China’s Hegemonic Ambitions, From Taiwan to the Moon: Richard Fisher

building on a foundation of Economic and then political influence China has drawn Russia North Korea and Iran into its early active military dictatorship Coalition in this episode I sit down with Rick fiser a senior fellow at the international assessment and strategy Center he specializes in understanding the Chinese Communist party and the Asian military balance we discussed the nuclear Coalition China is forming with other Rogue States we also discussed the the global implications of China's military Ambitions from its space programs we would probably think that they were launching satellites when in fact they would be putting uh nuclear warheads into space to its activity in the South China Sea we lose the battle of the South China Sea we begin to lose the battle for freedom on Earth this is American thought leaders and I'm Yan Kell Rick fiser such a pleasure to have you on American thought leaders thank you for having me sir my understanding right now is that communist China's military buildup is greater than that of Germany during the 1930s and not only in conventional Weaponry but in nuclear weaponry what's the reality that is the reality uh China is on the path to achieving nuclear superiority over the United States probably by the early 2030s by the mid 2030s they could have a fleet of uh three four maybe five six six aircraft carriers uh three or four of which could be nuclear powered uh they are on the path to a conventional power projection Air Force power projection Army uh uh and they are on a path to achieving not only military Primacy and maybe military political Primacy on Earth but also to reinforce that Primacy or even hegemony over the Earth Moon system so that even even if we are uh cornered on Earth we won't have the option of going to the Moon to get all the resources we would need to survive fight back or or even defeat the Chinese Communist Party hegemony and yet it doesn't seem like China is projecting its military power for example what we what we do hear about is Coast Guard Cutters ramming each other in and in the Philippines around a contested sh so what does that have to do with this gigantic military buildup that you're describing well this military buildup IS deployed and ready to invade Taiwan uh and there there are even in recent weeks horrific indications that a Chinese Communist Regime controlling Taiwan they are deployed against Japan uh they have assisted Pakistan North Korea and soon Iran to become nuclear missile Powers but you mentioned the South China Sea yes uh for the last 3 years or so there has been an escalating pattern of violence by the Chinese Coast Guard uh uh Maritime militia and even Navy against the Philippines uh this is all connected in order to be able to project military power around the globe and to project Chinese Communist power to the Moon in beyond the Chinese Communist party needs to control the South China Sea CH South China Sea is the Gateway the door which the Chinese Nuclear Navy will sail through uh hyan Island which is at the top of the South China Sea is the Spaceport that the party will use to populate the moon and to populate Mars and Beyond so the ramming the the uh violence in the South China Sea that barely makes uh headlines in the United States States but which makes all the headlines in the Philippines in Taiwan and Japan southeast Asia this is all very important we lose the battle of the South China Sea we begin to lose the battle for freedom on Earth explain to me how this isn't just China kind of asserting its dominance in that in the region well CH that it says it rightfully should have of course yes of course uh and uh you know Taiwan is rightfully belongs to to China the Communist Party says when in the whole history of Taiwan uh uh regimes on the mainland have only controlled Taiwan for uh just a scant few decades uh China should control uh a massive province in India essentially because they say so and so any place that the Communist party wants to assert a claim to it will do so I'm I'm sure we're on the cusp of hearing about claims to most of Antarctica uh and when they get to the moon we'll hear about claims to the moon and ditto to Mars or any other moon or planet or asteroid that the party decides to occupy uh their territorial aggrandisement is essentially going to be endless but they are always going to conceal their true goals they're always and they're always going to cloak their behavior in in in layers and layers of respectability to try and convince the world that they are morally and then legally Justified to basically commit murder okay you've been studying communist China's military buildup for decades um tell me a little bit about your background so we know where you're coming from here well uh I I graduated from a a small liberal arts college called Eisenhower college with the idea that I would come to Washington uh and uh become the world's expert on the Soviet navy uh this was uh the year 1981 82 and uh I actually was admitted to uh the Russian area studies program at Georgetown University but as a part of a a work study program I received uh the opportunity to work at uh the then Georgetown University controlled Center for strategic and international studies and uh I ended up working for uh two uh China and