India has become the world’s most populous country, according to the United Nations’ latest projections, knocking China off the top spot for the first time since the UN began keeping records.
Both countries are facing significant demographic challenges, be it dealing with the legacy of a disastrous one-child policy and ageing population or working out how to take advantage of a booming youth cohort while managing huge disparities in the growth rates of different states.
We asked two 25-year-olds – one from each country – about their lives and aspirations.
‘I don’t have time for myself’
Xue Pengyu, 25, Anyang, China
For Xue Pengyu, his life is his work. As a teaching assistant at an arts college in his home city of Anyang, a small city in Henan, a poor, northern province, he lives on campus alongside his students, who aren’t much younger than himself.
When 25-year-old Xue left high school seven years ago, he moved to Tianjin to study graphic design. The city’s population is more than double the size of Anyang’s, and it is only around 30 minutes by high-speed train from Beijing. After graduating from university Xue stayed in Tianjin and got a job working in a preschool. He hoped to stay there, or move to another big city, but the disruption of the pandemic forced him to return home.
Arts college worker Xue Pengyu, 25, lives in Anyang, China Photograph: Xue Pengyu
His living situation makes it hard to find a girlfriend. He doesn’t want to date a colleague and the job itself is all consuming. “The kids are in their rebellious period, so I need to take care of their emotions, monitor their behaviour and arrange study tasks for them,” he says. “Basically, I don’t have time for myself except for eating and sleeping.”
Xue’s income also limits his options. Although Anyang is a relatively cheap city, and his accommodation is provided by his school, his salary of about 3,000 yuan (£349.78) a month is “enough for myself” but “not enough to support having a family”. But he is sanguine about the future: the job has the potential for promotion, and he thinks it will keep him satisfied for at least the next three years.
And Xue reckons he is better off than his friends who moved to big cities such as Guangzhou and Shenzhen in the south, or Shanghai on the east coast. “The salaries there are still not enough to build a family. For them, the distance to starting a family is even further.”
For now, Xue isn’t thinking about having children. He is relaxed about his lifestyle, but having a child would be a “big burden … and I like to do whatever I want. I don’t want to be confined at home and having to look after a child. I would get annoyed by it.
“When I worked in preschool education, some of the kids were really cute, and I kind of wanted my own child. However my desire to have a child went down after I considered reality.”
‘I’m growing and developing but it’s slow’
Ranjan Kujur, 25, Jharkhand, India
Ranjan Kujur’s biggest break in life came when his aunt recognised that he was a bright boy, but would have little opportunity in his small village of Raintoli in Jharkhand state. Kujur’s father was unemployed, his mother had had no education, the village school was a shed.
He went to stay with his aunt in the city of Ranchi when he was six years old and attended the local school. The move spared him from rural poverty. The local school gave him a decent grounding and city life provided him with exposure to a more vibrant world.
Kujur became interested in dancing. After working odd jobs for a year, he plucked up the courage to join a dance class. The coach found him so talented that he waived the fees. “I feel free when I dance. It’s my life and I love it,” Kujur says.
Ranjan Kujur, a 25-year-old dancer, was born in Jharkhand state, India. Photograph: Ranjan Kujur
With his eyes set firmly on Bollywood he wants to do a three-year dance diploma in Mumbai but it costs around £500 a month, far beyond his means. His average monthly income is 16,000 rupees (£160) and while it’s enough for his daily needs (his aunt does not ask him to pay rent), it is not enough for college.
“I’m growing and developing but it’s slow. I have to focus on working even harder and saving the money for this diploma which will open up all sorts of opportunities for me.”
Until he has finished the diploma, he refuses to think of marriage or starting a family – “I’m still young!” he says. He says he doesn’t have time for a girlfriend either right now.
“Of course I will get married one day but only when I’m settled. There is a lot of competition in dancing so I need to be really, really good to get anywhere.”
Kujur spends most of his time practising for video clips that YouTube dance channels commission from him occasionally, teaching classes and going to homes to provide tuition, mostly Bollywood or hip hop. His day rarely ends before 8pm.
