China In The Euro-Atlantic

China is becoming an ever-more prominent actor in the global maritime commons, emerging as a key player in sectors such as global shipping. China is also gradually expanding its military footprint outside its region and developing the capacity for power projection at reach. For policymakers in the Euro-Atlantic, this raises the prospect of a Chinese military presence in the region and its environs (such as the South Atlantic and the Arctic). This paper seeks to outline the likely scope of a People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) putative presence in and around the Euro-Atlantic in the next 15 years and the nature of the foreign policy it will support.

Key Findings

• While there is some rationale for a PLAN presence in the Euro-Atlantic and its environs, the challenges of maintaining an extra-regional military presence at any scale will limit its scope. China’s blue-water capabilities are still nascent and even after likely growth, resourcing either a rotational or permanent deployment of PLAN capabilities will impose challenging force structure trade-offs on a navy that already faces the daunting task of competing in both the Pacific and Indian oceans.

• Despite this, the bottlenecks in key Chinese supply chains that begin in the Atlantic may provide incentives for a future Chinese leader to decide that a military presence at scale is warranted – such a choice will probably not be made in the medium term (10–15 years). Much of China’s military activity, including defence engagement, is likely to be Phase 0 shaping to set the conditions if such a shift is chosen.

• While China will represent a very limited military challenge in the region, it is likely to seek coercive options towards Europe. Beijing’s most likely foreign policy towards Europe would combine elements of coercion and engagement, since China needs the European market, but seeks a degree of leverage.

• China has several coercive options that leverage maritime power. Its central role in port infrastructure and support to Russia’s economy and military are two options that it might leverage. While many of these options either do not involve the PLAN, or involve it primarily as a supporting element, they can have second-order ramifications for European navies.

Although a future PLAN presence should not be a basis for strategic distraction from the core tasks of Europe’s navies in terms of deterring Russia, its shaping activities in the region should be monitored and where possible constrained.

Introduction

In 2019, NATO’s then Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg voiced concerns that although “there’s no way that NATO will move into the South China Sea … we have to address the fact that China is coming closer to us, investing heavily in infrastructure”. The prospect of China moving into the Euro-Atlantic area poses new questions for the UK and its partners in the region. Given that China has not yet emerged as a major defence and security actor in the Atlantic (although it wields considerable economic influence), policymakers and ministries of defence will benefit from an understanding of the potential scope of China’s regional ambitions, and their ramifications.

To explore China’s likely approach to the Euro-Atlantic, this paper’s analysis is based on some assumptions about the principles driving China’s foreign policy. These are derived from public statements and published scholarship.

The nature of China’s engagement in the Euro-Atlantic is apparent more from its conflicting economic imperatives than its modest military presence. The capacity of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) for sustained power projection remains limited. However, China has strong incentives to maintain stable relations with states whose markets partly sustain its investment-led, export-dependent economy. There are also reasons for China to pursue coercive leverage over European states that have, to some extent, cooperated with US efforts to economically contain China (most notably through exercising control over key technologies, such as semiconductors). An assessment of how Beijing might balance these conflicting imperatives and the emerging military implications of its approach will help European leaders avoid either complacency or overreaction. The Royal Navy Strategic Studies Centre and the Centre for Strategic Studies of the French Navy (CESM) have supported this project, conducted by RUSI and the Council on Geostrategy. The project examines how China may evolve as a power in the Euro-Atlantic. The research for this paper, conducted in July 2024, involved a review of existing literature on China’s capabilities and wider geostrategic imperatives.

There are several trajectories that China’s foreign policy in the Euro-Atlantic may take, each of which corresponds to a different set of naval priorities. It might opt for an increasingly coercive approach, aimed at fixing US and European assets in the region and thus giving it more of a free hand in the Indo-Pacific. This approach has been advocated by members of China’s military and analytical communities. It might entail the deployment of forces in the Atlantic at a scale sufficient to occupy the attention of a meaningful number of US forces and to give European states pause on their commitments to the Indo-Pacific. More explicit support to Russia than has been offered by China thus far might also constitute a coercive approach.

At the other end of the spectrum is the view, espoused by others in China, that Europe’s consumer economies represent “the endpoints” for many of the infrastructure projects that form part of the Belt and Road Initiative – a large number of which would serve the primary role of linking Chinese producers with European markets (since few other markets in Eurasia are of a comparable scale). While strategic engagement in the Euro-Atlantic is part of this view of China’s priorities, the main focus is not to alienate European states. To do so would drive them to coordinate with the US more closely, which incentivises non-military forms of regional engagement.

These are not mutually exclusive options, as coercion and engagement can form complementary strands of a state’s foreign policy. However, a nakedly coercive foreign policy makes engagement more difficult.

This paper contends that dissuasion is the foreign policy that Beijing is most likely to embark on in the Atlantic. China needs the markets of Europe, given its own structural export surpluses, which will prove difficult to export elsewhere. However, China’s latent capacity for coercion can serve as a useful means of dissuading policies that directly impact China’s interests in its immediate periphery. It is thus likely that China’s foreign policy in the Euro-Atlantic will attempt to maintain a constructive relationship with Europe (eschewing some aggressive foreign policy tools) while attempting to ensure that the principles on which the relationship rest are amenable to Beijing’s interests, particularly with respect to European policies in the Indo-Pacific.

