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China sees Russia partnership as crucial to its great-power ambitions and is developing ability to ‘win wars’: Pentagon
- US Defence Department calls out Beijing for ‘providing material support’ to Moscow in Ukraine war and heaping military pressure on Taiwan
- People’s Liberation Army said to possess over 500 nuclear warheads and able to win wars against a strong enemy understood to be the US
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Robert Delaneyin Washington
China views its “no-limits” partnership with Russia as integral to advancing the PRC’s emergence as a great power, the US government said on Thursday, in an assessment that also warned the Asian giant is ahead of American projections on nuclear warhead deployment and could be developing missile systems capable of hitting US targets.
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The US Defence Department called out China for “providing material support” for Russia’s war, intensifying military pressure against Taiwan and ignoring repeated requests for bilateral dialogue as the country modernises in preparation to fight a “strong enemy”, which the Pentagon assumed was the US.
The People’s Liberation Army’s evolving capabilities and concepts continue to strengthen China’s ability to “fight and win wars” against a “strong enemy” – a likely euphemism for the US – as well as counter an intervention by a third party in a conflict along the PRC’s periphery and project power globally, the Pentagon said.
The annual assessment, mandated by Congress and commonly known as the China Military Power Report, follows multiple warnings about the growth of the country’s nuclear force and a rise in “coercive and risky operational behaviour” against US military assets in international airspace over the East and South China seas.
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Elbridge Colby, co-founder and principal of the Marathon Initiative, a Washington think tank, on Thursday said the report indicated “greater aggressiveness and ambition” on China’s part and called the country’s nuclear warhead deployment “significant”.
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Such build-up was “designed to coerce unification of Taiwan if necessary, but also to project power beyond the first island chain”, said Colby, who previously served as deputy assistant secretary of defence for strategy and force development.
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