“My parents never thought there would be a dancer in the family and it’s not the work they had in mind but I don’t ask them for money. They can see how hard I’m working to make something of myself,” he says.
Additional research by Chi Hui Lin
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
The “Stand with Su” effort is a direct counterweight to some of the forces that have been lobbying against her — including the name choice, as one of the main anti-confirmation groups is called “Stand Against Su.”
“Julie Su has been a champion for labor, and labor is mobilizing in the way only we can,” AFL-CIO spokesperson Ray Zaccaro said.
A key part of the pitch is that Su, who faces a committee vote Wednesday, is in the same mold as former Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, a seasoned politician who had fans on both sides of the aisle and who has been directly involved in rounding up support for her, according to an administration official. Su served as Walsh’s deputy secretary beginning in July 2021 and has been acting head of the department for the past month, after Walsh stepped down to run the NHL Players’ Association.
“She has worked hand in hand with Marty Walsh,” American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten told POLITICO. “If you liked the way Marty Walsh operated as the Secretary of Labor, then there’s no reason not to embrace Julie Su.”
But Republicans say Su, who was labor secretary in California before coming to Washington, would veer sharply left of Walsh and used a confirmation hearing this week to portray her as anti-business and captive to labor’s priorities. Although all five of the senators in question voted to confirm Su as deputy secretary, Manchin, Tester and Sinema are likely to face tough reelection fights next year.
“The more that people learn about her track record and just how bad she was in this role in California, we’re seeing that shifting the debate,” Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.), a leading critic of Su, told POLITICO prior to her confirmation hearing. “It’s very different when you’re going for the top position than being under Marty Walsh.”
The battle over Su is the Biden administration’s first attempt at replacing a Cabinet secretary, and the latest test of Democratic leadership’s ability to confirm nominees after multiple high-profile misfires. Though Su is already steering the department, administrations are typically wary of issuing major policy decisions without a permanent leader, meaning that a protracted confirmation fight could bog down the agency for months.
Administration officials are holding nightly “war room” calls with Su’s backers to discuss the game plan for the following day and to track developments, according to a White House official. The administration also holds 15 to 20 check-in calls per day across labor and business groups.
Walsh has also been actively engaged in the process and advocating for Su with labor and business leaders and senators, according to an administration official.
Many Democrats on Capitol Hill are hopeful Kelly, Tester and King will support Su. If that is the case, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein remains in San Francisco recovering from shingles, Su and the White House would still need to win over Manchin and Sinema, both of whom have bucked the president in the past.
Neither senator is on the committee that will vote Wednesday on whether to advance Su’s nomination to the floor and attention will fully turn to them immediately after the vote.
Su has been ramping up her meetings with senators of both parties in recent weeks, though she has yet to meet with several key holdouts. She has spoken to Sinema, according to two sources familiar with the situation, and the White House is in touch with Manchin, an administration official said.
Su doesn’t have a traditional “sherpa,” a veteran lawmaker or some other plugged-in operative who typically leads Cabinet officials and other important nominees through the confirmation process on Capitol Hill. The lack of one has raised eyebrows among some of Su’s supporters about the White House’s level of support for the nomination.
The term “sherpa” is being phased out at the White House, however. Instead, she has a “navigator” — the senior leader of the Labor Department’s congressional affairs shop. The office has led Su through the process and accompanied her at each of her Senate meetings, according to that official.
Su is only the second Cabinet official to go through the confirmation process since the first months of the Biden administration — Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Arati Prabhakar being the other — and the agencies now lead the confirmation process, an administration official said.
With an obvious eye toward Manchin, the White House has heavily touted Su’s support from labor unions, including the AFL-CIO, Teamsters and, most significantly, United Mine Workers of America.
While a recent letter of support from Mine Workers President Cecil E. Roberts may pull weight with Manchin, Su supporters have been cautious to not be too heavy-handed with either him or Sinema, knowing that an overt lobbying effort may backfire.
“The White House knows what they need to do for the best outcome to get Julie Su confirmed,” said an organized labor official, who requested anonymity to discuss political strategy. “They know the relationship dynamics they have with the senators in question. And they know it’s a complicated circumstance that requires deft and delicate management.”
