China Report #3
Executive summary
The China BLUF Assessment from July 2021 highlights China diplomatic activities in Central and South-Asia, where Beijing is strengthening its partnerships with Pakistan and the DPKR. Further, Beijing is leveraging its leading position within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), to play an active role in the reconstruction of Afghanistan. In Africa, China’s official visit to Algeria and Egypt developed around leveraging the vaccine diplomacy to gain economic and political benefits. Further, special attention is dedicated at assessing China’s reaction to the US accusation regarding global cyber hacking campaign.
In the military and technological domains data shows steady advancements: in July, China launched surveillance satellites in orbit, built up more than 100 underground silos for the launch of nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles and progressed in the construction of a new navy ship, the Type 003 Carrier. Least but not last, during the celebration of the 100 anniversaries of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC), President Xi Jinping emphasized that Beijing must accelerate the modernization of national defense and the armed forces. This month’s monitoring also provides new evidence of technology transfer from Chinese Universities to the defense Industry through Joint Ventures and reviews updates on PLA Research on Military Target Recognition. An assessment on the impact that the Chinese technology digitalization poses to the Atlantic Alliance is given afterwards.
In the Indo-Pacific, Chinese ships entering Japanese and Australian waters raised serious concerns over these two NATO’s Partners in the region. Moreover, the US-China tension in this area remains high and characterized by public mutual accusations of interference in internal affairs. In conclusion, the report analyses the latest Japanese Defense white paper and propose foresight analysis of NATO’s out of area operations in the Indo-Pacific.