Asia experts uh Ray kleene Dr Ray kleene who used to be a high official with the Central Intelligence Agency and then Robert dowan uh who uh worked for uh uh uh uh former Senator Robert Dole late Senator Robert Dole and uh that changed my my life I simply uh got a job at the Heritage Foundation in their new Asian study center and I've been writing about studying uh uh military issues in US Asian uh relations uh ever since and in about uh 1994 or so I decided uh after having avoided it for a long time that I had to do a deep dive and become an expert on the people's Liberation Army and did that essentially by going to their air shows assembling my own database uh and then going to air shows in Russia and other places uh to F take an inventory of who was then selling new military Technologies to uh the pla uh in about 2004 they stopped giving me visas to go to their air shows so I decided I would go to military exhibitions every place else and I I still do that and uh collect uh on what the Chinese uh put out in terms of brochures uh write down the answers to any questions they they care to answer and it all goes into my database and contributes to my writing about China's military modernization and its strategic objectives what we hear about the Chinese military is everything from uh it's a huge military the Army there's a lot of people in there but they're not really good Fighters at all it's not really doesn't mean much right all the way to the Chinese military has already surpassed in some ways the US Military and there are ways for example with these Hypersonic weapon Technologies as I understand that uh no one has a response to where does the it fit on that Spectrum well even even in the 1980s and 1990s when the people's Liberation Army was backward was struggling to figure out how to modernize and trying to acquire technology all from all over the world uh it was it was still a very real threat to its neighbors and even to the United States primarily because of the thousands of years of of Chinese strategic history that prized two aspects of of behavior non-transparency or keeping secret from everybody what you have and what you're going to do and then the prize the the the emphasis value they've placed on the element of surprise so even if China had a backward military if they struck first massively wherever they chose to strike they could probably win today you have that Tradition now married to a military force that is far more modern far more capable and yes in some ways exceeds the actual Hardware military capabilities of the United States as you mentioned in Hypersonic weapons uh China has multiple Hypersonic weapons uh some are probably very secret we don't know about uh but China is is I think the the second country right after Russia just after a couple of years to have married a a Hypersonic Warhead maneuverable Hypersonic Warhead that is extremely difficult to shoot down to an ICBM or in the Chinese sense actually a satellite that could circle the Earth multiple times and Rain these Hypersonic Warheads down on our heads explain to me what that type of a weapon is and how it can be used because you hear about it but uh a lot of us don't really know what what it is a a normal ballistic trajectory ballistic missile is fired from the ground the sea or even the air and E and immediately goes into a ballistic Arc or a parabola or a half circle uh it has an apog meaning a high point and then it goes down it can be terminally guided with radar or Optical Seekers to achieve very very high accuracy but still it descends from a very high point and because of that it can be seen by radar or Optical sensors and if it can be seen by Those sensors it can be targeted by defenses on the ground be they anti-missile missiles uh laser weapons uh uh uh microwave weapons that fry the electronics and such you have a chance to defend yourself now a Hypersonic weapon starts out in a ballistic Arc but it can immediately descend to a lower altitude so it's out of radar sensing range and then when it gets to the lower altitude it can Jinx around go up and down so that even if the radar sees the Warhead approaching it has changed its position enough so that it can move basically move faster than the computer has time to calculate an interception solution so essentially it becomes very very difficult to shoot down and China deploys Hypersonic Warheads on its df17 uh intermediate range ballistic missile it can put those Warheads very likely on a new uh dongfang df27 intercontinental ballistic missile and it has sold this technology or given this technology to North Korea which also today has an intermediate range Hypersonic Warhead maneuverable Hypersonic Warhead missile what what's in these Warheads they can be uh non-nuclear uh they can have fuel air explosives they they can be traveling fast enough so that they can penetrate concrete or or Earth defenses attack a command post underground or they can be armed with probably a smallish nuclear warhead although nuclear warheads can be very powerful and still be very small I mean basically the size of this chair and and still have tens of kilotons or even 100 kilotons worth of uh nuclear explosive force we're going to take a quick break right now Rick and we'll be right back and we're back with Rick Fischer senior fellow at the international assessment