– Project 2049 Institute – A big picture look at China’s current military strategy.

– The Diplomat – The PLA Marines are at present a relatively small amphibious assault force, numbering just two brigades with roughly 6,000 men each. Nevertheless, they are reinforced by naval and air power, amphibious artillery and armor. The PLA Marines are considered an elite special operations force, and theoretically therefore “punch above their weight class.” They are well trained and well equipped, using both the latest Chinese and Russian technology. They are trained for amphibious and airborne assault operations. While they were originally designed to be a much larger mass invasion force, they have quickly evolved into a rapid deployment invasion force specifically tasked for assault operations. Despite this, however, the PLA Marines are still very much a work in progress (as is arguably the PLA Navy in general), and currently lack the full necessary capabilities for a cross-Strait invasion of Taiwan. They are, however, rapidly developing this capability as part of overall Chinese military strategy.

– War is Boring – Taiwanese spies caught helping Beijing build E-2 clone.

– Asia Unbound – Out of the limelight, Gulf of Aden cooperation has provided both China and the United States with a vital conduit for progressive military contact amid protracted mistrust in the Asia Pacific. Indeed, their navies recently conducted a joint anti-piracy exercise there. In the future, Far Seas non-traditional security cooperation is set to play an even larger role in buttressing Sino-American military relations.

– The Diplomat – An update on the Chinese antiship ballistic missile program.

– US and China Economic Security Review Commission – In the late 1980s, China began a modernization program to transform the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy from a coastal force into a technologically-advanced regional navy. China’s acquisition of platforms, weapons, and systems has emphasized qualitative improvements, not quantitative growth, and centered on improving its ability to strike opposing ships at sea and operate at greater distances from the Chinese mainland. The PLA Navy has made significant progress, particularly since the late 1990s. Today, it is able to conduct high intensity operations in China’s immediate periphery and carry out low intensity operations around the world. Trends in China’s defense spending, research and development, and shipbuilding suggest the PLA Navy will continue to modernize through at least 2020. China’s increasingly advanced and adaptive naval capabilities – many of which appear to be designed to restrict U.S. freedom of action throughout the Western Pacific – could undermine U.S. interests and security in the region.

– Congressional Research Service – The Congressional Research Service’s most recent analysis of the Chinese Navy.

– Breaking Defense – Because China believes it is much weaker than the United States, they are more likely to launch a massive preemptive strike in a crisis. Here’s the other bad news: The current US concept for high-tech warfare, known as Air-Sea Battle, might escalate the conflict even further towards a “limited” nuclear war, says one of the top American experts on the Chinese military.

– War is Boring – The DF-21D is China’s answer to America’s carriers, with an unusual origin in the Kosovo War.

– War is Boring – Beijing catching up to America’s flattops, maybe.

– The National Interest – Shanghai’s Changxing Island Shipyard, already home to both conventional-submarine and civil production, now appears to be preparing to construct China’s first indigenous aircraft carrier. Internet and satellite photos have emerged of a hull module whose limited dimensions suggest that it represents a cost-controlled demonstration of relevant construction capabilities.

– The Diplomat – A recent query from a colleague asked a very simple question: If America’s AirSea Battle (ASB) was ever called into service against China’s anti-access/area denial strategy (A2/AD), who wins? Yikes. The simple answer, without making loyal Diplomat readers suffer through a 10,000 word academic slog is… no one.

– US Naval Institute Proceedings – Military-to-military cooperation between the United States and China has been stalled for years. Here’s a suggestion to help bolster it.

– Guardian – China says its ships ‘sternly declared’ sovereignty over the islands, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China.

– Washington Times – China maintains the fastest-growing fleet of ballistic and cruise missiles on the planet, and soon will deploy a nuclear-tipped, submarine-launched ballistic missile capable of hitting the United States from Chinese waters, according to a new Pentagon report.

– Signal – The People’s Republic of China has been introducing diverse new classes of ships into its navy for decades, but it also has employed some as vessels for weapons trials. Three ships distinctly have served as test platforms for many of the new technologies that entered service with the People’s Liberation Army Navy, or PLAN. An examination of these trial ships can illustrate the next generation of technologies about to be incorporated in the navy.