The direct military ramifications of a strategy of dissuasion are likely to be limited in the short to medium term. While there are some reasons for China to seek a military presence in the vicinity of the Euro-Atlantic area (for example, in the Arctic and South Atlantic), there are considerable practical limitations, which are likely to prove enduring. China is likely to engage in what Western military parlance would term “Phase 0 shaping activities” in the South Atlantic and potentially also the Arctic. Phase 0 activities would be designed to cultivate regional influence, habituate the PLAN to longer deployments, and set the conditions for a more substantial presence in the longer term. Naval presence and activities, such as joint exercises with Russia, might also be used as a means of signalling to Europe China’s capacity to indirectly play a more significant security role in the Euro-Atlantic. For example, China might provide more explicit military and economic support to Russia as one way of seeking to reinforce a strategy of dissuasion.

The main conclusion of the paper is that for Europe’s navies, the presence of the PLAN in the Atlantic is a relatively distant and low-probability concern, but that growing Chinese interests in the region will lead to an increase in activity, which should at this stage be monitored and matched as an economy-of-force effort. In the long term, China may become increasingly dependent on sea lines of communication (SLOCs) in the South Atlantic and may have the capacity to commit significant resources to their protection. Similarly, its footprint in the Arctic might grow, for reasons that are discussed in the paper. While it is not likely that China’s presence will materialise until well beyond the next decade, it is a contingency to plan for, and the shaping activity that might enable this eventual development should be monitored. In the period most relevant to national defence reviews, the most significant consideration from a security standpoint is the Sino-Russian relationship in the High North and beyond, which might have more direct military ramifications in Europe.

The paper has three chapters. Chapter I describes the underlying assumptions about China’s foreign policy drivers on which the assessment of its military engagement with the Euro-Atlantic is based. Chapter II provides further detail on Beijing’s strategic imperatives in the Euro-Atlantic that have a plausible maritime dimension. Chapter III describes the employment and potential limitations of China’s naval power in the Euro-Atlantic. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of a Chinese presence in the Euro-Atlantic for European navies.

I. Assumptions About Drivers for China’s Foreign Policy

The assessments in this paper are based on a number of underlying assumptions for the next decade. The first is that the US will increasingly prioritise strategic competition with China. This will involve a rebalancing of US military capabilities towards the Indo-Pacific, potentially leaving gaps in the European security architecture. The 2022 Indo-Pacific Strategy released by President Joe Biden’s administration, for example, explicitly states an intention to “renew our focus on innovation to ensure the U.S. military can operate in rapidly evolving threat environments” in the Indo-Pacific region. It is likely that the US Indo-Pacific Command, which already absorbs 60% of critical capabilities, such as nuclear attack submarines, will see its allocation of naval assets grow. One outcome of this refocusing is that, much like the British and German fleets before the First World War, the US Navy and the PLAN might fix much of the other’s naval power in static opposition within a single region, ironically limiting the extra-regional footprints of both global aspirants. Both navies may seek to maintain an extra-regional presence to secure lines of communication and, in the case of China, to potentially fix US resources elsewhere. However, the very fragility of the regional balance of power will limit each navy’s slack capacity for deployment elsewhere.

The second assumption is that, to the greatest extent possible, China will remain committed to securing its supply chains and maintaining market access. Beijing’s economic plan hinges on a delicate balancing act: constructing a trade framework that supports regime security and self-sufficiency while fostering in other countries greater economic dependence on it. China’s trajectory of economic growth is heavily reliant on expanding its share of global manufacturing, a strategy which necessitates sustained increases in both production capacity and global market penetration. Beijing recognises the vulnerability of its economic model to external disruptions and will continue to pursue strategies to mitigate these risks.

The third assumption is that China’s efforts to reduce its dependence on external markets and technology through initiatives such as the “dual circulation” economy and “Made in China 2025” are unlikely to fully materialise by 2032. However, if this changes, it will affect the likelihood of a coercive foreign policy in the Euro-Atlantic by setting the economic incentive structures of China and European states at odds. Although these initiatives are aimed at mitigating reliance on foreign technologies and markets, China remains deeply integrated in the international systems from which it seeks to partially detach, and its growing role in some sectors (such as electric vehicles and solar panels) will also create new dependencies on suppliers in regions such as West Africa.

The fourth assumption is that Beijing will be heavily influenced by status concerns as well as security interests. The two may significantly overlap since global acceptance of China as a rule-setter in key regions will aid its economic and security interests. As China continues to rise on the global stage, Beijing will be increasingly motivated by the desire to be recognised as a great power and to shape international norms and institutions in the image of the values and interests of the Communist Party of China (CCP). Evidence for this desire to be a rule-setter rather than a rule-follower is apparent in initiatives such as the Global Development Initiative (2021), the Global Security Initiative (2022) and the Global Civilisation Initiative (2023).

Many of the instruments that China will apply to deliver this engagement are non-military, although a limited military presence can serve several aims for China. These include enabling certain forms of engagement (such as coordination on non-traditional security threats) and supporting China’s scientific establishment, as well as the efforts of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to generate maritime domain awareness and setting the conditions for a more ambitious military posture, should political and military circumstances require it.

II. China’s Strategic Interests in the Euro-Atlantic

China has several major areas of strategic interest in the Euro-Atlantic and adjoining regions to which its position in the maritime domain may be relevant. These are:

• Securing SLOCs and access to critical resources.

• Maintaining market access to Europe.

• Protecting Chinese overseas interests.

• Maintaining the capacity to put pressure on the US and other Western states on “exterior lines”.

