Search

Begin New Search Political Geography China Publishing Institution International Institute for Strategic Studies Publication Year within 10 Years

1. China’s Digital Silk Road: integration into national IT infrastructure and wider implications for Western defence industries

Author:
Meia Nouwens
Publication Date:
02-2021
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
International Institute for Strategic Studies
Abstract:
The geopolitical dispute between the United States and China is taking place on the fault line of global telecommunications infrastructure and digital technologies. As this competition grows, so too does the likelihood of a potential bifurcation in the global information and security technological ecosystems, split between US-allied liberal democracies on the one side and countries dependent on Chinese-based information and communications technology (ICT) on the other. The impact of this competition reaches beyond telecommunications companies and those involved in their supply chains. Indeed, second and third order of magnitude implications exist for the security and defence sectors. While this competition unfolds, the Chinese Government’s Digital Silk Road (DSR) continues apace and leverages the strengths of Chinese public- and private-sector giants to further integrate Chinese technologies and standards into the digital ecosystems of the least-developed, emerging and developed economies alike. The existing literature on the security and defence implications of the integration of Chinese ICT into national digital ecosystems is primarily concerned with the potential threats posed to intelligence and defence cooperation. However, the implication of China’s global digital investments for US and other Western defence industries is an understudied subject that deserves greater attention. To provide greater clarity to Western defence industries on these issues, this project has sought to answer four forward-looking questions. Firstly, what risks does the possibility of a bifurcated global digital ecosystem pose for the national and industrial security of key Asian, European and Middle Eastern states and economies? Secondly, to what extent does the integration of Chinese information technology and digital infrastructure create challenges for alliance intelligence and defence cooperation? Thirdly, what level of integration should be considered significant and how might security-cooperation efforts (e.g. Western arms exports) be affected? Lastly, can security risks to companies doing business abroad be mitigated when the integration of Chinese digital technology into national digital ecosystems is already high? This report has aimed to address this gap in current analysis by outlining the potential risks posed by China’s global digital and technological investments to defence industries. It follows with an analysis of the extent of Chinese DSR activity in five case-study countries across Asia, the Middle East and Europe that are of high security and defence importance to the US: Indonesia, the Republic of Korea (ROK), Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Poland. In doing so, the report aims to provide greater insight into government decision-making and lessons learned for Western defence industries.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Communications, Infrastructure, Hegemony, Digital Economy, Conflict, Silk Road, and Rivalry
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

2. Missile developments in South Asia: a perspective from Pakistan

Author:
International Institute for Strategic Studies
Publication Date:
05-2021
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
International Institute for Strategic Studies
Abstract:
India and Pakistan continue to develop their missile-delivery systems and associated nuclear inventories, raising concerns of a regional arms race. While Indian doctrine appears intended to fight a ‘two-front war’ against Pakistan and China, the extent to which India’s missile inventory is balanced, or otherwise, is a cause of disquiet in Islamabad. Many of the new missile systems being added to India’s inventory appear to be more suited to target Pakistan than China. This disconnect between India’s threat perception and missile developments not only risks eroding the credibility of its deterrence posture vis-à-vis China, but also courts an action–reaction dynamic with Pakistan. Islamabad, in response to how it views Indian developments, is in turn making qualitative improvements to its missile arsenal, with the intention of deterring limited conflict to an all-out war. The resultant arms race in the missile arena, however, is moving on two different trajectories. This paper discusses ongoing missile developments in South Asia, and how India and Pakistan have used different delivery systems as signalling mechanisms during past crises in an attempt to achieve their respective military or political objectives. It is also useful to examine Pakistan’s posture of Full-Spectrum Deterrence (FSD) in the context of India’s Cold Start doctrine, introduced in 2004 and apparently intended to allow India to explore options for a limited war in cases where there is a risk of crossing the nuclear threshold. The paper also reviews whether doctrinal ambiguities can be discerned in India’s declaratory nuclear policies, especially New Delhi’s claim of maintaining a credible minimum deterrence (CMD) and how this can be squared with the goal of being able to cope with a ‘two-front war’.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Military Strategy, Missile Defense, and Rivalry
Political Geography:
Pakistan, China, India, and Asia

