Defence Committee
Oral evidence: UK Defence and the Far East, HC 2035
Tuesday 25 June 2019
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 25 June 2019.
Members present: Dr Julian Lewis (Chair); Leo Docherty; Martin Docherty-Hughes; Mr Mark Francois; Graham P. Jones; Gavin Robinson; Ruth Smeeth; John Spellar.
Questions 1-72
Witnesses
I: Dr John Hemmings, Director, Asia Studies Centre, Henry Jackson Society, Dr Lynn Kuok, Associate Fellow, Asia-Pacific Programme, International Institute for Strategic Studies, Dr Alessio Patalano, Department of War Studies, Kings College London, and James Rogers, Director General, Global Britain Programme, Henry Jackson Society.
Written evidence from witnesses:
– Policy Exchange (DFE0005) - Dr Alessio Patalano
Witnesses: Dr John Hemmings, Dr Lynn Kuok, Dr Alessio Patalano and James Rogers.
Q1 Chair: Welcome to this oral evidence session, the first in a series, on the topic of UK defence and the Far East. We have a panel of four expert witnesses. I invite each of them to say a few words about themselves by way of introduction, starting with Alessio.
Dr Patalano: Good morning. My name is Alessio Patalano. I am a reader in East Asian warfare and security in the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London, and a senior fellow at Policy Exchange. My main area of expertise and what brings me here today is East Asian strategic history and maritime-related security issues, with a particular emphasis on Japan and Japan-China relations.
Dr Kuok: Thank you for the invitation to testify. My name is Lynn Kuok. I am an associate fellow at the IISS, the International Institute for Strategic Studies. I am also a senior research fellow at the University of Cambridge, as well as a visiting scholar at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Centre. I work on issues related to the politics, law and security of Asia-Pacific or Indo-Pacific, with a particular focus on the South China Sea.
Dr Hemmings: I am Dr John Hemmings. Thank you, Chair, for the invitation to be here. I am the Asia studies director and deputy research director at the Henry Jackson Society. I am also an adjunct fellow at CSIS and the Pacific Forum. I am here, like my colleagues, because of my close attention to security and foreign policy issues in the East Asian region, including Japan, the Korean peninsula, China and, to a lesser extent, India.
Chair: Slightly unusually, we have another person from the Henry Jackson Society, but one with a different perspective on the issue at hand.
James Rogers: Thank you very much for the invitation. My name is James Rogers. I am the director of the Global Britain programme at the Henry Jackson Society. My areas of expertise, aside geopolitics in East Asia and the Indo-Pacific region, also correspond to Britain’s defence policy and wider geostrategic orientation since the 19th or even the 18th century.
Q2 John Spellar: I have a couple of scene-setting questions to start. First, what is your assessment of the current security situation in the Asia-Pacific region?
Dr Hemmings: The situation is not critical, but certainly—I think everyone here is probably in agreement to different degrees—we are in a situation of immense flux. There are huge opportunities in the region. Obviously, the rise of China has been a massive economic boon to the region, and India is becoming similar, but there are historical residues, such as between Japan and China, on who will lead regional integration. There is also the US alliance system which to some extent has attempted to assimilate China into that order, but has seemingly failed as China begins to resurrect its own strategic ambition for the region. The result of much Chinese defence spending and modernisation has seen some uncertainty about its ultimate regional ambitions and strategic intent, so we have had what I would describe as some balancing behaviours and some strategic alignment, in the sense that the Quad and the Trilateral have all developed. Some of them did not originally have a China threat intention in them—they were built to give Japan a regional role—but as China’s rise has become more unclear and uncertain in intention, so those bodies have begun to form and coalesce around what seems to be the potential Chinese threat.
Dr Kuok: There are certain flashpoints in the region that we should be very careful about, because tensions are rising. Of the four flashpoints that are normally identified—North Korea, Taiwan, the East China Sea and the South China Sea—I would say that the situation in the case of North Korea is now more stable, as compared with 18 months ago. In the case of Taiwan, there are always some tensions there. China is right to be exercising strategic patience; it has all the time in the world and other tools at its disposal apart from military options. In that case as well, we are not likely to see the flashpoint become a flash. However, in the East and South China Seas, tensions are rapidly rising because of the increased presence of Chinese vessels.
In the East China Sea, that is slightly less severe because the powers are more evenly balanced. Japan and China have arguable parity in terms of force, so that is likely to deter any risky behaviour. However, in the South China Sea, we have seen very unbalanced powers, with China as a powerful player and the smaller countries facing increasingly risky attempts by China—as we saw in the last week or two—to collide with their vessels. This is all very dangerous because we might have a situation where China hits a vessel and, thereafter, the US becomes involved. That is one potential flashpoint.
We have seen China react rather strongly to the United States and to the UK and France exercising freedom of navigation rights—or, as I would rather say, asserting maritime rights and freedoms in the region. They are insisting on staving off such attempts to assert rights and freedoms in their seas, so that has been another danger spot as well.
Dr Patalano: I would probably categorise the current situation as unfolding from three different sets of security challenges. One pertains to traditional international politics power struggles about the redefinition of the order in the region and I categorise within that the competition and the growing tensions between the United States and China. To a lesser extent, that also implies the challenging security equations for some of the United States’ closest partners, most notably Japan and Australia.
We have a second set of security challenges, which are no less important. Few people tend to realise that the single largest source of death in that part of the world for the past 40 years is the risk of instability—natural and man-made disasters. These are frequent occurrences and over the past 10 years or so they have been much more destructive in power and have created much greater underlying problems within the region. That is important, because security is not only about countering military-type problems. Threats to prosperity and the ability to pursue prosperity are part of that equation as well.
The second category is risks of instability. The latest large disaster of that kind was the triple disaster in Japan in March 2011, which was extremely problematic and had repercussions in the UK as well. If you remember, between March and May 2011, the major Japanese car factories here—Honda, Nissan—were going behind. They had to reduce their production by half compared with the projection precisely because of the disruptions to the supply chain created by that. Even though today we are going to be focusing on a lot of the power struggle aspects, we should not underestimate the importance of the risks of instability generated by natural and man-made disasters.
There is a third category: the cold war legacy type of security challenges, of which the stability on the Korean peninsula and the situation across the Straits of Taiwan are the main and most important issues. How do these three sets of challenges come together? The overarching theme from a security perspective, in terms of how to approach them, is the fact that Asia-Pacific is a maritime-centric region. Most problems are taking place at sea and from the sea and that is also from where a lot of the solutions can come about. In terms of power struggles, to a degree, the East and the South China Seas’ tensions over maritime and territorial disputes in particular are a result of this dynamic. In particular, territorial sovereignty issues are about the competency of Governments to assert or claim rights over a territorial national space. From this perspective, in particular, that is an important component when we look at the Chinese approach to the East and South China Seas.
As far as instability is concerned, most of the action organising responses to the large, major disasters that have occurred over the last 10 years has been taken from the sea. As well as that, the sea has generated serious disasters in Japan and the Philippines; we know those disasters were generated either by freak waves—tsunamis—or by earthquakes that generated them. Because the populations in this region are concentrated around coastal areas, that increases the potential destructiveness of these events.
On the cold war legacy at the moment, the implementation of the UN Security Council resolutions, as far as North Korea is concerned, are taking effect. A very important aspect of that is taking place at sea in the East China Sea.
In terms of the risk assessment, I would agree that the Korean peninsula is stabilised at the moment, at least compared to a year ago. Diplomacy is leading the way in terms of moving forward. However, I would point out that it depends very much whether we are looking at the short term—over the next couple of years—or the medium term, in terms of articulating an assessment. If it is true that in the short term the South China Sea tensions are more volatile, and therefore problematic, then I believe that in the medium and long term the East China Sea could be the more dangerous area, even though it is less volatile and much more stable at the moment. That is particularly because it is where the two most powerful powers in the region—Japan and China—are facing each other. They are both on trends whereby they are, to a degree, addressing their political and financial problems, but not necessarily the defence element to it.
James Rogers: I add one other thing to what my co-panellists have already identified, and that is the wider structural economic change that is occurring in the world, regarding the centre of economic gravity. I am sure you have all seen the prominent map in The Economist that shows the passage of the economic centre of gravity of the world from north Asia towards the north Atlantic, during the British and American industrial revolutions, and now its gradual transition back again. One thing that will complicate and compound some of these issues is the fact that over the next 50 or 60 years we are going to see Asia and the Indo-Pacific region, not least the Far East, as we call it here, become increasingly important.
I have recently completed a study looking at some of the economic trading relationships of countries as far away as south America, which are, to some extent, also part of the Indo-Pacific region. What is so phenomenal is that over of the last 20 to 30 years there has been almost a complete role reversal. The main export market before was to Europe and north America, and now, increasingly, it is to China and south-east Asia. The growing attention to the region of the world’s major powers and other countries will complicate an already deteriorating picture.
Q3 John Spellar: That really looks at the current diplomatic situation, with some military overtones, phasing through the immediate into the intermediate and the long-term movement. What sort of investments are the major players putting into defence and military capabilities in pursuit of their strategies?
James Rogers: We have seen a significant increase. If you look at gross figures, the largest increase in defence spending has come from China over the past 20-year period. There has been a dramatic increase. If you look back to 2003 or 2004, China’s defence budget was the third or fourth biggest in the world. Indeed, the UK sat second only to the United States back then. Since then, there has been a dramatic change and China has grown and grown, and now it is spending between one fifth and one quarter of what the US is currently spending.
It may actually be spending more, given that there is some confusion about what is defence and what is security, and what is civilian use in China. For example, there has been a dramatic increase in the size of the Chinese navy and the Chinese air force. There is often a statistic put over that the Chinese navy increases by the size of the Royal Navy in gross displacement every single year, and has been doing so year after year, for the past five or six years. There is some truth to that, but what is really interesting is that China’s navy is undergoing a transformation in scale and size and the capability that China seeks to pursue. For the past 20 or 30 years, China’s navy has primarily been one of defensive capability, a brown, or even a green water fleet, that is to say, a navy that looks after China’s immediate vicinity.
