Analysis: China’s Quick Naval Buildup Causes Concern

TaiwanPlus News

With China showing its ability to amass a large number of ships in little time, some analysts are concerned Taiwan might need to be more vigilant. TaiwanPlus spoke to Raymond Kuo from the RAND Corporation for more.

Transcript

00:00Raymond, the last time we saw China conduct large-scale military exercises, Beijing usually

00:05announces what they're doing and for how long.

00:08With this recent surge in activity from China, why do you think they haven't announced anything?

00:13Part of it, at least in my mind, is I'm trying to actually ratchet down the temperature.

00:17They need to respond, or at least they think they need to respond in some way to Lai Ching-tung's

00:21trips to the Pacific Islands, as well as sopping over Hawaii and Guam.

00:26They consider that a provocation, so they think they have to respond to this.

00:29At the same time, I think Joint Sword 2024-B, it was so short and so sudden and called off

00:36so quickly, partly because they were kind of relying upon, I think, a political narrative.

00:42With 2024-A, they could say, look, Lai Ching-tung, his speech was quite provocative.

00:47I didn't necessarily think so, but at least they could hang their hat on that.

00:51With 2024-B, there really wasn't much there with a double 10-day speech for China to justify

00:58a large-scale military exercise.

01:00Similarly, so I think they got a little bit burned from that.

01:04The issue here is that Beijing really doesn't want to internationalize the issue.

01:08They want the cross-strait relations just to be a bilateral question.

01:12And Taiwan's defense ministry said that China has deployed its largest naval fleet in nearly

01:18three decades since 1996.

01:20What do you make of that increase in activity?

01:23I think these 90 or so ships includes some amount of Coast Guard vessels, maritime patrol

01:29and administration.

01:30And so you're seeing their increasing integration.

01:33Many of these vessels are quite capable in and of themselves, at least against non-military

01:39forces or units.

01:40But this is also a really wide area.

01:43We're talking thousands and thousands of miles of coastline and ocean.

01:47But at the same time, the use of military alongside, let's say, administrative or law

01:51enforcement units is relatively good practice for the PLAN and the CCG, the People's Liberation

01:59Army Navy and the Chinese Coast Guard to enhance their operational and joint operational capacity.

02:05In terms of what China wants to accomplish with this surge in activity, do you think

02:10this is more of a show of force or is this an actual practical exercise that they're

02:15using to practice some sort of future operation?

02:18Well, there's no doubt that it's to some degree of practical movement, that it is practice

02:23is operational training or training for the ultimate operation.

02:27Now, whether that's gray zone or invasion, that depends on the types of training that

02:31they actually do.

02:32But at the same time, you still have to worry about the capabilities.

02:36The ability to rapidly advance that many ships, even across that big of an area, is concerning.

02:42And so raising alerts, I think, certainly makes sense of having forces to at least monitor

02:46what's going on and demonstrate presence, I think is also a good sign as well.

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