The Big Story: Hong Kong Saga Continues, Will China intervene?
The Hong Kong protests have entered its tenth week. The protesters started swarming the international airport last week, demanding greater democracy in Hong Kong. It soon turned ugly as hundreds of protesters turned on an "undercover police officer" and a reporter from the Global Times. This prompted the Hong Kong police to launch a rescue operation. The protesters then clashed with the riot police, who attempted to force their way into the airport with pepper sprays. The protesters haveapologised for the airport violence saying, “after months of prolonged resistance, we are frightened, angry and exhausted. Some of us have become easily agitated and over-reacted last night.” The Hong Kong airport was cleared and re-opened on Wednesday on court orders.
China has called the protests as “near terrorism”. Xu Luying, spokeswoman for the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council said, “We express the strongest condemnation of these terrorist-like actions. This has seriously damaged the international image of Hong Kong and hurt the feelings of a vast number of mainland Chinese compatriots. The extremely abominable violent crime must be severely punished according to the law".
The Associated Press reports that over 500 armored vehicles of China’s paramilitary People’s Armed Police are parked in a sports complex of Shenzhen city. The Chinese media has said that Shenzhen exercises had been planned and were not directly related to the unrest in Hong Kong. But, the movement came shortly after Beijing's comments as protests being “sprouts of terrorism.” Earlier this week, social media was flooded withvideos of a large scale movement of the Chinese PAP vehicles travelling towards Shenzhen in Guangdong province. Shenzhen is just 25 km from Hong Kong.
Check the map at the end of this section.
Scholars have argued that these are threats to deter the protesters, and China would not use force in Hong Kong. Anna Fifield reports for the Washington Post that Beijing would stop short of sending the troops. They have used stringent language possible. “The responsibility after the use of force will fall on President Xi and CMC. But the blame would be on the Hong Kong police force now,” she argues. Minxin Pei argues for the South China Morning Post that President Xi would not use the force till PRC’s 70th anniversary, which is on October 1. He adds that action is unlikely as it may have a severe impact on the Chinese economy.
Willy Wo-Lap-Lam, a senior fellow for Jamestown Foundation argues that Beijing has a better alternative than the PLA deployment. They have covertly deployed mainland police in Hong Kong. A squad officer was addressing his colleagues as tongzhimen (同志们), or “comrades” during one recent anti-riot operations. This is a mainland Chinese term seldom used in Hong Kong, he says. “Since the Umbrella movement of 2014, China has secretly added over 30,000 members to the Hong Kong Police force from the mainland. Majority of them are from the neighbouring Cantonese speaking Guangdong province. This has helped them to integrate better,”he says.
Taiwan Strait, Median Line and PLA
Taiwanese press reports that the PLAN has increased its presence in the Taiwan Strait. UDN news reports that the PLAN has increased patrolling on the eastern side of the median line, since the start of the year. The median line is an imaginary line at 27°N, 122°E (north) and 23°N, 118°E (south) announced by the government of Taiwan. The median line is used for separating two sides of the Taiwan Strait. Till last year, China patrolled the western side of the Taiwan Strait using a single patrol ship. It has now increased this number to two and has started making inroads on the eastern side of the median line.
The Taiwanese report citing a military source said that the PLA Navy deploys its older and smaller vessels such as early Type-054 Jiangkai I, or modernised Type-053. The source adds that these vessels would gradually make way for newer Type-056 corvettes. In response, Taiwan has increased its presence from one to two ships in the strait for patrolling. But, Taiwanese defence authorities are concerned that even the old PLA Navy vessels are more capable than those ROC Navy deployments.
For details and an image of the imaginary median line, follow the full twitter thread by Collin Koh.
Lesson Learnt from Liaoning Aircraft Carrier
China’s domestically built aircraft carrier, the Type 001A, will house 36 fighter aircraft, 50 per cent more than its sister carrier, the Liaoning. The Type 001A is an upgraded version of the Liaoning, former Soviet Kuznetsov-class carrier.
China purchased the Liaoning in 1998 and was commissioned in 2012. It began manufacturing the Type 001A in 2013 and was launched in 2017.
Hu Wenming, the Chief of the shipbuilding program said, “The two carriers look similar, but they are essentially different from design, research and development perspectives. The Type 001A is more optimised and have advanced technology installed.” The Chief Commander of the aircraft carrier added that the lessons learnt from the Liaoning are put to good use.
Reportedly, the Type 001A can house 12 J-15 fighter more than the Liaoning. It also has a more advanced 360-degree radar for search operations. Both the ships can carry 14 helicopters and are powered by four-shaft conventional steam turbines. The top speed of the Type 001A is 31 knots, slower than the Liaoning’s 32. While the Type 001A retained the Liaoning’s ski-jump flight deck, at 315 metres (1,033ft), 10 metres longer. The new ship has a full displacement of 70,000 tonnes, compared with the Liaoning’s 58,600 tonnes.