– Stars and Stripes – A century before Columbus discovered America, Chinese naval vessels many times bigger than the Santa Maria sailed the high seas, reaching as far as Africa. But, unlike European voyages of discovery, the Chinese efforts did not forge a global empire. Beset by internal strife, China abandoned its naval efforts, and by 1500, it was a capital offense to build a seagoing junk with more than two masts. Today, fueled by a booming economy, Chinese naval power is on the rise again.

– BBC – China and Russia are beginning joint naval drills which Beijing has described as the country’s largest with a foreign partner.

– Medium – Beijing’s submarine fleet is not as big or powerful as U.S. military planners once feared. Have its blue-water ambitions been overstated?

– Jamestown Foundation – China’s deployment of the world’s first operational anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) has just been confirmed with unprecedented clarity by the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). The ASBM’s development path was unusual in many respects, but may increasingly represent the shape of things to come for China’s defense industry.

– Economist – China’s growing empire of ports abroad is mainly about trade, not aggression.

– US Naval War College Review – Non-arctic states, including China, India, and Italy, as well as the European Union collectively, are making preparations to exploit a seasonally ice-free Arctic, thus complicating the Arctic’s already fragile security environment. As the Finnish Foreign Minister stated in 2009, “the Arctic is evolving from a regional frozen backwater into a global hot issue.” Most notable among these external actors is the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which has maintained a vast, well-funded Arctic research apparatus since the mid-1990s and has invested heavily in Arctic-resource projects in recent years. For China’s energy import–dependent economy, Arctic resources and sea-lanes present a welcome strategic remedy. In light of the nation’s growing Arctic interests, Chinese leaders have begun to promulgate the notion that China is a “near-Arctic state” and a “stakeholder” in Arctic affairs. Notwithstanding China’s assertiveness with respect to its Arctic interests, important questions remain as to how it will pursue these ambitions, as it possesses neither Arctic territory nor the ability to vote on official policy at the Arctic Council. Cognizant of these inherent disadvantages, the PRC is leveraging its economic, political, and diplomatic might in order to secure for itself a say in Arctic affairs.

– US Naval Institute Proceedings – The newly launched Chinese aircraft carrier appears to be merely symbolic and nothing more—at least for now.

– US Naval War College Review – Wang Yilin, chairman of the China National offshore oil Corporation (CNooC), reportedly told an audience at CNooC’s headquarters in Beijing in May that large-scale deepwater rigs are “our mobile national territory and a strategic weapon.” An interesting look at how this may be true…

– Foreign Policy – Every morning at 6 a.m., more than two dozen of the world’s leading submarine watchers, aviation experts, government specialists, imagery analysts, cryptanalysts, and linguists gather at the headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Fleet in Hawaii. Their job is to probe the overnight intelligence reports to guide the activities and strategies of the five aircraft carrier groups, 180 ships, and nearly 2,000 aircraft that constantly patrol the Pacific and Indian oceans. The morning meetings are convened by the fleet’s top intelligence officer, Capt. James Fanell, and cover activities emanating anywhere “from Hollywood to Bollywood,” as the head of U.S. Pacific Command, Adm. Samuel Locklear, likes to put it. But the group never takes long before zeroing in on the country driving the United States’ military and diplomatic “pivot” to Asia. “Every day it’s about China; it’s about a China who’s at the center of virtually every activity and dispute in the maritime domain in the East Asian region,” said Fanell, reading from prepared remarks at a U.S. Naval Institute conference in San Diego on Jan. 31. Fanell, in comments that went largely unnoticed outside the small circle of China military specialists, spelled out in rare detail the reasons the United States is shifting 60 percent of its naval assets — including its most advanced capabilities — to the Pacific. He was blunt: The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy is focused on war, and it is expanding into the “blue waters” explicitly to counter the U.S. Pacific Fleet. “I can tell you, as the fleet intelligence officer, the PLA Navy is going to sea to learn how to do naval warfare,” he said. “My assessment is the PLA Navy has become a very capable fighting force.”