The White House’s light-touch strategy is not entirely reliant on unions to shoulder the lobbying load and the administration has highlighted her support from groups like the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, Small Business Majority and those representing Asian American and Pacific Islanders. If confirmed, Su would be Biden’s first AAPI Cabinet secretary and his fourth AAPI Cabinet member overall.
But organized labor is at the center of the pro-Su push.
“There’s a world of Julie Su supporters out there, and we’re trying to show that,” the labor official said. “We saw these senators vote for her [to become deputy secretary] and there’s no reason to vote against her now. It remains to be seen just how uncertain they actually are.”
— Daniella Diaz contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
In Israel, it caused disappointment — along with finger-pointing.
One of Netanyahu’s greatest foreign policy triumphs remains Israel’s U.S.-brokered normalization deals in 2020 with four Arab states, including Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. They were part of a wider push to isolate and oppose Iran in the region.
He has portrayed himself as the only politician capable of protecting Israel from Tehran’s rapidly accelerating nuclear program and regional proxies, like Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Israel and Iran have also waged a regional shadow war that has led to suspected Iranian drone strikes on Israeli-linked ships ferrying goods in the Persian Gulf, among other attacks.
A normalization deal with Saudi Arabia, the most powerful and wealthy Arab state, would fulfill Netanyahu’s prized goal, reshaping the region and boosting Israel’s standing in historic ways. Even as backdoor relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia have grown, the kingdom has said it won’t officially recognize Israel before a resolution to the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Since returning to office late last year, Netanyahu and his allies have hinted that a deal with the kingdom could be approaching. In a speech to American Jewish leaders last month, Netanyahu described a peace agreement as “a goal that we are working on in parallel with the goal of stopping Iran.”
But experts say the Saudi-Iran deal that announced Friday has thrown cold water on those ambitions. Saudi Arabia’s decision to engage with its regional rival has left Israel largely alone as it leads the charge for diplomatic isolation of Iran and threats of a unilateral military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. The UAE also resumed formal relations with Iran last year.
“It’s a blow to Israel’s notion and efforts in recent years to try to form an anti-Iran bloc in the region,” said Yoel Guzansky, an expert on the Persian Gulf at the Institute for National Security Studies, an Israeli think tank. “If you see the Middle East as a zero-sum game, which Israel and Iran do, a diplomatic win for Iran is very bad news for Israel.”
Even Danny Danon, a Netanyahu ally and former Israeli ambassador to the U.N. who recently predicted a peace agreement with Saudi Arabia in 2023, seemed disconcerted.
“This is not supporting our efforts,” he said, when asked about whether the rapprochement hurt chances for the kingdom’s recognition of Israel.
In Yemen, where the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran has played out with the most destructive consequences, both warring parties were guarded, but hopeful.
A Saudi-led military coalition intervened in Yemen’s conflict in 2015, months after the Iran-backed Houthi militias seized the capital of Sanaa in 2014, forcing the internationally recognized government into exile in Saudi Arabia.
The Houthi rebels welcomed the agreement as a modest but positive step.
“The region needs the return of normal relations between its countries, through which the Islamic society can regain security lost from foreign interventions,” said Houthi spokesman and chief negotiator Mohamed Abdulsalam.
The Saudi-backed Yemeni government expressed some optimism — and caveats.
“The Yemeni government’s position depends on actions and practices not words and claims,” it said, adding it would proceed cautiously “until observing a true change in (Iranian) behavior.”
Analysts did not expect an immediate settlement to the conflict, but said direct talks and better relations could create momentum for a separate agreement that may offer both countries an exit from a disastrous war.
“The ball now is in the court of the Yemeni domestic warring parties to prioritize Yemen’s national interest in reaching a peace deal and be inspired by this initial positive step,” said Afrah Nasser, a non-resident fellow at the Washington-based Arab Center.
Anna Jacobs, senior Gulf analyst with the International Crisis Group, said she believed the deal was tied to a de-escalation in Yemen.