Stories from Defense One
PLA to Miss Deadlines
Henry Boyd, a research fellow at the International Institute of Strategic Studies, argues that the PLA is set to miss its deadline for mechanisation and informatisation. President Xi had called the PLA to make all efforts to be a world-class army by 2050. In the process, Xi had pledged that the PLA would achieve basic mechanisation by 2020 and informatisation by 2035. But Boyd argues for Defense One that the PLA would miss both the deadlines. He highlights the PLA Army service as one of the main reasons for this. Boyd agrees that the army has shrunk, but it still has twice the number of active troops than the US Army. Equipping such a force with modern weapons is an enormous task. Besides, this also takes a toll on other services like the navy, air force, rocket force and strategic support force.
“The PLA Army has about 5,800 main battle tanks in service. Only 60 per cent out of these are based on relatively modern designs such as the ZTZ-96 and ZTZ-99. Around 2,000 are based on the obsolescent ZTZ-59, a license-built version of the Soviet T-54. Only one or maybe two brigades currently operate the Type-15 (ZTQ-15) light tank mentioned by the white paper. For other armored vehicles, the picture is worse: Only about 20 of the roughly 50 heavy and medium combined arms brigades (excluding amphibious formations) are currently equipped with the latest tracked (ZBD-04/-04A) or wheeled (ZBL-08) infantry fighting vehicles.”
Replacing the older vehicles is a key component of mechanisation and unlikely to be achieved by 2020.
China’s New Warfare: Biotech + AI
Elsa Kania, an Adjunct Senior Fellow with the Technology and Nation Security Program at the Centre for a New American Security, argues that the PLA is sponsoring research on gene-editing, human performance enhancement and more. China’s national strategy of civil-military fusion (军民融合) has highlighted biology as its priority. The People’s Liberation Army could be at the forefront of expanding and exploiting this opportunity, she writes.
The PLA’s keen interest is reflected through its strategic writings and research. Some of them are as follows:
- War on Biological Dominance (制生权战争), 2010 by a professor with the Third Military Medical University.
- Biotechnology will become the new “strategic commanding heights” of national defense, from biomaterials to “brain control” weapons. This was argued in 2015 by the then president of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences, He Fuchu (贺福初).
- Biology is among seven “new domains of warfare” discussed in a 2017 book by Zhang Shibo (张仕波), a retired general and former president of the National Defense University.
- The 2017 edition of Science of Military Strategy (战略学), a textbook published by PLA’s National Defense University mentioned the potential for new kinds of biological warfare to include “specific ethnic genetic attacks.”
“Following these lines of thinking, the PLA is pursuing military applications for biology and looking into promising intersections with other disciplines, including brain science, supercomputing, and artificial intelligence. The CMC has funded projects on military brain science, advanced biomimetic systems, biological and biomimetic materials, human performance enhancement, and “new concept” biotechnology,”argues Kania.
There is more about Gene editing and AI + Biotech, and its application for the PLA in her article. Read it here.
Exercises and Drills
Beijing has started a series of military exercises in the disputed South China Sea (SCS). The exercises are carried out near the Paracel chain of islands in SCS. This is with the background of growing tensions with Vietnam over maritime trade routes. The three-day exercises started this Tuesday. The tensions between China and Vietnam resurfaced last month over the energy-rich Vanguard Bank. Vietnam’s foreign ministry has complained about the presence of Chinese coastguard ships near its oil rig operation, off the Vanguard Bank. Observers noted that this could be a trick from the playbook of China to consolidate its presence around Paracel islands.
News Updates
- China’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS) has requested local level police organs to build an effective intelligence command system for the upcoming 70th anniversary of the establishment of the PRC. The intelligence team needs this to strengthen their capability to analyze, speculate, send out early warnings, rapidly react, command and deal with emergencies.
- More than 21,000 PLA service personnel and militia were involved in the rescue and relief operations in China’s typhoon hit eastern Zhejiang province. About 400 vessels were dispatched to evacuate more than 33, 000 local residents. The military also helped to repair 247 km of roads, clear about 3,200 meters of rivers and transport 105 tonnes of relief material, the report claimed.
- People’s Daily reports that China plans to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) for drones to make them self-capable. This would enable the drones to fly, identify targets and take decisions on their own. Li Yidong, chief designer of China’s Wing Loong Series drones said that AI is a fundamental requirement for the development of fighter drones. Drones today are operated manually and remotely from ground stations. But the signals could be jammed in electric warfare and the aircraft could lose their combat capability. Mr Li plans to overcome this difficulty by introduction of AI.
The Takshashila PLA Insight is written by Suyash Desai, a research analyst at The Takshashila Institution.
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