As I begin typing this on 30 Jan, 2020, at 12:56 US Central Time (GMT -6), Johns Hopkins University reports there have been 8,235 confirmed cases (111 outside of Mainland China, this plague's source): 171 have died, 143 have recovered, 7,921 are still ill.
Rising Tiger, Falling Eagle... Really?
One of the most common topics of discussion for the past decade and a half, on-screen and in-print, has been the rising danger posed by China. The buzz from media outlets (Barron), Academic think-tanks (Helprin), NGO's (Cheng) and even government reports (at least the ones intended for public consumption) (Defense Intelligence Agency) is that China is nipping hot on the heels of the US, threatening to replace it at the top of the international food chain, and that the US is scrambling to try and hold on to its position at the top... but showing signs of slipping. A report from Reuters this past Monday even went as far as to claim that the US and allies now "sail warily" through "Chinese-dominated" waters of the South Pacific (Lang & Lim).
Of course, this claim seems somewhat sensational in light of the increased frequency of US FONOPS in the waters around China under the Trump administration (Panda), including a recent voyage of two warships right through the Taiwan strait (to a noticeably muted reaction from Beijing (Chan), considering this was the second time in 2019 that two warships have sailed between China and Taiwan (Ziezulewicz)). The fact that other US allies such as France (Ali & Stewart) and the UK (Kelly) are conducting similarly defiant operations, including a six-day joint exercise by the US and UK navies (Pickrell), takes some of the wind out of the sails, no pun intended, of this assertion from Reuters.
Nevertheless, this underlines the prevailing concern over China's apparent 'rise.' With all the talk of the 'Thucydides Trap,' it is not uncommon to wonder what the US would do if it relations with China broke down and it came down to a head-to-head match. From my research, I find that such a confrontation would be laughably one-sided. China is aware of this as well, which is why they have adopted a 'non-kinetic warfare' approach (a slight update on what we would once have called a 'Cold War') to wear down the US without fighting.
Warfare can be military, or it can be quasi-military, or it can be non-military. It can use violence, or it can be nonviolent... These characteristics of beyond-limits war are the watershed between it and traditional warfare, as well as the starting line for new types of warfare.
(Qiao & Wang, Unrestricted Warfare, p. 206 & 207)
And so far, it's worked pretty well. China has nibbled away at US power, using tactics that we, under the international norms we ourselves established, could not legitimately retaliate against because they are not, by presently accepted definition, acts of war. In all likelihood, the US would decimate China in the event of an actual war, but since we're not willing to suffer the international flack we would get for throwing the first open punch, China gets away with sucker-punch after sucker-punch.
The question must be asked though: "What if the US took the same approach to China? Are there non-kinetic strategies the US could use that would be effective against China?" The answer is a thunderous, unambiguous "yes," but only if we're willing to play dirty. In this article I will explore several key vulnerabilities in China which the US could exploit, (some military, some non-military, and some of what China would call 'gray-zone' tactics), that would bring China's power in East Asia to a most-likely-permanent end, and all without even needing to resort to nuclear force.
And frankly, with multiple Chinese cities locked down including the country's central train depot of Wuhan (Kuo) and the entire country panicked, this would be the perfect time to out them into action, if utterly crushing China is our goal (though there may be more reasons not to). More on that later, but first, let's look at what strategies the US could use, and why they would be even MORE effective than usual right now, when China is wrapped up in their own homemade crisis. Even if the 2019-nCoV virus doesn't end up causing as much loss of life as, say, SARS, the chaos brought on by the fear of it, presents opportunities to strike.
Hit North Korea, Hard, Flooding Dongbei with Refugees
In the past decade and a half, the lunatic in Pyongyang has frequently thrown a "hey! Pay attention to me!" fit and waved his cute little fledgling nuclear arsenal in the world's face. And whenever this happens, it raises the possibility of the US simply smacking him down (possibly with a little demonstration of what an older, more seasoned and more proven nuclear force can do to a country with only one major city). The two things that always stop us from doing this are "what will his artillery do to Seoul in the DPRK's death throes," and "how many refugees will flood into China?" This is the question that keeps many of Beijing's top strategists awake at night.