Securing Sea Lines of Communication

While energy supplies that traverse the Indian Ocean have historically been an area of focus for Chinese strategists, a number of critical Chinese supply chains have bottlenecks in the Atlantic. For example, 98% of China’s cobalt is imported, with the majority from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Cobalt plays a vital role in several industrial processes, including oil refining. Similarly, much of China’s manganese, used in the production of steel and anodes for lithium-ion batteries, is procured from South Africa, Gabon and Ghana. This can have long-term military ramifications. Despite the fears of Chinese strategists, the prospect of a US blockade of the Strait of Malacca has always been remote: it would also have an impact on countries within the cordon (and the PLAN would inflict considerable attrition on any enforcing vessels). Many of China’s avenues to securing other key inputs, such as cobalt, are far more fragile.

The efforts of the US and its allies to control flows of key industrial and military inputs that must cross the South Atlantic in a conflict are, in theory, more militarily achievable. The US Navy could constrain flows of these inputs with a close blockade in more militarily permissive waters. Whether the US has an appetite to enforce such a cordon on distant neutral states is debatable, especially as this would also rob the US Navy of resources it would need in the Pacific. However, it would seem logical that a country that has spent decades treating the “Malacca dilemma” as a real concern should be equally worried about the prospects of such a blockade. It should perhaps not be surprising, therefore, that the PLAN is reportedly seeking bases capable of hosting its aircraft carriers in West African states such as Gabon and Equatorial Guinea, and that it has conducted visible naval exercises with Russia and South Africa. Chinese military authors have posited that aircraft carriers have an important role in protecting SLOCs and a carrier strike group acting as a fleet in being need not be preponderant to significantly complicate SLOC interdiction.

Nonetheless, there are a number of alternative and arguably less risky methods of supply-chain derisking available to China, including diversification and stockpiling – the same approach China applies to oil. Moreover, in a conflict, the precedence taken by military production over civilian consumption and the ability of a sophisticated economy to engage in import substitution is typically a limiting factor on the immediate impact of a blockade. Short of imposing something analogous to the Navicert system on vessels leaving African ports, it is unclear how the US Navy could impose a blockade, since most shipping to China occurs on vessels that are not Chinese-flagged. It is entirely plausible that the assertions of the Chinese military community regarding the need for “far seas protection” reflect institutional beliefs and interests of the PLAN rather than China’s strategy. If this is the case, it might well be that these interests will not translate into a military presence adjacent to the Euro-Atlantic, with some questioning the evidence that China has indeed sought a base in West Africa.

At a minimum, however, a plausible rationale for a military presence does exist and China has reportedly already set up military infrastructure, such as telemetry stations in Kenya. If the naval protection of SLOCs becomes a core mission for China, this would place sizeable Chinese forces within the Atlantic. On balance, this paper argues that this is unlikely to occur until well beyond the next decade, but efforts to set the conditions for a Chinese naval presence in the Atlantic, should a future leader opt to create one, may be visible during the next 15 years.

Maintaining Market Access to Europe

Market access to the consumption-led economies of Europe represents a second area of focus for China. The country has invested substantially in efforts to increase its connectivity across Eurasia through the Belt and Road Initiative, and the ability to move finished goods to European markets is likely to remain a significant driver of Chinese foreign policy, especially as its investment-led economic model will make it difficult to shift to a consumption-led economy.

Strategic investments in port infrastructure in Europe, including Piraeus in Greece and Hamburg in Germany, as well as ports in countries such as Egypt, give Chinese companies a controlling share in a number of critical maritime nodes, with Chinese firms owning or having a stake in all 15 of the world’s busiest ports. Chinese firms are deploying sophisticated logistics management platforms such as LOGINK, which already has agreements with at least 24 ports, and security inspection equipment manufactured by Nuctech. These technologies provide unprecedented opportunity for covert gathering of intelligence about maritime traffic, trade flows, cargo data and even biometric information of individuals working at ports. In principle, there are sound commercial reasons for China’s port investments and they do not necessarily provide Beijing with control over operations. However, a central position in global transport networks can be employed as a coercive instrument. Port operators are bound by national laws and cannot easily refuse services on political grounds, but countries can exercise other forms of control over their companies and capital. Consider, for example, recent US restrictions on the ability of US nationals to work with Chinese companies in key sectors. Moreover, coercive activity can be presented as administrative procedure, as was the case during China’s 2010 rare earths embargo on Japan (under the aegis of production issues) and its embargo on Norwegian salmon after the latter hosted the dissident Liu Xiabo (under the aegis of health inspections, conducted repeatedly until the produce rotted).

Economic entanglement, even if not designed explicitly for coercion, can create latent coercive tools – consider how networks such as SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications – the leading provider of secure financial messaging services) have been weaponised against Russia and Iran. The dominance of Chinese companies, such as engineering giant ZPMC, in providing critical port equipment such as ship-to-shore cranes, enhances Beijing’s potential influence over port operations. For navies, a major consideration is likely to be that, for many deployments, routine resupply of non-sensitive goods depends on suppliers operating through civilian ports.

Protecting Chinese Overseas Interests

The protection of China’s overseas interests, including the considerable number of Chinese nationals who work abroad, is also an increasingly important goal, the salience of which was illustrated by events such as the 2011 non-combatant evacuation operation for Chinese nationals in Libya carried out by the PLAN.

