Andrew S. Erickson

Michael Pilger, “China’s New YJ-18 Antiship Cruise Missile: Capabilities and Implications for U.S. Forces in the Western Pacific,” Staff Research Report, U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, 28 October 2015.
In April 2015, the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence confirmed that China has deployed the YJ-18 antiship cruise missile (ASCM) on some People’s Liberation Army (PLA) […]

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Elizabeth Shim, “China Scolds U.S. for South China Sea ‘Provocation’,” UPI, 27 October 2015.
Beijing said that its navy had deployed two vessels: Lanzhou, a missile destroyer and Taizhou, a patrol boat, to warn the U.S. ship away from waters claimed by China. …
The United States’ dispatch of the USS Lassen had been planned weeks in […]

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Jeremy Page and Chun Han Wong, “U.S. Warship’s Patrol Escalates Dispute Over Islands in South China Sea,” Wall Street Journal, 27 October 2015.
U.S. officials say operation was first of several to assert ‘freedom of navigation’ around the Spratly islands
A U.S. navy patrol off China’s artificial islands in the South China Sea was the strongest challenge yet […]

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Jane Perlez, “Beijing Calls U.S. Warship’s Route in South China Sea a ‘Provocation’,” New York Times, 27 October 2015.
China on Tuesday accused the United States of committing a “deliberate provocation” by sending a Navy destroyer into waters claimed by Beijing, adding that such actions would force China to speed up its building program in the South […]

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Simon Denyer, Craig Whitlock and Steven Mufson, “U.S. Warship Sails within 12 Miles of Chinese-Built Island in South China Sea,” Washington Post, 26 October 2015.
… Additional patrols will follow in coming weeks, and could also be conducted around features that have been built up by Vietnam and the Philippines in the Spratlys, a U.S. defense official told the […]

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Ronald O’Rourke, China Naval Modernization: Implications for U.S. Navy Capabilities—Background and Issues for Congress (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 21 September 2015), RL33153.
Summary
China is building a modern and regionally powerful navy with a limited but growing capability for conducting operations beyond China’s near-seas region. Observers of Chinese and U.S. military forces view China’s improving naval capabilities as posing a potential […]

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Ronald O’Rourke, Maritime Territorial and Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) Disputes Involving China: Issues for Congress (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 18 September 2015), R42784.
Summary
China’s actions for asserting and defending its maritime territorial and exclusive economic zone (EEZ) claims in the East China (ECS) and South China Sea (SCS), particularly since late 2013, have heightened concerns among […]

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Be sure to go to the Foreign Policy website and read the entire text!
Dan De Luce and Paul Mcleary, “In South China Sea, a Tougher U.S. Stance,” Foreign Policy, 2 October 2015.
Rejecting China’s “Great Wall of Sand,” the U.S. Navy will patrol near man-made islands constructed by Beijing.
The United States is poised to send naval ships […]

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Peter Mattis, “Observations on PLA Studies,” China Policy Institute Blog, University of Nottingham, 30 September 2015.
As China’s military modernization accelerated throughout the 1990s and 2000s, an outpouring of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) publications threatened to drown specialists in data. These sources, many of them available on the internet, have been a boon for analysts, providing […]

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Ian E. Rinehart and David Gitter, The Chinese Military: Overview and Issues for Congress R44196 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 18 September 2015).
Summary
China is building a modern and regionally powerful military with a modest but growing capability for conducting operations away from China’s immediate periphery. The question of how the United States should respond to […]

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Here are some of my recent thoughts on Chinese dredging and island-manufacturing activities in the South China Sea (SCS):
While countries other than China have also been involved in dredging and island-construction in the SCS, China has far surpassed its neighbors—combined—in both construction to date and future potential. It has deployed one of the world’s largest dredging […]

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Paul Lewandowski, “Does China’s New Missile Threaten US Power in the Pacific?” Parallax World, 16 September 2015.
The DF-21D Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile was unveiled publicly at the Chinese Victory Day parade, raising questions about the US carrier fleet’s vulnerability in the Pacific. …
The Global Times… declared that, after nearly a decade of the weapon’s development, the DF-21D’s coming-out […]

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This excellent book examining possible PLA futures has only become more important in light of Xi Jinping’s recently-announced military restructuring! It was an honor for me to serve as a discussant at the conference at which this book’s chapters were originally presented as draft papers, and I can attest that this volume is a worthy […]

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Eric Heginbotham, Michael Nixon, Forrest E. Morgan, Jacob Heim, Jeff Hagen, Sheng Li, Jeffrey G. Engstrom, Martin C. Libicki, Paul DeLuca, David A. Shlapak, David R. Frelinger, Burgess Laird, Kyle Brady, and Lyle J. Morris, The U.S.-China Military Scorecard: Forces, Geography, and the Evolving Balance of Power, 1996-2017 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, September 2015).
Over the […]

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Timely treatment of a tremendously important topic by some of the leading experts in the field!
Phillip C. Saunders and Andrew Scobell, eds., PLA Influence on China’s National Security Policymaking (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015).
SUMMARY FROM PUBLISHER
In recent years there have been reports of actions purportedly taken by People’s Liberation Army (PLA) units without civilian […]

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Gabriel Collins, “Foreign Investors and China’s Naval Buildup,” The Diplomat, 9 September 2015
Chinese shipbuilders are looking to international capital markets to fund their operations.
China’s military shipbuilders – now the world’s most prolific builders of large surface combatants and submarines – are leading a push to access local and global capital markets that other Chinese defense […]

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Chun Han Wong, “5 Takeaways from China’s Military Parade,” China Real Time Report (中国实时报), Wall Street Journal, 3 September 2015. 
1. Leaner, Meaner
Holding a military parade for an event China hasn’t typically commemorated could easily be read by China’s neighbors as another in a series of unsettling provocations. President Xi Jinping took some of the edge off the […]

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Harry J. Kazianis, “Is China’s ‘Carrier-Killer’ Really a Threat to the U.S. Navy?” The National Interest, 2 September 2015.
… When looking at this weapon, there are really two basic questions I have been asking for years: How capable is it? And if capable, can U.S. Navy vessels defend against it?
Capabilities
First, to its capabilities. According to […]

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William S. Murray; review of Robert Haddick, Fire on the Water: China, America and the Future of the Pacific (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2014); The Submarine Review (December 2014): 145-49.
William S. Murray is an associate research professor and the Co-Director of the Halsey Bravo research effort at the United States Naval War College. He […]

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