China’s Unconventional War Strategies

The CCP’s chemical warfare, maritime militia, and plans for Taiwan

Grant Newsham, a senior fellow with the Center for Security Policy and a retired U.S. Marine colonel. Tal Atzmon/The Epoch Times

“The idea of letting 23 million free people come under Chinese communist enslavement is not something that sits well with me,” says retired U.S. Marine Col. Grant Newsham, referring to Taiwan.

In a recent episode of “American Thought Leaders,” host Jan Jekielek and Newsham, the author of “When China Attacks: A Warning to America” and an Epoch Times contributor, discussed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) techniques of unrestricted warfare, its ongoing deployment against the United States, its plans for expansion in the Pacific and in the world, and Chinese vulnerabilities.

Jan Jekielek: You start “When China Attacks” with this scenario of an attack by the Chinese Communist Party on Taiwan. As I was reading, I was charting all these unconventional methods of warfare the CCP utilizes to achieve its objectives. Realistically, will this happen in the near future?

Col. Grant Newsham: The Chinese want to seize Taiwan. They’d like to get it without fighting, but if they have to, they will. They’ve built up a military that is capable of doing it, but they also need to ensure that the Americans are kept at bay. They’ve got to thread a needle here, because if they go too hard against the United States, it may provoke America to respond with everything they have, and that’s not what China wants. They want to humiliate the Americans just enough to make them worry about what happens if they go all in.

Essentially, it’s the front men in the United States telling whatever administration is in office to hold still. “Don’t respond. We can’t risk nuclear war over little Taiwan, and we want to get back to business as usual.” What I can see is the Chinese launching an all-out quick hard assault on Taiwan, but not going all out on the United States, not doing another Pearl Harbor attack or hitting the U.S. mainland, and maybe even leaving the U.S. bases in Japan alone.

They do have ways to make life difficult for us, like their fishing fleet, the maritime militia, things that look like civilian weapons or civilian entities, and also their proxies. In just about every country, they’ve got people who put in a good word for them.

Mr. Jekielek: Why is Taiwan so important to China, and why is it so important to the U.S.?

Col. Newsham: You hear a lot of people say, “Taiwan’s worth more to China than it is to us. It can’t be defended. Just let it go.”

That’s wrong, and there’s an element of maliciousness in it. The idea of letting 23 million free people come under Chinese communist enslavement is not something that sits well with me. But why is it important?

Surprisingly, it doesn’t have so much to do with the high-end semiconductors that Taiwan manufactures. That gets a lot of attention, and yes, it would be an inconvenience, and probably a big one if Taiwan’s semiconductor production was cut. They produce something like 90 percent of all high-end semiconductors.

But I don’t think that’s the main reason. With or without chips, Taiwan is a juicy target for Beijing. It’s part of the so-called first island chain that stretches from Japan to Taiwan, down to the Philippines, down to Malaysia. If you look at a map, that will tell you a lot about Chinese thinking.

That first island chain hems in the People’s Liberation Army. It makes it hard for them to get into the Pacific to go east. But if China takes Taiwan, they have seized a lodgment right in the middle of the first island chain. Think of a castle wall being breached and suddenly the attackers just pour in and keep going.

If the People’s Liberation Army launches from Taiwan and goes up north, they can surround and isolate Japan. If they go down south, they can isolate Australia, cutting it off from the U.S. and from the rest of Asia.

The Chinese objective is not to just stop at the first island chain. Rather, it’s to go all the way to the west coast of Latin America, where they are setting up the infrastructure, the ports, the airfields, the political influence, and the economic influence they’ll need to deploy Chinese forces in the future. It’s part of the plan.

And suppose Taiwan comes under Beijing’s rule. The message that would be sent is that the U.S. military could not keep the Taiwanese free. In short order, Asia will turn red as countries there realize that an American promise is not what it used to be, and you’re going to see that worldwide as well. We don’t have a particularly good track record in recent times of taking care of our friends. Rather, we tend to leave them high and dry, and there’s a point at which a lot of people notice.

Mr. Jekielek: Please tell us a bit about your background and how you came to study Chinese military capability and intentions.

Col. Newsham: I first started looking at Taiwan and China around 1981, so it’s been 40 years or so. I was with the Marines for 30 years and active in reserve time, and spent a lot of time in the Asia-Pacific. Also, I was a diplomat with the U.S. State Department for eight years, and a lot of that was in Pacific East Asia. I also worked for an investment bank in Japan and for Motorola in Japan and Korea. So, I’ve had decades of experience looking at China and Asia from different perspectives, not just the military, but also from the diplomatic, the financial, and that of high-tech industry.

