CCP Investing in Weapons to Exploit US Vulnerabilities: US Admiral

Admiral John C. Aquilino discusses U.S.-China strategic competition at Paley Center for Media in New York City on May 23, 2023. Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times

China’s communist regime is investing in military technologies that it believes will be capable of exploiting vulnerabilities in U.S. defenses, according to the top military commander in the Indo-Pacific.

That effort is part of a plan by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to assimilate Taiwan and displace the United States as the world’s leading superpower, according to Adm. John Aquilino, commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

“The Chinese will continue to develop weapons that they believe have advantage and deliver vulnerabilities to the United States,” Adm. Aquilino said during a March 20 hearing of the House Armed Services Committee.

“Their numbers and their capability and capacity are increasing. That’s a conscious decision by the CCP to support a 7.2 percent defense increase despite an economy that is on the decline,” he pointed out.

Adm. Aquilino said that the CCP’s nuclear and hypersonic development were contributing to the “rapidly evolving security environment” in the region, which he regarded as “the most dangerous I’ve seen in 40 years in uniform.”

To that end, he said China–Russia cooperation was placing pressure on the U.S. and its allies and could result in increased destabilization in the future.

“That set of cooperation is concerning, and it should be concerning to the whole globe,” he said.

“That cooperation from those two authoritarian nations puts us in a different security environment. I’m very concerned about that,” he added.

Adm. Aquilino noted that the CCP was explicitly attempting to develop advantages in nuclear and hypersonic weapons, which could spread the United States’s deterrence efforts thin if one considered the combined might of the Chinese and Russian arsenals.

His warning echoed that of a congressional commission, which found last year that the United States should work to expand and enhance its nuclear arsenal to compete with the combined threat posed by China and Russia.

Many security experts have likewise urged the Biden administration to expand and modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal to compete with the growing threat from the CCP, which is now believed to have more than 500 deployed nuclear warheads and will have more than 1,000 by 2030.

“We need to negate those vulnerabilities, and we need to take advantage of our capabilities that outmatch theirs,” Adm. Aquilino said.

Of particular concern, he added, was the risk that the Chinese regime would attempt to use its military advantage to deter the United States from entering a conflict to defend Taiwan from CCP invasion.

He stressed, however, that the regime is attempting to compel Taiwan into unification with the mainland without resorting to outright invasion.

“China would absolutely like to assimilate Taiwan without a war, and that is evident by their increasingly aggressive coercive campaign against Taiwan.”

Assistant Secretary of Defense Ely Ratner also Testified on Wednesday, saying that the CCP regime poses the greatest threat to the United States of any power in the world and seeks to displace the United States as the premier global superpower.

“[China] continues to present the most comprehensive and serious challenge to our national security,” Mr. Ratner said. “That’s because [China] remains the only country with the will and increasingly the capability to dominate the Indo-Pacific region and displace the United States.”