China's support for Russia's defense industry comes from top leadership
19/9/2024 5:47
The challenges to the
U.S. posed by China exceed those of the Cold War, U.S. Deputy
Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said on Wednesday, charging
that Beijing's support for Russia's defense industry came
directly from China's leadership.
President Joe Biden's administration has been explicit that
it is not seeking a cold war with China, but increasingly
analysts and members of the U.S. Congress have said escalating
global competition between the two superpowers resembled a
different but new style of cold war.
Campbell told a House of Representatives Foreign Affairs
Committee hearing that Washington needed to maintain a
bipartisan focus on China and step up the speed of U.S. naval
shipbuilding and the capacity of the U.S. defense manufacturing
base.
"Frankly, the Cold War pales in comparison to the
multifaceted challenges that China presents. It's not just the
military challenges. It's across the board. It's in the Global
South. It is in technology," Campbell said.
Foreign crises, including Russia's war in Ukraine and the
Israel-Gaza conflict, have created distractions for Biden's
efforts to focus on China and the Indo-Pacific region. Biden
vowed early in his administration to not let China surpass the
United States as global leader.
China's Xi Jinping and Russia's Vladimir Putin, the leaders
of the United States' two most powerful rivals, in May pledged a
"new era" of partnership, and cast Washington as an aggressive
Cold War hegemon.
Campbell, the State Department's No. 2 diplomat, said
increasing the speed of U.S. warship output should be of the
highest priority over the next decade.
"This is a naval time," Campbell said, calling increasing
the speed with which U.S. Navy ships are designed and built "the
most important thing that we need to do over the course of the
next 10 years."
"The Navy has to step up. We have to step up with them," he
said.
Campbell, who met with NATO and EU officials earlier this
month to provide allies with details of China's "substantial
support" to Russia's military industrial base, has said Russia
was in return supporting Beijing with submarine and missile
technology.
"The most worrisome thing is that it comes from the very
top," Campbell said, referring to senior Chinese leaders'
support for Moscow. He added that China has been supporting
Russia's drone activity in Ukraine.
The Republican chair of the committee, Michael McCaul, was
critical of the extent of the so-called excluded technologies
list for the AUKUS defense project with Australia and Britain
that is part of efforts to stand up to China, including
restrictions covering unmanned underwater vehicles.
Campbell called relaxing U.S. curbs on technology sharing
vital for AUKUS, but said the list did not ban sharing
particular technologies, just that each case would have to be
reviewed.
At the same time, he said, "we need to make this usable for
defense planners and others that are making billion-dollar
investments."
Campbell said a summit of the Quad countries - Australia,
India, Japan and the United - that Biden will host on Saturday
would include "big announcements" showing substantial progress
to help Pacific and Southeast Asian nations track illegal
fishing fleets, most of which were Chinese.
He also mentioned plans for discussions on stepped-up
security cooperation in the Indian Ocean involving India and
other countries. He said U.S. Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral
Samuel Paparo had been asked to help "fuse together our national
military approach, security approach" there.
"This is the new frontier, working more closely with a
partner like India in the Indian Ocean," he said.
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