Mr. Jekielek: A lot of the unconventional warfare the Chinese Communist Party wages involve all these different sectors.

Col. Newsham: It’s a different concept of war and of bringing your enemy under your control. For the Chinese, a shooting war is the last on the list, if it’s even necessary. Ideally, you’ve weakened your enemies to the point that they can’t respond effectively, or at all. You do this with methods that don’t involve shooting people, although they are willing to do that, or they have other people do the shooting for them.

These are things that to an American or Westerner look unobjectionable, that just looks like business competition. The Chinese look at this as economic warfare. The idea is to drive your opponents or your competitors out of business, to get their technology, suck their know-how out of them, and rig the system in China so that you can build up Chinese companies.

The idea is to dominate the main sectors and just about anything that’s on the Chinese list of things to dominate. You can look at how that has actually worked in the U.S. Once China was let into the World Trade Organization in the early 2000s, despite not meeting any of the requirements that every other country would need, American businesses started flocking to China. China turned into this manufacturing juggernaut.

America’s manufacturing capability—and, more importantly, the jobs and the livelihoods that came with it—disappeared. It’s weakened us, and it’s strengthened China, because the Chinese economy has grown, with many countries growing dependent on it, America not the least. This helps China develop its military as well. It’s a net gain for the Chinese and a net loss for us. There are other lines of attack that China sees as warfare—psychological warfare, biological war, chemical war, cyberwarfare, and proxy warfare.

Proxy warfare means getting your opponent’s influential people to do your bidding for you. It was very interesting the other day when we saw the CEO of TikTok testifying before Congress. Behind him was a phalanx of Americans who had signed up to do China’s bidding. Money has a way of doing that.

There’s also one more point I wanted to mention as to why Taiwan matters. It is proof that people of Chinese origin can handle democracy, consensual government, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and all the freedoms we think are important. That is one of the reasons Beijing wants to strangle it, because it is a daily living reminder there is an alternative for China besides Chinese communist rule.

Mr. Jekielek: Tell us about this concept of comprehensive national power, which the CCP uses to rate itself against every nation in the world.

Col. Newsham: “Whatever is good for me is bad for you” is the idea. Something that weakens your opponent while strengthening you is ideally what you want. China actually counts all of these wins and successes that they have around the world. They set up and get ownership of some strategic locations or airfields. Everything that is good for China and benefits China is exactly what they want, and they want the other side to go down. If you can weaken your enemy, confuse him, take away his key industries, weaken his currency, and get people to start using Chinese currency overseas, that is a big plus for China’s comprehensive national power and a decline for American national power.

They are very much keeping score on this. It’s helpful to remember the ultimate objective of the Chinese Communist Party. Ultimately, it is to get the Americans out of Asia, but also to keep pushing and eventually dominate the region and the globe.

Mr. Jekielek: What’s the state of the Chinese military? I’ve heard wildly different assessments of their capabilities.

Col. Newsham: People used to laugh 20 years ago at the idea of the People’s Liberation Army attacking Taiwan. It was jokingly referred to as the “million-man swim,” the idea being they didn’t even have the resources to get across the Taiwan Strait.

Nobody is laughing these days. China has a navy, an air force, ground forces, and rockets and missiles. Right now, it’s able to throw its weight around in the region, and the idea is to eventually throw it around globally.

The fix we’ve gotten ourselves into with the Chinese comes from not having taken them seriously enough and maintaining our edge. We spent so many years in the so-called sandbox in Iraq and Afghanistan, focusing on those kinds of wars, that the Chinese caught up in many areas and surpassed us in some as well.

Mr. Jekielek: Since we’re talking about maritime capability, there is this unconventional fleet that the CCP has used in a military way, which is essentially their fishing fleet, but which also doubles as a maritime militia. Please tell us how this maritime militia works.

Col. Newsham: These are fishing boats that sometimes do fishing, but they’re also built for double hauls and are up-engined. They have people with arms on them and they use them to ram, intimidate, and sink other vessels, particularly other fishing vessels.

You have this charade that they are not a part of the military and they’re just fishing boats. They’ve used these very successfully in the South China Sea. You can establish a long-term presence in places and drive your opponents out, and they won’t go back in. If you’re a fisherman, there’s no way you’re going to go in and challenge a big boat with a double haul and guys with weapons on it that is willing to ram you and sink you and shoot you if necessary. The Chinese have a lot of these, in addition to their regular fishing fleet, which sails the seven seas vacuuming up fish.

So, the Chinese have also understood one of the weaknesses of their opponents is that we insist on law and playing by the rules. When somebody doesn’t do it, we’re flummoxed.

