Two bipartisan lawmakers are renewing calls for a national investment in the naval sector, warning that America has fallen behind and that China’s use of the world’s oceans “to pursue global supremacy” is growing exponentially.
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL) noted in a joint opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal that Beijing, in its ambitious power grab, has seized more than a dozen islands in waters claimed by its neighbors and is hungry for more.
“China is using the islands as military outposts, which serve to choke off the region’s economic and natural-resources lifelines,” they wrote. “Beijing’s games of chicken with foreign ships contravene international law, risk dangerous escalation, and deny freedom of navigation to American allies and partners.”
China not only has the world’s largest navy, but it is also the world’s top shipbuilder and controls one of the largest shipping companies, built with the help of state subsidies.
A Center for Strategic and International Studies analysis estimates China offered $132 billion in subsidies to shipbuilding and shipping industries between 2010 and 2018. China has also invested nearly $60 billion into global port projects in places like Peru and Sri Lanka.
China has been accused of using predatory lending practices to gain control of the strategic port location. When nations like Sri Lanka can’t pay back the loans, China closes in and takes over.
“By flouting international standards of fair market behavior, China has secured nearly half of the world’s shipbuilding market as well as control over port and shipyard infrastructure around the world,” the lawmakers said.
And while China has been strategically building up its naval power, America’s commercial maritime industry has fallen woefully behind.
The United States had made up more than 40% of the world’s shipping capability at the end of World War II, with more than 5,000 ships at its disposal. Today, that number has shrunk to 90 U.S.-flagged ships that are involved in international trade.
The country’s maritime industrial base has also taken a hit. The U.S. lost 300 shipyards between 1983 and 2013, in part because the U.S. does not subsidize commercial shipbuilders like China. America has also increasingly turned to other nations to conduct trade, putting the U.S. at the mercy of foreign-flagged ships. Today, there are about 153,000 workers in the U.S. shipbuilding industry. China has more than 600,000.
Kelly and Waltz are behind a National Maritime Strategy that recommends expansion of mariner training programs, investments in U.S. shipyards, and the continued modernization of the inland waterways system.
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The report also “encourages private-sector investments and streamlines burdensome regulations.”
“The next step is for Congress to codify our bipartisan guidance into the National Maritime Strategy, and for the president to adopt it,” they said, adding, “that will set a course for securing America’s edge at sea, recognizing the innovative and competitive spirit of the American people.”
