WASHINGTON — An influential congressional advisory body warned in its annual report that strategic and systemic competition between the US and China continues to accentuate as Beijing forges ahead with its ambitious plans to surpass American power.
The 741-page report, released Nov. 14 by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, paints a sobering picture of China’s rapid military buildup and pursuit of worldwide influence through a wide range of means. And it warns that managing this complex rivalry will remain a top national security priority for the foreseeable future.
“The brand new normal is one in every of continuing, long-term strategic and systemic competition,” the report said. Based on the commission, the People’s Republic of China is pouring “unprecedented” resources into modernizing its military, with a concentrate on breakthroughs in missiles, space, undersea warfare and artificial intelligence.
The report underscores the ways by which Beijing seeks to shape global affairs to its profit, from military coercion to technology acquisition to influence operations, and makes it clear that the US faces a formidable strategic competitor.
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, established in 2000, is an independent agency of the U.S. government that directly reports to Congress and the president.
“Although a sustained economic slowdown could force difficult selections and tradeoffs, China continues to pour resources into its unprecedented military buildup,” the report said.
Efforts to shape international norms
In sectors like space and cyberspace, the commission said, China seeks to shape international law in its favor by discrediting established norms, exporting authoritarian elements of its legal system, and influencing laws and norms development.
Efforts to shape international law are especially focused on areas Chinese jurists call “frontier law” — in emerging fields like space, cyber and nuclear security by which international law has been less clearly defined.
“China views the present international architecture that governs space as favorable to its interests,” said the report. “It has avoided endorsing efforts to ascertain norms for responsible behavior in space.” Further, China is wary of proposed changes to the order “that it believes would constrain its future actions in space, particularly U.S.-sponsored changes just like the voluntary moratorium on destructive anti-satellite testing in space.”
Extracting resources in space
On the difficulty of resources derived from space, the report notes that current international space law doesn’t include a legal mechanism to obviously adjudicate ownership of space-based resources, leaving room for interpretation based on the dictates of a rustic’s national interests.
The report says Beijing “intends to assert a right to make use of space-based resources within the absence of a transparent legal framework regulating mining in space.”
The Outer Space Treaty states that celestial bodies will not be subject to national appropriation, however it is vague on the legal status of any resources extracted from those bodies, the commission identified. And China has expressed opposition to the Artemis Accords, framing the agreement as an attempt by the US to unilaterally set ground rules for lunar behavior.
“China’s criticism of the accords likely indicates trepidation that the NASA-led initiative will outpace China’s lunar program,” the commission said.
Space-based nuclear weapon
China is pursuing a space-based nuclear weapon that has the potential to threaten the U.S. homeland with a brand new global strike capability, the report said.
“China is already a world leader in missile and space technologies, and tighter U.S. export controls are unlikely to affect future Chinese innovation in these areas,” the commission noted.
“Beijing’s pursuit of space-based nuclear weapons and potential development of low-yield warheads could also complicate U.S. deterrence by offering the PLA greater flexibility to threaten or engage in limited nuclear use against U.S. forces within the region.”
China’s apparent development of a fractional orbital bombardment system (FOBS) raises the likelihood that China could permanently deploy nuclear weapons in space, effectively adding a fourth leg to its nascent nuclear triad. FOBS is defined as a payload that’s delivered into low-Earth orbit but reenters the atmosphere to bombard a goal before completing a full orbit.
The event of a FOBS, said the report, “illustrates Beijing’s commitment to identifying diverse methods of delivering nuclear weapons.”
The FOBS “poses a threat to strategic stability by allowing China to potentially deliver larger nuclear payloads than via ICBMs alone after remaining undetected for long portions of its flight.”
To tackle the competition with China, the commission in its report makes several recommendations to Congress, including reforms in export controls and more stringent reviews of foreign investments in U.S. corporations.
“If China overtakes long-standing areas of U.S. advantage in undersea warfare and space and establishes a decisive lead in AI,” the report warned, “the balance of power in Asia and worldwide may very well be dramatically altered.”