Safeguarding China's overseas interests through military cooperation
- By Zhou Bo
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E-mail China.org.cn, June 29, 2015
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Chinese army officials get ready for the sail at a port in Zhanjiang, South China's Guangdong province, Nov 9, 2012.The 13th naval escort squad, sent by the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy, departed Friday from China to the Gulf of Aden and Somali waters for escort missions. [Photo/Xinhua] |
In the recently published China’s Military Strategy white paper, China’s overseas interests are stressed like never before. Securing China’s overseas interests is taken as one of the “strategic tasks” of China’ s armed forces, and the PLA vows that it will strengthen international security cooperation in areas crucially related to China’s overseas interests.
What are China’s overseas interests? Where are these crucial areas and cooperation with whom? The succinct white paper hasn’t specified. As the largest trading nation and the second largest economy in the world, it is difficult to breakdown China’s overseas interests. Today China’s interests are not only global but in outer space too (a point people seldom think of).
As a rule of thumb, these overseas interests should include, but are not limited to, security of China’s foreign trade of import and export; security of Chinese nationals and property overseas; security of Chinese investment and security of sea lanes, gas and oil pipelines that are critical to China’s energy import. Additionally, great nations shoulder great responsibilities. As China grows in not only strength but also international political and economic influence, China’s international responsibilities will grow together with its national interests.
China’s overseas interests are endangered in the course of proliferation. Chinese workers were hijacked in Sudan, Algeria, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Pakistan and Afghanistan and sometimes were even killed. Before the war in Libya in 2011, the PLA helped evacuate 35860 Chinese nationals within two weeks, but huge amount of Chinese property and investment were ditched behind. Given the fact that 90% world trade is maritime trade, China’s concern over the security of sea lanes cannot be more justifiable. The oil and gas pipelines linking Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Russia and Myanmar with China could be easy targets of terrorist attack. China’s One Belt, One Road initiative covers an “arc of instability” stretching from sub-Saharan Africa through North Africa, into the Middle East, the Balkans, the Caucasus, and South and Central Asia, to Southeast Asia.
China today has two dilemmas: China doesn’t harbor any global security ambition, but its interests are already global; China vows to be a responsible power, but the Chinese military hasn’t all of the capabilities required to safeguard its national interests and fulfill it international responsibilities. Citing cooperation in areas crucially related to China’s overseas interests, the white paper has actually admitted PLA’s lack of capacity and experience. Such inability is reflected in some bitter lessons. For example, when Chinese ship De Xinhai was hijacked in the Indian Ocean in October, 2009, Chinese state media had to point out that the ship was 1,080 nautical miles away from the Chinese naval vessels in the Gulf of Aden, a hint that PLA naval vessels were simply too far away for an immediate rescue.
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