Increasingly, China is investing in things such as large auxiliary vessels for replenishment, aircraft carriers and all kinds of apparatus of power projection. Sometimes, we get a little carried away in the West with how quickly this is happening, because it is going to take a very long time. Nevertheless, that indicates to some extent the intent of where China seeks to go in the longer term.
Q4 John Spellar: Is that investment also leading to a significant upgrade in capability, in other words, modernisation of their armed forces?
James Rogers: Yes, some of the equipment is much more advanced than what was produced before. You can see that simply by looking at the shape and size of the kind of vessels that are being developed.
Dr Kuok: If we just look at defence spending and the toys that China is buying, if that were the sole indicator of capability, China would be doing very well and would have reason to be patting itself on the shoulder. As my colleague Dr Tim Huxley from the IISS has pointed out, spending does not necessarily translate into effectiveness. We must also be looking at various other factors, such as appropriate doctrine, suitable training, inspiring leadership, high morale, the degree of logistic support and relevant combat experience.
China is particularly weak on this last point. While China is now said to be able to complicate US operational planning, its long-range offensive capabilities are still said to be rather weak. Of course, that can change very quickly, but if we look at the current trends, if we go back to defence spending, we saw double-digit growth in the first half of this decade. That has slowed down since 2016 to single-digit growth. It is not a small amount, but still a slowing down, which is likely in response to a sense that it is worrying the rest of the world.
Q5 John Spellar: Obviously, you have focused understandably on the growth in Chinese capability. What about the other actors in the region, notably Japan, but Vietnam or any others?
Dr Patalano: On that point, it is very important to take a step back away from China because when you take an aggregate look at Asia as a region—the IISS is at the leading edge on this—Asia overall is outpacing, outbuilding and outspending western Europe in modernising their military forces. In some places, such as China, we have growth in numbers, scale and everything. In other cases, it is mostly about modernisation. That is the case in south-east Asia. In places such as the Philippines and Vietnam, they are mostly focusing on replacing old vintage kit and buying new stuff.
The problem with these budgets—the fundamental limits to this type of investment—is that there is very little conceptualisation, as in support. Once you build this kit, how do you maintain it? How do you translate the possession of materiel into military effectiveness?
The three cases that stand out in this regard are Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. I will take them in reverse order. At the moment, Taiwan is facing a very important debate that might very well lead to a significant modernisation process. In particular, over the last few years they have been very keen in moving from a conscription-based military structure to a professional force with all the challenges that brings about. But they are also trying to invest incredibly into modernising their defence industry sector and start producing domestically combat weapon systems with a particular emphasis on denial capabilities, particularly because their top priority is for addressing the imbalance across the Taiwan Straits.
In so far as Japan is concerned, Japan is already the seventh or eighth spender on defence matters, depending on how you calculate it. It already has considerable military. It therefore does not necessarily focus on expanding its own capabilities, but rather on investing into areas where it was particularly weak—intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities, speed capabilities and increasingly more space.
South Korea is the most interesting country in this regard, because for a number of years their defence budget was flat. You would guess that, now that the situation with North Korea is relatively stable, there would be no particular need to increase the budget, but they recently announced that they are considering upgrading and expanding their arsenal. Where exactly they are going to go with that is difficult to understand entirely. Probably one of the options is to go back and enhance the expeditionary component of the South Korean military, which was not particularly paid attention to over the last few years, precisely because of the situation with North Korea.
Q6 Chair: You said that the situation with North Korea is now relatively stable. Why do you say that, given that on the wider scene with the United States there is still a great deal of attention and concern about North Korea?
Dr Patalano: It depends how you characterise tension. From a military perspective, the situation on the ground is pretty well known. The North Koreans continue to move troops around. It is likely that they have a schedule in terms of how to continue their development of those combat systems. It is nothing to be worried about or to take people completely by surprise, from that perspective. It is known what sort of trends are there. The Koreans have slowed down in that regard, but there is nothing new on the horizon.
The tension here is more about where the political and diplomatic game is going to go. In this respect, there are indicators that would suggest that Kim Jong-Un is trying very much to get out of the isolation that North Korea has been in for a relatively long period of time. The diplomatic game currently being played out with the United States is about that. It is about negotiating, through the possession of their own arsenal, a better political and diplomatic position for themselves.
Q7 Chair: So you think that they are looking for stable deterrents.
Dr Patalano: I think that is definitely the case. If you look at the trajectory between 2016 and early 2018 in terms of how they sped up the missile and nuclear testing programme, that was very much to be in the position, in retrospect, to be able to go to the negotiating table from a position of strength with the United States.
Q8 Chair: This Committee did a report specifically on North Korea, and we came to the conclusion that it was rather unlikely, after having invested so much effort in acquiring nuclear weapons, that North Korea would want to give them away. Can I just take a quick poll of the other three? How do you feel about the situation with regard to North Korea at the moment?
Dr Hemmings: Of course, it is very fluid. As we know, at the moment the Trump Administration has sent a letter trying to reopen negotiations, and it already looks as though the North Koreans are beginning to restart the provocation cycle that they used to run so successfully against previous US Administrations. In some senses, I think the Trump Administration has tried to leap in on that. We do not know the contents of the letter, but clearly they have tried to maintain momentum after the massive loss of face suffered by the North Korean regime in Hanoi. In Hanoi, the North Koreans completely underestimated the determination of the Trump Administration to get a good deal; they understood the determination to get a deal.
That is an overview, but there are deeper structural issues that are of more concern. In answer to your question specifically, there was a slight chance, as you saw in our report, that they might be persuaded by their very strong desire for economic modernisation—investment, not aid. The Trump Administration was very happy to go along with that promise. The problem, of course, has been the trust deficit, in terms of the North Koreans’ normal strategic approach towards the negotiation to always go for maximum gains at the outset.
The Trump Administration just walked away. Of course, for the moment we can recover from that, but what we see is a North Korean regime that—this is similar to the US-China relationship—does not understand Washington, and an American Administration that does not understand Pyongyang. Given the historical trust deficit, and the real, deep need for that incremental approach of de-sanctioning mixed with economic incentives, that would require real trust on both sides. I am not hopeful at the moment. I hope that my mind will be changed.
Dr Kuok: My view is that, because the consequences are so severe, we should not be complacent. However, I think the situation is stable, in the sense that, because the consequences are so severe, parties would think twice about doing anything.
Q9 Chair: So despite the rhetoric, you believe that the logic of nuclear mutual assured destruction applies to North Korea as to anybody else?
Dr Kuok: Yes.
Q10 Mr Francois: On the People’s Liberation Army’s navy increasing each year by the equivalent displacement of the Royal Navy, that statistic is not quite true, is it?
James Rogers: No. It is true, but it depends on the kinds of vessels that you are accounting for. The Chinese navy has grown quite substantially over recent years, in terms of total displacement. If we narrow down the focus away from the small coastal combatant patrol ships—small frigates, small patrol submarines and vessels of that nature—and instead look at the kinds of vessels that the US, UK or French navy can operate, or increasingly the Japanese or Australian navy, such as large frigates, large destroyers, amphibious ships, auxiliaries that can replenish at long distance and so on and so forth, the Chinese navy has not grown as dramatically as that statistic indicates. However, overall, the Chinese navy has grown quite substantially in recent years.
Q11 Mr Francois: Where are they on their carrier programme?
James Rogers: The issue is that, in recent years, China has procured a Soviet-era carrier, which has been upgraded in accordance with their own technical capabilities. But there is no substantive carrier programme on the same scale as operated by the United States, or even by the UK for that matter. But the key point to remember—this is critical—is that the technical and industrial capabilities are there for China to do this when it decides that the time is right for it.
Q12 Mr Francois: But in terms of what it is actually doing—not the fact that it could build them—it has procured one ex-Russian carrier of the Kuznetsov class, which you say they have modified. That is still in service, right?
James Rogers: Yes.
Q13 Mr Francois: Are they building any new aircraft carriers?
James Rogers: Yes.
Mr Francois: What I am interested in is how many and at what rate?
Chair: Presumably they are using their usual practice of procuring one from someone else so that they can reverse engineer it and develop their own techniques?
Q14 Mr Francois: Where are we on the Chinese carrier programme today?
Dr Patalano: The key element is to draw a distinction between overall tonnage and number of hulls. Since 2009, in terms of major surface combatants—from basically offshore frigates onwards—the Chinese have built the equivalent of the Royal Navy surface fleet every two and a half years.
Q15 Mr Francois: That is different from every year, isn’t it?
Dr Patalano: Precisely. We need to be careful about how we look at the statistics. In terms of scale, it is a big thing. Twenty years ago, these guys did not have a navy. These days, HMS Sutherland in the eastern South China Sea is never without a Chinese frigate shadowing it, as was Albion and as would any other ship. I have worked a lot with the Japanese and I can tell you that the East China Sea is never a lonely place; you will always have some companionship coming from the Chinese. In terms of scale, that is what matters, because on a daily basis there is a lot of equipment available at sea. That also means that seamanship is improving among mariners, even though the standardisation process is not what you would expect it to be in the Royal Navy, because they have come from zero—
Q16 Mr Francois: I do not mean to be rude, but we are tight for time. Are they building a new aircraft carrier?
Dr Patalano: They are building three carriers, and the latest chat on the Chinese internet is about a fourth carrier. The first one is going to be the one that we know—the Varyag; the Liaoning. The second one will still be conventional. The third one is probably going to be nuclear and the fourth one is seen to be nuclear with maglev catapults on top.
Q17 Mr Francois: How big are they?
Dr Patalano: At the moment, the projection is difficult to see. I would say 60,000.
Q18 Mr Francois: So they are about the same size as QE?
Dr Patalano: Yes. That is what we are looking at.
