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  1. THE SOUTH CHINA SEA: CHINA’S NUCLEAR ASSURED RETALIATION SANCTUARY

THE SOUTH CHINA SEA: CHINA’S NUCLEAR ASSURED RETALIATION SANCTUARY

The second similarity between China and the Soviet Union is China’s apparent pursuit of a submarine sanctuary in the SCS, like that the Soviet Union established in the Sea of Okhotsk. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union defined the Sea of Okhotsk as a “sanctuary” or “maritime bastion” for its nuclear-armed missile submarines (SSBNs).30 By attempting to maintain absolute sea and air superiority in this area north of the Kuril Islands (which Japan calls the Chishima Islands), the Soviet Union intended to protect and maintain an assured nuclearretaliation capability against the United States.31 Admiral Gorshkov believed that continuous maintenance of the Soviet Union’s ability to target the American homeland with nuclear-tipped submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) was crucial to deterring the United States from attacking the Soviet homeland. Therefore, he designed the Soviet navy and directed its operations to secure that sanctuary through absolute sea and air superiority to ensure the survivability of Soviet SSBNs.32

China similarly seeks to militarize the SCS, at least in part to create a sanctuary for its military operations against the United States.33 Although China has a substantial maritime border with access to the ECS, the SCS, and the Yellow Sea, the SCS is the area that is most suitable for establishing a naval and submarine sanctuary on the model of what the Soviets created in the Sea of Okhotsk.

[T]he early PLAN’s foundations—its education, tactics, and equipment—all derived from the Soviet navy, with enduring effects to this day.

First, a successful sanctuary requires sufficient depth to accommodate submarine operations, and bases to supply and otherwise support submarines; only the SCS meets these conditions.34 Second, the sanctuary must be free from USN influence; otherwise China’s submarines would remain under potential threat in a conflict, when their deterrent capability would be most important. China recognizes the U.S. Navy’s superiority and competence in antisubmarine warfare (ASW), which prevents the SCS from being an effective sanctuary—for now.35 The SCS, however, could fulfill these conditions if and when China completes the militarization of the “artificial islands” it has constructed in the SCS, especially in the Spratly and Paracel groups.36 If a conflict breaks out between China and the United States, the SCS presently would be a contested area, but the air and sea bases China has built on its militarized artificial islands could provide it with access and capacity for force projection to establish sea and air superiority over the region, and provide an additional base for ASCEL operations. This could leave the SCS unacceptably perilous for U.S. warships, including nuclear submarines.

There are two strong indications that China intends to use the SCS as a sanctuary for its SSBN fleet. First, Liu Huaqing, the father of the PLAN, was influenced strongly by the Soviet navy, and therefore placed high priority on improving China’s submarine capabilities, including the development of SLBMs for deterrence.37 Second, China already considers the SCS to be a “core national interest,” alongside the resolution of Taiwan’s status. In 2010, high-ranking Chinese officials told U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg that the SCS is a core national interest, echoed by the director of China’s State Oceanic Administration.38 Chinese president Hu Jintao once cited China’s vulnerability to the Malacca dilemma—China’s overdependence on trade flowing through the Malacca Strait without viable alternative routes—as one of the reasons his country placed strategic value on the SCS.39 Hu feared that the United States could close off the strait in a crisis, which would have a dire impact on the Chinese economy.40

However, trade vulnerability does not explain fully China’s focus on the SCS. With respect to energy, China has sought to reduce its vulnerability under the Malacca dilemma by diversifying its global sources for oil and gas and increasing energy imports arriving via overland pipelines.41 Furthermore, China appears to recognize that the reciprocal economic costs of a blockade to the United States, owing to the two countries’ close economic interdependence, may reduce U.S. leaders’ willingness to shut off China’s maritime trade. Trade between the United States and China exceeds $2.1 trillion in value per year, leaving ample opportunity for China to impose its own economic costs on the United States. The economic and supply-chain chaos created by COVID-19 illustrates the vulnerability of the United States to China-dependent supply chains, and hints at the type of pain China might impose deliberately on the United States in a conflict.42 Furthermore, the economic and political consequences of a blockade do not hit immediately, leaving China time to conduct swift counterattacks to undermine the U.S. blockade before it produced the intended effect.43 Thus, China has a variety of countermeasures and mitigations that it can deploy to protect its sea lines of communication (SLOCs) in the SCS. Therefore, the need to protect its SLOCs does not explain fully the strategic value that China places on the SCS, or the resources and effort it has expended to exert dominance over the region.44

The best explanation left is the sea’s strategic and military importance, suggesting that China will continue to try to shape the SCS to serve as a bastion for its military, especially its SSBNs. China already appears to have started to develop an SSBN sanctuary in the SCS. First, it continues to build up the infrastructure on the artificial islands it constructed in the Paracel and Spratly Islands (and may begin to construct on the Scarborough Shoal), effectively creating a “Great Wall of Reefs” equipped with sensors and airfields to help shield its submarines. Second, in Yulin on Hainan Island in the South China Sea, China has built a large submarine base, which now is home to its Type 094 Jin-class SSBNs, and presumably also will host its new Type 096 SSBNs. China’s most advanced type of SSBNs can be deployed along this maritime “Great Wall” from the base in Yulin yet still enjoy generous water depth in which to operate.45 Even though the JL-2, the latest SLBM carried on the Jin class, cannot reach the U.S. homeland from the SCS, China possesses the world’s third-largest space industry, and presumably it will equip its next generation of SSBNs with longer-range SLBMs capable of targeting the United States, possibly as soon as 2025.46

In sum, China appears intent on establishing a sanctuary for its SSBNs (or at least on reserving the option to do so) by militarizing the SCS to increase the subs’ survivability against U.S. ASW capabilities and achieve a survivable, assured nuclear-retaliation capability (in concert with new, longer-range SLBMs). This explains why China considers the SCS to be a core national interest, and why it seeks to dominate those waters in a manner analogous to its territorial seas, even if it does not claim the SCS as such explicitly. The modern record of China’s actions in the SCS—occupying the Paracel Islands in 1973, the Spratly Islands in 1988, and Mischief Reef in 1995, followed by the rapid, large-scale construction of military infrastructure on those features beginning in 2014—suggests China’s grand ambitions for the SCS and the risks that their full realization could pose to the United States.47

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