“It is difficult to imagine a Saudi-Iran agreement to resume diplomatic relations and re-open embassies within a two-month period without some assurances from Iran to more seriously support conflict resolution efforts in Yemen,” she said.
War-scarred Syria similarly welcomed the agreement as a move toward easing tensions that have exacerbated the country’s conflict. Iran has been a main backer of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government, while Saudi Arabia has supported opposition fighters trying to remove him from power.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry called it an “important step that will lead to strengthening security and stability in the region.”
In Israel, bitterly divided and gripped by mass protests over plans by Netanyahu’s far-right government to overhaul the judiciary, politicians seized on the rapprochement between the kingdom and Israel’s archenemy as an opportunity to criticize Netanyahu, accusing him of focusing on his personal agenda at the expense of Israel’s international relations.
Yair Lapid, the former prime minister and head of Israel’s opposition, denounced the agreement between Riyadh and Tehran as “a full and dangerous failure of the Israeli government’s foreign policy.”
“This is what happens when you deal with legal madness all day instead of doing the job with Iran and strengthening relations with the U.S.,” he wrote on Twitter. Even Yuli Edelstein from Netanyahu’s Likud party blamed Israel’s “power struggles and head-butting” for distracting the country from its more pressing threats.
Another opposition lawmaker, Gideon Saar, mocked Netanyahu’s goal of formal ties with the kingdom. “Netanyahu promised peace with Saudi Arabia,” he wrote on social media. “In the end (Saudi Arabia) did it … with Iran.”
Netanyahu, on an official visit to Italy, declined a request for comment and issued no statement on the matter. But quotes to Israeli media by an anonymous senior official in the delegation sought to put blame on the previous government that ruled for a year and a half before Netanyahu returned to office. “It happened because of the impression that Israel and the U.S. were weak,” said the senior official, according to the Haaretz daily, which hinted that Netanyahu was the official.
Despite the fallout for Netanyahu’s reputation, experts doubted a detente would harm Israel. Saudi Arabia and Iran will remain regional rivals, even if they open embassies in each other’s capitals, said Guzansky. And like the UAE, Saudi Arabia could deepen relations with Israel even while maintaining a transactional relationship with Iran.
“The low-key arrangement that the Saudis have with Israel will continue,” said Umar Karim, an expert on Saudi politics at the University of Birmingham, noting that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank remained more of a barrier to Saudi recognition than differences over Iran. “The Saudi leadership is engaging in more than one way to secure its national security.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
But this year has already seen four near-miss incidents involving airliners — including a heart-stopping moment when a FedEx cargo plane came within 100 feet of landing on top of a Southwest Airlines jet that was taking off in Austin, Texas. The FAA is investigating all four.
Together, those incidents raise questions about the health of an industry whose operations have gone through tremendous upheaval, with Covid-19 sending travel plummeting only to see it surge again last year, according to former safety officials and accident investigators. Concern is already evident on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers are crafting a major overhaul of aviation policy due later this year. It also comes at a time when President Joe Biden’s pick to lead the FAA has been stalled due to Republican objections about his relatively sparse aviation background; he will finally receive a Senate hearing Wednesday.
“In recent weeks we’ve seen several very concerning near-misses that were almost mass fatality crashes,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said at a congressional hearing Feb. 15. He asked Billy Nolen, the acting FAA administrator, “What more can be done to make sure the next near-miss doesn’t become a horrific tragedy?”
In response, Nolen insisted that the national aviation system, including its trained pilots, air traffic controllers and safety standards, is working as designed and that the flying public is safe.
Addressing questions about the Austin incident, Nolen said: “It is not what we would expect to have happened, but when we think about how we train both our controllers and our pilots, the system works as it is designed to avert what you say could have been a horrific outcome.”
But Nolen has also called a summit that will meet this month to review potentially budding safety threats, asking industry and union representatives to review the FAA’s programs and suggest changes. In announcing the summit, Nolen wrote that the agency will also probe internal data and seek to understand why certain safety protocols “appear to be not as effective as they once were.”
