Chinese naval diplomacy and the game of GO
The Go game defines Asian philosophy as much as chess defines the Occidental approach.
Earlier game versions could last several weeks until a hard limit was set at 16 hours. Even with simple rules, it has 10ˆ120 more combinations than chess, way more combinations than atoms present in the known universe.
Go is a strategy game with multiple simultaneous battles leading to a point-based strategic victory once the winner has entrapped and suffocated his enemy. Whereas chess is more tactical; the ultimate goal is to kill only one piece, the King.
Go has been played in Asia for more than 2500 years and was such an important part of knowledge that it was considered in China as one of the four cultivated arts by scholars. It teaches long-term planning, humility in defeat, and a more comprehensive approach to conflicts with multiple steps towards victory.
It has been applied in Asian history for millennia to help visualise short-term actions and the long-term end goal of your opponents.
Leaders running a dynasty play Go while generals fighting wars and battles play chess.
It is worth noting that, in the early 21st century, Occidental players able to compete with Japanese, Korean or Chinese masters were a rarity.
There is nothing to worry about then!
China’s economic, diplomatic and military influence has expanded successfully globally over the past 30 years. This emerging superpower is now confident enough to challenge post WW2 super powers. Its naval diplomacy in the South China Sea is probably the most visible application of the game of GO.
Building your stones
The Go game only has one type of piece, but they can be assembled in infinite combinations to achieve your long-term objective; dominance.
The pace of the transition of the Chinese military from 1960s Occidental and Soviet hardware into one of the most powerful armies on the planet surprised everyone.
The Chinese Navy has now a well-equipped surface fleet, with several well-equipped air defence aircraft carriers. But an Army is only as good as its people.
Education as a priority
The Seven Sons of National Defence
In 2001, China was decades behind the Western world in technological development. A long-term education plan was a necessity.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology sent graduates to foreign universities and also invested in Chinese universities specialised in critical research fields applicable to the People’s Liberation Army.
Three-quarters of university graduates recruited by defence-related state-owned enterprises in China come from the Seven Sons universities.
According to the Hoover Institution, the Seven Sons "operated as prime pathways for harvesting US research and diverting it to military applications".
The Chinese program was so successful that in 2020, the United States government banned students from the Seven Sons schools to study in graduate programs in the United States.
After 15 years, the Chinese government succeeded both in quality and quantity. According to the Statista website, ”as of 2023, China has the world's highest number of top universities in the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), the US News and World Report Best Global University Ranking, the University Ranking by Academic Performance, the CWTS Leiden Ranking, and the SCImago Institutions Rankings.
As published in the Guardian in March 2023:
”China leads in 37 of 44 technologies tracked in a year-long project by thinktank the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. The fields include electric batteries, hypersonics and advanced radio-frequency communications such as 5G and 6G. “
“The critical technology tracker shows that, for some technologies, all of the world’s top 10 leading research institutions are based in China and are collectively generating nine times more high-impact research papers than the second-ranked country (most often the US), and it hosts seven of the world’s top 10 research institutions in this topic area”..”
When China entered the World Trade Organisation on December 11 2001, the Western economy rushed in to invest to take advantage of cheap labour. Those times are over.
China's education system brings over 9 million world-class university graduates per year, and they firmly believe that Chinese-made tech is better than ours.
People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN)
After 2000, a new generation of ships, directly influenced by the French Lafayette stealth design, went into production.
After several key deals signed with Tawain, France wanted to balance its relationship with mainland China. They collaborated on the propulsion, radar systems, hull design, surface-to-air missile and sonar technology. The Type 054 was born, and more than thirty units were built.
China also acquired modern submarines (SSK Kilo) and surface ships (Sovremenny) from Russia.
Other technology transfers from Italy and Israel (radar technology, missiles) fed the Chinese industrial capability to the point of independence and today near parity. In the early 2000, no one had any issue giving the Chinese 1970s and 1980s technology. Their only objective was to find new markets to compensate for post-Cold War Western defence's drastic budget cuts.
