Recently, US intelligence reported that China has developed fast breeder capacity that will allow it to make far more plutonium nuclear warheads than US assessments had previously predicted.

Admiral Charles Richard, Commander of the US Strategic Command, informed the US Senate Armed Forces Committee recently that "...we became aware that this limitation (on production of nuclear weapons) has changed in an upward direction."

He said that China's progress in activating a fast breeder reactor had greatly increased its capability and its nuclear stockpile was undergoing an "unprecedented expansion." He added that China was on track to achieve the goal of establishing a nuclear triad with the separate ground, air and sea-launched nuclear weapons by the middle of the current decade.

Last year, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in its Annual Report, titled 'Chinese Nuclear Forces 2020', authored by Hans Kristensen and Matt Korda, discussed the state of play in the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF). It claimed, "China is continuing the nuclear weapons modernization program that it initiated in the 1980s and increased in the 1990s and 2000s, fielding more types and greater numbers of nuclear weapons than ever before."

Within the next five years, China aims to deploy close to 200 warheads on its land-based ICBMs, which could threaten the US.

It is impossible to say, how many nuclear weapons China actually has, but Kristensen and Korda offer their estimate of Beijing having a stockpile of approximately 350 nuclear warheads, of which roughly 272 are for delivery by more than 240 operational land-based ballistic missiles, 48 sea-based ballistic missiles and 20 nuclear gravity bombs assigned to bombers.

The report also states that 78 warheads are intended to arm additional land- and sea-based missiles that are in the process of being fielded. According to the US DoD's 2020 report to Congress assessing China's military capabilities, Beijing is estimated to possess a total nuclear warhead stockpile "in the low 200s".

Whatever the actual number of warheads that China has, the point is that the threat it poses to global security can only be assessed when studying the entire spectrum of weapons and delivery systems in China's inventory.

While China may not have enough fissile material, it is often forgotten that it has Pakistan and North Korea as reliable allies, who are always willing to lend a helping hand, when needed. More importantly, it must be noted that while the US currently has the lead in frontier and emerging technologies, China is playing catch up.

One of the recurring themes of the Pentagon's 2020 report on China is the strong emphasis placed by the PLA on the utilization of emerging technologies, especially artificial intelligence, autonomous weapons systems, quantum computing and encryption, and hyper-sonics.

Thus, while the Strategic Competition Act is a step forward in the fight against China, the US will have to do much more and take multiple steps in the medium term to combat the growing threat from China. (IANS)

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