Chapter Nine

Defense of the Energy Sector

China’s future political stability and national coherence depend in no small part on continued economic growth fueled by readily available, affordable energy supplies from both domestic and foreign sources. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is deeply involved in the energy sector at two levels. First, the military frequently is tasked with participating in the modernization and expansion of China’s energy infrastructure. The 2002 Defense White Paper issued by Beijing notes PLA participation in “the construction of nine energy facilities such as pipelines, natural gas fields and oil-and-gas fields; the construction of seven hydropower stations and nineteen trunk diversion channels [and for] the protection and construction of the ecological environment.”²²⁸
The second level of PLA involvement relates to the question of possible threats to domestic sources. The White Paper notes that the military is responsible for “maintaining and promoting social stability and harmony,” to include “cracking down on all criminal activities that threaten public order.”²²⁹ Beijing typically classifies as “threats to public order” incidents of labor unrest and other similar activities, which means that the People’s Armed Police (PAP) and the PLA are primary instruments of government control as the energy infrastructure undergoes the sometimes traumatic effects of privatization and modernization. The military is especially concerned, of course, about possibly violent threats to power sources and pipelines.
The advent of the Three Gorges Dam project has drawn the attention of China’s national security analysts. PLA planners supposedly have discounted for the immediate future the possibility of air raids on this massive installation because of its location in the middle of the country, China’s nuclear deterrent, and the nation’s air defense system.²³⁰ Despite those -reports, the People’s Liberation Army Air Force must consider how to defend such an important piece of the national infrastructure.
Uighur separatists and other non-Han groups in China have long been a low-level but nonetheless bothersome factor in maintaining domestic tranquility. Most serious has been unrest in Xinjiang, the potentially energy-rich western province subject to transnational Islamic movements. Separatist threats have been highlighted since the events of September 11. The war on terrorism proclaimed by Washington has, de facto, focused on Islamist groups, a factor that probably provides the primary motivation for Beijing to join the United States in this struggle.
Categorizing such groups as terrorist legitimizes oppression and persecution that hitherto would have drawn condemnation from the United States and other Western nations. When the Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, visited China in August 2002, he supported classification of the Uighur group Eastern Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) by the United Nations as a terrorist organization, much to Beijing’s satisfaction.²³¹
Some steps have been taken to protect domestic energy facilities against organized attack, although defensive measures appear limited to those by local police and PAP units and those attendant to routine defense plans of Military Region staffs. For instance, in mid-2001, the State Council promulgated revised Regulations for Protecting Oil and Natural Gas Pipelines, a measure intended to defend against “seizing, sabotaging, stealing, and looting pipelines and facilities.”²³² In one recent case, “a gang” stealing power cables to sell for profit was prosecuted.²³³
More serious events affecting the production of domestic energy supplies have resulted from labor unrest, primarily in the Daqing petroleum complex, which began producing in 1960 and has long been China’s most productive field. Reorganization of the Daqing operation, site of China’s largest and most productive oilfield, reportedly has resulted in the loss of approximately 80,000 jobs.
One source has estimated that the unemployment rate in the rust belt provinces may be as high as 25 percent, which has contributed to “workers rioting over job losses...challenging the police and demanding social security benefits.”²³⁴ As a result, up to 50,000 laid-off workers and their families demonstrated throughout March and April 2002.²³⁵ As many as “several hundred thousand workers from the Daqing Oilfield” may have participated in various demonstrations.²³⁶
The economic problems in China’s northeastern rust belt provinces have been exacerbated by the government’s determination to overhaul inefficient SOEs. It has involved the displacement of long-term workers, often without the compensation promised during their employment. Local police, PAP, and regular PLA troops were all used to counter resulting labor demonstrations during 2001 and 2002 that frequently involved violence by both sides.