3. The evolving nature of China’s military diplomacy: from visits to vaccines

Author:
Meia Nouwens
Publication Date:
05-2021
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
International Institute for Strategic Studies
Abstract:
The People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) military-to-military cooperation in response to the global coronavirus pandemic signals a growing role for the military within China’s diplomatic activities. Historically, the PLA played a minor role in Chinese foreign policy. However, in the wake of a more nationalist and assertive Chinese foreign policy, the PLA’s role in national diplomacy and security strategy has grown to serve both strategic and operational goals and has reached new heights in the context of the coronavirus pandemic. Military-to-military COVID-19-related engagement has taken place within a larger context of Beijing’s expanded diplomatic efforts to improve China’s global reputation following its initial delayed and mishandled response at the start of the coronavirus outbreak in 2020. Publicly available data shows that COVID-19 military diplomacy began in March 2020, when the PLA sent protective equipment and clothing to Iran. In February 2021, the PLA began to donate COVID-19 vaccines to overseas militaries. The PLA’s vaccine assistance to 13 countries globally fits within a wider vaccine-centric diplomatic effort by the Chinese government but so far has been far smaller in scale. Between March 2020 and April 2021, the PLA has provided military medical assistance or donations to 56 countries around the world, and a United Nations peacekeeping mission. In all but two cases, the PLA’s medical diplomatic activities were directed at countries belonging to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Geographically, the PLA mostly engaged with countries in the Asia–Pacific and Africa. The focus on the BRI and South–South diplomacy also reflects China’s wider diplomatic narrative and foreign policy objectives. The PLA’s activities were usually framed within the ‘responsible stakeholder’ narrative that China sought to promote through its civilian aid diplomacy. It is likely that the PLA sought to cooperate with militaries wherever it could and focussed on countries with which it already enjoyed established friendly relations, rather than using the PLA’s military diplomacy to establish new strategic relations. The PLA’s military diplomatic activities relating to the coronavirus demonstrate that the PLA will increasingly play a greater role in China’s foreign diplomacy, in line with President Xi’s instructions.
Topic:
Security, Diplomacy, Military Strategy, and Hegemony
Political Geography:
China and Asia

4. Missile developments in Southern Asia: a perspective from India

Author:
Manpreet Sethi
Publication Date:
06-2021
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
International Institute for Strategic Studies
Abstract:
Credible nuclear deterrence presupposes the availability and integration of certain essential components that collectively constitute a nuclear arsenal. Delivery systems, deployable across a variety of platforms and of requisite range and reliability, are one such critical element. Accordingly, in the last decade the three nuclear-armed states in Southern Asia − China, India and Pakistan − have been engaged in developing missiles that they consider necessary to support their respective deterrent needs. This paper identifies recent trends in missile development in the region, focusing on the above-mentioned states. It captures capability trends, considers the differing capability emphasis among the three countries depending on their approach to nuclear deterrence and assesses the impact of missile developments on strategic stability.
Topic:
Security, Nuclear Weapons, Military Strategy, Deterrence, and Strategic Stability
Political Geography:
Pakistan, China, India, and Asia

5. Exploring post-INF arms control in the Asia-Pacific: China’s role in the challenges ahead

Author:
Bates Gill
Publication Date:
06-2021
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
International Institute for Strategic Studies
Abstract:
With the demise of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2019, much attention has focused on the Asia-Pacific as the locus for a new missile-fuelled arms competition, especially between the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Much speculation has also centred on the prospects of avoiding the most dangerous elements of that competition through arms control or other risk-reduction measures. There are good reasons for these concerns. Since the 1990s China has invested enormous resources in the development and deployment of short-, medium-, and intermediate-range ballistic and cruise missiles, as well as intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Today China fields one of the world’s largest and most diverse arrays of ballistic-missile systems, including both conventional- and nuclear-armed variants. Critically, these missile systems have become an increasingly central feature in the strategic and operational thinking of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and will likely remain so for the decades ahead. At present, Beijing sees little to no value in reductions to these systems. On the contrary, they are valuable for the very reasons Washington and other regional capitals would like to see them limited: they pose a credible deterrent and warfighting threat in and around China’s periphery, not only against the United States, but also against US allies and others in the region such as India. For the United States, China’s steady missile build-up has been a long-standing concern. When the Trump administration announced its withdrawal from the INF – citing Russia’s non-compliance with the treaty – it also cited China’s deployment of intermediate-range missile systems and their threats to US interests in the Asia-Pacific as an ancillary reason for quitting the agreement. Since 2019, the United States has initiated weapons-development programmes with an eye to deploying its own suite of intermediate missiles to the region in order to range Chinese targets, in addition to other offensive and defensive systems to counter Chinese missile threats. Coming in the larger context of deteriorating diplomatic, security and economic relations between Beijing and Washington, these developments are only a small part of an intensifying competition between the two powers.
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, Diplomacy, Hegemony, and INF Treaty
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