The reason they prop up North Korea is not so much that they want a buffer zone (not anymore), but rather, they are afraid of the refugee wave. As Jane Perlez writes for the New York Times, "China has refrained from imposing overly punitive sanctions on North Korea for fear of causing a collapse that would result in refugees flooding the economically vulnerable northeast." And by the way, when she refers to the Northeast as "economically vulnerable," she's putting it mildly. All three of China's "Dongbei" provinces (the ones situated in what was once called Manchuria) have been in recession for most of this decade (Fenby, 119).
What makes this strategy particularly attractive is that it would not even require nuclear force on our part. Even conventional strikes would be enough to cause a tsunami of refugees to flood across the Yalu River, according to predictions in both Beijing and Washington (Mollman), a scenario that would be lethal to the already-strapped northeastern region. Imagine how much more chaotic this would be at a time when China is already imposing quarantines and suffering shortages of medical supplies (Cole).
Of course, there is one major drawback to this, and that is the fact that it basically entails sacrificing Seoul, something America is not eager to do and which South Korea damned sure would not appreciate. In the event of a major strike on North Korea, there's little North Korea could do to survive, but their artillery (which has been put where it is specifically for this very deterrent) would have just enough time to kill a few million South Koreans before they collapsed (Menon), so unless we intend to throw a long-standing ally under the bus, this is not the tactic I would recommend...
...Though it's good to remind the Chinese we could, if we felt China was dangerous enough to make it necessary.
Fortunately, there's another thing China is short of right now other than medical supplies (and space for refugees), that is not getting much attention lately: food. And this crisis would be easily exploited, which brings me to my second strategy.
Support Peripheral Rebellions, Removing Their Food Supply
I already described in a previous article how China is suffering food shortages as a result of 2019's twin crop plagues (Armyworm and African Swine Fever). The magnitude of these crises was made evident later in 2019 when, even in the midst of a trade war, Xi Jinping considered a new food source to be a desperate enough need that he caved in and agreed to purchase this food from his rival, the United States, getting very few of his own demands met in return (Huang). As a result, China is now once again purchasing American soybeans, as well as pork (Polansek & Plume) and even rice (Ingerswen & Smith).
Yeah, you read that right. China, the world's largest rice producer throughout most of history, needs food so badly that they are importing rice from the nation whose economy they have sought to destroy since 1991.
What I also mentioned in that article, was the fact that what little food China is able to produce is almost entirely grown in peripheral border regions who view themselves not as "Chinese" but as "under Chinese occupation."
If one looks more closely at where this arable land is, one gets a glimpse of why China is so insecure about ethnic uprisings. Depending on how traditional a definition of "China" one uses, it would not be completely out of line to say more than 80% of "China's" arable land is not actually even in China.
The Tibet Autonomous Region holds 10,846,800 hectares (21.4% of the country's total) of the PRC's grasslands. Inner Mongolia (which, as its name suggests, traditionally was part of Mongolia, not China, and whose population is mostly Mongolian, not Han), Xinjiang (the Uighur Autonomous Region currently under the guns of a crackdown not unlike the one Tibet endured, which was once an independent nation and currently has a separatist movement) and Qinghai Province (which was once the Tibetan Province of Amdo) make up another 64.65% of the PRC's arable land (Wu, Sui & Zheng, p. 9).
Added together, 85.05% of the PRC's arable land is in ethnically-non-Chinese border areas!
This map has a small error in the fact that a few slivers of what is labelled "Manchuria" should actually be labelled "Korea," as they were part of Goguryeo (Yeo), but it makes the point. Most of the periphery of China, is not what the informed would actually call "Chinese. (Friedman)."
And the vast majority of these peripheral breadbasket regions have centuries of reasons to hate the Han (Szczepanski (1), Griffiths). The indigenous population (whose suffering at the hands of the Han has not only gone on more than 10 times longer than the European and American campaigns against Native Americans, not only surpassed them in cruelty by several orders of magnitude, but is still, unapologetically ongoing), are not afraid to remind the Han of this either. Tibet (Branigan Szczepanski (2)), Xinjiang (DPA), even Inner Mongolia (Spegele) have all been the source of ethnic unrest against the unrepentantly Han Supremacist Central Government.