Similar incidents have occurred elsewhere in China’s vast energy infrastructure.²³⁷ Reports are sketchy, given Beijing’s understandable sensitivity to such unrest, but a particularly violent conflict was reported in Shanxi Province, where 2,000 coal miners at Datong went on strike.²³⁸ Other major incidents have been reported, one involving 20,000 miners in Laioning Province, and a second involving thousands in Guizhou Province. Indeed, one knowledgeable Western correspondent believes that incidents of large-scale civil unrest occur almost daily in China, with the oil industry particularly susceptible as a result of information exchanges established between workers from different and widely spread fields.²³⁹
The privatization of SOEs, among which the energy sector has been prominent, exemplifies one of the most difficult aspects of modernizing China’s economy: the need to maintain societal peace by providing a hitherto absent social safety net. Ironically, the transformation of the economy from communism to capitalism has required China’s leadership to address at the most basic level the societal inequality that has historically precipitated revolutionary developments in industrializing societies.
At the beginning of the 16th Party Congress in November 2002, President Jiang Zemin included in his eight national priorities the need to “deepen the reform of the income distribution system and improve the social security system,” and to “do everything possible to create more jobs and improve the people’s lives.” He also said that “developing socialist democracy and establishing a socialist political civilization are an important goal for building a well-off society in an all-round way, and that... China must go on steadily and surely with political restructuring, extend socialist democracy and improve the socialist legal system.”²⁴⁰ In other words, economic modernization was intimately linked to popular support, a link noticeably problematical in at least one major part of the energy infrastructure.
The PLA is also tied to the nation’s hunger for non-domestic energy resources in other ways. The demand for reliable petroleum supplies remains as acute for world powers today as it did a century ago, but with some important differences. Although China has been a net energy importer for a decade, the country retains more than adequate supplies to meet all conceivable PLA missions to defend Chinese vital national security interests.
An interesting comparison may be drawn between present-day China and Great Britain just a century ago, a world power completely dependent on imports for petroleum. This dependence led Britain into imperialist ventures to secure such resources, notably in Mesopotamia (now Iraq) and Central Asia (especially the Baku area, now Azerbaijan). Ironically, these two petroleum-rich regions remain at the apex of international intrigue and potential warfare a century later.
First, the international political situation at the beginning of the 20th century focused on conflict between nation-states in competition for prospective provinces and colonies. Trade was ascendant and linked directly to a nation’s military—primarily naval—might. The economic balance is certainly a vital part of international relations in East Asia today, but the globalization phenomena currently on the rise has greatly reduced the emphasis on military, especially naval, power as a necessary ingredient in that process. This is also due to the historically unique position of the United States as the world’s dominant military power, with a navy that effectively performs traditional maritime missions, such as SLOC protection, for all Asian nations.²⁴¹
Second, a naval race was a primary feature of the deteriorating relationships among European powers, the United States, and Japan, with even China deploying a small but modern battleship navy. Currently, naval force is important in Asia’s maritime environment but is a tool rather than the focus of international competition; nothing like the early 20th-century Anglo-German naval race is taking place. Potential conflicts in East Asia do not focus on territorial colonization, although there are more than 30 territorial disputes in the region, ranging from minor maritime border disputes to the far more serious question of Taiwan’s relationship with China.
Beijing has signed border agreements or negotiating regimes with all 14 nations that share its borders, but it still has sovereignty disputes with Japan (over the Daiyutaos [Senkaku Islands to Tokyo]), India, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines, and Indonesia over the various land formations and ocean area of the South China Sea. China’s attitude toward these sovereignty disputes has for the most part—certainly since early 1996—been moderate; although not conceding any of its claims, Beijing has sought to establish bilateral and multilateral agreements to contain these disagreements.²⁴²
Third, national militaries at the dawn of the last century were launching dramatic technological advances that would contribute to a revolution in military affairs (RMA). This would include the development of turbine-driven warships, submarines, aircraft, and armored vehicles, all energy-intensive. An RMA may also be occurring at the dawn of the current century. If so, it is one that will be based on information rather than energy. China’s interest in securing energy supplies springs from economic rather than military motivation.
