Dragon Strike -- A Novel of the Coming War with China (Future History Book 1) Read online

  There was fighting throughout the Spratly Islands that morning, while reef by reef and atoll by atoll China pushed through its territorial claim with military force. Philippine troops put up a lacklustre fight, then surrendered. Malaysia and Brunei had told their troops to hand over their positions without resistance. Apart from Vanguard Bank, the fiercest battle took place around the craggy coastlines of Itu Aba Island, Sand Cay, and Spratly Reef, where Vietnamese and Taiwanese troops joined forces to hold off an invasion force of Chinese Marines. At first, they set up a line of fire at two jetties. Then, keeping that covered, they waited as the Marines tried to land on the small beach on the other side of Sand Cay. They mortared the landing area and destroyed the boats with heavy machine-gun fire. They mortared the back of the beach where the Chinese Marines were running for cover. They turned the beach itself into a killing zone. Most of the Chinese were killed over the next fifteen minutes. The wounded were picked off by snipers, until two Chinese Zhi-9a helicopters came in with covering fire. The Taiwanese and Vietnamese made a controlled retreat, sacrificing a small vanguard group. They escaped in a Taiwanese PCL type offshore patrol craft and a Vietnamese Poluchat class coastal patrol craft. Despite her speed of 20 knots the helicopter crew were able to target the Vietnamese vessel. Those on board the Taiwanese warship survived.

  The White House, Washington, DC

  Local time: 1845 Saturday 17 February 2001

  GMT: 2345 Saturday 17 February 2001

  The secure telephone rang on the desk in the Oval Office of the White House. President James Bradlay had been elected only three months earlier in a landslide victory. Charismatic, good-looking, youthful, though not young, a family man who, unlike his immediate predecessor, felt no need to prove his manhood with every pretty stranger he met, Bradlay had seized the opportunity to preach the gospel of renewal after riots had turned many inner cities of America into no-go zones for most of the summer. He had galvanized the electorate when in Chicago he faced down an angry crowd on the Southside, quelling what the authorities feared would be the worst civil unrest in that city since the Democratic Convention of 1968. In his inaugural address, less than a month earlier, he was concerned almost solely with domestic issues, especially the need for a new covenant between black and white. He paid ritual homage to the United Nations, the need for Japan to open its domestic market to foreign trade, and to his administration's desire for a cooperative relationship with China.

  He had stopped in at the Oval Office to look through papers on welfare reform before going on to a small dinner in the White House. The telephone interruption reminded him of the time. Only a handful of his closest colleagues had the number. Bradlay picked it up. The caller was Marty Weinstein, his National Security Adviser. `Mr President, I'm sorry to disturb you,' he said.

  Briefing

  China's readiness for war

  On the eve of Operation Dragonstrike China was an economically powerful one-party state, ruled behind the scenes by the People's Liberation Army, a military force of two million men under arms. At the leadership's disposal were strategic nuclear weapons, a blue-water navy and a modernized air force.

  The economies of Russia, the United States, and Europe were inextricably linked with China. Boeing, Motorola, Mercedes, Siemens, GEC, and other multinationals had factories and investment locked up in the Chinese market. The Russian arms industry, the main survivor of the Yeltsin years, supplied much of the equipment and technical know-how to China's growing military-industrial complex, especially its air force and navy. Western democracies had become resigned to Chinese human rights violations. The hope that the country would fragment like the former Soviet Union had proved to be an illusion.

  The Chinese economic miracle had astonished the world, but the Communist Party's leaders were themselves only too aware of the problems posed by sustaining such rapid growth. Corruption was widespread; food shortages returned to haunt the Party. It had to keep 1.3 billion people believing (or at least not resisting the thought) that only the Party held the Mandate of Heaven to rule China. To bolster its popularity, the Party developed an ideology of authoritarian nationalism which stressed the unique qualities of Chinese culture and civilization. It reminded the Chinese people that democracy was alien to their society. It invoked the great sage Confucius, who said the bonds that united the Chinese nation were like those which held the family together: respect for one's parents and for the institutions of government. Opponents of the regime argued that this selective mixture of nationalism, authoritarianism, xenophobia, and expediency was not much more than an Asian form of Fascism. They warned that China posed the greatest threat to world peace since the rise of Fascist Germany and Italy in the 1930s.