Q19 Gavin Robinson: Lynn, I will direct this question to you, because you touched on it briefly in your initial answers. How high do you see the risk of miscalculation in the region by state actors? I guess miscalculation could be at the micro level, with collisions between vessels, or at the geopolitical level. If the risk is high, how likely do you think it is that that could lead to conflict?
Dr Kuok: As I mentioned earlier, the risk of miscalculation in the East China Sea and the South China Sea has increased in the last couple of years. In the East China Sea, we have seen the highest number of vessels from China since 2012, when there were some tensions because the Japanese Government purchased the Senkakus from private owners, and 2016, when I assume the Chinese were upset because of the South China Sea tribunal ruling.
We have seen the number of ships in the East China Sea increasing and the longest coastguard presence in the East China Sea from the Chinese—I think it has been present for 60 days in the East China Sea. Japan is very worried, but as I said earlier, because of the proximate power parity between China and Japan, the consequences would be greater if a conflict or an incident occurred, and therefore they have kept their behaviour broadly in check since 2008, when there was a Chinese presence there.
My real concern, and this is what should be concerning the Committee as well, is the South China Sea, because we have seen several incidents that should really make us sit up and take notice. You all know about the massive militarisation of the islands that China has claimed in the South China Sea. There has been a complete build-up of them. There are missiles there and basically there are air-enabled facilities there. China has sent lots of vessels there to surround features, both to send a message that it lays claim to those territorial features and to send a broader message that it also lays claim to the maritime area around it.
What we have seen recently is China acting quite recklessly with regard to the smaller players in the region. We have had China send about 300 vessels to surround a Philippines-occupied feature in the last few months. They have been swarming the maritime space with their vessels. That is one—it has been intimidating smaller players.
It has also been more feckless in regard to its behaviour with respect to the United States—a bigger power. In December 2014, the United States and China signed a MoU—a memorandum of understanding—for safety at sea and air. Since then, we have not seen any incidents at sea between the United States and China, because China complied with the rules of behaviour at sea and air.
In September last year, China disregarded that in the incident between the USS Decatur and a Chinese vessel. The Chinese warship came very close to the USS Decatur, forcing it to manoeuvre. That was the first unsafe and unprofessional manoeuvre that had happened since the 2014 MoU. That is another reason why we should be worried.
The final reason why we should be worried, of course, is that China is increasingly irate about what it calls foreign powers playing in its playground. The UK and France have received particularly bad responses from China. China has accused the UK of breaching its sovereignty, or something like that, when the UK sailed through the Paracels to challenge its illegal and excessive straight baselines. When France went through the Taiwan Strait, which is international waters, it similarly said that France’s act was illegal and it was breaching Chinese waters.
Q20 Chair: Russia has the concept of its “near abroad”. Does China have a similar concept for this area, and if so, what is it called?
Dr Hemmings: There is to some extent a tributary system 2.0—that is not used in any policy language; I am simply creating that term right now. We have seen, among international relations scholars who are closely tied to the Communist party, the resurrection of the term tianxia, which is very much a hierarchical emperor system—essentially, the Chinese imperial concept. We have seen that resurrected among Chinese policy intellectuals who are close to the party.
In terms of how China is behaving in the South China Sea—take away the conceptual framework that I have laid out and look at just the behaviour—the Chinese certainly seem to be prioritising it as China’s lake. In other words, all those states around there will have their own sovereignty but essentially they will—as under the old tributary system, which was much looser than a formal European empire—have to have the military and foreign policy preferences of China pushed or promoted by Beijing. For example, in the Code of Conduct discussions, we have seen the Chinese try to insert the removal of the ability of ASEAN states to practise military exercises with external powers. It is not neo-colonialism, but it is a neo-tributary system essentially.
If we look forward at the economic drivers of the region, we see that it will count for a large percentage of global growth. That is one driver—the Chinese wish to dominate that economic market and to make, to some extent, a near abroad—but they are also worried about their trade routes and about their sea resources of energy and seafood. The South China Sea is a locus of all those things—ambition, energy vulnerability, energy resource need and the food stock in fishing waters.
Returning to the question about whether it would be a miscalculation, I think—just take away from the word—there will be a calculation. This is a very incremental plan to extend Chinese de facto sovereignty over the South China Sea, and to remove the ability of foreign powers to operate in that space. It might be a 20-year objective—or for the 2049 Chinese Communist Party centenary; we are not quite sure—but if we step back from the small behaviours of the day-to-day tactical and we try to understand the big picture 30,000 feet up, it is deeply concerning. It is a very strategic intention.
The final little bit that I will add—which I am sure will come up later in the Committee discussions—is the linkage to Middle East energy oil. That first island chain will essentially form a new buffer zone for Chinese trading and economic, and military preferences.
Dr Kuok: We talk about Chinese domination of the space—we don’t have to wait decades. Admiral Phil Davidson of the United States actually said a year ago, when he was testifying before the House Committee, that China has control of the South China Sea in all situations short of war. That probably overstates the case a little bit, because the United States and other powers, including the UK, continue to ply the waters of the South China Sea. So that statement overstates things, but his underlying point is an important one: China has a degree of control in the South China Sea that gives it definite military advantages and, I should point out, already gives it clear political and diplomatic advantages.
Examining the south-east Asian actors and how they behave in the South China Sea, their behaviour is a pale shadow of their behaviour in the past, when they were far more assertive in response to Chinese encroachment into their exclusive economic zones. Now it is silence. The other thing that China has done is clearly to undermine US credibility in the region. Overnight, China, like a magician, pulled huge artificial islands out of its hat, and the United States was asleep at the wheel. That has hit US credibility very hard.
Chair: We shall come on to those islands shortly. Martin briefly, then back to Gavin.
Q21 Martin Docherty-Hughes: On Gavin’s question about the risk of miscalculation, in the book, “Avoiding War with China”, Etzioni talks of “mutually assured restraint” as a key element of reducing risk in the Pacific and in the relationship between the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China. Do you agree with that, yes or no?
Dr Patalano: No, actually, I would not, because it depends so much on what you see China’s game as being about. China’s game is about leapfrogging—the Chinese are trying to complement lacks in certain areas with investment in asymmetric advantage. The key thing is that they win if they make it very difficult for you to make a decision to do anything about it. That is the main game at the moment. I would say it is about raising the stakes for counteractions to what the Chinese do. We are straying in a way—this is not necessarily going to work—to play precisely to the strength of the idea of making it more difficult for us operationally to take a decision. In principle, I am not necessarily sure I would agree with that, particularly the behaviour in the East China and South China Seas, and especially in the aftermath of the 2016 award to the Philippines in the International Court of Arbitration case. The Chinese considered it a win that nobody was saying anything about this being an important award and that the Chinese should endeavour to implement and abide by its content—anybody who was silent was considered by them a win. That to me is a strong indicator that what we are looking at here is a power that is trying very much to raise the stakes for either of us to take action.
Q22 Martin Docherty-Hughes: Etzioni, in his book “Avoiding War with China”, talks about “mutually assured restraint” between the People’s Republic and the United States specifically, as a way of reducing risk and conflict in the region. Would you agree with them?
Dr Kuok: If by restraint we mean incremental steps to increase its consolidation—
Q23 Martin Docherty-Hughes: Bringing them into the international order.
Dr Kuok: Well, I think that the view of the United States right now is that that has not helped at all.
Martin Docherty-Hughes: So it is a no.
James Rogers: It assumes that China itself is going to operate under conditions of restraint, and I think the evidence, at least over the last five years and increasingly so, is that they are not. They will follow the path of least resistance on the one hand and, on the other, they will try to push, as they have in the South China Sea, in areas they consider to be of critical importance to the regime’s national interest. Along those lines, therefore, if we ourselves operate under the conditions of restraint, it basically means that we open the door to their aggrandisement, progressively in their vicinity but then increasingly, potentially, further afield.
Q24 Gavin Robinson: Back to miscalculations, I hope it is a fair synopsis to say that everything is well calculated and it would be a mistake to view even minor incidents or potential collisions—demonstrations of power with 300 vessels around islands—as a miscalculation. Those are all deliberate demonstrations of power and influence. The international order and international organisations were mentioned. What are the regional bodies or organisations that could play a purposeful role here in managing relations and managing developments, but ensuring that the South China and East China Seas remain open as productive trading routes?
Dr Hemmings: You don’t mean the Quad and things like that, you mean international organisations as in bodies of—
Gavin Robinson: International or regional, but it would be useful, as part of this evidence session, to get a feel for the dynamic at play there, for how useful you think these bodies are and whether they can provide a solution.
Dr Hemmings: I have to say that I am a bit of a pessimist so far about the ASEAN structures. I do not think they were designed or built to deal with a great power challenge. Because of the geographical structural dynamic there, right next to China, the Vietnamese often say, “We’re right next door to China, and we know after 1,000 years of constant conflict with China that they are not going away, so we have to accommodate them.” Yet that coming from the Vietnamese is amazing, because they have been the most robust at standing up to China in the South China Sea.
As you can imagine, among the other states that do not have the military capability, the hardware or the national pride you can see in that statement, there are countries there that are hedging. Evan Medeiros described hedging as essentially balancing—on the one hand, creating alliances and trying to build up your military capability, but on the other hand, engaging and using a lot of diplomacy. Countries are hedging very carefully, but the ability of the Chinese to penetrate and disrupt the cohesion of the ASEAN group has been a growing feature of it. We see it a bit with how China has penetrated the EU in terms of Piraeus port and the Greek inability to vote on a human rights issue a few years ago.
In terms of the ARF and ASEAN itself being able to deal with this, we saw a small glimmer of hope over the weekend when ASEAN came out with a new paper on the Indo-Pacific. This a great snapshot to see what we are dealing with. ASEAN could not agree on developing the Indo-Pacific as a strategy, to match the Indian, Japanese, American and Australian direction. As a result, the Indonesians, Malaysians and Vietnamese promoted an outlook rather than a strategy. I am still working my way through the paper, but you can see inside it that they are torn and worried about provoking China and driving more of this strategic tension. China has been successful at defining the situation as the US being just a culpable for the tensions, but that is unfair, given that China has been promoting the greatest change in the region.