The PLA thus can count on China’s indigenous petroleum supplies to fuel its platforms; another resource for the PLAN is nuclear power, already used in six of its submarines.
Other PLA missions remain that affect China’s energy needs in the category of national security rather than naval necessity. These missions include, before all others, the requirement to pacify and safeguard civil peace in contentious, potentially resource-rich provinces in the west and northwest. Xinjiang is the most troublesome, but Beijing will likely categorize all non-Han groups (including Tibetans and Muslims residing elsewhere in China) as terrorist, as it has with the ETIM, should members of these groups be perceived as threatening public order. The concern for domestic peace, although in theory primarily dealt with by civilian police and PAP forces, depends in the final analysis on the PLA.
Controlling the ethnic minorities is eased by the fact that they compose, in total, no more than 10 percent of China’s vast population, but it is complicated by the fact that many of these groups reside in border areas that historically have been troublesome, such as Xinjiang with the Islamic Central Asian republics, Tibet with India, and Mongolia with Russia. Hence, ethnic irredentist or independence movements are almost certain to involve groups in neighboring nations and trans-border power projection. Beijing will no doubt attempt to enlist third-party, surrogate, or international organizations in any campaign to maintain its claimed territory.
Recent examples include, first, the aforementioned agreement with the United States (and the UN) about the ETIM. The second example is Beijing’s efforts to establish a Central Asian security organization as part of the Shanghai Cooperative Organization (SCO). This group was nominally targeted on improving economic relations among its members but more importantly, from Beijing’s view, on resolving border disputes, strengthening borders, and establishing international controls over actual and potential cross-border political and religious movements. Since becoming the SCO in 2000 when Uzbekistan joined, and especially since September 11, the group has increasingly focused on security issues, specifically “cooperation against terrorism, separatism and extremism.”²⁴³ Cross-border cooperation between national militaries has steadily increased, to include recent military exercises among Chinese and Kyrgyz, and Chinese and Russian, forces.²⁴⁴ After signing border resolution agreements with all SCO members, Beijing wants further to strengthen the organization, but has met with limited success. The organization announced in November 2002 that an antiterrorism center would be established in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, with a secretariat in Beijing.²⁴⁵
Furthermore, it must have been very sobering to see the United States, immediately after the events of September 2001, so quickly and apparently effortlessly establish a strong diplomatic and military presence in the very Central Asian region the SCO was designed to control for China. Despite Washington’s claims about its antiterrorism focus, there is an undercurrent of suspicion in Beijing that the American presence in Central Asia will not soon end.²⁴⁶
Nonetheless, the SCO represents Beijing’s most significant effort at multilateralism and delineates the theater most likely to demand PLA missions in the realm of protecting energy resources. Should Uighur separatists expand their terrorist actions, Xinjiang’s energy resource infrastructure, including the Tarim Basin fields, might be a likely target.
A presumably more vulnerable target would be the pipeline system Beijing is currently constructing. More than a half-dozen major pipeline projects are built, under construction, or in the planning stage.²⁴⁷ These fall into two broad categories. The first type is intended to facilitate the distribution of oil and natural gas within China, primarily bringing oil and natural gas from western and northern sources across the country to Shanghai and the rest of economically expanding eastern China. The national plan includes three vertical trunk lines, from Russia, from China’s northwest, and the Zhongwu line.²⁴⁸ The most notable of these trunk lines completed to date is the 775-mile-long line from Lanzhou to Chungqing, built at a reported cost of $500 million.²⁴⁹ Pipeline security concerns are being addressed by Beijing; the West-East Pipeline’s origin in Xinjiang makes it vulnerable to Uighur separatist attention; one CCP official has stated that “The pipeline is going underground to escape both the extreme climate and its potential as a target for terrorist attack.”²⁵⁰
The second category aims to access foreign energy resources, most immediately those in Russia and Kazakhstan. Other Central and even Southwest Asian sources, including Turkmenistan, may be targeted. As demonstrated by T.E. Lawrence in the Middle East during World War I and currently by the Ejército de Liberación Nacional in Colombia, pipelines are difficult to protect.