“I think it’s a good time to stop and say: ‘Is there anything we’re missing and is there anything we can do differently’ to maintain this high level of safety that we’ve enjoyed,” said Nolen, who is also the FAA’s safety chief.
Senate Commerce Chair Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) did not seem mollified, telling reporters after that hearing that the spike of near-disasters shows “the system needs to be improved.” She said she is concerned that the FAA doesn’t have the right technology or personnel in place.
Besides the near-misses, the summit also comes on the heels of a holiday travel meltdown in which Southwest Airlines canceled about 16,000 flights as it struggled to recover from a winter storm, and the FAA’s own snafu involving a computer system glitch that forced flights to be grounded nationwide for hours.
The FAA has yet to decide whether this year’s four near-collisions belong in the most serious tier of incidents, those in which a collision was “narrowly avoided.”
But even the FAA’s data on second-tier incidents involving commercial planes show a similar pattern: From 2018 to 2022, its data show 19 incidents it defined as having a “significant potential” for a collision including five incidents in 2022 alone. (POLITICO’s analysis of these figures also exclude helicopters and general aviation planes.) If all of 2023’s incidents were classified in the second tier, it would almost equal the total for all of 2022.
A record of safety in jeopardy
A handful of people have died on board commercial airlines over the past decade, including a 2018 episode in which a Southwest Airlines passenger was partially sucked out a shattered window in the skies near Philadelphia. But no fatal commercial airliner crash has happened in the U.S. since July 2013, when a Boeing 777 flown by South Korea’s Asiana Airlines struck a seawall and broke apart while landing at San Francisco International Airport, killing three people.
The last fatal crash involving a U.S. airline was in 2009, when a small regional jet operated by Colgan Air on behalf of now-defunct Continental Airlines went down in icy conditions, killing all 49 people on board and one on the ground.
Each of this year’s incidents is undergoing a separate investigation by both the FAA and the NTSB, an independent agency. But those investigations will likely take over a year to complete. Meanwhile, the uptick of near misses is a warning sign that something may be amiss in the way airlines and the agency that oversees them are functioning, lawmakers, former pilots and former crash investigators said.
On Jan. 13, a Delta Air Lines Flight taking off from John F. Kennedy International Airport had to stop to avoid hitting another plane that had crossed 1,000 feet in front of it. Just over a week later, a United Airlines Flight crossed a runway about 1,100 feet in front of a small cargo plane at Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in Honolulu. Then came the Feb. 4 near-collision between a FedEx plane and a Southwest jet at Austin Bergstrom International Airport.
In Austin, the FedEx plane was landing during bad weather when the cargo pilot caught sight of the Southwest flight underneath it, said Jim Cox, a former pilot and executive air safety chair with the Air Line Pilots Association union. According to the FAA, both planes had been cleared to use the same runway.
The FAA ought to classify all three incidents as “serious,” said Alan Diehl, a former crash investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, adding that the Austin incident in particular showed “what I considered to be questionable controller behavior.”
“Ted Cruz is right,” Diehl said. “We were very lucky that we’re not looking at hundreds of casualties in all three of those incidents.”
A fourth incident occurred Feb. 22, when a Mesa Airlines flight was forced to halt a landing 1.3 miles from the runway at Hollywood Burbank Airport in California. Air traffic controllers had allowed a SkyWest flight to take off from the same runway at the same time, the FAA said.
Some former air safety officials say the problems on display are probably at least partially a result of the pandemic and the way it has reshaped the aviation workforce, for which there isn’t necessarily a quick fix.
In 2020 as the pandemic forced air traffic to historic lows, the airline industry shed more than 90,000 jobs through buyouts and incentives for early retirements, reaching a low point of 364,471 full-time employees by that November, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
As flights skyrocketed back toward pre-pandemic levels the industry has raced to meet the demand, hiring more than 100,000 new airline workers over the past two years alone. Now, airline staffing levels have surpassed those even before the pandemic with 473,349 full-time employees as of December 2022, the bureau reported.