Nobody anticipated that the Chinese military could catch up in 15 years.
Thanks to a stable government with a clear long-term plan, backed by massive industrial capabilities and a world-class education program, they transformed their Navy (among other things).
China controls 40% of the world's Shipbuilding capabilities (see graph below). The PLA Navy has put into service 678,000 tons worth of well-equipped warships between 2014 and 2018,
8 out of 16 planned Type 055 Renhai class Cruiser (10.000 tons) with 112 VLS cells (roughly comparable to a late block US Ticonderoga or Arleigh Burke)
30 Type 052D Luyang class destroyer, a smaller version of the cruiser with 64 VLS cells and the same equipment ( equivalent to European Aster or Aegis-equipped destroyers)
40 type 054 /A Juangkai Frigate
50+ Type 056 anti-submarine corvette fitted with a very effective low-frequency towed array sonar.
3 aircraft carriers 2 STOBAR (Russian Carrier sister ships) and one brand new CATOBAR with EMALS, the first real carrier with a full air group. 6 are planned.
11 amphibious ships of 20 000 and 35 000tons
The PLAN also field 83 submarines, but I will cover them in a different article.
Modern hardware is important, but key deficiencies have been identified in 2020 and are not so easy to fix:
Outdated command and control organisation lacking flexibility.
Logistic fleet insufficient for long-range deployment
Recruitment problems
Lack of joint service operational experience
No experience of high-intensity naval combat.
According to US military analysts, the Chinese Fleet is still a fleet in being, without any recent interservice combat experience.
Looking only at the hardware, the risk is to only see half the picture and risk making the PLA out to be 10 feet tall”.
Source Office of Naval Intelligence:
China's shipyards have a capacity of over 23.2 million tons, more than 232 times greater than the US capacity of less than 100,000 tons.
2021 China’s navy is expanding by roughly the equivalent of the entire French navy every 3 years.
40% of the shipbuilding capability on the planet with 75 shipyards with 50 aircraft carrier-capable dry docks
Chinese Coast Guard, the second Navy
Formed in 2013 as a separate branch of the Navy, the CCG took over the brown water Navy role of mostly coastal and oceanic search and rescue patrols.
And it came with a staggering number of hulls.
40 ships over 3500 tons
60 Ships over 1500 tons
Those numbers do include 22 real warships, the type 056 class light corvette, transferred from the Navy in 2020.
This second Navy has become instrumental in China's territorial expansion in the South China Sea alongside the “Fishing Militia” also known as the Little Blue Men
Between 2016 and 2019, 89 incidents occurred in Malaysian territorial waters.
Type 056 Jiangdao-class corvette
Deploying your stones on the field
The last Chinese fleet to explore the world sailed in the 15th century. The admiral Zeng-He and its treasure ship were key in developing Chinese relationships with the Muslim world. After centuries of isolation, it was only appropriate that the first Chinese ship to visit external powers in the 90’s was named after him.
After a decade of international visits and exercises, the Chinese task force finally conducted an operation off the coast of Somalia during the international antipiracy coalition.
2 eyes defensive concept
The game of Go is all about securing your territory against enemy actions.
Chinese Blue Water Navy’s role is to secure the Chinese zone of influence on the Western Pacific. It does so by deploying surface and submerged units. Its size and firepower are still inferior to a potential US carrier group, but not if the Chinese Fleet stays within the protective umbrella of its land-based anti-ship carrying bombers and long-range missiles group.
The People's Liberation Army Rocket Force is the 4th branch of the People's Liberation Army and controls China's arsenal of land-based ballistic, hypersonic, cruise missiles—both nuclear and conventional. Looking at the map below, we can see that allied military airfields or harbours within several thousand kilometres from Mainland China are within range of hundreds of warheads.
A Rand report shows how China managed to set up a protective bubble around its territory.
Western intelligence also reports that the Chinese military uses its merchant ships for intelligence and might also use containerized anti-ship missile launchers to increase its fleet firepower.