Another concern is the possibility of petroleum imports being halted by attacks at sea during the long transit from Southeast Asia, Southwest Asia, the Middle East, or other foreign sources. The SLOCs are most vulnerable not on the high seas, but at transit points through narrow straits, including Hormuz, the 9-Degree Channel, Malacca, Luzon, and Taiwan. The U.S. Navy will protect these SLOCs for the foreseeable future, but a Sino-American crisis (over Taiwan for instance) might drive Beijing to decide that the PLAN had to be capable of defending these SLOCs. The way for China to preclude this eventuality is to resolve Taiwan’s status peacefully and to develop continental pipelines as the primary avenue for accessing foreign oil sources. Failing that, Beijing would have to make a major change in national budgeting priorities to build a navy and air force capable of protecting the extended SLOCs that carry much of China’s imported oil and natural gas. This is not likely to happen, for several reasons.
First, Beijing retains national priorities that fall under the rubric of “rich country, strong army.” That is, developing China’s economy and ensuring the welfare of its people will remain the top priority of the national government and the CCP. Second, while the Taiwan issue remains the most sensitive one between Beijing and Washington, the present economic and political situation on the island, U.S. and Chinese interest in keeping the issue within peaceful bounds, and the common interest in the campaign against terrorism all mitigate against the reunification issue deteriorating to the point of hostilities. Hence, Sino-American relations should remain essentially peaceful, if frequently contentious. Third, there is little indication that the Chinese military’s strategic paradigm is going to change significantly in the near future. The PLA remains dominated by the army, with the navy only as strong as specific maritime-associated national interests justify.
The Chinese navy currently includes fewer than 20 warships capable of operating in even a limited early 21st-century naval environment. And these ships—2 Sovremenny-class, 1 Luhai-class, and 2 Luhu-class guided-missile destroyers (DDGs), and approximately 12 Jiangwei-class guided-missile frigates—are armed with very limited antiair warfare weapons systems. Another 40 or so surface combatants are armed with antisurface ship cruise missiles and, in a non-air threat environment, could perform SLOC defense duties in Chinese littoral waters. The PLAN ability to deploy is further limited by the presence of only three replenishment-at-sea ships in the fleet.
The navy’s real strength lies in its numerous, modernizing submarine force. The five nuclear-powered Han-class attack submarines are capable of extended deployments but are noisy and difficult to maintain. China’s most modern submarines, four Kilo-class and three Song-class conventionally powered attack boats, are not well suited for long-range deployments (to the Indian Ocean, for example) but are formidable weapons systems within about 1,000 miles of China’s coast. Beijing continues to build Songs and buy Kilos from Russia; as these boats become operational, the 30 or 40 older Ming- and Romeo-class boats will be decommissioned.²⁵¹
Since 1983, the PLAN has periodically deployed two- or three-ship task forces on diplomatic missions to Southeast, South, and Southwest Asia and to the Western Hemisphere. In 2002, a Luhu-class DDG and an oiler completed a circumnavigation of the globe, a significant accomplishment.²⁵²
Hence, PLAN is capable of defending littoral SLOCs (those lying no more than 200 nautical miles [nm] from China’s coast). Even that capability must be qualified, however, given the proven difficulty of defending surface ships against submarine attack.²⁵³ Defense of China’s economic offshore infrastructure is a prominent concern of naval thinking. The South China Sea would become an area of primary PLAN operations should significant energy resources be discovered in waters claimed by Beijing in that sea. PLAN forces have regularly deployed to the Paracel Islands since the early 1970s and to the Spratly Islands since the early 1980s.²⁵⁴ A Chinese military presence has been established on more than a half-dozen of the islands.
The current maritime strategy is one of offshore defense, meaning that the PLAN will strive to “maintain control over the maritime traffic in the coastal waters of the mainland” and the resources in those waters.²⁵⁵ Defining this area of capability is not easy, but perhaps the most reliable approach is to look at specific missions and sea lines. This approach yields formidable ocean areas for the PLAN to defend: all of the South China Sea, the western half of the East China Sea, the waters extending from the Chinese coast to at least 100 nm east of Taiwan along a line from the Philippines to Japan, and all of the Yellow Sea.
The next step in this concern is more distant SLOCs, ranging from the Malacca Strait between the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, and the Hormuz Strait from that ocean into the Persian Gulf. Assuming a continued constructive relationship with the nations of Southeast Asia, China should not have to be concerned with commanding the seas of the narrow Malacca Strait, and the Strait of Hormuz is so far from China that deploying PLAN units to defend it would be impractical (except possibly as part of a multinational force).