and strategy Center how could we sort of imagine the impact of such a can you give me some kind of a reference point one non-nuclear Hypersonic uh uh Warhead from a df7 probably has enough energy to travel straight through an aircraft carrier and maybe break the Keel of the aircraft carrier which would very quickly Force the aircraft carrier to uh Bend up break like like the Titanic and just sink 5,000 Souls boom gone uh that's that's the power that they have and you often see Chinese uh propagandist artists uh uh coming up with uh illustrations of these missiles slamming into American warships uh carriers and smaller ships to make this very point that we we can hit you with a missile and uh destroy 5,000 Sailors and and what about on the nuclear side well China has been uh uh developing nuclear warheads uh since uh the late 1950s uh uh Nikita kushev uh former Soviet leader broke up the the Soviet alliance with China because he wouldn't give Mao nuclear warhead design data that he demanded uh so Mao invested uh his own money made his made his own uh nuclear Enterprise if you will and uh then in uh the mid 1990s or thereabouts the Chinese basically decided to brag to the Americans that they had stolen uh the designs of All American nuclear warheads uh they revealed that to us as as a as a means of generating fear in their power in their in their military potential uh that Revelation then spurred uh former Congressman Christopher Cox to uh begin his investigation that resulted in his historic Cox commission report I joined his uh uh office after the report uh came out to help help with the marketing of that report but uh it was really one of the first and really most profound warnings from the American Congress about the threat that China opposed to our our freedom and security uh but China's investment in its nuclear enterpris is massive and it's not just nuclear material nuclear warheads but it's also uh multiple companies that are making the missiles to carry these Warheads uh possibly on on uh fractional orbital bombardment systems that can circle the Earth multiple times if if they so desire and all manner of uh short range to medium intermediate ballistic InterContinental InterContinental range missiles so the there's nuclear warheads right now up on satellites uh no the in in uh when was was it in uh 2021 uh the Chinese tested their fractional orbital bombardment system twice and uh as of now no as far as I know they don't have nuclear warheads in space orbiting the Earth but what they did in 2021 is tell us show us that this is what they could do so I imagine that since then they've simply been building these fractional orbital bombardment capable missiles and they are now residing uh in uh silos or in uh uh missile bases and storage and how does one deliver these things to these uh bombardment satellites well they're already part of the uh uh uh essentially the third stage of of the rocket MH the the first fobs fractional orbital bombardment systems were uh built on an early large Chinese space launch vehicle called the Long March 2C um a space launch vehicle that was essentially about the same size as the old American Titan 2 ICBM from the 1960s a liquid fueled uh rocket um but the Chinese because they're so reliable cheap easy to make they've kept on using they still use them today uh uh so the production line for Long March 2 C's has been in operation since the 1970s and and uh you know they they have had the potential to amass any number of these Rockets put them in storage but just in the last few years reveal this fractional orbital EMB barment capability they would exist in probably in storage areas and space launch bases China has five space launch bases and so they would probably store them there roll them out put them on the launcher it would take a while to put the liquid fuel into the rocket but you know this would just be a matter of hours um we we would probably think that they were launching satellites when in fact they would be putting uh nuclear warheads into space I see I mean that's uh it's just not something you hear about a lot no no uh the major threat elements that China is producing uh kind of on a weekly maybe monthly basis ought to rate uh headlines on uh the major American television networks cable channels should have shows that specifically highlight these various threats but they're not the American public is is relatively uninformed about the the the breadth and depth of these threats that are developing from China Russia North Korea soon Iran and the fact that they were they are all now in a state of coordination they they they are all in some way funded by China by the Chinese Communist party which in my opinion exercises a kind of leadership and and is is actively working to make all of them more powerful and one day when the Chinese Communist party so decides they will attack and sadly I am not sure that we will be prepared and it is thus incumbent upon American leadership to ourselves be in a position and to lead our allies into positions where our enemies decide H tomorrow is not a good day next week is not good either next year probably not well Rick Fischer it's such a pleasure to have had you on thank you for having me thank you all for joining Rick fiser and me on this episode of American thought leaders I'm your host Yan Kell [Music]