Other overseas interests include exploration for resources in international waters, which falls under the purview of the State Oceanic Administration. In the past decade, Chinese authors have highlighted the fact that there was scope for China to increase the number of applications it made to the International Seabed Authority for mining rights in the Atlantic, with a specific focus on metallic sulphides in the South Atlantic. China has recently concluded its first deep-sea expedition in the Atlantic, in which the State Oceanic Administration’s research ship Shenyai Yihao (which can operate a range of submersibles) played a leading role. China has also conducted a number of scientific expeditions in the Atlantic in the past decade, with a particular focus on the South Atlantic. A number of Chinese scholars and analysts have also expressed interest in resource extraction in areas such as the Arctic, which, although not part of the Euro-Atlantic, have a symbiotic relationship with it, particularly since several NATO members are Arctic states. Activity in the Arctic can serve a range of aims, including setting the conditions for access to seabed resources in international waters and generating usable data to support navigation that Chinese entities, including the PLA, can leverage.

China has committed significant resources to scientific activity in the Arctic, coordinated through the State Oceanic Administration, but which the PLA supports with personnel. The PLA is also represented on China’s Polar advisory committee. To date, China has completed 13 scientific expeditions to the region, employing platforms such as the polar icebreaker Xuelong-2, and its share of research outputs related to the region is growing rapidly. In addition, China has sought to increase its regional access through investments in infrastructure, including an abortive bid by China Communications Construction Company to construct airports in Greenland.

Thus far, however, China has worked primarily (but not exclusively) through Russia, an approach that dovetails with Russia’s own aspirations to become a primary goods provider in the Indo-Pacific. For example, in 2021 Russia articulated plans to fill gaps in the Chinese coal sector left by China’s decision to embargo Australian coal. Much of Russia’s coal mining occurs in the Arctic and the country maintains coal mines in geopolitically sensitive Svalbard, Norway. Similarly, since 2014, Russia has relied on China for financial support to underpin its efforts to tap its liquefied natural gas (LNG) reserves in the Arctic and, in February 2021, Novatek (Russia’s second-largest gas producer) and China’s investment company Shenergy Group signed a deal to ship several million tonnes of LNG from Russia’s now-sanctioned Arctic LNG-2 project to the Yamal peninsula in northwest Siberia for onward transit to China. Despite this, China’s embrace of Russian hydrocarbons remains lukewarm. Although coal exports from Russia have risen, nearby Indonesia has been the primary beneficiary of China’s frictions with Australia, while Arctic LNG-2 has had to suspend operations due to a paucity of tankers following Western sanctions. Moreover, China’s foreign policy aspirations to be regarded as a “near Arctic” state have roused suspicions in Moscow.

Maintaining Pressure on Western States’ Exterior Lines

The idea of expanding strategic space on exterior lines is a common feature of Chinese analytical discourse. China is, as mentioned, likely to seek latent coercive levers to apply to Europe, if only to shape European behaviour regarding its own interests in Asia. China’s foreign policy, however, beyond its immediate environs, has thus far largely (but not exclusively) eschewed military coercion. While not averse to flexing the state’s economic muscle (for example when then Premier Wen Jiabao cancelled trade talks with France in 2007 after the latter hosted the Dalai Lama, or cutting off imports from Lithuania in 2021 over the latter’s decision to open a Taiwan Representative Office), China has by and large limited its coercive statecraft to economics and has been judicious in its use of non-military coercive tools.

Several Chinese analysts suggest that maritime presence in the Atlantic should be part of a strategy of operating on exterior lines and a means of relieving pressure in East Asia, although there is a lack of consensus to some degree on whether such a strategy should be militarised. Some advocate a cautious approach, emphasising geo-economics and investments in port infrastructure in which the PLAN should focus on multilateral engagement and cooperation with European states on non-traditional security threats such as piracy – partly as a means of countering the narrative that it represents a threat. Other Chinese analysts, such as Hu Bo of Beijing University, have called for a force of two to three carrier strike groups to be deployed beyond East Asia to “pin down” US assets that might be deployed to the region. Similarly, China’s premier doctrinal publication, The Science of Military Strategy, calls for aircraft carriers to be deployed to protect Chinese SLOCs. By and large, discussions of operating on exterior lines tend to focus on the Indian Ocean and Central Pacific. However, and as discussed in subsequent sections of this paper, the practicalities of operating in the Atlantic will limit possibilities for the PLAN over the next decade. Advocates of a larger presence in the Atlantic do consider the prospect of a more prominent role for Chinese “escort forces” in the region in the future but appear to recognise that the PLAN’s presence will be limited for the foreseeable future.

The idea of operating on exterior lines may also be relevant to China’s nuclear deterrent. While China’s ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) would struggle to break out of the First Island Chain in a crisis, the Arctic in theory offers a safe bastion and an energy efficient route for submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) such as the JL-3 (successor to China’s current SLBM) to reach the US, leading the Pentagon to raise the prospect of Chinese submarines operating in the Arctic. However, the practicalities of operating in the Arctic make this a highly questionable means of increasing the survivability of China’s second-strike capabilities, for reasons which are explored in greater depth in the next chapter.

In practice, the PLAN’s presence in both the Euro-Atlantic and its immediate peripheries (the Arctic and South Atlantic) is for the next decade likely to be relatively modest, but the deployment of such a limited presence to set the conditions for a more significant presence beyond the next decade should not be overlooked. Moreover, while China may not have a direct regional security presence, it can have an indirect impact on the security environment in the Supreme Allied Commander Europe’s (SACEUR) Area of Responsibility in ways that bear considering, primarily through its relationship with Russia.

