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WASHINGTON — The Pentagon’s formal, unclassified assessment of China’s military power will be out in the near future, likely in the “mid-October” timeframe, according to a key defense official.
Speaking at the Defense News Conference, Ely Ratner, assistant secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs, said the annual report on “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China” — more commonly known as the China Military Power report — could be weeks away.
“I will say as not only a DoD official, but as a former scholar and think tanker, it is the premier unclassified report on the status of the PLA [People’s Liberation Army], and it walks through what we understand as the PLA’s defense and national security strategy as well as a number of developments over the past year,” Ratner said.
“It will be, as always, an important document and we’ll do whatever we can to make it accessible to audiences and really highlight what’s new there, because it is a pretty meaty document,” Ratner said. “I think we’re looking now at mid-October, but it’s a dangerous thing to put a pin on a calendar with government activity.”
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Although he declined to go into details of the report before it was out, he teased that it will include “what’s new in terms of our understanding about PLA capabilities” including “our concerns about specifics about some of their behavior that have not been reported publicly to date.”
The behavior Ratner referred to involves what the US has described as unsafe, unprofessional interactions by the PLA with American and allied planes and ships.
That includes “coming within very close approaches, conducting unsafe maneuvers around our aircraft,” Ratner said. “And we do need a mechanism to be able to talk about this behavior and communicate from the US side, which we have tried to do as much as possible, that this behavior is not going to deter us from operating in the region. It’s dangerous, and the PLA has got to knock it off.”
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Ratner also called on Beijing to open up its military lines of communication, particularly at the level of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Smaller level meetings, even a recent exchange between US Indo-Pacific Command chief Adm. John Aquilino and a PRC counterpart, are well and good, Ratner said. But, “I don’t think those are substitute for leader level engagement in terms of ministerial level engagement.
“We have seen a couple openings, absolutely. But we would definitely be looking for more, again, at the ministerial level and to revitalize some of the standard engagements that we’ve had that have proved important in the past,” he added.
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