In the past few months, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has increased the frequency of military maneuvers close to Taiwan, with the PLA last week conducting joint naval-air exercises for two successive days.
This included multiple waves of PLA Air Force aircraft crossing into Taiwan’s southwestern air defense identification zone on Thursday last week.
According to the Ministry of National Defense, Chinese aircraft took off from bases within China’s Eastern and Southern Theater Commands.
The exercises represent an increased level of coordination and complexity, spread across separate commands and two branches of China’s military.
It is highly likely that the purpose of the exercises was to test the capabilities of China’s new BeiDou-3 satellite navigation system.
In a report delivered to the Chinese Communist Party’s 19th National Congress in October 2017, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) stated: “By 2020, the PLA will have essentially achieved the important step of mechanization, and by 2035 China’s military and defense structures will have achieved fundamental modernization.”
Of central importance to Xi’s military modernization plan is the “data-ization” of the military, which has been achieved through the successful completion of BeiDou-3.
On July 30 Xi attended a commissioning ceremony for BeiDou-3.
The constellation of 55 individual satellites that comprise the system is the world’s fourth complete satellite navigation system after the US’ GPS, Russia’s GLONASS and the EU’s Galileo.
However, BeiDou-3’s data and wireless capabilities still require repeated testing and calibration to ensure that they can provide accurate information to aircraft, ships and guided missiles before the system can be used in a war by China’s military command structure.
The PLA might have been using the joint-military exercises to compress the testing and calibration for BeiDou-3, and to bring forward the completion date for the system’s certification by the military as “combat ready.”
Achieving full integration of the navigation system into China’s military ahead of schedule would also assist Beijing to ramp up its campaign of psychological warfare against Taiwan.
Huang Wei-ping is a former think tank researcher.
Translated by Edward Jones
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