Alan W. Dowd is a Senior Fellow with the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes on the full range of topics relating to national defense, foreign policy and international security. Dowd’s commentaries and essays have appeared in Policy Review, Parameters, Military Officer, The American Legion Magazine, The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, The Claremont Review of Books, World Politics Review, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Jerusalem Post, The Financial Times Deutschland, The Washington Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Examiner, The Detroit News, The Sacramento Bee, The Vancouver Sun, The National Post, The Landing Zone, Current, The World & I, The American Enterprise, Fraser Forum, American Outlook, The American and the online editions of Weekly Standard, National Review and American Interest. Beyond his work in opinion journalism, Dowd has served as an adjunct professor and university lecturer; congressional aide; and administrator, researcher and writer at leading think tanks, including the Hudson Institute, Sagamore Institute and Fraser Institute. An award-winning writer, Dowd has been interviewed by Fox News Channel, Cox News Service, The Washington Times, The National Post, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and numerous radio programs across North America. In addition, his work has been quoted by and/or reprinted in The Guardian, CBS News, BBC News and the Council on Foreign Relations. Dowd holds degrees from Butler University and Indiana University. Follow him at twitter.com/alanwdowd.

ASCF News

Scott Tilley is a Senior Fellow at the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes the “Technical Power” column, focusing on the societal and national security implications of advanced technology in cybersecurity, space, and foreign relations.

He is an emeritus professor at the Florida Institute of Technology. Previously, he was with the University of California, Riverside, Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, and IBM. His research and teaching were in the areas of computer science, software & systems engineering, educational technology, the design of communication, and business information systems.

He is president and founder of the Center for Technology & Society, president and co-founder of Big Data Florida, past president of INCOSE Space Coast, and a Space Coast Writers’ Guild Fellow.

He has authored over 150 academic papers and has published 28 books (technical and non-technical), most recently Systems Analysis & Design (Cengage, 2020), SPACE (Anthology Alliance, 2019), and Technical Justice (CTS Press, 2019). He wrote the “Technology Today” column for FLORIDA TODAY from 2010 to 2018.

He is a popular public speaker, having delivered numerous keynote presentations and “Tech Talks” for a general audience. Recent examples include the role of big data in the space program, a four-part series on machine learning, and a four-part series on fake news.

He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Victoria (1995).

Contact him at stilley@cts.today.

Why China is Developing Military Vessels at the Center of its Coronavirus Outbreak

Monday, April 6, 2020

Categories: ASCF News National Preparedness Economic Security

Comments: 0

As China continues to recover from COVID-19, the city where the now global disease began is stepping up ship production for military and commercial purposes as part of its broader economic recovery, domestic media and experts say. 

A state-owned builder of ships and submarines in Wuhan has worked overtime since March 3, the Chinese state-controlled Global Times news website reported last week. The facility of the China State Shipbuilding Corp. is “making up for time lost during the city's lockdown” and keeping an “undisclosed major project” on track, the website said.   

China looks to Wuhan, where the COVID-19 coronavirus surfaced in December, as a key site for building vessels for the People’s Liberation Army Navy, said Collin Koh, maritime security research fellow at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.  

Factories in the central Chinese industrial hub turn out submarines for export, for example, to Pakistan and Thailand, he added. 

“Wuhan is a key industrial city when it comes to indigenous production for the PLA modernization, as well as the fact that when you talk about exports of submarines, this is increasingly going to become a crown jewel of China’s present and future arms export,” Koh said.   

In that vein, Chinese defense contractor Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry Co. built a complex 10 years ago on 3.3 square kilometers in Wuhan, U.S.-based defense research organization GlobalSecurity.org says. The site has “made significant contribution to the updating of the naval equipment and national defense of China,” GlobalSecurity.org says. 

Wuchang Shipbuilding let its second wave of workers back on the job March 26 for a factory reopening a day later, the Global Times report says. The subsidiary of China State Shipbuilding Corp. makes ships and submarines. 

Despite Wuhan’s location 840 kilometers from the sea, completed ships reach the Chinese coastline via the Yangtze River. 

Wuhan is also known for a military school, a PLA chemical-biological weapons research center, and military logistics, said Alexander Huang, a defense-specialized strategic studies professor at Tamkang University in Taiwan. 

“Wuhan is the center or the probably most important location for several things,” Huang said. “These are the things I know, the logistics center, the chem-bio research institute and some transportation and others.” 

Much of China, including Wuhan, began powering back up in March after weeks of lockdowns that barred people from going to work. About 50,000 COVID-19 cases were confirmed in Wuhan through March 19, the official Xinhua News Agency says. 

Renewed shipbuilding would fit in with what analysts call sustained Chinese coast guard and military activity near Taiwan and in the South China Sea, even at the peak of the virus outbreak. Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines, all of which contest Beijing’s South China Sea claims, are still too tied up fighting COVID-19 to bolster their own defenses, experts say. 

China is “taking advantage of the lull in activity” around the world by bolstering its military in nearby seas, said Jay Batongbacal, international maritime affairs professor at University of the Philippines.  

Vietnam, which has issued shelter-in-place orders to contain COVID-19, on Friday filed a complaint with China over what Vietnamese media call the sinking of a Vietnamese fishing vessel near the disputed sea’s Paracel Islands. On Thursday a Chinese surveillance vessel “hit and sank” the Vietnamese boat with eight fishermen aboard, Viet Nam News reported. 

“The forward positioning of the coast guard ships is pretty constant,” said Carl Thayer, emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia. “The PLAN (Chinese navy) stays out of it basically, but they get off the bench when an American warship begins sailing through the area and then whatever regular exercises or port calls.” 

Washington periodically sends warships to the South China Sea to confirm that it remains an international waterway. 

Submarine production in Wuhan is probably linked to export orders, too, Koh said. Exports drive the Chinese economy, but they are expected to slow because of the slump in demand from Western countries fighting COVID-19. 

Pakistan had announced plans in 2015 to buy eight new Chinese-made submarines, for example. Thailand is on track to get up to three Chinese subs by 2023, according to media reports from Bangkok. 

Photo: Reuters - A nuclear-powered Type 094A Jin-class ballistic missile submarine of the Chinese People's Liberation Army's navy is seen during a military display in the South China Sea, April 12, 2018.

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