In terms of other IGOs, maybe we should save the Quad and the Trilateral for another question. There is a space for NATO, and it has been considering the type of approach. The only reason we should think this is in any way reasonable—I know it sounds a little bit out there—is the fact that 40% of European trade goes through the South China Sea. So it is not inconsiderable, if Europe’s access to Asian markets becomes at the fiat of Beijing, that this should be our concern. Of course, as we all know, NATO is extremely hard pressed on the European continent dealing with the reassurance initiative and Russian transgressions. Could team Europe develop within the NATO construct a coalition of France, UK, perhaps Germany and the Dutch? There are potentialities, perhaps not under the official NATO rubric, but certainly where NATO members begin to try to develop a dissuasion strategy with Chinese efforts in the South China Sea. Other than that, I don’t see other IGOs, and particularly not the UN or the General Assembly, being able to deal with regional tensions at all.
Dr Patalano: It is a very good question and it depends very much where you set it up. If it is about problem solving, the security architecture as a whole is not designed to do that, because most of these are places to get together and have a dialogue about—Lord forbid—doing something that everybody signs up to. We need to move away from our approach to multilateralism in that respect and focus more on setting the bar on crisis management, in which regards it depends very much on when the crisis happens. The security architecture as a whole is quite helpful. The best example of this is the China-Japan tensions between 2012 and 2014. Between 2013 and 2014, there was extremely limited official contact between the two sides and an increased risk of unintended consequences unfolding from coastguard cutters or military assets either hitting each other or being in very close proximity.
The beginning of the end of that very tense moment was on the back of the APEC meeting in November 2014 or the first week of December, during which Prime Minister Abe and Xi Jinping met on the side of that general meeting. Prime Minister Abe made a point of inserting in his plenary session speech that he was looking at the East China Sea as a sea of peace, prosperity and opportunity, making the political opening for something to re-start. In fact, shortly thereafter, in January 2015, the two countries resumed high level discussions on maritime affairs, which is a multi-agency, Government-to-Government-level interaction, and that was the beginning of a slightly different political phase.
If we move away from problem solving and focus on crisis management, the multilateral architecture that exists in the region is quite helpful to provide, mentally, opportunities for them to come to discussion insofar as risk situations are concerned.
Dr Kuok: Coming to the table does not necessarily mean talking about anything very meaningful. The negotiations surrounding the code of conduct have been dragging on for decades. In fact, they were recently revived after the South China Sea tribunal ruling. If we look at even how the negotiations take place, we are able to see just how weak ASEAN is as an association. Ideally, they should have presented their version of what they wanted the code of conduct to be. Instead, we had what was called, quite ironically, a single draft negotiating text, but, in essence, those were some bland terms, and each country’s position on each of those terms, so there was no ASEAN unity at all in this respect. So if we just look at that microcosm, that really casts doubt on how much ASEAN is equipped to deal with some of the problems surrounding its region. In a sense it has got the most motivation out of all the international organisations to want to do so, but we have seen precious little progress in that respect.
Q25 Mr Francois: In your opinion, what risk do China’s activities in the region, and particularly its military modernisation programme, pose to our allies and to the global legal and trading order?
James Rogers: In what timescale? Immediately, or in 10 years or 15 years?
Q26 Mr Francois: Well, we have already touched, in the answer to earlier questions, on something of the scale of their military modernisation problem. What threat does that really pose to our allies in the region?
Chair: In other words, why are they doing all this? Do you think they have a short-medium-term plan, or are they just giving themselves options?
James Rogers: I think like many countries before China, as a country tends to grow in power and its national capability grows, and its ability to harvest that and turn it into national instruments grows, there is a tendency for that country to engage overseas, initially within its immediate vicinity and then later overseas, to maximise its ability to underpin its interests.
What strikes me about China—I think this is an issue that we have had to confront, as well, with Russia over the past 20 years—is that we told ourselves after the cold war and increasingly during the 1990s that countries like Russia and China could be turned into what were called at the time responsible stakeholders in the international system, the rules-based order that we and the Americans, and a number of other countries, have done a great deal since the end of the second world war to construct. This is a key point I would like to make. We often forget that peace is not natural. It is actually a construct that we have contributed to over the last 70 years, both at a grand level but also in different regions and areas.
It seems to me that China is not like us in the sense of being a liberal democratic state. China is an authoritarian regime, and the Chinese regime’s key interest is sustaining its own power. We have seen just how far the Chinese regime is prepared to go in securing that objective, in 1989 and, more broadly, every day in the country itself.
Now, what is China’s long-term objective? I don’t necessarily know that there is a long-term objective, in the sense of there being a kind of worked-out master plan that will be implemented over the next 20, 30 or even 50 years. What I do think is that as China grows in power, as it is able to turn its economic capability into instruments for national advantage, as its navy, its air force, its diplomatic footprint, its geo-strategic reach in terms of overseas military facilities, whether they are in the South China Sea, grow in size and scale—three very large ones have been built over the last five years that make some of our ones, or the American ones, look relatively small in comparison—and as the power base behind that grows in size and scale, assuming it will continue to grow in size and scale, then China will in time become increasingly a challenge for different countries in the region and for the United States and other major powers in the West, such as the UK and France, to deal with. That doesn’t necessarily mean it is going to become a military confrontation, but I do think it will become increasingly like the kind of confrontation that we saw in the past between the Soviet Union and the West. That is to say, a cold war, if we understand a cold war to be a kind of war—or a kind of geopolitical struggle—that is waged under nuclear conditions.
Q27 Mr Francois: I just wanted to come to that, because if there is going to be, to use your phrase, some kind of cold war, then the nuclear balance becomes very important. We have touched briefly on improvements in Chinese maritime capability. How concerned should we be by improvements in Chinese strategic nuclear capability?
Dr Patalano: That is an excellent question, and thank you for asking it—
Mr Francois: We have our moments.
Dr Patalano: We all do. To answer very bluntly, look at the patterns of Chinese nuclear submarine deployment from 2013 onwards. The Indian Ocean is one of the places where they are going. If you consider that the current capabilities they possess have a striking range of about 7,000 km, that puts pretty much every European capital at risk.
Does that translate into an imminent or present threat? No, it does not, because the Chinese have a “second strike only” doctrine for use of nuclear power. However, it does raise the tantalising question that once you start operating in the Indian Ocean, if you look at the trajectory of technological investment in so far as it concerns the strategic capabilities of submarines based in China, they do have an option open to slightly modify a structured doctrine—especially if, looking ahead in the future, they were to feel an international context that was increasingly antagonising and hostile towards them, which is certainly the impression.
I regularly interact with the PLA at both educational and official level—I was actually in China at the weekend for a PLA-sponsored activity—and there is a certain obsessive attitude of “The West is ganging up against us.” No matter what you tell them, there are a good deal of people who will not come away from that.
Q28 Mr Francois: You say that they do not have a first strike doctrine, but are they actually upgrading? You talked about more aggressive patrolling, for instance in the Indian Ocean, but are they actually upgrading their strategic nuclear forces? Are they building new long-range ICBMs?
Dr Patalano: As part of a broader missile development, yes, they are looking into increasing the ability to extend the range of their missile-striking capabilities in general. As a matter of fact, on your question about what the biggest military problem coming from China is, there is land-based air power projecting in a maritime environment. The South and East China Seas are very problematic environments to operate in from the perspective of the reach of Chinese capabilities out there. That is the reason why the military bases in the South China Sea are being developed the way they are: to give them an edge in their battle space.
Specifically on your point about upgrading capabilities: yes, they are. It is not just about missile capabilities. We have conducted a small study on the research vessels and the activities in terms of mapping seabeds, and an awful lot of activity was conducted by the Chinese in the Indian Ocean. Of course, now they are expanding in the south Atlantic and other places, but what I think is very important is that if you see the patterns of exploring seabeds, you get an idea of where these people are planning to go. Especially for submarines and nuclear submarines, a detailed knowledge of the seabeds is very important to enable greater stealth once you deploy capabilities. The Indian Ocean is totally on the map on this one.
In retrospect, there is also another question that the Chinese are raising with their declaration of “near Arctic power” status. It is like saying, “Okay, the Indian Ocean is at one end, the Arctic is at the other, and we are right in the middle.” Again, it is not about a clear present threat, but certainly there are indications that they want to have the political option to wave their submarine component at you if and when needed. We are talking about 10 or 15 years.
Q29 Mr Francois: With these bases in the South China Sea, they are basically building what you might call fixed aircraft carriers, with very long runways and lots of logistic support for high-capability combat aircraft. They are building aircraft carriers that can move around in the ocean, they are building fixed aircraft carriers in terms of the bases, and they are upgrading their strategic nuclear forces, but you say that they do not have a first strike doctrine.
If you make a comparison with Russia, they have a very aggressive doctrine for the use of tactical nuclear weapons, or the de-escalation idea that they have: that you actually use nuclear weapons, ironically, to de-escalate a concept. Do the Chinese have any similar doctrine whatsoever for the use of nuclear weapons in a tactical or, in quotes, “operational” sense?
Dr Patalano: Not that I am aware of. We have done a bit of research on this, so I would not necessarily agree that they already have one. They certainly are aware of Soviet doctrines.
I would probably also suggest that if you look at some of the bases, it is not just about the projection of their power. Mischief Reef is the size of anything between Tower Bridge and Buckingham Palace inside, so you can pack a whole fleet down there from stormy weather and then operate outwardly into different places. It is not just about the strategic dimension; there is also the conventional outreach that they are expanding. But at a tactical and operational level, to the best of my knowledge, even in terms of routine patrolling, there is nothing that would indicate that they have doctrines similar to the Russians.
Mr Francois: This is my last question—maybe I could open it up to the panel more widely and then I will hand back to the Chair. Are we in the West, and particularly the United Kingdom—it is slightly on the other side of the world from us—underestimating the growth of Chinese military capability? If we are, would your advice be to do something about it?