Now then, how hard would it be for a government that has a history of arming rebels, such as the US, to arm these minorities at a time like this, when China is locked down and its security apparatus already stretched thin? The PLA already has their hands full quelling unrest over the outbreak, and the protests in Hong Kong already diverted their attention? And where would a country that is already starving get their food supply if their entire breadbasket zone suddenly took up arms against them? How much damage would be done by a food shortage and widespread violence on top of the already existing outbreak? Further, if even one of the four main peripheral Buffer States (Tibet, East Turkestan, Mongolia or Manchuria) managed to win their rightful independence from China, the Party would be hard-pressed to maintain their "we made China strong" rhetoric, a situation from which they would never recover. It would likely be a century before any Chinese successor state managed to turn the starving and disease-stricken remnant into even a regional power again, let alone a global player.
This is the moment to distribute weapons and give the oppressed ethnic periphery a chance for some centuries-overdue revenge against their overlords.
The Chinese insist that's what we're already doing in Hong Kong (Westscott). So, since we've already been given credit for stirring up trouble, we might as well earn the credit we've been given. Right?
Shut Down WeChat
For a reader who has never lived in China, it's really difficult to explain just how vital the phone app WeiXin (or "WeChat," as it's known in English) is to everyday life in China, but for the purpose of this article I'll try. As the reader already probably knows, virtually ALL social media used by the rest of the world is banned inside the self-anointed "Central Nation.". And those that are allowed, are the ones created in China, by China, for China, and are typically not even available in any language other than Putonghua (Mandarin). The one exception to the last item (about half of its features are available in English, and a few are even available in other languages) is WeChat.
And what is WeChat? Basically, if you have seen the movie Terminator: Genesys, it's Genesys. Imagine a social media platform that combines Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Skype (in a country where three of those are blocked and the fourth is limited). Now imagine that it is also a Googlemaps double (in a country where Googlemaps is banned). Then, imagine that it once upon a time had an online dating function built-in (though admittedly, the "shake" and "message in a bottle" features, which were mostly for this purpose, have gone mostly by the wayside recently). Imagine also, that it has a built-in means of ordering train and plane tickets or hotel rooms. Imagine as well that it is the primary means of ordering food delivered to your home, or hailing a taxi.
But that's not all. Imagine as well that most utility payments are made using this app, rather than over a computer or in person (indeed, in 5 and a half years in China I rarely saw a place where a utility bill of any kind even COULD be paid in person). Since the account is linked to your HuKou (if you're Chinese) or Passport (if you're foreign), this can be done entirely from your phone.
But I'm not done yet. Try to imagine also that most banking is done through this app. In fact, imagine that more than half of all financial transactions in the country were done through this app instead of cash or cards. WeChat does this two ways. One is "scan the bar code and pay the amount authorized," and the other is "open a chat conversation with someone on your friends list and click 'send money.' " Since the app is connected to your bank card, this is quick and painless.
And finally, let's imagine that this app, rather than phones, is the primary means of phone-to-phone communication throughout the country.
Well, if you can imagine all this, then you have just imagined WeChat.
Indeed, in my five and a half years in Beijing, I never once knew my co-workers phone numbers, or those of my friends. Instead, when you want to keep in touch with someone, it's "can I have your WeChat?" This applies not only to personal correspondence but at-work communication as well. Basically, it is not possible to exist in China without WeChat. It is to Chinese society what the spice melange was to the Human Empire in Frank Herbert's Dune novels. Without it, there is no communication, transportation, finance... nothing.
In fact, one of its more recent features (added a mere three days ago as I type this) is a handy-dandy little feature labelled "Health." And what pops up when you click this feature? Why, it's a real-time Coronavirus tracker, of course! The red number is the number of confirmed cases in Mainland China, orange is "suspected cases," green is "recovered cases," and black is deaths. I reiterate, however, that this only tracks cases in Mainland China. How kind of Tencent to add an apocalypse monitor to their handy-dandy little on-the-go telescreen.
And the entire app is controlled, surveilled, and powered by one server, operated by a partially state-owned firm called Tencent. This makes this one hell of a juicy target for a cyberattack. A virus (of the digital kind) that caused this app to stop working, would grind China's day-to-day life to a screeching halt.
Now it would be temporary, of course. They'd go back to paying with cash, buying tickets from a PC, hailing taxis the old-fashioned way, and calling people by phone, all within a few days time. But during that time, the level of confusion cannot be imagined by anyone who has not seen just how dependent on this app the entire country really is.