III. China’s Blue-Water Navy as a Foreign Policy Instrument

The past three decades have seen China grow as a maritime power, moving from a regional power, built for contingencies related to Taiwan and the South China Sea, into a more expeditionary force. A continued build-up of maritime capability meant that, by 2022, the PLAN had more hulls than the US Navy. Nonetheless, the US Navy remains the largest in terms of gross tonnage, while the PLAN is still in the process of moving from a regional force with a large number of smaller vessels towards a blue-water navy.

This ambition has been manifested in projects such as the Type 055 cruiser (equipped with a higher vertical launch system capacity than the US Navy’s Ticonderoga-class, since its individual cells are larger), and the Type 076 landing helicopter assault (LHA) carrier, which may be equipped with CATOBAR (catapult launchers). Similarly, the People’s Liberation Army Navy Marine Corps (PLANMC) has grown five-fold in the past decade, with an explicitly stated focus on expeditionary missions. Notably, contingencies involving Taiwan remain the preserve of the People’s Liberation Army Ground Force (PLAGF), which controls the six heavy amphibious brigades in the Eastern Theatre Command and retained this despite the growth of the PLANMC. Moreover, since 2015 the PLA has added “far seas protection” to the list of the PLAN’s missions. It seems clear, then, that China desires the capacity to project power beyond its environs, but the answers to the questions of where, to what end and to what extent are less clear.

It should be noted that despite its substantial growth, the PLAN still has relatively limited (although rapidly growing) blue-water capabilities. For example, the force fields fewer major surface combatants (vessels of destroyer size or larger) than the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) – the PLAN operates 31 destroyers and cruisers to the JMSDF’s 36 destroyers. The PLAN also fields four Type 075 landing helicopter docks (LHDs) in support of its marine corps. It is likely that the PLAN will also grow rapidly, but it will have significant regional commitments even within the First Island Chain, given the scale of the area the chain encompasses. For example, the Spratly Islands are 1,200 kilometres from China’s nearest land-based airfields on Hainan Island off China’s south coast. Moreover, most contemporary Chinese discussions of PLAN activity beyond the First Island Chain tend to focus on the Pacific and Indian Oceans, where establishing a militarily significant naval presence will prove highly resource intensive.

Practical Limitations of China’s Naval Power

In principle, the fact that most of the several critical materials on which China relies, including cobalt and magnesium, come from a limited number of West and South African providers, including the DRC, Gabon and South Africa, provides a cogent rationale for a Chinese presence in the Atlantic, which would be entirely consistent with the logic of far-seas protection. That Equatorial Guinea and Gabon are states that China has reportedly approached to secure a facility large enough to house an aircraft carrier would also be consistent with the logic of SLOC protection.

However, there would be several impediments to the emergence of a standing PLAN presence in the Atlantic. The most obvious is the fact that in the Atlantic the PLAN would be operating at considerable distances from the wellsprings of Chinese power and in an area where the US and its allies militarily dominate – a fact acknowledged by most Chinese strategists.

It could be argued (as have analysts such as Bo) that China can secure its major aims at reach by creating a distant fleet in being large enough to make the US enforcement of a blockade unfeasibly costly (especially if the US were also confronting China in East Asia). Indeed, it is precisely the difficulty of managing both a distant blockade and events in the First Island Chain (which, as several studies have noted, is not viable) that would, in theory, incentivise the US to focus on bottlenecks. Such bottlenecks include China’s access to materials that come from a small number of states where a close blockade could be more readily enforced given the absence of a Chinese naval or anti-access threat beyond the Indo-Pacific.

The issue with this reasoning, as discussed, is that the immediate demands of balancing commitments within China’s region and outside it are considerations for China as well. Despite its rapid recent growth, the PLAN has a limited blue-water fleet (it fields just eight Type 055 cruisers, for example). This will change in due course, but even a much larger PLAN fielding the six aircraft carriers that China aspires to have by 2035 will be bound by the logic of force structuring. Factors such as vessel maintenance cycles and workup periods impact all navies, and experience suggests that perhaps half of the PLAN’s notional future carrier fleet will be at sea at any given time. The forward deployment of a carrier battlegroup, particularly one that includes the nine escort cruisers, frigates and destroyers discussed by Chinese analysts, would imply that China would have to make considerable sacrifices to its force availability in East Asia. Similarly, China’s fleet of Type 075 and Type 076 LHDs and LHAs, although growing in number, is still small relative to the scale of some of the tasks required by the PLAN in the First Island Chain.

Platforms such as the Type 093 nuclear-powered attack submarine (SSN) could be used as an alternative to surface vessels for deployments beyond the First Island Chain because they are both more self-sustaining and have limited prospects of escaping the First Island Chain in a conflict (and so have bounded utility in this theatre, where China’s diesel electric submarines are more useful). However the Type 093 is relatively noisy, which, it has been suggested, appears to be a function of its propulsion systems and deficiencies in its anechoic coating, and this would limit its military utility. Since the prospective bases which might give the PLAN access to the Atlantic are likely to be in Africa, there is also a political dimension to the issue which must be considered. SSN deployments, although not strictly speaking contrary to the Treaty of Pelindaba (which declares Africa a nuclear weapons-free zone), would also create political complications for both China and the host nation. That said, there may be other rationales for extended deployments, including habituating Chinese submariners to longer periods at sea, which is presently a challenge as illustrated by the mental health issues that extended deployments are causing among Chinese submariners who are not used to them. The logic of using extended rotational deployments as a means of exposing the PLAN to the rigours of sustained activity at sea would also apply to surface vessels, but it would suggest deployments comparable to the UK’s periodic carrier strike group deployments to the Indo-Pacific, rather than a standing presence. These deployments, should they occur, would have diplomatic significance – and would represent a means for European navies to gain situational awareness of the PLAN – but their military significance in the Euro-Atlantic would be limited.