A multinational effort is under way to combat the colossal rise in the number of pirate attacks in Southeast Asian waters, attacks that cause an estimated annual loss of $25 billion. China is not playing an active role in the antipiracy center established in Kuala Lumpur by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), with participation by Japan and India.²⁵⁶
As for the vast Indian Ocean distances between the two straits, China faces a wary India with a formidable navy of its own. Beijing’s close relationship with Pakistan is marked by significant military assistance to a navy that also is able to count on French submarines and other foreign assistance. Pakistan’s force of seven modern, conventionally powered submarines is augmented by eight frigates—none of them new but most armed with guided missiles—and two replenishment-at-sea oilers.
China is also helping Pakistan build a deepwater port at Gwadar, nominally for commercial traffic.²⁵⁷ But Islamabad has consistently come out second-best in wars with New Delhi, and the advent of the two nations as nuclear powers casts future contests in a different light, especially as India’s only way of effectively threatening China is with its nuclear arsenal.
Beijing has begun to establish a military presence in the Indian Ocean and hopes its close relationship with Islamabad will allow it to count on the Pakistani navy in a regional maritime contest. China also has established a strategic economic and military relationship with Burma/Myanmar, the latter by providing advisors and material assistance. The Chinese military and contractor personnel in that country—involved in projects ranging from road-building in the far north to manning listening stations in the Andaman Sea—represent the first Chinese military presence on foreign soil since the Vietnam War.²⁵⁸
Several factors motivate Beijing’s policy in Burma. First is concern for their common border, historically one rife with drug traffickers and other smugglers, and at one time a refuge for former Nationalist soldiers. Second is the desire to counter Indian influence in the region—important because of its location between the subcontinent and Southeast Asia, an area to which Beijing is devoting increasing political and economic resources.
Third is concern for the Indian Ocean SLOCs on which China depends for so much of its energy imports. At the same time, India is trying to establish a stronger political and naval presence east of Malacca, evidenced in New Delhi’s increased attention to ASEAN and the 2001 deployments by the Indian Navy to East Asia, from Singapore to Japan.²⁵⁹ These events, combined with Indian naval strength in the Indian Ocean, pose a classic problem in maritime strategy for Beijing: its most important source of petroleum imports, the Persian Gulf area, lies at the end of very long SLOCs that are dominated by the navy of a potential enemy.
The Indian Navy continues to modernize and expand. It currently includes an aircraft carrier and at least 17 conventionally powered submarines, with several newer models under construction. The navy surface force centers around 8 DDGs, perhaps 15 older destroyers and frigates, and 3 replenishment-at-sea ships. More importantly, India has funded an ambitious plan to modernize its navy, from new aircraft carriers to submarines.²⁶⁰
The naval picture of the Indian Ocean, apart from the usual American presence of one or two aircraft carrier battlegroups, is dominated by an Indian force much stronger than its Pakistani opponent. The PLAN is stronger than either, but it is severely limited by the distances involved.
How will China address the problem of Indian Ocean SLOCs? Beijing apparently has decided not to build a navy capable of patrolling these long SLOCs to the Middle East. Instead, Beijing seems to be concentrating on forming supportive relationships with the nations bordering those routes, from the Philippines to Saudi Arabia. Beijing’s concern for the security of its overseas energy supplies need not dominate its national security policy process. Rather, the most important aspects of energy security are economic and political, not military.
Given China’s aforementioned significant draw on Middle Eastern-Southwest Asian oil, a prolonged war in that region might well seriously disrupt the outflow of petroleum products. To forestall or ameliorate that eventuality, Beijing is engaging in diplomatic activity both to signal its interest in the welfare of the Arab states and to offer mediation services in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.²⁶¹ This activity backs up and possibly extends Beijing’s activities with petroleum companies in the region, including investments or extraction activities in Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Sudan, and Somalia.
The maritime oil flow to China would be subject to unrest in Southeast Asia but almost certainly would not be seriously affected. For one thing, the political situation in that region is so fractured as to make effective international action against freedom of navigation extremely unlikely. For another, even if the Malacca Strait–South China Sea route was interrupted, oil could be shipped via alternate routes at an acceptable increase in cost.²⁶²

