A failure by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to respond to Israel’s brilliant 12-day (June 12-23) bombing and special operations war against Iran, topped by US President Donald Trump’s ordering the June 21 bombing of Iranian deep underground nuclear weapons fuel processing sites, has been noted by some as demonstrating a profound lack of resolve, even “impotence,” by China.
However, this would be a dangerous underestimation of CCP ambitions and its broader and more profound military response to the Trump Administration — a challenge that includes an acceleration of its strategies to assist nuclear proxy states, and developing a wide array of power projection capabilities to attack the interests and security of the US and its allies and partners.
Decades of American and international activism have failed to prevent China’s longstanding objective of turning its proxies Pakistan, North Korea, and (almost) Iran into nuclear missile armed states for the missions of containing India, undermining US power in Asia, and to destroy Israeli and US power in the Middle East.
During his first term, even Trump considered but ultimately decided against bombing North Korea’s nuclear program.
Only when Israel saw the existential threat of an imminent Iranian nuclear weapons capability did it bomb Iran’s nuclear weapons production and military bases and boldly “decapitate” much of Iran’s political-military leadership — having already cleared a “path” by hobbling Iranian proxies Hamas and Hezbollah.
After the horrific Hamas Oct. 7, 2023 strike against Israel, the CCP became the vocal supporter of the broader radical Islamic war, an escalation to joining an open war against Israel, following decades of economic and concealed military technology support which enabled Iran’s direct and proxy conflicts.
But China has ensured that any potential military take-out of Pakistan’s or North Korea’s strategic nuclear capabilities will be deterred by China-assisted proliferation of their nuclear arsenals, which for both now include theater nuclear bombs, nuclear armed short/medium/intermediate range ballistic missiles, and ground, sea or air-launched nuclear cruise missiles.
Pakistan is believed to be developing a new solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), but North Korea already has two liquid-fueled and two more concealable solid-fueled ICBMs, including the world’s largest, the Hwasong-19 carried by a 22-wheel truck derived from the China Aerospace Science and Technology ICBM trucks transferred to Pyongyang in 2011.
But to further ensure North Korea’s nuclear threat, China is likely behind North Korea’s construction of nuclear “second strike” nuclear-propelled nuclear ballistic missile submarines (SSBN) that will be protected in China/Soviet style “Bastions” defended by new China-assisted 96-missile armed destroyer combat ships and future larger cruisers.
All of this radically increases the risks should Trump decide to strike North Korea like Iran, and preserves for the CCP a North Korean nuclear threat to create diversionary crises, to assist an invasion of Taiwan, or to undertake proliferation to create new nuclear proxies like Venezuela, or to rapidly rearm Iran.
But even if the CCP loses the ability to direct an active Iranian nuclear threat, it has gained a new nuclear proxy via its great economic support and increasing military technology transfers that enable Russia to conduct its horrific war of empire in Ukraine, with the threat that it might spread to the Baltic states and Poland.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s (王毅) July 2 admonition to European Union High Representative/Vice President Kaja Kallas, as reported on July 4 by the South China Morning Post, “that Beijing did not want to see a Russian loss in Ukraine because it feared the United States would then shift its whole focus to Beijing” is barely half the story.
For the CCP and its People’s Liberation Army (PLA), Russia’s Ukraine War serves as a proving ground for Chinese technology and a bloody school for its Taiwan War, training Chinese “mercenaries” to gain experience in fighting intimate drone/electronic system wars, while providing experience in coordinating a now trilateral Russia-China-North Korea conflict. The payback for the CCP and the PLA will be active Russian and North Korean participation in any PLA blockade or invasion of Taiwan.
China and Russia have conducted an average of 9x military exercises annually between 2020 and 2024, 11x in 2024 to include a joint nuclear bomber exercise targeting US military bases in Alaska.
A continuing CCP challenge to the Trump Administration will include continued assistance to Russian, North Korean, and Pakistani proxy power that will evolve to assist the PLA’s rapid construction of global power projection capabilities, built on the pillars of nuclear weapons superiority, broad naval/air/ground force global projection, and increasing global military access.
Russia’s cooperation for over a decade in assisting China’s building a “defense” against nuclear ballistic missiles is very likely combined with a robust covert agreement to coordinate their nuclear missile “offense” strategies.
Combined Russia and China deployed ICBM warheads today could exceed 2,400 and grow to well over 3,000 by 2035, while last May the US Defense Intelligence Agency estimated that by 2035 Russia and China combined could have 5,000 “boosted hypersonic weapons” and 10,000 land attack cruise missiles.
So far, the US will do well to merely fund replacements for its over-age ICBM, SSBN, and bomber forces, with, to date, little intention to increase beyond current levels of about 1,500 nuclear missile warheads.