“I think the American people have been burned a little bit by the failure of our transportation system and the fact that we’re really going to have to rebuild the human infrastructure in aviation,” said Jim Hall, an independent aviation consultant who chaired the NTSB from 1993 to 2001. “We lost a whole lot of qualified pilots, mechanics and flight attendants and we’ve seen how that has impacted aviation in the last 12 to 18 months. What you have going on right now is a retraining of the system.”
The FAA’s air traffic control staffing, which has been problematic for years in part because of a wave of retirements combined with how long it can take for new hires to complete their training, is a piece of the puzzle as well.
The agency has about 14,000 air traffic controllers nationwide, according to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association union, which declined to comment on the spate of near-misses. In July, NATCA leader Rich Santa told an industry conference that attrition is outpacing controller hiring, even as the demand for flights is surging.
A skills gap across the industry
This mass staff exodus across many sectors of the aviation workforce creates a gap in skill levels that can’t be filled purely through new hires, particularly in roles such as pilots and air traffic controllers that require extensive training. To take the controls of a commercial airplane, a pilot must first have had 1,500 hours of flight time. And it can take years for an air traffic controller to be considered fully qualified.
Diehl, the former crash investigator, agreed that the aviation industry is “still adjusting to a post-pandemic environment.”
“We also know that there is a pilot shortage partly because of retirements,” Diehl said. “I’m not saying it was a factor in any of those three incidents. But in general we are seeing an influx of new people and frankly a lowering of new standards.”
The FAA’s Nolen rejected the notion that workforce issues are contributing to lower standards, noting that the FAA is planning to hire new air traffic controllers and the aviation industry is hiring new pilots to cope with demand.
“The industry has done a lot as well as the agency,” Nolen said. “We are on track to hire 1,500 air traffic controllers this year and we’ll hire another 1,800 air traffic controllers next year. There’s a lot of hiring going on.”
But Hall, the former NTSB chair, said a feverish hiring pace doesn’t fix any gap in experience. He suggested that’s a particularly acute problem when it comes to the increasing push for allowing more industry “self-certification” that the FAA then simply oversees.
“If you don’t have the knowledge and expertise to operate the system, you’re looking at possible failures that cost lives,” Hall said. “Both in the cockpit and in the tower, we’re going to have to pay close attention and support the FAA to rebuild its oversight of the industry and encourage Congress to refocus their oversight on aviation.”
Cox said the incidents “do not have a common denominator” and that absent a common thread, it’s difficult to target a fix.
He suggested that the NTSB investigations ultimately will prove the best tool at addressing any future changes.
“I think right now we need to be patient to get the right answers, not the fast answer,” Cox said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
China has previously used spending on pipelines, ports and other commercial facilities to pave the way for military bases near strategic locations such as the mouth of the Red Sea, the CSIS authors write. Now, China’s investment in regional ports and infrastructure in Oman and the United Arab Emirates could provide an entry point for Chinese naval ships in the strait. Such ships already travel nearby waters to patrol against pirate vessels.
“China has laid the groundwork for something it might do in the future,” said Matthew Funaiole, senior fellow at the CSIS China Power Project. “It’s all about giving itself options.”
He added: “China has cast a wide net in the region, which gives it plenty of leverage. And a military facility on the western side of the Arabian peninsula does make sense from a military planning standpoint.”
The Biden administration has kept an eye on Beijing’s presence in the area, said a senior administration official who requested anonymity because of lack of authorization to speak to the media.
“The administration is focused on infrastructure buildout by China and has developed strategies with our G7 allies to ensure a global high-quality and diversified supply chain,” the official said.
The CSIS report documents China’s billions of dollars of investment over the past decade in port facilities in the UAE and Oman, two countries that straddle the strait across the water from Iran. The expansion of Beijing’s footprint at the Khalifa Port in the UAE, plus its ownership stake at a fuels storage terminal at the country’s Port of Fujairah about 100 miles to the east and investment at Duqm Port in Oman, raise the issue of Chinese power growing in the region, the report says.
The report notes that the China Harbour Engineering Co. won a bid in October 2022 to build a 700,000-square-meter container yard and 36 supporting buildings at Khalifa Port. The company is a subsidiary of China Communications Construction Co., one of the firms that the Trump administration sanctioned for supporting China’s construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea.