James Rogers: Yes, I would say that we are, but I wish to add something in relation to the question a moment ago and what I said previously. Potentially, as we move on into the 21st century, nuclear capabilities will not be afforded the same primacy as they were in the cold war between the West and the Soviet Union. New technologies will potentially come online—not only direct energy weapons and the ability to fire them with great accuracy and at speed, but other technologies that we simply cannot foresee. We know that certain foundations are being built up for cyber capabilities, and advanced computing capabilities will allow those kinds of systems to come online. I am not sure to what extent those could disrupt what was considered to be the nuclear balance that existed during the cold war. It might be that we should focus on those things, rather than on existing capabilities that we have developed and become accustomed to. There is some indication that China has done that, alongside other countries such as the United States. We need to focus on that area, because as a relatively small island nation that is the one area where the UK has always been able to seize the advantage and make up for its lack of size with technological sophistication.
Q30 Mr Francois: A lot of work is going on in those fields, but I am not sure that we can discuss that at the moment. What do your colleagues think? Are we underestimating China’s military development?
Dr Hemmings: I will come at this from a broader perspective than purely military, because there are good people in this city who do Chinese naval studies—some of them at this table. People are watching, but the policy makers are not reacting. We are not seeing that discussion and debate. We have tried to raise the issue, in order to inform the public and to then support subsequent policy making.
Q31 Mr Francois: How should they be reacting?
Dr Hemmings: In terms of force structure and—dare I say it?—higher defence budgets, particularly for maritime.
Chair: You are always welcome to say that in front of this Committee.
Mr Francois: Not that we are trying to lead the witness in any way.
Dr Hemmings: We think that the UK and western allies should spend more on defence. They should also look at air and maritime powers, and at cyber, as things to focus on.
Q32 Mr Francois: Why specifically because of China? That is what I am pushing you on.
Dr Hemmings: I suppose because it has the largest ambitions and the greatest capability. If you look at the purely military aspect of Chinese power and ambitions, to some extent you can be level headed about it and say, “We see something coming that is a problem down the road”. However, if we look more holistically at bases, places, the sea links, the control of sea ports, the strategic intent with 5G and undersea cables, there is a much larger game occurring. Today I heard from a contact who was in the Azores, where there is a massive Chinese presence. That is where our cables go to north America. They are working on developing an airfield that the US has let languish.
We also see strategic intent in the South Pacific, and those are all strategically vital areas, with Iceland being another. The Financial Times began a wonderful continuation of the “string of pearls” discussion that we had in the 2000s, about how China rules the waves. There is a wonderful article that people can look up and see that there is a kind of Mahonian game 2.0, and a struggle to dominate not just sea trade and the infrastructure, but the digital and data infrastructure that will accompany that.
Q33 Mr Francois: Who wrote that FT article?
Dr Hemmings: It was multi-authored. I can send you the link. I cannot remember off the top of my head, but I know that Sam Beatson, who is at King’s College, helped with a lot of the research.
Q34 Mr Francois: Just to finish, Ms Kuok, did you have anything to add to that?
Dr Kuok: On why we should worry about China specifically, it is normal for a large and growing economy to want to update its military hardware, but it is problematic when that power seeks to undermine the international rules-based order. On that point alone, we should be worried.
Dr Patalano: In 10 years of engagement and interaction with the Chinese, they come from a mindset that is, in terms of international relations, zero sum. They simply do not believe in the so-called win-win situation that they often talk about, which is ironic. They are all about survival, particularly survival of the party. When you combine an authoritarian political regime with a worldview that is zero sum, it does not necessarily put you in a very good place. Since the last round of the major congress, with the leadership’s official documentation setting out the pursuit of China’s overseas interests at the top of the prosperity agenda of the party for itself, that potentially sets you on a collision course with the Chinese, particularly where their interests are not necessarily aligned with the rest of the world. The western Indian Ocean and parts of Africa are some of the obvious areas, but central Asia is another place of interest, as is the south Atlantic. The party will go after its own interests and try to do everything in their power to stay where they are and tell a story to their own people that that is the case.
As I said, I was in China at the weekend. The thing that was a struggle about it was that Chinese media had absolutely no coverage whatsoever of everything that was going on in Hong Kong—zero. I had meetings with former students—people who have masters degrees or PhDs from the UK—and the fascinating thing was that when I mentioned I was having problems with my email, because the internet restrictions had been enhanced in mainland China over the past two weeks, they all said, “Why? What are you talking about?” I said, “Didn’t you hear about the protestors in Hong Kong?” They said, “Yeah, but it looked like there were just a few people outside the Government office.” There was no context for the interaction. The Orwellian “1984” world does exist. If you go to mainland China, it looks like that in Beijing—a mach 10 version of it. Do not underestimate how an authoritarian regime with global ambitions sets you into that sort of zero-sum context, which definitely presents the problem of how to address it.
Mr Francois: Thank you. Between the four of us, you have given us good advice.
James Rogers: May I add to that?
Mr Francois: I must hand back to the Chair. Forgive me.
Chair: Very briefly.
James Rogers: There’s one more last point I would like to make, which is in relation to what we were just talking about. As time goes on, China will not just be concentrated in the Far East. We will increasingly see Chinese assets further afield, even in Europe. Remember that it was in, I think, late 2017 that we saw a Chinese flotilla in the Baltic for the first time. This adds to the perception of China’s rising power. If countries like the UK, France and the US are not prepared to invest back into the assets to maintain the perception of our own power, the peace that we have enjoyed, which is a consequence of a construct that we have put in place, will eventually come undone.
Q35 Ruth Smeeth: That is quite a nice segue. What practical steps do you think we need to take to defend the rules-based order?
Dr Hemmings: I’ll start with the Indo-Pacific term, which is now being used by a number of UK allies and partners in the region. We have already seen large segments, including military leadership and even political leadership, using the construct. I think we might be on the precipice of adopting it formally. It would be good if we did so. Why? As I described previously, to some extent a kind of great game 2.0 is developing. We have China’s grand strategic vision unfolding, in terms of the Belt and Road initiative and its efforts to recreate the global order incrementally without resistance. To those states that are beginning to balance and stand a bit firmer on their own national interests, we can send a very powerful image—just as powerful as the image of joining the AIIB—by adopting this nomenclature. With very few risks, we could begin to work more closely with regional allies and partners such as India, Japan and other Quad countries. Some of that is already happening anyway. As we have said before, the best way to preserve peace is by having the military capabilities to dissuade an opponent from unwinding that. We have tried, to some extent, the educational approach, trying to teach the Chinese the right way to go, in terms of UNCLOS and maritime law and order, but we may be moving past that point to where we just have to show collective capability.
Q36 Ruth Smeeth: So you think collective deterrence is the only way to deal with this?
Dr Hemmings: I think so. I will give you an example. When the Indians suffered that incident a few years ago on their northern border with China, in which China tried to revise the border unilaterally, without any sort of discussion with India—just putting troops in that space, rather than diplomatically or anything like that—to some extent we were all silent. Only the Japanese stepped in and gave vocal verbal support to India over that incident, and the Indians noticed it. It would have cost us nothing to say something, especially if we had been joined by a number of states. In terms of collective diplomacy, we could do much more. The Chinese do not like it when a group of states in chorus speak out about a topic.
To some extent they punish allies when certain things cross their national interest; one area we can worry about is the new strategy that the Chinese are developing, where if the US asks an ally to do something, such as to have THAAD or to ban Huawei or any number of other things—arrest a Huawei official as she passes through the country—the Chinese diplomatically isolate that country. They do not punish the US; they punish the ally.
Over the long term, it is a strategy that is intended to separate and weaken the western alliance, by punishing the smaller of the two. The Americans, to some extent, have not realised that. Politically, they are not standing by their allies. With THAAD, the South Koreans had to carry the punishment by themselves; with Meng Wanzhou, the Canadians are carrying it by themselves.
Over the long term—10 or 15 years—you see an undermining of western cohesion. Collective, collective, collective would be my best bet for maintaining peace. That could be at the military level, with more exercises and more interoperability in the region; at the economic level, where we do more on infrastructure and investment in the region and more support of ASEAN maritime domain awareness capacities; or at the diplomatic level.
Q37 Ruth Smeeth: Is this because China, given its history, is taking a much longer-term view? We react, or fail to react, to the immediate threat, but they are looking at how to undermine a relationship over the next 30 or 50 years’ timespan, whereas we are focused on today.
Dr Hemmings: There are two tensions in this. They are in a little bit of a rush because they have a demography crisis—they are getting very old very quickly—and Xi has a strong desire to get this done by 2049, the China dream strategy. On the other hand, you are right that there is an understanding that Germany’s rise provoked massive counterbalancing by Germany’s European neighbours. They have tried, and they have been fairly successful at it so far, to incrementally shift the status quo in their favour without provoking good collective diplomacy, a violent conflict with the US, for example, which is still the main military power in the region, or an economic response. They have been very smart.
Q38 Ruth Smeeth: Does anyone else have anything to add?
James Rogers: I do. You ask how we can defend the rules-based order from China. We need to ensure that we understand that China is, to some extent, a revisionist state at the moment. We need to prevent it from becoming a revolutionary state that seeks fundamental transformation of the rules to make those rules correspond to the interests of the Chinese regime so that it can get its way in the majority of cases around the world. That would manifest itself across multiple different vectors—military, economic, cultural, ideological, political and so on.
You also mentioned the issue of deterrence, and I think we need to look at that through a three-step process. The first component is one of dissuasion; there is a difference between dissuasion and deterrence, because deterrence assumes there is actually a threat, and dissuasion assumes that there could be a threat in the future if we allow things to run their natural course. It seems to me that there could be multiple different threats from the growth of Chinese power over the next 10, 20, 30, 40 or 50 years, so we need to put in place different approaches, structures and institutions—this will involve working with various allies, not least the US, Japan, Australia and so on—that prevent China from taking courses of action that it otherwise might take in the event of a growth in its own power. On top of that, we need to focus on the issues where China is currently causing a problem, where revisionism is currently under way. Therefore, we move into a situation of deterrence, where we assume that there is actually a threat and that we need to take specific actions designed to mitigate that threat, or even to reduce it, by showing that there is a counter-power that is pushing back against it.