Endnotes

²²⁸“China’s National Defense In 2002 ‘White Paper,’” December 9, 2002, 34, accessed at <www.china-embassy.org/eng/38991.html>. [BACK]

²²⁹Ibid., 6. [BACK]

²³⁰Yang Ron, “Perspective on Hot Spots,” Zhongguo Kongjun, February 1, 1998, 4–6, in FBIS-FTS20000113001050, clearly envisions the United States as the would-be attacker. [BACK]

²³¹Philip T. Reeker, U.S. Department of State press statement, September 11, 2002. Also see Richard L. Armitage, “Statement at Conclusion of China Visit,” Beijing, August 26, 2002. [BACK]

²³²“Earnestly Strengthen Protection of Oil, Natural Gas Pipelines, Facilities,” Xinhua,August 9, 2001, in FBIS-CPP20010809000116, notes that the original regulation was promulgated in 1989; this edition of Xinhua describes the revised regulation as “State Council Decree No. 313 of the PRC.” [BACK]

²³³“Four Sentenced to Death in Beijing for Destroying Power Lines,” AFP, April 19, 2002, in FBIS-CPP20020419000058. [BACK]

²³⁴“China is No Threat to America—For Now,” Guardian Unlimited, in Alexander’s7, no. 9 (May 3, 2002), based partially on World Bank estimates. [BACK]

²³⁵John Pomfret, “Chinese Oil Country Simmers as Workers Protest Cost-Cutting: Thousands Laid Off, Benefits Reduced,” The Washington Post, March 17, 2002, A24, and Mark O’Neill, “Nearly 80,000 Daqing City Oil Workers Laid Off Since 2000,” South China Morning Post, April 10, 2002, in FBIS-CPP20020410000048. Also, Robert J. Saiget, “PRC Factory, Oil Workers Protest in Northeast,” AFP, March 18, 2002, in FBIS-CPP20020318000109, gives the figure of 80,000 laid off. According to Beijing, Daqing produced 51.5 million tons of crude oil in 2001, the 26th consecutive year of producing 50 million or more tons (“China’s Oil Giant Reports High Output for 26 Straight Years,” Xinhua, December 31, 2001, in FBIS-CPP20011231000120). For just two reports on the demonstrations, see “Further on 50,000 Oil Workers Protest,” AFP, March 13, 2002, in FBIS-CPP20020313000158. [BACK]

²³⁶“Curfew Imposed Following Demonstration Staged by 50,000 Workers,” Sing Tao Jih Pao (Hong Kong), in FBIS-CPP20020320000066. [BACK]

²³⁷See Larry Wortzel, “Beijing Struggles to ‘Ride the Tiger of Liberalisation’,” Jane’s Intelligence Review, January 1, 2001, for the best compilation of recent incidents of civilian unrest. [BACK]

²³⁸This was reported in “Laid-Off Workers Demonstrate in Shanxi,” Information Center for Human Rights & Democracy (Hong Kong), June 6, 2002, in FBIS-CPP20020607000038, 1. This report also stated that “30,000 workers in 20 factories in Liaoyang City, Liaoyang Province, staged a joint demonstration between 17 and 20 March.” [BACK]

²³⁹Statement by Far Eastern Economic Review correspondent, December 18, 2002. Reported in James Kynge, “Riots in Chinese Mining Town,” The Financial Times, April 3, 2000, and “20,000 Go On Rampage Over Mine Closure,” Associated Press, in the South China Morning Post, April 3, 2000; “APRC Riot Police Break Up Protest in Guiyang,” AFP, March 29, 2000, in FBIS-CHI-2000-0329. These reports were brought to my attention by Dennis Blasko. [BACK]

