The latest Pentagon annual report on China’s military power reveals that the communist regime has outdone the United States in the Indo-Pacific region, according to retired Brig. Gen. Robert Spalding.
Spalding believes China’s military capabilities can obstruct the United States’ ability to aid Taiwan or other allies like Japan or South Korea, which he described as “a big problem for the United States going forward.”
He further noted the increasing capabilities of China’s satellites.
According to Spalding, China’s satellites can serve both defensive and offensive purposes. The types that the regime has in hand can be launched from the ground and function in space.
“And those satellites enable them to pick out U.S. ships and direct the missiles that can come in to attack them,” Spalding, a contributor to The Epoch Times, said on Dec 6.
“All in all, they are advancing their capability to be a global military and space phenomenon. Because these things orbit the Earth, it allows them to extend their reach,” he said.
“So I think this is a tremendous challenge for the United States going forward.”
Spalding believes the United States is now downplaying China’s military might because “we tend to call them a near-peer.”
He characterized this act as a “political red herring.”
“We don’t want to acknowledge that they’re superior to us. And what that does is it prevents us from actually making the [U.S. military] force changes that we would need to actually compete on a peer-to-peer basis with China.
Influence Campaign
Spalding raised the alarm about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) influence campaign via Chinese tech companies such as Tiktok, a video-based sharing app.“And as long as that’s the case, I think what you’re gonna see is conflict happening in our population on a day-to-day basis,” he said.
The report released on Nov 29, which examines the CCP’s “way of war,” found that the regime is doubling down on systems-based warfare and increasing its “non-war military activities” to weaken the United States without overt, kinetic conflict.
Spalding said that weapons and information, and psychological warfare would be utilized hand in hand.
“The weapons certainly are meant to deter any military response by the United States,” he said.
“They’re going to use these [app] platforms for social control and influence to slowly erode the appreciation for our values and principles in the United States and other free countries.”