Opinion | Chinese military officers’ tough talk on the US is a product of fear and frustration, not a real threat

Recent confrontational remarks by Chinese military officers on the US are a response to American provocation in the form of increased freedom of navigation operations, new alliances such as the Quad and anti-China rhetoric in US foreign policy circles

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Published: 12:30am, 25 Feb 2019Updated: 12:30am, 25 Feb 2019

There is growing hysteria in the US over the “China threat”. Recent controversial statements by two Chinese military officers have added fuel to the fire. One US expert has warned that in China “the language of war is creeping in”. However, these particular Chinese military officers are well known for their over-the-top rhetoric and their threats are atypical. Nevertheless, their fears and frustration are not surprising given recent “in-your-face” US policy, rhetoric and actions.

To China’s leaders, it must seem that just as the country is regaining its cultural – and national – dignity after a “century of humiliation”, it is being faced with a possible 21st-century repeat of history. Indeed, geopolitical developments may be seen by the general population as evidence of a grand conspiracy of Western civilisation against it.

China is hemmed in by US bases and rotational assets located in American allies and strategic partners stretching across a wide swathe of Asia, from Japan and South Korea in the east to the Philippines and Australia in the south, and Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand in the southwest.

The US is trying to make military inroads with Vietnam and India. Worse, the UK is considering establishing a military base in Southeast Asia. This must add to China’s impression of being threatened. Indeed, Chinese leaders are sensitive to the public expectations and nationalism that they have stoked with their sometimes belligerent rhetoric and promises that China will not be bullied.

Then US defence secretary James Mattis (third from right) talks to Vietnamese military officials on a visit to Bien Hoa air base outside Ho Chi Minh City on October 17, 2018. The air base had been heavily contaminated in the late 1960s and early 1970s by American forces through the storage and spillage of the chemical defoliant Agent Orange. Photo: AP

From China’s vantage point, US rhetoric has become increasingly shrill and aggressive. It has named China as a “strategic competitor” and a “revisionist” power and declared that “a geopolitical competition between free and repressive visions of world order is taking place in the Indo-Pacific region”.