  By the mid-nineties, the Party leadership was convinced that the United States planned to contain China's growth. Confirmation came in March 1996, when United States warships were deployed in the South China Sea to protect Taiwan during Chinese military exercises. The PLA vowed that it would never again be humiliated by America. Funds being used for civilian infrastructure development were diverted to accelerate the modernization of the military. The areas of concentration were the navy, air force, and missile research. A strategic partnership with Russia was forged.

  There were also economic reasons to build up the nation's military capability. China's independence in energy supply was being eroded by its rapid development. To maintain the momentum China had become a huge net importer of oil. It felt vulnerable to the vagaries of the international oil markets. The government believed the only largely untapped reserves of oil were around two remote and uninhabited groups of reefs and shoals in the South China Sea known as the Spratly and Paracel Islands. They were 800 kilometres apart, and lay in one of the world's busiest waterways. Oil exploration had been limited because the territory was contested. China had a historic claim to the whole of the South China Sea, but its ownership was disputed by several countries in the region: Vietnam, which argued a history of occupation and development of the islands, and the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia, all of which could mount plausible claims to some of the islands and a lot of the South China Sea. These waters, which carried the shipping routes between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, were a vital waterway for all countries of the region, especially Japan, which had to import virtually all the energy it consumed. Nearly a quarter of world ocean-going trade crossed them each year.

  By the end of the twentieth century, as the forces of national pride and economic vulnerability converged, East Asia became embroiled in an arms race. There was a sense that the serene days of living under the security umbrella of the United States would soon end. America was tired. Its carping about human rights had made it unpopular among nations whose Western-educated leaders preached the virtues of strong leadership and warned of the dangers to social cohesion of Western decadence. The region felt it was ready to look after itself; it was impatient to do so. Many of the South-East Asian countries prepared to defend themselves. Both Japan and China were jostling to inherit the mantle of regional leader. Yet Japan was unwelcome because of its record of colonization during the first half of the twentieth century; China because of its cultural chauvinism.

  Defence spending in East Asia became the highest in the world. Between 1994 and 1996, budgets in some countries went up by more than 20 per cent as they commissioned new aircraft and fighting ships. Japan became the highest spender on defence of any country in the Pacific apart from America. Its security relationship with the United States, once rock solid, was cracking under the strain of yet more vociferous American demands for Japan to open its market, and a desire among a new generation of Japanese leaders to see the country stand on its own two feet. China's plans remained veiled in secrecy. It designed fighter aircraft with Pakistan. It bought warplanes and fighting ships from Russia. It hired teams of Russian scientists to work on delivery systems for long-range missiles. It dispatched agents to Europe, America, and Australia to bring back technology which was denied to it by the
international community on the open market. Within a few years, it had created the ability to project its power regionally through combined naval and air operations. What it lacked in technology it made up for in human ingenuity.

  The overriding consideration for China's leaders had remained unchanged since Mao proclaimed the founding of the People's Republic in October 1949: preservation of Communist Party rule. Yet, by the dawning of the twenty-first century, the Party's grasp on power was uncertain. The leadership's fear of luan (chaos) was palpable. They needed a fresh mandate. A war to recover sovereign territory rapidly moved from being a plausible to a necessary way ahead. In pursuit of their aims, China's leaders were prepared temporarily to forfeit economic development for nationalism, and to take casualties in war. President Wang concluded that none of China's smaller Asian neighbours would risk conflict, nor were they united enough to confront China as a single military force. Only Vietnam would fight. Wang knew from personal experience how well the Vietnamese could fight. This time, however, the outcome would be different. Historically, the Chinese and Vietnamese were known as `brother enemies'. The Vietnamese Communist Party had already held provincial-level elections and had hinted at full parliamentary and presidential elections within the next five years. It had signed a bilateral defence treaty with France, its former colonial power.

