– 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.”

– Wall Street Journal – The U.S. Department of Defense annual report on Chinese military developments, released on Monday, has made a splash by putting forth the most direct official accusations so far of Chinese cyberintrusions into the U.S. government computers. But the 92-page report – much improved from its 43-page 2012 predecessor, which was widely criticized for being many days late and dollars short – offers a number of other important insights into China’s growing military capabilities.

– US Department of Defense – The DOD’s annual update on China.

– Wired – Over the next 15-20 years, the U.S. and China are headed for a confrontation in the western Pacific, with Japan caught in the middle. And China, currently the underdog, could very well come out on top. That’s the unnerving conclusion of a new report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

– Bloomberg – The Chinese military has deployed its new anti-ship ballistic missile along its southern coast facing Taiwan, the Pentagon’s top military intelligence officer said today.

– BBC – Japan would respond with force if any attempt is made to land on disputed islands, PM Shinzo Abe has warned.

– Daily Telegraph – China’s first aircraft carrier could make its maiden long distance journey “within the year”, state media has announced in a further indication of the country’s growing military clout.

– The Diplomat – Debates over China’s anti-access system of systems and its desire to pierce the successive Pacific Island chains often overlook the fact that China faces a very basic set of maritime problems. The PRC draws its most important resources from across an ocean that it cannot control, and exports most of its finished goods to overseas partners who similarly lay beyond the reach of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). Whether or not the PLAN can deter or defeat the U.S. Navy (USN) in China’s littoral, the organization’s true test lies in its ability to secure the PRC’s critical lines of communication.

– Congressional Research Service – The question of how the United States should respond to China’s military modernization effort, including its naval modernization effort, has emerged as a key issue in U.S. defense planning. The question is of particular importance to the U.S. Navy, because many U.S. military programs for countering improved Chinese military forces would fall within the Navy’s budget.

– USA Today – A Chinese navy flotilla is conducting military drills at an island chain that is claimed by nearby Malaysia in a rare and provocative visit to the southernmost part of the South China Sea.