Finally, we need to react. Increasingly over time, China will be able to do things that keep us on the back foot: it will seize the initiative and we will be forced to respond. We need to be able to react to those initiatives in a way that undermines what China is seeking to do. One way we might do that, or we have been trying to do that—probably the Americans more than the British—is through the so-called freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea. Those will not change the status quo on the ground—they do not change the fact that China has built very large military facilities on low-tide elevations and is using those to exert power and increase the perception of its power in that region—but they deny them the ability fundamentally to reorient the perception of international law.
We need to do more of that with our allies, but that is just a microcosm of the broader situation. We need to think about this in a much more holistic way, not just a military way, although of course that is important. We need to understand that defence is not just a military exercise but an exercise that conceptualises a whole array of issues, including the ability of the regime in Beijing to get inside our own political and economic systems and cause disruption from within. In a way, that is already a victory before we have an ability to respond or even think of responding, because it has already changed our perceptions of the situation.
Dr Kuok: I would add to what my colleagues have said by pointing out that it is also important that we seek to get China to behave not only when the rules matter to us—meaning the West, or the US and its powers—but when the rules matter to the countries in the region, which are smaller than China. They might determine that, because China is in their backyard and is more powerful, and because external powers seem more interested in defending the rules that matter to them, they will take a measure of which way the wind is blowing and decide to bow to China’s will.
In that case, we would see the erosion of the rules-based order in the region happen very quickly. That is why, as Dr Hemmings mentioned earlier, we should think very carefully about the economic initiatives that can be put in place. Japan, Australia and the United States have a trilateral infrastructure development initiative. The United Kingdom could also think about establishing one, or joining one, and ensuring that, unlike with the trilateral initiative we already have, there is movement on that front. The Chinese are moving very quickly, and the rest of the world a little less so.
That said, I would also, as Mr Rogers said earlier, urge the UK to continue its freedom of navigation operations, which I would rather call assertions of maritime rights and freedoms. Those are critical, because they prevent the cookie from crumbling, both practically, because China cannot be allowed to assert control over the waters around the features that it has already consolidated control over, and as a matter of law. If the international community does not assert its understanding of what maritime rights and freedoms are, China’s understanding, or another power’s understanding, will take over, so that is critical.
Another role that the UK is in a unique position to play—I do not think we should discount this for the long term, although unfortunately not the short term—is to use every opportunity to highlight that its interests as a naval power were served by the current international law of the sea, and China’s interests as a growing naval power would similarly be served by that same structure, which even the Soviet Union, as an enemy of the United States in the 1960s, sought to support. On persuading China that things such as the law of the sea are in its own interests, it is completely unsustainable to apply one set of rules to the South China Sea, which it considers to be its backyard, and another to the rest of the world.
Ruth Smeeth: Very briefly, Dr Patalano.
Dr Patalano: Three things: drop the far east, adopt and develop the Indo-Pacific from a UK perspective—look at the Japanese and Australian versions, which are very different from the American version—and in so doing develop a strategic approach that restates, clearly and loudly, the role of the UK as a world-leading maritime power, in the same way that the Department for Transport’s Maritime 2050 has done for the maritime sector, but in a defence and security dimension. On the back of that, think about a distinction that exists between the current approach of the UK to the region, which is reactive, and one that aims at shaping. It is not just about pushing back on the naughty thing that the Chinese do on a daily basis—everybody will do that as a rising power. Respecting and implementing a rules-based order is about empowering those who are already in the region and leaving the region to be able to do so. If you ask around south-east Asia or other parts of Asia, everybody is unhappy with the way the Chinese behave most of the time.
What can the UK do to contribute to the shaping of the regional environment? From that perspective, multilateral work is certainly one area to create a framework for that. The other is capacity building and the activities that contribute to the wider prosperity agenda. If coastal states across the region in the South and East China Sea are supporting and developing their own capabilities, that will contribute to their having a stake in maintaining the international rules-based system that has provided growth and economic development so far.
It is very important not to focus just on the reactive side, which is what we have been doing over the past couple of years, with deployments in east Asia, but, more importantly, to think about a shaping agenda aimed at leveraging existing diplomatic agreements, building up specific alliances and contributing to risk management on a daily basis and capacity building.
Ruth Smeeth: I have to go, Chair, so Graham will ask the next question for me.
Chair: Okay, that’s fine.
Q39 Graham P. Jones: What are the implications for regional security of China’s Belt and Road Initiative?
Chair: May I couple that with a supplementary question? What are the implications for European security of the Belt and Road Initiative, given that both Greece and Italy have already signed agreements with China under its terms?
Dr Hemmings: I will happily take a nibble at that. The Belt and Road Initiative is not just a land-based strategy; it also has a maritime component. If we look at the drivers behind it, to some extent I believe that China views itself as having unfavourable geography in the sense that it is highly exposed on its maritime flank, to which it has historically suffered invasions. Also, as a modern economy, its source of energy is at some distance from it, in seas controlled by its peer competitor, the United States, although of course to a lesser degree.
The BRI, and the maritime silk road to some extent, is driven not just to get rid of excess industrial capacity or labour force, although those are also drivers; to some extent it is also to consolidate its control over the central Asian space. It does that incrementally and through a holistic number of different tools that have a political interference level, and the ability to use investment as political leverage over local domestic elites.
In Kazakhstan and Kurdistan you can see very good work on how foreign policy elites in those countries have been co-opted by investment. We see a little of that with Hambantota in Sri Lanka, where domestic elites are courted, pushed and promoted into helping with the strategic investments that, of course, help that individual, especially if they have constituencies that require infrastructure. They then become either personally or socially beholden to Beijing’s fiat, and they have the benefit of dictating the financial terms of the deal. Should that state fail, they can essentially take a large percentage of stock. For example, on Hambantota, it was around 51% for 99 years.
To some extent, we see a neo imperialism—not formal imperialism, but it is certainly a type of imperialism, in terms of the extension of economic control and diplomatic influence, and the capabilities to gradually develop military reach further and further afield. Those things by themselves would not be particularly bad if it was a democratic China doing this; I think we would all have three cheers. However, given that it is an authoritarian state, and is essentially also exporting an approach towards technology—the surveillance society—we will begin to see ports all along the new maritime silk road that essentially have Chinese-built 5G networks. They will also have Chinese big data systems analysing all cargo going in and out and all sailors going in and out.
Some people are much more ahead of this than I am and look at the ability to disrupt trade very strategically and very surgically. If, for example, the next Defence Secretary says something at RUSI that offends China, we might find some shipments that belong, perhaps, to key people in the British political establishment being waylaid or slowed down, or that could happen in reverse, for example to Malaysian politicians—so, this idea of an unofficial sanctioning system being developed.
The reason I mentioned its being holistic so many times is because I have been deeply impressed by the Chinese ability to overlay. With the navy, they have the militias. With the infrastructure banks, they have the tech firms. They are not doing things simply; they are doing them in really complex, incredibly strategic ways. Given that we are westerners and tend to have the value systems that we do, and we have seen that coming up right to eastern Europe, and—leading to your follow-up question—we are beginning to see some of our European partners, such as the Czech Republic, having a big debate on 5G—that is the case in many other eastern European countries. The problem is that the co-opting of those foreign policy leads is beginning to happen here in Europe.
To some extent, if you look at Sun Tzu—no one has mentioned Sun Tzu yet, so I will throw him out there—you win without fighting. We are beginning to see states that are in many ways signing over their own national interest because of the pressure that China is able to bear not just on individuals but on social and political elites. The 5G question in this country has been a classic example of that. We have had UK telecoms massively co-opted. They seem to have put Huawei in the core at the moment; we don’t know, because we are not being told, but they are certainly in the 5G network that is currently running. All of this has happened without a proper public debate and consideration of what is in Britain’s national interest. The dangers are social, strategic and—because of China’s ideological approach—deeply worrying for the West.
Dr Kuok: The first point to note is that China denies that the Belt and Road Initiative has any strategic intent. That said, some of the projects that it has embarked on have absolutely no economic viability, so one can either assume that they are remarkably feckless or that there is strategic intent. That is the first point I would make.
Q40 Graham P. Jones: An example would be?
Dr Kuok: Hambantota port.
The second point I would make is that there has been lots of talk recently about the pushback against the Belt and Road initiative, and there has been a degree of triumphalism over that and reassurance over that. However, one should not be too reassured by the talk of pushback, because it is definitely overstated, at least in my part of the world—south-east Asia. Countries might have sought to suspend some projects and renegotiate some of the terms, but by and large they decide to go ahead with them once they negotiated better terms. At the height of the Indonesian elections, when the Jokowi Administration was being criticised for his close ties to China, we saw his close aide actually go to China and offer $91 billion-worth of deals for China to take up. That just shows how much countries in the region rely on China to boost their infrastructural development.
The implications of this for regional security are huge, because it is already having implications for how countries conduct their relations with China. We have seen the Philippines, for instance, sign the MOU for joint development with China, which suggests legitimate overlapping claims on China’s behalf, when China in fact has none, and has been shown by a tribunal to have none.
We have seen how China has in the past divided ASEAN—the only regional organisation, really, that deals with such issues. We have seen how it has divided the organisation in the past, and it will continue to do so because its economic strength is increasing day by day. Of course, the Belt and Road Initiative is affecting the broader US-China balance. The US has waited quite a long time. China came out with the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013. I think the US came out with its BUILD Act as a response, and with its Indo-Pacific strategy in 2018. It is really dragging its feet. I think it is changing the broader balance of power in the region. Finally, if projects go wrong, we can expect to see that some of these countries that have smaller domestic Chinese communities might be targets, in the event that there is a backlash against some of the Belt and Road projects.
