Is the People’s Liberation Army Navy a threat to British interests?
Is the People’s Liberation Army Navy a threat to British interests?
The Big Ask | No. 07.2024
Last week the Royal Navy monitored two People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) ships as they passed through British waters – as they returned from the annual Navy Day parade in St. Petersburg. As the United Kingdom (UK) is an island nation, access to, and the freedom of, the world's oceans are of critical importance. This comes at a time when Beijing is growing increasingly aggressive in the South China Sea, while its rapid maritime military buildup shows no signs of abating. So, in this week’s Big Ask, we asked seven experts: To what extent is the People’s Liberation Army Navy a threat to British interests?
Neil Brown
Distinguished Fellow, Council on Geostrategy
The presence of PLAN warships in the Baltic Sea, exercising with the Russian Navy, mirrors similar activity between the two in the Barents and South China Seas and also – along with Iran – in the Gulf of Oman. These highlight the growing strategic connection between the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Russia, Iran and North Korea, and the fact that the PLAN is the branch of the Chinese military with the greatest global reach. Its capability is formidable and is rapidly growing. It supports Beijing’s blatantly assertive stances against the free and open international order; but the threat to British interests is wider and acute.
The PLAN is an essential vehicle for the PRC’s regional ambitions, including its excessive geographical and jurisdictional maritime claims in the South and East China seas. By adding military to diplomatic and economic heft, the PLAN (along with the Coast Guard and Militias) enables Beijing to use lawfare and assert bogus claims and gain concessions from neighbouring states (and Pacific Commonwealth and British overseas territories). This undermines their sovereignty and access to their own marine and subsea resources, as well as the universal implementation of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) which codifies international rights of access and presence.
The PLAN is an essential vehicle for PRC global ambitions through: SSBNs which give it a nuclear capability effectively outside any missile or disarmament treaty regime; force projection led by three aircraft carriers; an increasing presence in regions from the Caribbean (where it is courting British overseas territories with strategic intent) to the Arctic and Antarctic (where it is seeking to exploit emerging physical and legal opportunities); and a now permanent presence in the Red Sea and Arabian Sea where it exploits the UNCLOS rights in territorial seas, international straits and exclusive economic zones which it denies to others to undermine the United States (US) and UK-led maritime order.
William Freer
Research Fellow on National Security, Council on Geostrategy
When considering whether the PLAN is a threat to Britain, four different elements should come to mind, each answered in order. These are: 1. Defining what British interests are; 2. Judging the intent of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP); 3. Current and future capabilities of the PLAN; and 4. Geography.
Broadly speaking, British interests are to support the free and open international order, in particular the global commons – and foremost among these, the sea. The true intentions of the CCP are hard to know at any level of granularity. But it is fair to say recent actions in supporting the Russian war effort against Ukraine, increasing aggression in the South China Sea, and direction of travel towards more militaristic rhetoric, all show that Beijing intends to displace this order (at least hemispherically, if not globally).
Backing this intent is the concerning expansion of maritime power (both civilian and military) – enabled by the world’s most extensive dockyard capacity – the PRC is undertaking. Not only has the size of the PLAN’s battlefleet expanded, but it has also introduced new capabilities in recent years, including aircraft carriers. The range and volume of the PRC’s already impressive anti-access and area denial (A2/AD) bubbles has grown substantially, and nascent power projection capability is being introduced. Even the US is struggling to build enough warships to maintain deterrence; for example, commissioning just 14 escorts (cruisers, destroyers, and frigates) in the last ten years to the PRC’s 58. Some may say geography ensures the PLAN is no threat to Britain, but the connectivity between the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific and the PRC’s growing activity far from home show that this is no longer true.
Charles Parton
Distinguished Fellow, Council on Geostrategy
To answer this question, we need to define both the geography and the timeframe. At present, the PLAN is yet to become a powerful blue water navy. It is, however, a force to be reckoned with in the South China Sea. A PRC invasion of Taiwan would depend significantly on the PLAN. No matter how loudly the CCP protests that Taiwan is an internal Chinese matter, Taiwan affects British interests, and not just because the UK’s – and the world’s – prosperity is dependent on the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation’s continuing supply of semiconductors. Trade and other relations are not of first order importance, but they are growing. Taiwan is integral to the maintenance of America's strategic position in the western Pacific and Britain’s security is closely bound up with that of the US. PLAN activities also threaten international rule of law through its attempts to interfere with freedom of navigation in the South China Sea and through its role in the militarisation of those seas, in defiance of rulings of the Hague arbitral tribunal under the UNCLOS, which the PRC has signed, ratified and ignored.
The PLAN is at present not a threat to London’s interests in the broader world. It lacks the ships, overseas bases and experience of the US, UK, France or Russia. But the ambition to join that group is there, the shipbuilding programme is set to full throttle, the first overseas bases are developing, and recent exercises with the Russians have started the business of acquiring experience. To paraphrase Mao, a voyage of 10,000 nautical miles begins with the first steps.