The ability of the PLAN to operate from bases in states such as Gabon and Equatorial Guinea – and presumably hold at risk US platforms – would require a degree of willingness on the part of these states to take risks on behalf of China in both establishing bases and allowing their use. In the short to medium term, this level of risk acceptance is unlikely in what are largely transactional relationships. While the concept of the PLAN using dual-use commercial facilities to resupply distant vessels has been considered by the PLAN as a more non-committal option through which to rely on prospective partners, this is more useful to enable deployments in support of diplomacy and engagement than it is to sustain credible naval forces. It is relatively unlikely, for example, that volatile goods, such as munitions, can be stored in civilian ports for long, even if neutral ports could be used for refuelling in wartime. While the pursuit of bases by the PLAN cannot be ruled out, it is unclear whether these facilities would have a significant military role. The risk of SLOC interdiction could in the final instance be offset by other means, including stockpiling and overland transport of goods to ports in third countries to which the US is not constraining access for onward transport. In effect, the problem of resourcing a distant blockade would remain for the US, and the use of the PLAN to protect Atlantic SLOCs appears unlikely to be viable for some time.

Similarly, the prospects for a Chinese SSBN bastion in the Arctic are constrained by several factors. First, the PLAN does not currently operate SSBNs capable of operating under ice, although its future Type 095 SSN and Type 096 SSBN may be able to do so. Thus far, however, the only indicators of this are academic research, which is inconclusive. Even if this is the case, the Type 096 (for which construction began in the early 2020s) will only be fielded in numbers necessary to ensure a consistent presence at sea by the end of this decade. Second, following the arrival of the first Type 096, the PLAN would need to spend additional years habituating its submariners to operations under ice (which relatively few NATO navies, such as the US Navy and Royal Navy, can do). Third, Chinese SSBNs would need to transit chokepoints such as the Bering Strait to enter the Arctic, meaning that a survivable presence would require at least one SSBN out of a planned fleet of six to be permanently in the Arctic (meaning, in effect, that the majority of the fleet would need to be committed to resourcing this mission). This would also mean that Russian support would be vital to sustain China’s undersea deterrent since Russia is the only non-Western state with experience operating submarines under ice – a strategic commitment neither nation indicated a desire to undertake. And fourth, an Arctic SSBN presence is considerably more complex to deliver than China’s other means of assuring its second strike. China is currently placing multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles, which permit a missile to deliver multiple nuclear warheads to different targets on road-mobile DF-41 ICBMs. This has the effect of ensuring that even a small number of missiles which survive a first strike can both deliver a large number of warheads and pose a complex problem to missile defences. China is also expanding its number of missile silos, increasing the number of targets that the US would need to strike to cripple its arsenal. These palliatives are far more readily achievable than an under-ice SSBN patrol.

It is likely, then, that within the next 15 years, material constraints on the PLAN will make a military presence capable of supporting Chinese interests in a high-intensity scenario either in the Euro-Atlantic or its environs unlikely. It is still plausible, however, that China is attempting to create optionality for itself and set the conditions for a more expansive presence, should this be deemed desirable and feasible. But this is unlikely to be the case for well over a decade.

Other Potential Uses of China’s Maritime Power

There are other functions that naval and maritime power can fulfil for China in the Euro-Atlantic.

Diplomatic Signalling

Naval activity can be used as a tool of diplomatic signalling for both Europe and other actors. As noted, China has conducted several joint exercises with the Russian navy in the previous decade, including the 2017 Naval Interaction exercises in the Baltic Sea, exercises in the Mediterranean and more recent exercises with the Russian and South African navies on the periphery of the Atlantic. A PLAN Type 052D guided missile destroyer also took part in Russia’s Navy Day celebrations in St Petersburg in July 2024. One aim of joint exercises with Russia may be to signal China’s capacity to play a more significant and not entirely welcome role in Europe, should European states become more engaged in the Indo-Pacific. While not wishing to stoke paranoia, this paper notes that the coincidence of a Chinese exercise in Belarus at the same time as the NATO Summit in July 2024 and on the back of the participation of several European states in RIMPAC 24 (Rim of the Pacific Exercise, the world’s largest international maritime exercise) could be seen as exactly the kind of behaviour that best illustrates this scenario. It may be intended to signal China’s capacity to insert itself into the European security environment if European states play a larger role in the Pacific.