Chair: We have three groups of questions still to go, and we are beginning to run short of time; we have to stop in about 15 minutes. Forgive me if I plough things on a little further. Graham, do you want to cover your next topic?
Q41 Graham P. Jones: How have the UK’s regional allies and other regional actors responded to China’s actions in the South and East China Seas?
Chair: Not everyone can answer every question, so perhaps someone could volunteer.
Dr Patalano: I will take the regional allies. There is a fundamental difference between the United States and some of the other allies of the UK in the region, particularly South Korea, Japan and Australia. I will focus on those three for very simple reasons; they cannot really move geographically into another region. They are locals, and so cannot outright have a containment or confrontational policy approach towards China. Perhaps the greatest difficulty is how to manage sending a statement without creating an antagonistic environment. Japan is probably the best example of that.
In terms of responding, the Japanese have adopted, first of all, some sort of co-ordinated approach towards the East and South China Seas. From their perspective, these are two maritime bases that, even though from a political perspective they have different features, are exactly the same insofar as the challenge to international law and the maritime order, so they used a single approach.
In a practical sense, the Japanese have focused on pushing back and maintaining what has been described to me by officials in Japan as a noise-cancelling posture in the East China Sea—simply put, preventing the Chinese from taking over the spaces that were contested, and increasing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance activities in order to have a better domain awareness of Chinese activities, while at the same time continuing the political dialogue. What is interesting, though, is how the Japanese have approached the question of the South China Sea. Clearly they wanted to do more. They started to operate more clearly in terms of pursuing co-ordinated and co-operative approaches with other actors in the region, notably Australia and the United States.
At the same time, they have not limited their action to these two theatres. Also very interesting are Japanese activities and diplomatic and defence engagements in the west of the Indian Ocean, particularly with some of the Gulf states region actors, notably Oman, and in and around Bahrain—CTF 151, and their activities in counter-piracy. The Japanese understood that a better way to push back at China is to create greater awareness internationally, and put their activities, if you want, within that context.
If you think about it, both in 2016 and 2017 at the G7 meeting the Japanese managed to get wording into the joint statement that condemned, without naming, the Chinese activities in both theatres. They basically tried to bring together their operational activity in theatre, combined with out of theatre activity that would increase awareness towards the problems in the region, and work their way around in order to have a stronger international, multilateral condemnation by key actors.
Q42 Martin Docherty-Hughes: We cannot talk about UK interests in the region without discussing the Chagos Islands. Beyond the issue of natural justice for the Chagossians, the UK finds itself in a big strategic quandary. You can disregard the UN ruling and allow China, Russia and others to increase their attacks on the liberal order, or respect it and allow China a vital beachhead in the Indian Ocean. I don’t see precious much about this in the British media and I don’t have an answer. What are your thoughts?
James Rogers: There is a quandary, as you say, but the issue, and this is an issue in relation to—
Q43 Martin Docherty-Hughes: Is the quandary that we respect the UN’s ruling or we don’t like China?
James Rogers: The two, to some extent, overlap. The issue, as I understand it, is that if the UK were to surrender sovereignty over the British Indian Ocean Territory, the base, apparently, would likely remain under US administration or for US use; the lease would be transferred. So it doesn’t seem to me that this is going to benefit the Chagossians at all. The other option, of course, is that in the future the actual island or the base could be transferred to another country, and that other country—
Q44 Martin Docherty-Hughes: Could it be China?
James Rogers: It could be China, and China would, I am quite certain, love that facility, because it’s probably the most strategically advantageous location in the entire—
Q45 Martin Docherty-Hughes: We are very short of time and there are some very important questions to be asked. Can you not see that, for people like me, who are critical friends in much of this discussion, there is utter duplicity in disregarding the ruling of a United Nations body and then saying to China, “You shouldn’t do the same”? This is about transparency, openness and the rule of international law.
Dr Hemmings: We could be strategic and law abiding, but we would have to plan around it carefully; we would have to discuss—
Q46 Martin Docherty-Hughes: Flout the rules—bend a little bit?
Dr Hemmings: No, no—not like that. What I mean to say is, rather than just trusting to the idea that they would maintain the base, woo them, court them, discuss with the sovereign nation what we would like to do and get some sort of agreement going into the handover of sovereignty—do that, rather than releasing the base and trusting to luck. It’s something that has been pressing on my mind as well, because if it’s not a rules-based order, we are just doing what they are doing.
Dr Kuok: Of course, the duplicity extends not only to the United Kingdom, but to the United States. We saw a great deal of noise over the South China Sea Tribunal ruling in the immediate aftermath, but after that the United States went quiet. Why did it go quiet? Because one of the main rulings of the tribunal was on what constitutes an island that is entitled to generate a 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone. The United States had not liked that part of the ruling, because it had implications for its islands in the Pacific.
Dr Patalano: If you don’t mind my saying so, I think the question of duplicity does not necessarily apply. If you think about the Nicaraguan case, the United States didn’t really show up and didn’t contribute, but eventually negotiated de facto compensation for Nicaragua and, over time, abided by the ruling. I think the key difference is that the Chinese have shown, in their contested spaces in the eastern South China Sea, no intention to actually move forward from their position. The key question for the UK, in order to avoid that element of duplicity, is where you go from here. What kind of negotiations do you have in that context in order to move to a solution that addresses concerns on both sides? It’s not that you are just disregarding; you are taking that as happening, and then where you go from there is going to say something about whether you have some sort of duplicitous behaviour or not. I can say that the Chinese, in their own territorial disputes, are not really moving forward in any direction or giving any indication of such, but I think one should wait and see what the next move from the UK will be in order to have that judgment.
Martin Docherty-Hughes: Maybe we should invite the Chagossians to give evidence.
Q47 Chair: We have two topics left and basically what they amount to is: what should British strategic policy be in the region, and what should American policy be in the region? I am going to deliver the British bit all bundled together in one go, and I hope Martin will do the same with the American bit in a few minutes’ time, but we will have to keep it very concise. Effectively, what I would like to know is: do you think the UK has got a coherent strategic approach to this region? For example, would we need and would it be practicable for us to have a strategic base in the region? What other capabilities might we need to have an effective strategy for the region? How well are we working with our regional allies, such as Japan, South Korea and other members of the Five Powers Defence Arrangements, on these issues? It is fine if different people take different dimensions of that. Who would like to go first? Lynn, would you like to start on some aspect of that?
Dr Kuok: Sure. You asked about the military base in the region. I think that Singapore and Brunei were raised as possibilities. That was, as some people might say in the region, talking out of—whatever.
Q48 Chair: Sorry. What were you going to say?
Dr Kuok: It was considered rather reckless to be raising Singapore and Brunei as bases without first consulting with them. Whether it is politically feasible is completely out of the question, simply because of the negative connotations that a new military base would have on issues of extra-territoriality. It is not something that the region, south-east Asia at least, would necessarily accept.
Q49 Chair: So you don’t think that there is any ally in the region that would offer to host a strategic base?
Dr Kuok: Perhaps Japan, but I was addressing Singapore and Brunei. In the case of Singapore, its closest partner, the United States, does not have a base in Singapore, but it has facilities in Singapore.
Q50 Chair: Martin will deal with the United States. I just want us to concentrate on Britain and Britain’s role, and what we can do when we have our aircraft carriers, for example.
Dr Kuok: The other issue that I think concerns countries in the region is simply how China would view any decision by a country to allow the UK to have a base in the region. I think countries in the region would be very sensitive about how China might respond. That would also decrease the appetite tremendously for whether they should allow the UK a base. They are probably calculating the extent to which the UK’s strategic weight will outweigh any potential fallout from China. I think the calculations in that respect will probably not come out in the UK’s favour at present.
Dr Patalano: I will be very brief. I think there is an opportunity for an Indo-Pacific station, as it were. I think it would be composed by a strategic base and complemented by base access agreement arrangements. I can see base access agreement arrangements, in particular in Japan and Korea, to cover the north-east sector, and the strategic base not in Singapore or Brunei, but in Australia. Why? Because that could come on the back of the current BAE Systems commitment to the Type 26 frigate, which is a joint programme and will create requirements for the UK to work more closely with the Australian navy, to develop a particular component, such as ASW capabilities, in a joint fashion.
I think there is an affordable option and that is it: a strategic base in Australia, probably in Darwin. But also the US is implementing this—I won’t say any more. What should be at the core of an Indo-Pacific presence? I think rotational forces and OPVs have been mentioned, as well as frigates—that is absolutely fine. From my perspective, the top would be something that looks like the Albion, an amphibious or sort of landing ship, if you like. Why? Because that is the Swiss army knife capability of the British armed forces.
Chair: Which, I must say, this Committee is rather proud to have played a key role in preserving.
Dr Patalano: Having sat in on a debrief with the captain of Albion during deployment in the Asia Pacific, I can tell you that they did more than 400 deck landings with all helicopters from all partners in the region. They could be deployed to assist in case of a disaster. They conducted a challenge of excessive maritime claims. They can develop joint doctrinal activities with local partners and others. From my perspective, you start with an Australian base, and a nice littoral strike ship or amphibious ship, based on the things that the Albion does. That is where you start and you complement that with existing arrangements, and Japan and Korea on top of that.
Chair: Very good.
Dr Hemmings: I will be very quick. I will leave bases to my colleague James. Just in terms of strategic oversight, I think that in the Indian Ocean region—I am using the Indo-Pacific construct rather than East Asia; hopefully that will be of use to you—we should work very closely with India, and be closer to where the UK’s interests and geography are favourable. Certainly the Singapore facilities should be continued, but I agree that there are concerns—the same with the Indians, but again, mutual basing rights, as has been mentioned, would be a very good way of developing relationships.
I disagree with Japan and to a lesser extent Australia: if countries have capacity, those allies are already close to us politically. To some extent, there is some reason in visiting them, but having a base there—what’s the point?
Q51 Chair: Surely the point has to be, if we are operating major units of our fleet, possibly in a hostile environment on the other side of the world, they need some sort of base to support them, don’t they?