If WeChat shuts down, Chinese society shuts down. Period.
Wage an Economic War, Crushing Their Already Waning Economy
This one is obvious, because we've already seen a teasing glimpse of it with the Sino-American 'trade war,' which hurt America but absolutely knocked the wind out of China (Cho, Xie). So many articles have been written illuminating the fact that America has been utterly crushing China in the Trade War while feeling... I won't say "no pain" but less pain then China, that there is scarcely any need to retread the same ground here.
Let it simply suffice to say that an epidemic is not exactly a boost to any nation's economy, and China's already weak position in the Trade War has been further weakened already by the mere hypothesis of economic fallout from 2019-nCoV (He). If the US decided to ramp-up further economic pressure now, our already-badly-wounded opponent would be hard-pressed to fight back while they are busy licking their wounds from the viral outbreak.
And speaking of outbreaks, there's one final tactic America could use to drive a wooden stake permanently into the heart of the Chinese Empire. It's the one whose impact would be multiplied by the largest amount by the Coronavirus crisis. Though I'm almost loathe to mention it, because as much as I despise China, I find this notion so repugnant I wouldn't even use it on them unless I felt they were so dangerous that their existence, rather than their ascendance, was a threat to the world. Yet, for the sake of thoroughness, I will list it. Perhaps a few decades from now, the fact that this was not done during China's weakest hour, will be enough to dispel China's damnable myths about the world plotting against them.
Release an Actual Bioweapon
(Sigh)
I told you this one is repugnant. But for the moment, let's imagine if America decided China's neverending litany of aggressive acts against our allies had made them such a volatile danger, destroying them was so vitally necessary to preserve the world we have come to cherish, that they decided "the end justifies the means," and resorted to biological warfare. If I were president, and if it seemed that this was necessary, then I'll shoot it straight. Now would be the time, and the weapon of choice would be a few crates full of rats carrying Yrisnia Pestis, the bacteria that causes Bubonic Plague, distributed across northern China, with a heavy concentration dropped into Beijing, and I would do this before implementing any of the other tactics.
Why Yrisinia Pestis?
Well, for one thing, I already commented on how vulnerable China is to a Plague outbreak. Between a trend of antibiotic resistance, a natural reservoir of the bacteria already present in Northeast China, and the fact that rats (which spread the disease) thrive in and around Beijing, especially in recent years, China (which has been the source of most of the world's Bubonic Plague outbreaks) seems ripe for another, and what better time to help such an outbreak along than when China's medical system is already stretched to its limits from a different disease? In fact, back in November when Beijing had a brief rash of Yrisnia Pestis diagnoses, I feared that is precisely what was coming.
But there is another reason. The early symptoms of Pneumonic Plague (the airborne form of Yrisnia Pestis) mimic the early symptoms of 2019-nCoV strikingly. So much so that in both cases, it has been suspected that numerous infections have been hidden by reporting them as "death by pneumonia." The already monumental task of treating a highly contagious and deadly disease would be compounded by the fact that doctors would find it difficult to know which of the two killer germs to treat for. Also, the possibility of dual infection would raise the mortality rate of both by weakening the immune and respiratory systems of those who survived one, making them easy prey for another.
And finally, the timing would be perfect, because the greatest risk with any biological attack (the risk of the disease spreading beyond the target) would be minimized now, as numerous countries lock their doors to travelers from China (Harrison). In short, not only is China more vulnerable than ever, but the rest of the world is more insulated from them. We could maximize fatalities in China with minimal risk of loss anywhere else.
Imagine All of These in Tandem
In the wake of the Coronavirus outbreak, the United States launches a large-scale surprise attack on North Korea. The leaders of the Kim Regime, all in Pyongyang, are taken out within the first few salvos. Though North Korea's artillery retaliates heavily and civilian casualties flood Seoul, the ROK (having hoped to avoid a fight that would be so costly for Seoul, but now realizing one is upon them whether they liked it or not) rolls tanks through the DMZ and makes an unrestrained push toward the besieged city of Pyngyang, seeking to roll back the Kim Regime for good. The DPRK's already-fragile state apparatus cannot sustain itself. Government order of any kind ceases to exist within hours.