Nobody has actually come up with the common sense approach that lets them know that we regard these as naval ships, and we are going to respond accordingly. You can see the advantage that it gives to the Chinese compared to us and others.

Mr. Jekielek: I’ve recently become more aware of the bullying actions of the Chinese Communist Party to get the leaders of some of these small island chains in the Pacific to play ball, seemingly on course to assuming eventual administrative control. But a few of these leaders have stood up to the behemoth.

In one case, President Panuelo of the Federated States of Micronesia is on record saying that Chinese officials have threatened his life. In this long letter, he describes a host of serious threats to his nation. It’s unheard of anywhere, never mind in a tiny island chain state. What is the significance of this?

Col. Newsham: President Panuelo had the nerve and courage to say this and writes in great detail about things like the Chinese paying off all sorts of officials and influential people in Micronesia. They’re providing money to secessionist groups in several of the states in Micronesia. It would be like providing money to Texas so they could go independent.

And this is just Micronesia. You have huge Chinese investments where these real estate developers come in and promise billions, and they insinuate themselves commercially. That leads to political influence, and then they pretty much get a lock on the local economy. They create a constituency of people that get a ton of money from the PRC [People’s Republic of China]. They’ve been very effective doing this in the Pacific.

These islands in the Central Pacific are actually in the middle of America’s defenses. We have the first island chain with Taiwan, but the Chinese are setting up behind us. Recently, they have signed a deal with the prime minister of the Solomon Islands that effectively lets the Chinese military into the Solomon Islands. That’s where Guadalcanal was, the World War II battle. The Chinese military will get in there before too long.

Mr. Jekielek: Let’s talk about one of these unconventional warfare methods in which the CCP has been engaged, which is fentanyl.

Col. Newsham: It’s as clear a case of chemical warfare as you’ll find. China provides about 99 percent of the fentanyl precursors. The raw materials go to Mexico and then get turned into pills and moved into the United States. Fentanyl killed about 70,000 Americans last year. In the entire 12 years of the Vietnam War, 55,000 Americans were killed.

In one year, America lost 70,000 people, many of these of military age, and this is just the ones who died. Then, there are the walking wounded, along with the effect this has on families and society. The costs of dealing with and trying to treat these people are immense. Some figures are over a trillion dollars, depending on where you look.

Think about it. You’ve effectively launched an attack on your main enemy. You’re taking what amounts to a couple divisions of troops off the battlefield every year, and nobody does anything, and you get away with it.

Also, there’s a psychological warfare aspect to this. By getting so many influential Americans convinced that they have to be in the China market, that they need to make money from China, and that we need China’s help with issues like North Korea and climate change, we have tied our hands and will not take on China on the fentanyl scourge.

I’ve heard the excuses that it’s local officials behind the fentanyl and the central government doesn’t know what they’re doing. Once again, that suggests you don’t really know how China works. The law is what Xi Jinping says it is. China could crack down on fentanyl if it wanted to, but I would suggest it doesn’t because it’s been wildly successful in killing us. I don’t know why you would stop if your enemy is not wise enough to stand up for himself.

A retired Navy pilot from Pittsburgh called me up and told me that his adult son had just died from fentanyl poisoning. Of course, he was distraught, to put it mildly. He said, “I tried to get congressmen interested and they really weren’t.” All I could do was listen to him. To ignore it the way our ruling class and elites have, there’s a callousness that just isn’t my thing.

Mr. Jekielek: I really want to talk about solutions as we finish up. What can we do?

Col. Newsham: China is very sensitive to its human rights record, where it’s just an absolute atrocity, but then you have the climate czar, John Kerry, basically saying: “Human rights don’t matter. The only important thing is climate change. We’re not going to talk about this with the Chinese. We need their help.”

It’s hard to see how you’re going to win a war or this fight with the PRC if you’re thinking like that.

You need to apply pressure where it’s really going to hurt. One example that I cover in the book is that the Chinese government is absolutely dependent on the convertible currency, U.S. dollars. Without it, they really can’t fund their military or even their economic growth. If they want to fund the Belt and Road initiative, they have to pay in U.S. dollars or something like it.

That can be by manufacturing things in China and selling them overseas. That can be Wall Street pumping tens of billions a year into the Chinese economy, which is a godsend to the Chinese Communist Party. The investment American business puts into China is being used to build their economy, their military, and the so-called comprehensive national power.

There’s a shortage of convertible currency, so here’s what you do. You start cutting them off from the U.S. dollar network. Start with the People’s Bank of China, and revoke its license to operate in the U.S. for six months. That would get some attention.

You have to go up to the highest levels and make them feel the heat. You have to understand their system, realize how to apply pressure and power, then go to the top. We’ll see if that happens.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.