Years earlier, Shanghai-based shipping giant COSCO signed a $738 million agreement to build a container terminal at the same port. The deal includes provisions giving China exclusive design, construction and management rights over the terminal for 35 years.
Good reasons exist for concern that the Chinese government may use its commercial relationships in the Hormuz Strait as a foundation for the development of a military foothold in the region.
Beijing parlayed its commercial relations with Djibouti to seal a deal in 2014 to allow the Chinese navy to use the African country’s port near the mouth of the Red Sea. Beijing used that agreement to establish a naval installation in 2017 that U.S. Africa Command has accused of using military- grade lasers to harass U.S. fighter pilots landing in Djibouti.
Western interests worry that Beijing’s focus on the area may eventually lay the groundwork for the Chinese military to add its presence to the area. The U.S. government has flagged this as a concern for years. The Defense Department noted in a report to Congress last year that China is “likely” considering the UAE as a location for military logistics facilities.
“The [Persian] Gulf area is now going to become a contested region, subject to superpower strategic competition,” said John O’Connor, chief executive at J.H. Whitney Investment Management, a firm that analyzes geopolitical risk. “And that’s a new feature, not a bug.”
Not everyone thinks a military buildup is inevitable, however.
Other assessments of China’s military in the Strait of Hormuz suggest that it’s highly unlikely that Beijing will seek to extend its reach in the region with the creation of facilities for People’s Liberation Army Navy units or personnel. A RAND Corp. analysis published in December that rated the relative attractiveness of 24 countries for potential PLA facilities assessed the possibility of such a development in the UAE as “low feasibility” due to the Pentagon’s close scrutiny of the country and the Arab nation’s dealings with potential rivals.
And China has its own concerns about the flow of oil out of the strait that would make it want to build up infrastructure there. It has surpassed the United States as the world’s No. 1 consumer of oil and heavily depends on the Middle East for much of its supply. Ports and storage facilities could be a way to protect China’s own supply from being disrupted in an area known for regional conflict.
Other analysts say the PLA doesn’t need to establish formal military facilities in strategic ports where Chinese state firms are already present.
“Rather than raise international threat perceptions with overt shows of military presence, the PLA may opt to embed plainclothes personnel … and use nominally commercial warehousing, communications, and other equipment to quietly meet military needs,” an article in the spring 2022 edition of the journal International Security concluded.
Despite China’s substantial and growing economic and political relations with the UAE and Oman, “I don’t see any indications that China currently seeks to establish a base or enduring military presence in either of those countries, or elsewhere in the Middle East,” said Dawn Murphy, associate professor of national security strategy at the National War College and an expert on China’s relations in the Middle East. “I see no signs that China desires to fundamentally change its security presence in the Middle East, pick sides between countries, or challenge the U.S. security role in the region – for now China is primarily an economic and political power in the region.”
Still, a heavy Chinese presence in the area could roil oil markets if concerns over possible military tensions with the United States or Europe over Taiwan spill into the area. Crude prices often spike whenever anxieties grow over friction between the U.S. and Iran.
That China’s buildup in the area can raise concerns in the United States shows how oil politics can still loom large for the U.S., the world’s biggest oil producer. Even a benign presence at the choke point would give Chinese companies information about fuel or ship movements that they could send back to Beijing as intelligence, said Republican aides with the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
“Everything in the private industry in China is somewhat connected to the larger CCP or the PLA,” said the official, who was granted anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to be quoted in the media. “Even if you’re a private company, you might be called upon by the Chinese government to share intel.”
At worst, having a direct PLA presence on the Strait of Hormuz would set off alarm bells among energy security experts, said Scott Modell, chief executive of consulting firm Rapidan Energy and a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who served in the Middle East, Central Asia and Latin America.
“National security hawks like me will view the news of Chinese bases along the Strait of Hormuz as an unacceptable threat to U.S. national security, sensing that Beijing’s long-term objective is the placement of military bases at choke points around the world to offset the risk to strategic commodity flows in the event of a major geopolitical event such as a forced reunification with Taiwan,” Modell said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