Dr Hemmings: Absolutely—
Q52 Chair: Where are you suggesting that should be?
Dr Hemmings: For example, if you were in Japan, that is fine. You could have AWACS and other systems up there, but to some extent there is no need. You want to be where the need is and you want to use the base as dissuasion. You also want it to be a political act. I am not saying that you should not be completely—
Q53 Chair: I’m sorry; I’m not trying to be awkward, but I don’t follow how you can dissuade someone without having the capability to do whatever it is that you are potentially able to do in order to dissuade them.
Dr Hemmings: I will let James follow up on bases. If you were in Japan, that might have some good impact, but if you were in India, for example, as has been mentioned by Rear-Admiral Philip Jones, with the idea of ship swapping, you are developing relationships. It lends itself to what I spoke about earlier, that kind of collectivisation of security.
Q54 Chair: All I am trying to talk about in this particular bit is, what should we be doing in terms of hard military power in that area, and what sort of infrastructure would be necessary to support it? If we are going to play a part in asserting the freedom of the seas in this region, on what base would that hard power be able to align?
Dr Hemmings: I will turn over to James.
James Rogers: Let me just say a few words. I think it depends on what we are seeking to do, as you point out and as John alludes to as well. It also depends on the timeframe we are dealing with. Are we thinking ahead five, 10, 20 years?
Q55 Chair: We are talking about in the near term. We are just in the process of re-acquiring strategic carrier strike capability. The question, as raised by the former Defence Secretary, is: should it be deployed for this purpose in this area? If it is, what sort of support base would it need?
James Rogers: There is already a logistics facility in Singapore and there are already facilities in Brunei, which support the British military presence there.
Q56 Chair: Are you saying they are good enough as they are?
James Rogers: No, no.
Q57 Chair: Would they need to be developed?
James Rogers: Yes. I think there needs to be a larger presence in the region from the UK. That has to be tailored in relation to what we are seeking to achieve. If the objective is simply to administer disaster relief, to show the flag periodically, and so on and so forth, then yes, an amphibious ship—
Q58 Chair: But it isn’t. We have established that fact that we want to be able to assert the freedom of the seas.
James Rogers: Yes, so I think we would need to have a larger and more permanent presence there. That also depends on what we want that base to do. If we want that base to act as a kind of deterrent, or a dissuasion, base—that is to say, to have a political effect on the ground—we might be prepared to put it within the range of China’s anti-access and area denial capabilities. That is, with the risk, in the event of a confrontation sometime—20 or 30 years—down the line, that it could come under direct fire.
There is an option to put the base further back, in Australia, say, where it would potentially be less vulnerable. Therefore, you would potentially have less of a dissuasion or a deterring effect on the ground within the south-east Asian region. It depends entirely on what we hope to do in the longer term, which is why I asked that initial question. If we are going to make that kind of investment, it seems to me that we are thinking for the next 10, 15 or 20 years, not just the next five to 10 years.
Q59 Chair: I am sure that’s right in developing any base, it could be for a longer term. Alessio, you are looking very exercised.
Dr Patalano: I was thinking that the Japan debate is a bit of a false one because here we are talking about base access agreements. HMS Albion did its main deployment refit in Yokosuka. I was there in Japan when it happened. They were on the American side of the base.
The question is also about making it possible to use the Japanese side of the base or indeed Sasebo, or any of the other major bases available. Without that, it would be more difficult for Albion to have an extended deployment time. I completely agree with you that there are a number of policy activities or actions that can be taken in the immediate future to have a discussion about base access agreements.
In Japan, it is very easy because the Japanese are already having a discussion with the Australians about base access agreements, and they are doing that in the context of a framework that would allow other powers and countries to have that discussion with them. It is not about having permanent bases there; it is about base access agreements, which is an entirely different kettle of fish. I do believe that Australia—
Q60 Chair: Hold on just a second. I do not really want to prolong this, but we are talking here about a situation where we have said that China is exerting a certain amount of coercive control over a number of our allies, and basically they are trying to keep them out of the strategic picture. Yet you are saying that we would not need to have an assured base in the area but we would be content to rely on being given access to other people’s bases without some more formal agreement.
Dr Patalano: Oh no, no—
Q61 Chair: Surely that would be vulnerable to political pressure just at the very time that it would need to be used.
Dr Patalano: Absolutely. But if you remember, my first intervention on this particular question was that from my perspective, having access to a base in Australia is perhaps where you got the core of what I would say is—
Q62 Chair: It sounds to me there is a bit of a consensus building on Australia.
James Rogers: We need to have a military base in south-east Asia. Whether that is in Australia or Singapore is a supplementary issue. We need to have a demonstrable impact on the ground there to show that Britain is able and willing to project force into that region alongside its allies.
Chair: Just to wind this up, because we have to stop and give Martin the last word—
Martin Docherty-Hughes: What’s it going to be? I can’t tell you—Scotland is yet to speak.
Q63 Chair: That is always a very good way of keeping him here until the end of the session. Basically, we are saying that we do need some sort of permanent base presence in the region. In a word, which country would each of you opt for, if I said we need to choose now?
Dr Patalano: Australia.
James Rogers: Singapore.
Dr Hemmings: Singapore.
Dr Kuok: You already have a refit and refuel naval support unit in Singapore, so you can negotiate—
Q64 Chair: I thought you said earlier that you didn’t fancy the idea of developing it further.
Dr Kuok: Expanding the facilities is perfectly acceptable. A base—maybe it is semantics, but—
Q65 Chair: It is only semantics in the sense that a base means it is something we can rely on being available in times of crisis rather than it being at the discretion of a host country, which could easily withdraw it.
Dr Kuok: Sure. Expanded facilities would be reliable in a time of crisis, as they have been available to the UK since the 1970s.
Q66 Chair: We have boiled it down to Singapore or Australia, by the sound of it. Or did I hear someone put in a bid for Brunei?
Dr Hemmings: No.
Chair: Not so keen. Martin, over to you. Will you roll up the similar questions on America?
Martin Docherty-Hughes: It is a rare occasion on which I will disagree with the Chair. As an Atlanticist, my concern is that we can hardly meet our capabilities in the north Atlantic and the high north, never mind putting capability in the East China Sea. You will forgive me if I do not agree with the Chair on that.
Chair: We are going to have to stop in five minutes flat.
Q67 Martin Docherty-Hughes: Okay. Briefly, what role does the US play in regional security in Asia-Pacific? Then we can talk about Japan.
Chair: You have got five minutes.
Martin Docherty-Hughes: So two minutes on the United States.
Chair: Okay. Well, one and a half minutes each. There you go.
Dr Hemmings: What role the US plays in the Pacific?
Martin Docherty-Hughes: Yes. The freedom of their navigation, operations and allied presence in the region.
James Rogers: I will say it in a nutshell: it underpins the regional order in south-east Asia and in east Asia. Without it, the entire system would fall apart.
Q68 Martin Docherty-Hughes: Does everyone agree on that?
All witnesses indicated assent.
Q69 Martin Docherty-Hughes: Good. We have got South Korea and others, but I am going to go on Japan. The relationship between Japan and China pre-Communism is ancient. One of my concerns about our inquiry is that we do not hear much about the 4,000 years of culture and history of the Chinese nation. I am not talking about communist—I ain’t no communist. For the record, believe me, I do not believe that Chinese companies should be involved in the national infrastructure of the UK.
I need to be blunt with John and James in terms of some relationships that your society seems to have been having with Japan over the last couple of years. I want you first of all to clarify your society’s relationship with the Japanese Government. I am a critical friend of China, but I want some clarity over the rumours in newspapers that Japan was funding you in terms of articles to say something about China.
Dr Hemmings: I will take that. We are completely unfunded by the Japanese state at the moment. But two years ago, two and a half years ago when I first started, there was a Sunday Times news article, which was partially correct. We were in a financial funding relationship with the Japanese state at the time. It was a fairly sensitive area, because we were looking at Chinese influence on operations inside London, particularly in Parliament and among political leads. I was not surprised when it blew up. However, I can say from that Sunday Times article we have not had any funding.
Q70 Martin Docherty-Hughes: Would that also go for the Global Britain programme as well, James? Who would fund that?
James Rogers: No. There is no funding from Japan for the Global Britain programme.
Martin Docherty-Hughes: It is just a concern, in terms of—
Chair: You have your answer. Let’s move on.
Martin Docherty-Hughes: That’s all I needed to know, Chair.
Dr Hemmings: There is someone who is funded by Japan here, apparently.
Dr Patalano: Yes. The Ministry of Education, like any other institution from an educational point of view, would—
Q71 Martin Docherty-Hughes: Can you expand on that? Is it from the Ministry of Education or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs?
Dr Patalano: It is the Japan Foundation, which is the educational and cultural exchange component of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Martin Docherty-Hughes: You can understand where a person from my perspective gets concerned about whether the evidence or research is informed by third parties. It is very important for us as Members of Parliament to make sure we give a level playing field to differing views. As a social democrat, I am no fan of communism, but I need to make sure there is parity and the opportunity to give different views.
Q72 Chair: Just to close, I notice that “communism” is a word that has been conspicuously absent from this discussion. We have talked a lot about Chinese imperialism, but does the communist ideology still play a central role? A yes or no answer—one sentence each—will do.
Dr Patalano: Yes, in the way the party sees itself as the driving engine towards prosperity for the nation.
Dr Kuok: No, in the sense that China would define its national interest in exactly the same way, and pursue exactly the same course of action as it has done in the last decade or so.
Dr Hemmings: Yes—this is similar to Alessio’s answer—because of its centralised economy, its paranoid approach towards the international order and its Leninist approach towards interacting with foreign states.
James Rogers: Yes, in terms of some of the tactics that the Chinese Government deploys in relation to its partners and the countries in the region.
Chair: We have a nice spread of opinion there—not quite 50:50, but it is the best we can do for today. I thank our four experts for submitting themselves to almost two hours of intense questioning, and for the informative answers that they have given to us. The session is concluded.