6. China’s BRI: The Development-Finance Dimension

Author:
David Gordon and Haoyu Tong
Publication Date:
03-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Institute for Strategic Studies
Abstract:
This report is the first of two synthesising the findings of a major research workshop convened in Washington DC on 26 June 2019, by The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), as part of its multi-year project on China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The IISS commissioned ten papers that addressed development-finance and security issues in the BRI, prepared by leading scholars and policy practitioners. They were joined at the workshop by more than two dozen other experts on China’s international behaviour. This first report focuses on development-finance issues in the BRI; the second will address security issues broadly cast. China’s Belt and Road Initiative is now six years old. Announced by (then) newly ensconced President Xi Jinping, it has since become the centrepiece of Xi’s ambitious drive to make China a more active global leader, and to break free from the cautious approach set out more than 30 years earlier by then-paramount-leader Deng Xiaoping – that China’s strategic approach should be to ‘hide its capacities and bide its time’. At the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) 19th Congress in 2017, the BRI was integrated into the party’s charter. Much of the early analytical work on the BRI has focused on questions surrounding China’s motivations – economic or geopolitical. Is Xi’s initiative a response to changing domestic economic circumstances? Or does it signal evidence of China’s intent to build a twentyfirst- century imperium modelled on the post-war United States-led experience, more than on European colonial or earlier Asian empires? The emerging consensus on this question is that it has been a bit of both. At the same time, an often overlooked factor is Xi’s constant need to further consolidate his power inside China, as the economics versus geopolitics debate about the motivations for the BRI gives too little attention to the more purely political dimension. The BRI cannot be separated from Xi’s efforts to cast himself domestically as an exceptional leader for an exceptional moment in China’s history.
Topic:
Development, Globalization, Infrastructure, Hegemony, and Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)
Political Geography:
China and Asia

7. Assessing Chinese defence spending: proposals for new methodologies

Author:
Meia Nouwens
Publication Date:
03-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Institute for Strategic Studies
Abstract:
Little is known about how China’s growing defence budget is allocated, particularly following recent structural reforms. In the absence of publicly available information and new research on Chinese defence economics, outside observers consider the official data to be incomplete. Publications addressing Chinese defence spending often claim that ‘it is widely believed’ official Chinese statistics exclude key categories of military-related spending. For instance, in 2003, one analyst wrote that ‘it is widely accepted that the official budget released by the Chinese every year accounts for only a fraction of actual defense spending. In particular, whole categories of military expenditure are believed to be missing from official figures.’ The methodologies employed by research institutions, such as the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), to estimate China’s total military spending date back to the late 1990s. Furthermore, existing estimates do not take into account China’s recent military reorganisation under President Xi Jingping’s direction, which began in 2015, and a wide range of defence reforms. For example, in 2018, the Chinese authorities integrated the China Coast Guard (CCG), the People’s Armed Police (PAP) and the maritime militias into the Central Military Commission’s (CMC’s) command structure. It is currently unclear how this restructuring has affected China’s defence spending. In addition, China’s defence spending could have been affected by the increasing fulfilment of weapons procurements by domestic firms. Therefore, a reassessment of China’s defence spending and the methodologies employed is required.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Military Strategy, Military Affairs, and Budget
Political Geography:
China and Asia