As North Korea's state collapses, hundreds of thousands of North Koreans come flooding across the border into already impoverished Dongbei. Amid a public outcry over these foreign "parasites," the PLA is deployed to secure the border. Fighting breaks out and thousands of North Koreans are killed, many while pleading for their lives, and these images are leaked to Western Media outlets, adding to China's already dismal litany of Human Rights scandals and prompting leaders of nations to take punitive actions against China. Those who do manage to get across the border find themselves in a country already gripped by fear of an invisible killer spreading through the air. The survivors find themselves struggling to compete for food and space in a region of China that was already poor.
Oh, and the deployment of PLA troops was so sudden there was little time for medical screening. Infected soldiers, none of whom knew they were infected, have moved into the northeastern regions that had previously not been hard-hit.
As the death toll from 2019-nCoV spikes from the sudden influx of a few hundred thousand refugees bringing with them all manner of new pathogens (and the resulting strain on an already stretched-thin hospital system), protests break out in Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia. China reacts the only way they know how: with brute force. But the locals have had enough. They fight back, with American-made and American-supplied weapons and munitions. The PLA, already stretched thin, is deployed to reinforce its existing garrisons in all three places, but the protesters gather support as the flames of dissatisfaction with the regime are fanned by the government's mishandling of the outbreak. Hong Kong's protest movement, already more than six-months strong, catches their second-wind as they hear echoes of "Do You Hear the People Sing" coming from all around China's periphery.
Already reeling from an epidemic, China finds themselves facing military conflict on four different fronts (Hong Kong, Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia) with an unstable military situation and a refugee crisis happening simultaneously in Dongbei. Tsai Ing-Wen, unable to help herself, takes the opportunity to begin challenging the PLA Air Force in the skies near Taiwan and, emboldened by the PLA's scattered deployments, even makes a few sorties over Fujian.
In desperation, China recalls most of their forces deployed to their artificial islands in the West Philippine Sea, leaving only skeleton crews behind. The recalled forces are sent to attempt to secure Hong Kong, and bolster the Mainland's defenses around the Formosa Strait. It's not long before the AFP begins rather less-than-subtly probing Washington about the possibility of an amphibious strike to retake Fiery Cross Reef and Panatag (Scarborough) Shoal. Vietnam, in the meantime, feels more fiesty than the Philippines and is not waiting for the US. They attack the Paracels themselves. Whether the attack is successful or not, China is now surrounded, and faces a seven front war. Medical supplies to fight 2019-nCoV become impossible to obtain as fewer and fewer trade routes are to be found unhindered by separatist forces, and what few doctors the central government was able to send to Hubei Province find themselves redeployed to military hospitals near the front lines.
These deployments of troops and medical personnel are hampered, of course, because China's transportation is almost entirely done by train, and their central railway hub is in Wuhan.
As weeks press on, the besieged PLA finds itself unable to maintain a perimeter on every side simultaneously. Soon, China's food-growing regions begin to shrink as separatists gain ground in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Inner Mongolia (the last of which finds unexpected support from the Mongolian People's Republic). Everywhere the separatists go, Han are evicted from their homes and forced back into the interior, but they have nowhere to go, and homelessness on the streets during an epidemic is a death sentence, as well as an assurance that the epidemic will continue. Beijing begins floating the idea of bolstering the PLA through conscription, both to reinforce their numbers and to come up with a way to put the evicted Han to some use. Determined to preserve their "National Sovereignty" and "Territorial Integrity" at all costs, the decision is made to announce a draft. This backfires, as the population, already frustrated with the government's continued lackluster handling of the coronavirus, as well as the food shortages brought on by the separatist uprisings, begins taking to the streets.
Protests are isolated at first, but these huge gatherings are enough to shatter the fragile quarantine the central government had in place. The spread of the virus accelerates, and the People's Armed Police, already taxed by reinforcing the PLA in every peripheral zone, must now contend with domestic uprisings. Beijing's response to this is, of course, further domestic lockdowns, which only fuels unrest.