  Dragonstrike, the Chinese military occupation of the South China Sea and the humbling of Vietnam, would receive widespread support throughout China. It would legitimize the Party's grip on power, secure energy supplies, challenge the military power of America, and declare China the regional leader in East Asia.

  Downing Street, London

  Local time: 0015 Sunday 18 February 2001

  The interruption came at the end of an informal dinner with Michael Stephenson, the Prime Minister, Charles Wentworth, the Foreign Secretary, Peter Makinson, the Party Chairman, and their wives at No. 10 Downing Street, the Prime Minister's official residence in London. A light-hearted conversation about the party's bank overdraft was quickly forgotten when a duty officer handed the Prime Minister news of the Chinese attacks.

  The Chairman and Secretary of the Joint Intelligence Committee, together with the Chief of Defence Staff and the Defence Secretary, were contacted and told to stand by. Staff monitored two television sets, tuned to the BBC and CNN. Downing Street opened lines to Permanent Joint Operations Headquarters in Northwood in North London, Britain's joint military command centre. Minutes before informing Downing Street, Northwood had itself been alerted by Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Cheltenham; GCHQ had been informed by Britain's Far East listening post in Darwin, northern Australia.

  Wentworth was quickly told that the White House regarded the attack as a serious international crisis and was planning a response by 0045. It was not known exactly what line the Americans would take. The Prime Minister asked for a verbal report and draft statement by 0025. His Press Secretary, Private Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and a senior official from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office drew up Britain's reaction. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office made sure the Press Association and Reuters were ready to put it out immediately.

  On the other side of Downing Street, at the Foreign Office, officials collated the assessments of Britain's representatives in Hanoi, Beijing, and elsewhere in the region, in time for the Foreign Secretary to present them for the 0045 meeting. From Hanoi the Ambassador reported that there were 1,750 permanent British residents in Vietnam and possibly up to 5,000 tourists. Unconfirmed reports from the bombing were one British engineer dead and two slightly injured at Cam Ranh Bay. Russians, French, Germans, Americans, and other Westerners were believed to be hurt. The Consul-General in Hong Kong said that eighty-seven British nationals were listed as working on the rigs in the South China Sea. An unknown number of Hong Kong Chinese with British Dependency passports were also employed there. At least seven might have been on Discovery Reef at the time of the attack. It should be assumed that they were being held by Chinese troops. In a telephone conversation with the Resident Clerk (Duty Officer) at the Foreign Office, the Consul-General in Hong Kong said the situation in the territory was volatile: `We must do everything to retain the confidence of the Chinese. They think we are trying to destabilize the situation here. This South China Sea adventure could not have come at a worse time.' The British Ambassador in Beijing spoke on the telephone from a secure room inside the embassy known as the Wendy House. He had not had official confirmation of the attacks. His information was coming from CNN and the BBC. He urged London to treat the Chinese leadership carefully. `These are highly intelligent and highly motivated national leaders who are facing a domestic crisis. It may be a dictatorship, but it's fracturing. Corruption's rampant, food shortages abound, and there's a shortage of oil. My advice is to tread carefully and see what they say. China is a nuclear power with large ambitions.'

  By 0050 Wentworth was nearing the end of his report. He noted that Britain had treaty obligations to Malaysia, one of the claimants to the South China Sea islands, under the Five Power Defence Agreement drawn up in the 1960s. If the Malaysians asked for Britain to honour it, Australia and New Zealand would also be involved.

  The Prime Minister asked: `What would they do?'