8. The PLA’s Mask Diplomacy

Author:
Helena Legarda
Publication Date:
08-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Institute for Strategic Studies
Abstract:
Much has been written about China’s “mask diplomacy” during the Covid-19 pandemic. As the epicenter of the pandemic shifted from China to the rest of the world, China’s government sent planeloads of masks and medical supplies to hard-hit countries around the world. Beijing’s “mask diplomacy” sought to bolster China’s image as a responsible global power and was widely perceived as part of Beijing’s attempt to control the narrative around the pandemic and distract from its initial cover-up. But while all the attention focused on the Chinese government’s actions, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was carrying out its own, much quieter version of mask diplomacy. According to MERICS data, in the three months between March 13 and June 19, the PLA sent military planes full of medical material to 46 countries. The material, which mostly consisted of masks and personal protective equipment (PPE), was invariably donated to the recipient countries’ armed forces or defense ministries. The PLA also set up video conferences with foreign militaries to share its experiences of fighting the Covid-19 outbreak and strengthen military-to-military relations. At first glance, the Chinese government’s mask diplomacy campaign and the PLA’s look remarkably similar. However, a number of differences suggest there were different goals and strategies at play.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Public Policy, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
China and Asia

9. China’s BRI: The Security Dimension

Author:
David F Gordon, Haoyu Tong, and Tabatha Anderson
Publication Date:
09-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Institute for Strategic Studies
Abstract:
In this second report published by the IISS Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) Project under the Geo-Economics, Geopolitics and Strategy Programme, the authors examine a range of security-related challenges that the BRI confronts as it expands into diverse geographies to China’s west and south. The report explores the risks in operating across environments fraught with political, economic and social instability. Beyond this, it delves into the actual and potential challenges that the BRI faces from Islamic extremism and terrorism. The report also assesses the ways in which the Maritime Silk Road (MSR) fits into China’s growing strategic interests in Southeast Asia, and the development of the Digital Silk Road (DSR) at the forefront of the technological and geopolitical competition between China and the United States. Finally, the report explores the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) as a case study of the security risks and governance challenges present in what is probably the single most important country-wide BRI endeavour.
Topic:
Regional Cooperation, Infrastructure, Hegemony, Digital Economy, Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and Silk Road
Political Geography:
Pakistan, China, and Asia

10. Defeating Threat Air Defences: the Return of the DEAD

Author:
International Institute for Strategic Studies
Publication Date:
12-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Institute for Strategic Studies
Abstract:
For the past two decades the US and its allies have faced a very limited surface-to-air threat in wars in which they have engaged. This is now changing as the worsening security environment and the emergence of near-peer rivals once again raises the spectre of a strongly contested air domain. A central element of the renewed challenge is the surface-to-air missile (SAM) system. China and Russia have fielded and continue to develop SAM systems across all range categories – and to offer many of these for export – that pose a credible threat to air operations. The US, and to an even greater extent the Europeans, have reduced emphasis and expenditure on what is known as the suppression of enemy air defence (SEAD) role. Counter-insurgency rather than counter-integrated air-defence operations have been the priority since the turn of the century. There is now, however, the renewed challenge of being able to carry out air operations in airspace defended by the latest generations of point-, short-, medium- and long-range SAM systems. Low-observable aircraft only offer a partial solution, particularly as the US and its allies will operate mixed fleets of stealthy and non-stealthy combat aircraft at least until around the middle of the century. The latter types of aircraft remain at greater risk from SAM threats than low-observable aircraft, and their operational utility will depend partly on the wider capacity to counter surface-based threat missile systems. SEAD is an asset-intensive capability, particularly in the early days of a conflict, and has traditionally involved dedicated platforms as well as fighter ground-attack aircraft. In SEAD operations in the 1990s, such as Operation Allied Force during the 1999 Kosovo conflict, up to one-third of strike missions were tasked against ground-based air defences. While the force mix will change as uninhabited systems are increasingly adopted in the inventory, a variety of crewed and uninhabited aircraft and associated weaponry will still be required for the task, and will be required in numbers greater than are available in current inventories if faced by a peer or near-peer threat. Collating what is known as an electronic order of battle against peer and near-peer rivals should once again become a priority, as should the capacity to counter, disable or destroy surface-to-air threat systems.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Military Strategy, and Missile Defense
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Europe, Asia, North America, and United States of America