²⁴⁰“Jiang Zemin, A Report to CPC National Congress,” November 8, 2002, accessed at <www.china.embassy-org/eng/index.html>. [BACK]

²⁴¹One associated mission in which the United States is playing only a peripheral role is that of combating piracy, an age-old problem in the region, most particularly in Southeast Asian waters; the nations of that region, however, have established an antipiracy organization that has precluded the necessity of the United States taking a leading role in the effort. This center and its activities are discussed in “Japan-China-S.E. Asia,” LLP Press, May 4, 2000, accessed at <www.maritimesecurity.com/archive/aprilmay2000_anti_piracy _efforts.htm>. [BACK]

²⁴²Among these border agreements reported in China’s National Defense in 2002 “White Paper” are the “Beibu Gulf [Gulf of Tonkin] Demarcation Agreement with Vietnam” (December 2000), the “Supplementary Agreement on the [Tajik-PRC] Boundary” with Tajikistan (May 2002), frontier cooperation agreements with Russia (1995) and Mongolia, and a “Frontier Defense Cooperation Agreement” with Kazakhstan (January 2002). See “China and ASEAN Sign Spratlys Deal,” Associated Press report, in Alexander’s 7, no. 23 (November 27, 2002), for account of China and the ASEAN nations (Indonesia, Brunei, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Burma, and the Philippines) signing a “Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea” designed to reduce the chances of military conflict over disputed territorial claims. [BACK]

²⁴³“China, Kyrgyzstan Sign Anti-Terrorism Agreement,” Xinhua, December 11, 2002, in VIC, “Asia-Pacific Daily News Summary.” [BACK]

²⁴⁴Wan Yanxian, Nian Hongtu, and Liang Yongli, “For Peace and Tranquility: A Talk with MG Liu Dengyun,” Jiefangjun Bao, October 12, 2002, in FBIS-CPP20021012000012. [BACK]

²⁴⁵First announced in “Shanghai Cooperation Organization Approves Center for Anti-terror,” China Daily, June 8, 2002, accessed at <www.china.org.cn/english/FR/34120.htm>, but apparently not approved until the fall of 2002: see “Agree to Establish Antiterrorism Headquarters and Secretariat,” Xinhua, November 23, 2002, accessed at <http://news.xinhuanet.com/newscenter/2002-11/23/content_638851.htm>. [BACK]

²⁴⁶For instance, see Wang Jinguo and Yang Shu, “U.S. Enters Central Asia and the Caspian Sea for Oil and Gas,” Renmin Ribao, May 13, 2002, in FBIS-CPP20020514000040. [BACK]

²⁴⁷See Philip Andrews-Speed et al., The Strategic Implications of China’s Energy Needs, Adelphi Paper 346 (London: International Institute of Strategic Studies, 2002), 35 ff., for a brief discussion of pipeline construction. [BACK]

²⁴⁸“China Outlines Strategic Pattern of Natural Gas Development,” People’s Daily, in Alexander’s 7, no. 23 (November 27, 2002), 1, which also included a CNPC report that China has signed a “protocol” with Russia for purchasing 20 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually, beginning in 2008. [BACK]

²⁴⁹“China’s ‘Longest’ Oil Pipeline Begins Trial Run,” Xinhua, November 10, 2002, in FBIS-CPP20021110000058. By comparison, the Alaska pipeline is 800 miles long and cost $8 billion to build in 1977; the proposed Angarsk-to-Daqing line is projected to cost $2 billion, with another $5 billion required to develop the associated Russian gas deposits (Varvara Aglamishyan, “China Gives Go-Ahead for Deliveries of Russian Gas,” Nezavisimaya Gazeta, October 23, 2002, 3, in FBIS-CEP20021024000180). [BACK]