The PLAN as a Supporting Arm in the Euro-Atlantic

Importantly, naval activity would in this instance not be China’s primary threat to Europe – rather it would represent a relatively costly signal of China’s potential willingness to employ other tools that may be more immediately consequential. While China is unlikely to have considerable local military strength in the Euro-Atlantic over the next 15 years, it can have an indirect impact on the security of the region. For example, China could reinforce Russia’s capacity to generate export revenue. Russia still relies on Protection and Indemnity (P&I) Club-insured shipping for the transfer of 45% of the vessels carrying hydrocarbons from terminals in the Baltic Sea. Russia’s continued reliance on vessels that depend on Western insurers and thus probably obey the oil price cap, and the decrepitude of the vessels in Russia’s “shadow fleet”, all point to the limits, as a means of sanctions evasion, of any Russian effort to substitute its shadow fleet for international carriers that are exposed to Western pressure. The environmental risks that older vessels pose could also be a legal basis for their eventual denied access to ports and key straits. If the major bottleneck is a lack of available seaworthy ships, Chinese state-owned oil tankers might offer Russia a means of transporting oil at above price-cap rates, particularly since the two largest global operators of oil tankers are Chinese. So far, China’s financial institutions have shied away from transactions that might fall foul of these sanctions – given the exposure of Chinese banks trading in dollars and euros to international sanctions. However, Russia’s growing reliance on Chinese-made dual-use goods and its trade deficit with China mean that transactions in renminbi would give Russia access to a currency for which it has increasing use, despite it being less tradeable than the US dollar. China could also collaborate with Russia in the production of commercial shipping for Russian state-owned firms – a possibility floated by the head of Russia’s VTB Bank Andrey Kostin as a means of clearing the backlogs in Russia’s Zvezda shipyard – or China could sell excess capacity to third-party carriers dealing in Russian oil.

China’s military support for Russia could also take more direct forms. The idea that Chinese shipyards could provide Russia’s navy with capacity was, apparently, hinted at by Vice Admiral Sergei Avakyants, then head of Russia’s Pacific Fleet, after joint exercises between the Russian navy and the PLAN. Avakyants suggested that the proportion of modern PLAN vessels allocated to exercises with the Russian Pacific Fleet partly reflected a desire to advertise China’s shipbuilding capabilities. While this assessment may or may not have been accurate, it is often the case that military support that begins as covert or partially deniable assistance escalates to more direct forms over time. Additionally, it is notable that China has recently announced that it will sell the Type 052 destroyer internationally, since few Chinese partners other than Russia have a rationale for procuring the vessel, or the funds to do so.

China’s Presence in Africa

Chinese and Western security interests may well clash in third-party states where China seeks a growing security footprint. To some extent this may have already occurred. In July 2024, Italian authorities interned a Chinese vessel carrying Wing Loong UAVs to Libya’s General Khalifa Haftar, in contravention of the UN arms embargo on Libya. The reality of Chinese-operated ports on Europe’s immediate periphery may make similar interdictions more difficult to achieve in the future. China also has a growing security presence in states such as the DRC, where it has supplied the government with CH-4 UAVs to fight rebel forces, and the Chinese aeronautics company, China National Aero-Technology Import & Export Corporation, has offered to supply the DRC with J-10 aircraft. If longstanding Chinese investment (which comes with fewer political strings than Western alternatives) is combined with more lenient terms, military support between China and Russia could, unchecked, leave both countries with an even greater level of control over Western economy supply chains than they currently enjoy. China can support such activity through the provision of advise and assist missions and by acting as an alternative partner to Western states on issues such as counterpiracy, as it has with Nigeria.

Sabotage

There is also potential for Chinese limited and deniable coercive activity in the Euro-Atlantic, in tandem with Russia. Consider, for example, the alleged sabotage of the Balticconnector pipeline (a natural gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia) by the NewNew Polar Bear (a vessel registered in China owned by several Russian and Chinese commercial entities) which appears to have dragged its anchor over the pipeline. Chinese survey ships and commercial companies associated with the cable industry or deep sea mining could step up activity near submarine cables in the Atlantic in areas with a lighter NATO presence, such as the Azores Fibre Optic System, and near connections from West Africa such as the Cabo Verde node. The surveying activity being conducted by the Ministry of National Resources could certainly support this, particularly since data gathered must be shared with the PLA. However, there are several impediments to the option of sabotage activity in the Atlantic. China is itself seeking to become a major, if not quite monopolistic, provider of cable services linking European companies to East Asia – a concern that led the US to force China Telecom out of the consortium building the SEA-ME-WE-6 cable (an optical fibre submarine communications cable system that carries telecommunications between Singapore and France) in 2023. Notably, China chose to bankroll an alternative cable linking Asia and Europe (Europe–Middle East–Asia, known as the EMA). Any suggestion of China’s involvement in sabotage would make it considerably easier to build a political consensus for excluding Chinese companies from sensitive projects in the Euro-Atlantic.

Unlike Russia, China has not invested heavily in the specialised military equipment needed to target infrastructure, such as cables at depths that make repair difficult, although civil capabilities such as uncrewed underwater vehicles, built for exploring the seabed, could be used in a military capacity.

While it is not possible to entirely exclude sabotage as a tool of dissuasion, it remains relatively unlikely.

Transfer of Data

A more significant challenge is the prospect of China becoming a key provider of services related to the transfer of data, which can be employed for intelligence gathering. The latter contingency would, however, only become an extreme consideration if China became a monopolistic actor in the cable market, and with Chinese companies such as HMN Tech (which provides submarine network system solutions) currently holding a 10% market share, this is some way off, although ensuring this remains the case is a policy consideration for Western states.

While the PLA can support foreign policy aims in the Euro-Atlantic and its environs that are contrary to European interests, it is these policies themselves rather than the military presence involved in them that are the major concern. For the most part, the PLA will be a supporting element in the Euro-Atlantic, reinforcing Chinese foreign policy aims as a tool of military signalling and engagement. These functions can, however, set the conditions for a more militarily credible presence in the long term, and the evolution of the PLAN’s footprint should be monitored.

