Covert Shores – Better images have emerged of a new Chinese Navy (uncrewed surface vessel. The new type was first observed in Chinese social media reports in August last year. The type is known to be related to mine hunting.

CIMSEC – This article will analyze these unconventional methods, focusing centrally on China’s evolving systems and strategies, while also drawing parallels to other unconventional strategies of other nations. That said, this article is centrally focused on Chinese maritime strategy evolution and its ramifications. These tools, by examining an undercurrent of strategy applied to different facets of the undersea domain, establish an argument on Beijing’s military-civil infrastructure, through research vessels, cargo fleets, fishing boats, and autonomous drones. In such a way, this infrastructure operates without acting as a clear and present threat or exigency for war; rather, it functions simply as an inconvenience or mild concern, one which becomes increasingly threatening, despite not acting as an obviously military entity

RUSI – Beijing claims a Philippine resupply mission to Second Thomas Shoal was illegal, lacking approval from Beijing, China has shifted to treating this as space it administers.

Global Times – The Chinese PLA Navy sent the Liaoning carrier task group to the Western Pacific on Wednesday for training. This is the Liaoning’s second far-sea training deployment to the Western Pacific this year, which also marks the 10th anniversary of its first such deployment in late December 2016, after the carrier entered service. 

Military experts told the Global Times that the Liaoning’s decade of far-sea operations tells the story of its transformation from a “coastal pathfinder” to a “far-sea blade,” and mirrors the Chinese Navy’s strategic shift from near-sea defense to far-sea defense.

China Maritime Studies Institute – In recent years, the PLA has employed a new concept—“preclusion” (shezu)—that captures the two related missions of deterring and denying U.S. military intervention in a Taiwan conflict.

In Chinese military strategy, “preclusion” would seek to combine defensive operations on “interior lines” and offensive operations on “exterior lines.” The former would rely on shore based cruise and ballistic missiles “to use the land to control the sea,” while the latter would favor long-range air and naval operations to envelop the approaching enemy.

The “preclusion” concept is essential to PLA thinking on “cognitive warfare,” which seeks, among other aims, to deprive the adversary of the will to intervene on Taiwan’s behalf.

Precluding U.S. military intervention in a Taiwan conflict is an apparent driver of the PLA Navy’s development and employment of carrier strike groups. It is the core focus of PLA Air Force training and operations beyond the First Island Chain.