In recent weeks, China has surged its naval fleet into both surrounding and far away waters.

Most significantly, the People’s Liberation Army Navy sent two strike groups into the South China Sea. The larger, centered on the Shandong aircraft carrier, operated off the main Philippine island of Luzon before transiting into the Western Pacific for blue water flight operations. 

The other is an Expeditionary Strike Group led by a Type 075 Yushen-class amphibious assault ship, one of China’s largest and most advanced. Four of China’s Type 055 Renhai-class cruisers, described as “the most lethal surface combatant in the world,” escorted the two strike groups.

China’s newest aircraft carrier, the Fujian, has been on its third set of sea trials.

China and Russia began “Exercise Joint Sea-2024” at the Zhanjiang port in southern Guangdong province, the headquarters of the Chinese navy’s South Sea Fleet.

A total of 56 aircraft — the most ever in a single day, according to Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense — flew into Taiwan’s air-defense identification zone, some coming as close as 33 nautical miles of the southern tip of the main island of Taiwan. Another 10 Chinese planes flew outside the zone at the same time.

Chinese Coast Guard cutter 5901, dubbed “the Monster” because of its 12,000-ton displacement, was spotted near Sabina Shoal of the Philippines, in the South China Sea.

Finally, four Chinese naval combatants transited nearby Alaskan islands, staying out of territorial waters but coming inside the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone, the band of water between 12 and 200 nautical miles from the shoreline. As James Fanell, co-author of Embracing Communist China: America’s Greatest Strategic Failure, told Gatestone, this is the fifth time since 2015 that China dispatched warships inside the American EEZ.

“In the past couple weeks, the Chinese Communist Party has demonstrated to the region–and more importantly to Washington–that the People’s Republic of China is the master of the seas in the Indo-Pacific,” said Fanell, also a former U.S. Navy captain who served as director of Intelligence and Information Operations at the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

Why is Chinese President Xi Jinping moving so fast at this time to exert control over peripheral waters? Prominent China analyst Willy Lam wrote last October that China’s leader perhaps sees a closing window of opportunity and therefore is in a hurry to annex territory.

At a June conference of military officers in one of China’s most famous revolutionary bases, Xi reportedly made dire-sounding statements. “We are here in Yan’an to hold a military meeting, preparing for a civil war,” he said, in one version of his talk. The text of his remarks, now widely circulating, remain unconfirmed.

Whether he goes to war or not, he is getting ready to do so. Both the Financial Times and CNN have reported that businesses have been establishing military units inside their organizations. “Chinese Companies Are Raising Militias Like It’s the 1970s,” the cable network reported.

Xi is engaged in the fastest military buildup since the Second World War. In addition, he is purging military officers opposed to war, trying to sanction-proof his regime, stockpiling grain and other commodities, surveying the U.S. for nuclear weapons strikes, and mobilizing civilians for war. At the same time, he is reasserting state control over the economy, financial markets, and virtually all other aspects of society. He is, in short, bringing back totalitarian controls to China.

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