By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

A Need to Forestall a Chinese Attack

Underneath the Island of Hainan

It is a profound challenge to the region. There’s no denying that the increase in the capability within the South China Sea is a threat to among others U.S. interests.

And while we do not think Chinese leader Xi Jinping is ready to mount an attack that would draw in American forces. But that doesn’t mean the day won’t come, perhaps sooner rather than later.

China is working very hard at having superiorities there that nobody else can match. They have built an ability to project power with multiple types of capabilities — air, missile, militia, ships, and submarines. Hence there is a need to build up our capability and military posture with allies to forestall a Chinese attack.

 

China’s Staggering Military Buildup

The Greater Yulin Naval Base is the epicenter of the Chinese naval presence in the South China Sea, split across two deep-water bays and featuring the two most expensive military infrastructure items in the region today: an aircraft carrier dry dock and a carrier pier, together worth about $2.5 billion.

China has spent tens of billions of dollars turning farm fields and commercial seaports into military complexes to project power across thousands of miles of ocean it claims as its own.

The military buildup has a variety of motives, experts say: Beijing’s quest for global power. Protection of sea routes that fuel China’s economy. Resource exploitation. And the ability to defeat the United States and its allies if they try to thwart a Chinese attack on Taiwan.

Over two decades, the People’s Liberation Army has more than tripled the value of its military infrastructure on Hainan and on reclaimed reefs in the South China Sea, according to an exclusive analysis of some 200 military sites by the Long Term Strategy Group (LTSG), a defense consultancy commissioned by the Defense Department that was authorized to share its analysis of open-source data with The Washington Post.

Overall, the value of the military infrastructure in Hainan and in the South China Sea exceeded $50 billion as of 2022, according to the researchers. That’s more than the value of all U.S. military facilities in Hawaii, LTSG said.

The infrastructure at Greater Yulin Naval Base on Hainan was valued in 2022 at more than $18 billion, which rivals the value of one of the U.S. military’s most vital Pacific Ocean installations: Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, the researchers said. (That figure does not include the underground submarine pen carved out of a mountain on the East Yulin base.)

Hainan, China’s southernmost province, now boasts a military support apparatus — buttressed by staggering infrastructure investments in the South China Sea — that analysts say could if present trends continue, neutralize what has long been considered a U.S. military advantage in a possible head-to-head conflict.

 

 

 

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