US Navy chief says ‘phenomenal growth’ in China’s military requires a strong response
- ‘We certainly have a lot of respect for them given their ability to learn and evolve,’ Admiral Michael Gilday, chief of US naval operations, says of People’s Liberation Army
- Gilday outlines several development programmes to counter China’s rise, including incorporating artificial intelligence and unmanned vessels
China is an impressive military adversary that is consistently improving and meeting its targets years in advance, putting the US Navy under pressure to respond effectively to the mounting challenge, a top US admiral said on Thursday.
“We certainly have a lot of respect for them given their ability to learn and evolve,” Admiral Michael Gilday, chief of US naval operations, said at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in a discussion of the US Navy’s future.
“In their phenomenal growth in the military dimension, but also in the economic dimension, not just regionally but globally, they’ve exceeded every deadline they’ve ever set for themselves.”
His comments came as US-China relations hit new lows and tensions rise over the Pentagon’s “freedom of navigation” voyages in the contested Taiwan Strait and South China Sea.
Gilday said that Beijing’s goals under President Xi Jinping of becoming a regional military power by 2035 and a global one by 2050 are ahead of schedule, with the earlier one likely to be achieved by 2027. “We take that ’27 timeline that President Xi has talked about very seriously.”
How do we fit into the whole-of-government approach to deterring China?
In preparing for any US-China confrontation, Gilday continued, the US Navy must make some tough trade-offs in a constrained budgetary environment.