China also built an underwater surveillance system called the Underwater Great Wall to counter the US Navy's fleet of attack submarines. Arguably the biggest threat to the Chinese fleet.
Chinese Conventional Strike capabilities as of 2022
The Concept of Invasion
No other Chinese naval activity mirrors the game of GO other than the application of the “Cabbage tactics”.
It was named by Rear Admiral Zhang Zhaozhong of the People's Liberation Army Navy. It is a tactic to overwhelm and seize control of an island by surrounding and wrapping the island in successive layers of Coast Guard ships and fishing boats to cut it off from outside support.
Numerous contested islands were promptly transformed from dry rocks to fully functional military airbases (see below). A few nations tried to reclaim their island, but what can a few patrol ships do against hundreds of fishing boats big enough to ram your ship or foul its propellers with fishing nets?
Any opposition was met by a nearby Chinese Coast Guard ship shadowed by a real warship with enough firepower to cope with any further escalation.
A few limited incidents took place with some casualties. But very few local powers want to risk an open war with China.
International arbitration ended up being involved but it did not stop or slow down China's expansion.
Chinese salami
Another learning from Go is to play the long game by hiding your ultimate goal in slicing it into several smaller objectives.
Whilst an Immediate conquest of the whole region by a Chinese task force would have triggered a global outcry and potential confrontation, nobody went to war when China effectively captured dozens of smaller islands over 15 years, one Island at a time.
It is called the Chinese salami-slicing strategy.
By just looking at the map below, we can see how effective this long-term strategy has been.
China has now established a dense network of surveillance stations and military outposts. The Chinese Fishing militia is now supported by a very extensive logistic network of small Islands, sustaining its permanent presence.
Any foreign vessels entering these newly claimed territorial waters are quickly encircled and pushed back by more and more aggressive behaviours.
Concept of mutual life
The game of Go, unlike Chess, is not about destroying your enemy. Victory is declared thanks to a point system, based on how much territory you control after a succession of small-scale engagements.
It is important to stress that there is no search for annihilation; the ultimate result is cohabitation with the opposite force, but if possible in a position of strength.
Henry Kissinger, in his 2011 book On China, describes the game Go as a strategic encirclement. He was advocating the need for the Western world to study this game and adapt to it. Occidental chess-centered culture is good for short-term decisions, but we need to learn to play the long game to avoid being overwhelmed on the world stage.
The Go game needs decades to be mastered, and very few Westerners are good enough to compete with Asian players. We have to rely on our Korean and Japanese Allies in the short term.
One thing for sure is we are now living in a world where China cannot be ignored politically, culturally and militarily. Contrary to the Cold War where 2 systems vowed the annihilation of the other, this new area of confrontation needs to be more about coexistence, collaboration and show of forces.
According to Army Gen. Charles A. Flynn, commander of U.S. Army Pacific, It is Key for the Allied forces to have a combination of land, air and naval Forces dissuasive enough in the region to prevent a war.
Sources
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/05/what-china-wants/528561/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Liberation_Army_Navy_Surface_Force
uses of the merchant ships for intelligence AND weapons
https://freebeacon.com/national-security/china-building-long-range-cruise-missile-launched-from-ship-container/
Rand report
https://www.rand.org/paf/projects/us-china-scorecard.html#:~:text=From%20a%20handful%20of%20conventionally,reach%20U.S.%20bases%20in%20Japan.
Chinese students from the sevens sons university:
Source https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2021/06/how-china-steals-us-tech-catch-underwater-warfare/174558/
Chinese Navy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Liberation_Army_Navy_Surface_Force
Chinese Second Artillery
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Liberation_Army_Rocket_Force#Missile_ranges
Chinese Sosus:
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2126296/chinas-underwater-surveillance-network-puts-enemies
Chinese weaknesses:
https://thediplomat.com/2021/04/chinas-military-has-a-hidden-weakness/
Concept of no war
https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3553901/general-highlights-chinas-military-advantages-disadvantages/