Prof. Alessio Patalano
Professor of War and Strategy in East Asia, King’s College London
To what extent the PLAN is a threat to British interests? The answer requires some reformulation of the question itself. The PLAN is not a ‘threat’ to British interests in that it does not represent a direct military challenge to British sovereign territory or British nationals. However, the PLAN is part of a multilayered civilian, paramilitary, and military structure that Chinese political authorities are increasingly using to advance maritime interests through coercion and the threat of use of force. Such a use of national resources, including the PLAN, fundamentally undermines the core principles of freedom of navigation underwriting global order at sea that ensures British economic independence and sovereignty.
To this extent, therefore, the PLAN represents a potentially critical challenge to UK national security. In particular, given its size and character, as much as those of the other Chinese maritime services, the PLAN constitutes part of what the Integrated Review Refresh referred to as the ‘epoch defining’ aspect of the PRC challenge as a whole. This requires Britain to possess adequate maritime means and projection capabilities to monitor the PLAN’s activities and address its endeavours – whether in the English Channel or in other areas vital to British economic interests. This also requires the UK to work closely with allies and partners to maximise its efforts and guarantee maximum effects – including in meeting PLAN challenges in the realms of conventional and strategic deterrence.
Danielle Reeder
Freelance Security and Defence Consultant
The PLAN has been burning fuel to show the UK and its allies that Chinese naval power is capable, and growing. Last week, the Royal Navy escorted the Chinese destroyer Jiaozuo and fleet auxiliary Hongzhu through British waters.
As a clear show of Chinese naval force, there are two threads of concern for UK interests: lawfare and warfare. On lawfare, the PLAN move is an all but expected tit-for-tat demonstration of what the Royal Navy would rightly defend as freedom of navigation. But as with the growing trend of ‘weaponised lawfare’, Beijing’s message may be a demonstration that it can exercise such freedom in North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) allies’ territorial waters, while a reciprocal action could be met with aggression. This would certainly follow the tendency of asymmetric rule ordinance that applies to Chinese fishing vessels in the South China Sea, and the disproportionate use of military assets to manage such disputes.
In addition to reminding the UK and its allies of the Chinese military build-up, the PRC also shows further development of its military alliance with Russia. On warfare, rapid expansion of naval power is indeed a credible cause for concern, but Britain and its allies still out-power Beijing’s ambitions in terms of military partnerships and deployability.
While any combination of Chinese and Russian assets pose a real threat to international peace and security, the more the PRC flexes, the more it alienates its neighbours. If anything, the Indo-Pacific nations will find themselves ever more in a position of wanting and needing to form credible alliances to secure stability. Beijing may be able to show Britain that it has the military might to square-up in a stand-off, but it is still a long way from the mainland to St. Petersburg.
Dr Kevin Rowlands
Associate Fellow in Naval Strategy, Council on Geostrategy - (Writing in a personal capacity)
There is a long history of Russian warships passing through British waters. The usual response from the Royal Navy is to dispatch a warship to do a little friendly ‘shadowing’. It shows that the UK knows they are there and that the Royal Navy can do something about it. Chinese naval vessels appearing in UK waters is not new, but they are much rarer, and the response is the same.
But should they be here? Well, why not on their ‘lawful occasions?’ The PLAN is exercising the same rights to freedom of navigation and demonstrating global presence that British and allied ships do in the Indo-Pacific; rights enshrined in UNCLOS. And therein lies the rub. Any thought that the Indo-Pacific and the Euro-Atlantic are separate, discrete regional theatres is quite simply wrong. The Chinese are not ‘there’, nor are the Russians just ‘here’. The world is smaller than that.
Russia is a Pacific nation and the PRC’s Belt and Road Initiative has already extended its reach into the Euro-Atlantic. There is certainly more to come as the High North opens to maritime trade and traffic. The PRC is ‘tilting’ to the Euro-Atlantic now, as the passage of Jiaozuo and Honghu has shown. We need not be alarmist about that, but we do need to understand it is happening.
Dr Emma Salisbury
Research Fellow on Sea Power, Council on Geostrategy
The PLAN, Chinese Coast Guard, and Maritime Militia have all undergone significant expansion and modernisation in recent years. The PLAN is now numerically the largest navy in the world, with growing numbers of modern multi-mission combatants. Accordingly, the PRC now has considerable capability in its regional waters and an increasing ability to pursue blue water operations on a wider scale.
For the last 30 years, Beijing has consistently referred to the nation’s ‘maritime rights and interests’ in nearby seas within the First Island Chain, and much of the Chinese build-up of maritime power is aimed at both defending these and advancing them coercively. In recent years, the PLAN has begun to perform missions outside the First Island Chain, gradually extending its ability to operate outside the range of the PRC’s land-based defences.
The implications of PRC naval expansion for the Euro-Atlantic region depend on how effectively the UK can work with allies and partners to navigate the complexities of geopolitical competition in the maritime domain. By investing in Royal Navy capabilities, strengthening alliances and partnerships, and promoting dialogue and cooperation, Britain can work to safeguard the national interest and preserve an open international order to promote peace and stability at sea.
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