CHINA will never become the dominant
power in Asia and its strategic rise should not determine the future
structure of the Australian Defence Force, according to a major Kokoda
Foundation report.
The strategic think tank’s report, to be released today, is
likely to ease fears of an expansionist China following President Xi
Jinping’s pledge in Canberra that China would never inflict war upon
nations in the region.
The provocative report challenges the
popular assumption that China’s strategic clout and economic growth will
continue unabated and argues that Beijing may already be approaching
the zenith of its global power. It rejects claims that the US is
in decline as a Pacific power and says the fashionable belief that China
will eventually challenge the US in the region is improbable.
The
report delivers a withering assessment of China’s military
capabilities, saying the country does not have the equipment, training
or experience to pose a significant threat to the region and that
Chinese warships would be easily picked off by their US or Japanese
counterparts. “Presently China is a regional military power entirely without any
modern combat experience and with major deficiencies in doctrine, human
capital and training,” it says.
The report, written by defence
experts Paul Dibb and John Lee, will trigger fresh debate in Canberra
about Australia’s strategic response to a rising China at a time when
commercial links between the two countries have never been stronger.
Assessments of China’s military ambitions will be central to the new defence white paper to be released next year. In
an address to parliament on Monday, Mr Xi promised that China would
uphold peace as its economy and strategic clout continued to grow. Mr Xi
and Tony Abbott signed a historic free-trade agreement that promises to
redefine trade links between the two nations as part of a new strategic
alliance with Australia.
The Kokoda report says the popular belief that China will soon become the dominant power in Asia is not supported by the facts. “Such
arguments ignore the implications of China’s economic, social and
national fragilities, its lack of major friends or allies in the region
as well as the considerable military deficiencies and challenges faced
by the People’s Liberation Army,” the report says.
“With the
defence white paper due for release in 2015, the government should bear
in mind that planning for an era of Chinese dominance in the region — or
even its emergence as an American strategic peer in Asia — would be
premature, if not improbable.
“Australia should not design its
defence force for war with China, but should be able to counter Chinese
coercion and contribute to allied military operations if necessary.”
The report, to be published in Kokoda’s Security Challenges journal,
rejects the view held by analysts such as former defence official Hugh
White that the US should cede “strategic space” to a rising China in the
Pacific. “Any suggestion that the United States should move to
one side in Asia to make strategic space for China should be rejected,”
the report says.
“China is not now or foreseeably a strategic peer
of America’s and any move by Washington to concede China’s so-called
legitimate strategic interests would smack of appeasement; and offered
unnecessarily and for little conceivable gain.”
The report argues
that domestic challenges such as an ageing population, income inequality
and political unrest will undermine China’s ability to emerge as a
major military and strategic force. “In our view, China may soon
be approaching the zenith of its power as its economy encounters serious
structural impediments and demographic barriers to growth,” it says.
The report says it would be decades before China could hope to challenge the US militarily in the Pacific.
“China’s
forces still lag considerably behind those of the United States in
overall resources, technology and experience,” it says. “In our view, China is 20 years behind the United States in high-technology weapons and sensor development.”
The
report describes China as a lonely power with few friends in Asia and
says any attempted expansion of its strategic weight in the South China
Sea or elsewhere will only encourage a “strong external balancing
against China” by other countries in the region, especially Japan, India
and the US.
“None of this is to underrate the potential challenge
to regional stability from China’s military modernisation, but neither
is it to succumb to the current fashion of exaggerating China’s military
capabilities,” the Kokoda Foundation says.
The debate about
China’s military modernisation has been raging for years between those
who see it as part of broader ambitions to project power far beyond its
shores and others who see it as a natural and non-threatening part of
China’s economic and political emergence. In the 2009 defence white
paper the then prime minister Kevin Rudd took a hawkish view of China’s
military expansion and ordered that the size of the future submarine
fleet be doubled from six to 12 to deal with the perceived threat of a
modernised Chinese navy.
Although the Kokoda report plays down the
China threat, it says Australia “must be able to resist Chinese
coercion — whether by military or other pressures — with regard to our
own direct security interests, including if necessary our economic
security”.
“We should develop the high-technology naval and air
assets necessary to contribute to any allied conflict in the region
where we might need to make a contribution or where Australia needs to
help resist Chinese military adventurism,” it says.
Professor
Dibb, from the ANU, authored a 1986 report that laid the foundations of
Australia’s modern defence policy, while Dr Lee is a senior fellow at
the Hudson Institute in Washington DC. The Kokoda Foundation is an
independent not-for-profit think tank to promote debate on security
challenges.