Trump’s “Golden Dome” national missile defense objective, though decades overdue, faces steep funding and potential political support challenges should the Democratic Party win back the White House in 2028. But it still constitutes the most profound US attempt to steer the global nuclear missile competition toward defenses, and to revive the desirability of arms control agreements.
China, however, which has traditionally refused any attempt to subject its nuclear weapons to arms control limitation agreements, will have less incentive to do so with growing combined China-Russia nuclear superiority, and even less so should it break out its own national missile defense system.
At the November 2024 Zhuhai Airshow, the PLA revealed its HQ-19, a missile interceptor similar in size to the 400+ kilometer range US Lockheed Martin Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile interceptor, and there have been recent internet revelations of a larger missile interceptor, perhaps the HQ-26, that can defeat ICBMs.
Furthermore, in an attempt to limit any future US deployment of theater/tactical nuclear weapons to US allies like the Philippines, on July 3 the Chinese Foreign Ministry said China was ready to sign protocols to the 1995 Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (SEANWFZ) Treaty.
Never mind that at Yalong Bay on Hainan Island the PLA Navy stations four and eventually may station up to six SSBNs, each armed with 12x JL-3 submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) with 3x to 6x nuclear warheads each, pointing to a possible arsenal of 216 to 432 nuclear weapons on Southeast Asia’s doorstep. But expect China and its proxy Cambodia to condemn as a SEANWFZ violation any US deployment of tactical nuclear weapons — or even non-nuclear armed conventional ballistic missiles under the pretext they could be nuclear armed — that could thwart a PLA invasion of the Philippines’ Palawan Island, closest to the illegal PLA air/naval/missile bast at Mischief Reef.
Neutralization of the US potential intercontinental and theater nuclear coercive capability is essential for the CCP-PLA to proceed with their ambitions to invade and destroy Taiwan’s democracy.
Further PLA preparations for this invasion include the widely reported construction of specialized invasion barges using elevated pylons with long embarkation ramps that exponentially increase the number of invasion “beaches” along Taiwan’s coast.
In addition, reports from early 2024 indicate that China is now increasing its fleet of large Roll-On-Roll-Off (RORO) Pure Car and Truck Carrier (PCTC) automobile transport ships from about 30 to 80, which would have a potential to move up to 160,000 troops and equipment at a time.
Recall that the June 6, 1944 D-Day invasion moved 156,000 troops, while in peacetime, Taiwan’s seven major civilian airfields process about 140,000 passengers daily, or many more troops when captured by the PLA and used by a fraction of China’s 4,000 Boeing and Airbus airliners.
Beyond Taiwan, the PLA is challenging the Trump Administration’s military buildup plans by increasing its capability to move the fight beyond the First Island Chain into the Second Island Chain.
Revealed in December 2024, the Chengdu Aircraft Corporation’s new alleged “6th Generation” stealthy, supersonic, and very large three-turbofan engine “J-36” fighter has an estimated combat radius of about 3,000km and could be equipped with 500+km range air-launched anti-ship ballistic missiles as well as 300+km range anti-aircraft missiles — all deadly to US Navy aircraft carrier battle groups and their current mainly 4.5 generation Boeing F/A-18E/F strike fighters.
By the early 2030s, new larger PLA Navy full flattop conventional take-off and landing aircraft carriers, perhaps two of the 80,000-ton CV-18 Fujian-class, followed by more nuclear powered 100,000-ton carriers, could be equipped with the December 2024-revealed Shenyang Aircraft Corporation “J-50” 6th generation fighter — beginning an era of global PLAN power projection.
But into the 2030s as the CCP is increasingly able to project PLA military power globally, to instigate wars that tie down the US on Earth, the CCP and its PLA-controlled space program will be challenging American leadership by contesting control of the Solar System.
To control Low Earth Orbit, crucial for winning wars on Earth, the PLA will seek to impose control over the Earth-Moon System, a program that extends neatly from the PLA’s dual use manned space program that resumed in the early 1990s.
In 2026 the PLA is expected to start testing its Long March-10 Moon-rated manned space launch vehicle, while its new Mengzhou manned space capsule passed its Launch Escape System test in June, and the new Lanyue manned Moon lander prototype is in tests on Earth.
The PLA is also developing plans for the manned exploration of Mars, and in late 2023 space engineers from the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASAC) revealed a 3-year project to devise a 100-year plan to occupy moons and asteroids though the solar system.
So yes indeed, the CCP’s nuclear proxy strategy suffered a major setback in Iran, which still has its radical Islamist regime that the CCP could decide to quickly rearm with conventional power and nuclear potential.
The CCP is the only power now challenging the United States and its democratic allies for global primacy, which has the intention and capability to invade and destroy democracies starting with Taiwan, and is also focused on the requirements for ensuring its primacy on Earth by controlling the Earth-Moon System and the Solar System beyond.
Richard D. Fisher, Jr. is a senior fellow with the International Assessment and Strategy Center.
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