Conclusions and Lessons for European Navies

For European navies, the direct military threat posed by the growing Chinese presence in the Atlantic will be low for at least the next 15 years. Moreover, most Chinese activity relevant to the Atlantic will occur just beyond the peripheries of the Euro-Atlantic, off West Africa, in the South Atlantic, and the Arctic. The key consideration for Europe’s navies will be how much capacity they allocate to hedging against the prospective evolution of China’s Atlantic posture, given the resource demands of contending with other acute threats.

There appears to be no consensus from Beijing on requirements for a significant military presence in the Atlantic, although considerable attention is paid to the question of expanding “strategic space” in other ways. While China faces tangible risks to some of its supply lines in the Atlantic, there is little that it can do to rectify this challenge in military terms in the medium term. Moreover, there are non-military means by which China can mitigate risk, including diversification, stockpiling and rerouting goods. It is conceivable, however, that the PLAN could pursue rotational deployments in the South Atlantic within the next two decades as a means of both setting the conditions for a more substantial presence in the longer term and habituating the force to operations at reach.

In all likelihood, much of the activity that this entails will effectively amount to Phase 0 shaping activity in areas adjoining (but not part of) SACEUR’s Area of Responsibility, including the South Atlantic and the Arctic. Port visits by PLAN vessels, maritime data acquisition, military cooperation on non-traditional security issues, and defence engagement in the form of arms sales can, collectively, set the conditions for the PLAN to secure access in areas such as the South Atlantic. While these pursuits are not immediately threatening, they do accord to the importance of European navies remaining engaged in regions that many of them may wish to de-emphasise to refocus resources on the much more pressing challenge of deterrence regarding Russia. While the prioritisation of acute threats represents a rational choice, an economy-of-force effort to match China’s Phase 0 activity should be retained as an economy-of-force task. This need not always involve the deployment of assets – in the Gulf of Guinea, for example, the Anglo-French MDAD-GoG (Maritime Domain Awareness Trade-Gulf of Guinea) has arguably been the most useful European contribution to the safety of regional shipping. Frameworks allowing for the pooling and rotational commitment of ships to tasks such as engagement might also be a means for European navies to manage competing commitments with limited force structures, and this might be a role for the Anglo-French Combined Joint Expeditionary Force, which has lost its original rationale (resourcing expeditionary commitments comparable to the 2011 intervention in Libya).

Operating in proximity to the PLAN may also offer it information-gathering opportunities, much as was the case in 2021 when the activities of Chinese Type 093 SSNs near the UK’s carrier strike group revealed (or at a minimum provided the opportunity to verify) a number of details regarding the platform’s acoustic signatures. This represents not only an information-gathering opportunity, but potentially also a constraint on Chinese activity in the Atlantic if this activity raises the prospect of sensitive data regarding deployed vessels being gathered.

In contrast to China’s limited naval presence, China’s engagement on the peripheries of the Euro-Atlantic could have immediate effects. For example, deeper Chinese engagement with Russia as a means of derisking some of China’s own supply lines and pressuring European states cannot be ruled out. In economic terms, China can substantially increase Russia’s capacity to generate revenue both through China’s own deeper engagement with Russian hydrocarbons extraction in the Arctic and by enabling Russia to circumvent oil price caps without having to rely on an old and relatively small fleet of dark ships (unregistered and uninsured vessels that have turned off or disabled their automatic identification systems).

In military terms, China’s capacity to serial-produce vessels such as the Type 052D represents the last plausible avenue through which Russia could generate a blue-water surface capability. While China’s engagement with Russian hydrocarbons remains relatively cautious, there are sound reasons for this to change, including the fact that Russia offers China a means of hedging against the Malacca dilemma. Moreover, China’s export of dual-use military goods to Russia illustrates a willingness in principle to engage in defence exports.

These possibilities do not change any of NATO’s core missions, but they do mean that planning for deterrence with regard to Russia should include the possibility that in areas where Russia is currently assessed to have relatively dim prospects (such as long-term growth and the size of its surface fleet), Chinese support is one of the few means that could enable Russia in the near future.

In effect, the optimal direct response for Europe’s navies to a PLAN with a limited but gradually expanding Euro-Atlantic footprint should be one premised on mirroring the non-committal but potentially useful Phase 0 shaping activities that the PLAN itself appears to be undertaking. It should further set the conditions to constrain a more assertive China if need be, without overreacting to a prospect that may never materialise.

Sidharth Kaushal is Research Fellow for Sea Power at RUSI. His research at RUSI covers the impact of technology on maritime doctrine in the 21st century, and the role of sea power in a state’s grand strategy.

René Balletta was the First Sea Lord’s Visiting Fellow at RUSI until August 2024. He has served much of his career at sea in a variety of surface platforms that include frigates, destroyers, amphibious assault ships and aircraft carriers.

Philip Shetler-Jones is a Senior Research Fellow in the International Security research team at RUSI. His current research is concentrated on Indo-Pacific security. His recent publications have focused on the defence policy of Japan, attitudes of China to NATO, and narratives about the defence of Taiwan.

Elizabeth Lindley is an analyst of politics of the People’s Republic of China, Chinese foreign policy, and cross-strait relations. She has a degree in Chinese Studies (First Class Hons) from the University of Cambridge, which included advanced Mandarin study in Taipei.