²⁵⁰Zhang Zhiheng, CCP Secretary in Xinjiang Autonomous Region, quoted in “China’s Gas Line Is on the Way,” The Age Company, June 6, 2002, in Alexander’s 7, no. 13 (June 27, 2002). These security concerns are addressed at length in Peter S. Goodman, “A Pipeline to the Future, Clogged by China’s Past?” The Washington Post, August 20, 2002, E1. [BACK]

²⁵¹Eight additional Kilos are on order from Moscow, and at least two more Songs are under construction. The 16 Mings and dozens of the Romeos remain seaworthy, but the PLAN will not be able to train enough crews to operate all of them effectively. [BACK]

²⁵²The PLAN execution of the traditional naval mission of presence is detailed in Kenneth W. Allen and Eric A. McVadon, China’s Foreign Military Relations (Washington, DC: The Henry L. Stimson Center, 1999); circumnavigation is addressed in many reports contained in “PLAN World Cruise 2002: Special Report,” VIC, “Asia-Pacific Daily News Summary” (September 23, 2002). [BACK]

²⁵³There is a large literature on this subject; see Samuel Eliot Morison, The History of U.S. Naval Operations in World War II, vol. I: The Battle of the Atlantic (Boston: Little Brown, 1947), for an account of the German navy’s dramatically successful submarine campaign against coastal traffic off the eastern U.S. and Caribbean coasts in 1942 and 1943. [BACK]

²⁵⁴Shigeo Hiramatsu, “China’s Naval Advance: Objectives and Capabilities,” Japan Review of International Affairs 8, no. 2 (Spring 1944), 126. [BACK]

²⁵⁵Admiral Shi Yunsheng (commander of the PLAN), quoted in “Jiang Made the Final Decision on Adopting Offshore Defense Strategy,” Tung Fang Jih Pao (Hong Kong), August 24, 2001, in FBIS-CPP20010824000062. [BACK]

²⁵⁶Cited in “International Maritime Bureau Reports 57 Percent Increase in Pirate Attacks,” The Sun (Vancouver), February 3, 2001, in Alexander’s 6, no. 4 (February 22, 2001), 1; the $25 billion figure is in “Asia Piracy,” Reuters (Singapore), December 10, 2002, in VIC, “Asia-Pacific Daily News Summary” (December 10, 2002). The most complete single source of information about the piracy problem is “Primer: Piracy in Asia,” VIC (April 8, 2002). [BACK]

²⁵⁷Discussed in “Pakistan, China to Ink Accord for Gwadar Port Construction,” The News (Islamabad), August 8, 2002, in FBIS-SAP20010808000048. [BACK]

²⁵⁸J. Mohan Malik, “Sino-Indian Rivalry in Myanmar,” Contemporary Southeast Asia 16, no. 2 (September 1994), 137–155, presents an extreme view of a “de facto military alliance” between China and Burma. A less alarmist view is presented by William Ashton, “Chinese Bases in Burma—Fact or Fiction?” Jane’s Intelligence Review 7, no. 2 (February 1995), 84–87. The author views the relationship as extensive but focused more on economic than military priorities, based on conversations with U.S., Chinese, Indian, and Taiwan analysts. [BACK]

²⁵⁹“Indian Navy Exercises Seen to Irk Beijing,” The Washington Times, May 8, 2000, 1. [BACK]

²⁶⁰Ship numbers are from A.D. Baker III, ed., Combat Fleets of the World 2002–2003 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2002). Reports have occasionally surfaced about India deploying nuclear-powered submarines—a Charlie-class was on loan from Russia for several years—but it is much more likely that both the Indian and Pakistani navies will restrict themselves to new submarines powered by air independent propulsion systems. [BACK]

²⁶¹For instance, see “Wang Shijie Says China Vows to Remain Active in Middle East Peace Process,” AFP (Hong Kong), November 21, 2002, in FBIS-CPP20021121000024. [BACK]

²⁶²See John H. Noer with David Gregory, Chokepoints: Maritime Economic Concerns in Southeast Asia (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, in cooperation with the Center for Naval Analyses, 1996), for cost estimates. [BACK]