Meanwhile, purchasing medical supplies and food from abroad has been made more difficult by US sanctions put in place after scenes of Chinese border guards slaughtering North Korean civilians. Now, the US adds another blow. They stop selling food to China, and threaten to impose sanctions upon any nation that does. This is the point where the Chinese government finally realizes that the US is indeed determined to destroy them, and they begin issuing speeches on Xinhua, calling for "People's War" against the "American Imperialists." Some Chinese hear them and answer the call, spurred on perhaps by their outrage over the decision to stop selling food to China. Others consider it another of the Regime's attempts to shift the people's anger away from them.
By this time, no one is certain of the death toll from coronavirus anymore, as the doctors responsible for treating the virus, obviously more exposed to it than most people, have begun dying. However, untested fatalities from "pneumonia" are on the rise in every corner of China. People who were already afraid to leave their homes due to the outbreak (an outbreak that may have been under control weeks ago had the government's resources not suddenly been stretched so thin), are now forbidden to do so without a government-approved reason. Delivery drivers are granted an exception, as the government deems that allowing people to order their own food and goods (what few are left) requires less effort on their part than handing out rations. Fortunately, people can still do this, and can still check on their friends and relatives in other provinces, and receive government notifications, thanks to the miracle of WeChat.
Wait, what's this? WeChat is down!
The final nail in the coffin is when a doctor in Beijing (where thousands of NorKor refugees have made their way to at this point, and which is under martial law due to its proximity to Inner Mongolia) makes a post on Weibo (which is promptly pulled down, but not before the damage is done) saying the prototype coronavirus treatments are not having as much of an effect as they were supposed to, and about half the cases of pneumonia in and around Beijing seem to be different. By the time the Health Ministry makes the connection and realizes that they are battling Coronavirus and Black Plague simultaneously, the country is in utter disarray. Large numbers of PLA troops have fallen victim to starvation or disease. Others have defected. The country has lost more than 40% of its territory and no one is even sure how many are dead, but with food shortages and a collapsing healthcare system, the number is only rising.
Finally, the US offers to broker a peace treaty between the Chinese government and the separatists. Aware that the US was the mastermind of their demise, a broken, utterly humiliated Chinese regime is left with no survival options but to accept their most crippling "Unequal Treaty" ever imposed on them at the hands of a Western Power. They recognize the independence of Tibet (to include Qinghai and the Sichuan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture), East Turkestan, and Taiwan (to include Hong Kong), as well as ceding Inner Mongolia to the Mongolian People's Republic, renouncing their "Nine Dash Line," and ceding the Ethnic Korean Prefectures in Dongbei to the ROK (which has annexed what was formerly known as North Korea), in return for a cessation of hostilities, a removal of sanctions, and donations of badly needed food and medical supplies.
In the final twist, it becomes clear why Russia never came to China's aid as the treaty (as per back channel agreements made between the US and Russia before the onset of hostilities) also forces China to return formerly Russian territory such as Damansky Island, to the control of Russia (who has already begun making overtures to invite the newly liberated East Turkestan into the Eurasian Economic Union, driving their influence deeper into Central Asia and limiting China's influence there).
So, If We Can Crush Our Rival So Easily, Why Don't We?
Short answer: because there's no need to.
As I hinted at in the early paragraphs of this article, China is not actually a threat to the US's role as the world's leading power, and contrary to the hype, it's really not in any position to become a threat any time soon (Fenby, 118 - 120). It's understandable that there would be some unease in Washington over China's relative rise in power. Ever since the USSR collapsed the US has been a Tyrannosaurus in a jungle full of Dromaeosaurs, so it raises our eyebrows (if Tyrannosaurs have eyebrows) when we learn we're now a Tyrannosaurus in a jungle full of Dromaeosaurs and one Baryonyx, but the Baryonyx was never big enough to be dangerous by himself and frankly, he's sickly and dying anyway.
...But if we did... if we did feel the need to destroy China completely, this would be the time.
We have the means.
We have the opportunity.
China would do well not to give us a motive.
As I begin typing this on 2 Feb, 2020, at 03:42 US Central Time (GMT -6), Johns Hopkins University reports there have been 14,627 confirmed cases (173 outside of Mainland China, this plague's source), and WeChat Health's coronavirus tracker (which only reports stats from Mainland China) reports 19,544 suspected (unconfirmed) cases. Of the confirmed cases, 305 have died (1 outside of China, in the Philippines), 346 have recovered (WeChat Health reports 351), and 13,976 are still ill.
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