  The Foreign Secretary replied: `New Zealand, for what it's worth, would support us. Australia, which is more important, may well take a lead from Asia. It would have to consult its Asian neighbours. It doesn't have the European Union. It doesn't have the North America Free Trade Agreement. If it puts a foot wrong in East Asia, it loses the only operational trading bloc to which it aspires to be a member.'

  Wentworth then told the meeting that the Ambassador in Paris reported that France's reaction to the attack on Vietnam would be volcanic. The Ambassador had recalled a conversation about Indochina with the French President, who said bluntly: `We once owned the jewel of Asia. We lost it in 1954. We don't intend to lose it again.' He pointed out that after the Vietnamese provincial elections Paris and Hanoi had begun drafting a mutual security treaty. France might use this to take a military position in support of Hanoi.

  A message from the Ambassador to the oil-rich sultanate of Brunei reminded the ministers that a British naval group led by the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal was paying a visit to Brunei on its way to Australia. Deliberately, this was not included in the Foreign Office statement which came out in time to lead the 0100 radio news bulletins:

  `The British government is deeply concerned about the violence and loss of life in Vietnam and the South China Sea. We are in contact with our European and American allies and urge China to withdraw from disputed territory to avoid further bloodshed. The government calls on China and Vietnam to uphold the pledges made over many years: that sovereignty disputes in the region should be resolved through peaceful means. `The government is particularly concerned for the safety of British nationals in the war zone.' As soon as the statement was broadcast, both BBC and CNN switched to the live press conference from the State Department in Washington.

  The Presidential Palace, Hanoi, Vietnam

  Local time: 0730 Sunday 18 February 2001

  GMT: 0030 Sunday 18 February 2001

  Nguyen Van Tai, President of Vietnam, had planned a visit to Hue, Vietnam's old imperial capital, that morning, but for the past forty-five minutes he and his staff had been poring over maps of Vietnam and the South China Sea. Tai, the man known as Vietnam's Gorbachev, an honour he did not fully accept, sat at the head of an ornate nineteenth-century French table, his generals and civilian advisers on either side. Two portraits hung on the wall opposite: Ho Chi Minh, the founder of Communist Vietnam, and General Giap Vo Nguyen, who delivered defeat to the French at the siege of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. As the faces of these two great Asian leaders looked down upon their successors, President Tai was concluding his summing up.

  `So you are telling me, gentlemen, that our best course of action is inaction,' Tai said. `I should order our air force to stay in Laos and Cam
bodia. Our navy, or what is left of it, I should keep at sea running away from China's attacks. So be it and so ordered. General Diem, see that the air force and navy are informed immediately. I am not, however, entirely happy with the idea of doing nothing other than protecting our military assets. I want the Chinese to pay for what they have done. We should unleash a reign of terror along our mutual border. Nothing big. Small units only. I want our best troops held back to defend Hanoi. What I have in mind are guerrilla operations. Surgical and clean, but designed to produce maximum impact. General Thu, please see to it. Finally, I think we should involve the international community, especially France and the United States. I will put in a call to President Dargaud and I will see the US Ambassador here.

  `In the meantime, I want a full statement issued over Radio Vietnam condemning the Chinese unequivocally. I also want a clear exposition of the legitimacy of our claim to the islands. It should conclude with a call to the United Nations to intervene. That is all.

  ' Radio Hanoi broadcast:

  `This morning at dawn the Chinese government launched an unprovoked attack on our air force and navy aimed at destroying our capacity to defend the nation. This is a dagger aimed at the heart of the Vietnamese people who in 10,000 years will never forget this perfidious act. At the same time the Chinese navy has laid siege to the oil-production facilities on the Hoang Sa (Paracel) and Truong Sa (Spratly) Islands in the Bien Dong Sea (South China Sea). The government of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Vietnam calls on China to withdraw immediately and renounce its rebel claim to Vietnamese territory or accept the consequences of protracted war.'