The community of analysts surveying the actions of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and how Beijing affects the global security environment is a subject that has assumed a higher profile since the re-election of President Donald J. Trump. Now that more tariffs and a tougher stance on China are on the agenda, the conflicts within this group—one that is perennially divided on the issue of how deeply the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has penetrated and is influencing US policy—are more visible than ever.
There is less attention and even less agreement on the positive compared to the negative influence of the CCP in Europe. This concern was the subject of a January 24 seminar titled “Chinese Influence Operations & Hybrid Threats against Europe: EU, US & NATO,” chaired by Potomac Foundation Executive Director Dr. Phil Karber and at the behest of the European-American Community Workshop.
Listening to the contents of the presentations made by the participants, it becomes apparent that the PRC is moving to undermine European security in general and NATO in particular, whether or not everyone present agrees on this point. In almost every possible sphere of activity and in the mode of “the camel’s nose under the tent,” the PRC seeks to use its economic and trade clout to spread its influence throughout the region and diminish that of Washington in the process.
China Rising: But Is Anyone Noticing?
Chatham House Rules are observed for most of the proceedings. But one of the major presenters at the forum, Capt. James Fanell, USN (ret’d), who resides in Switzerland and is currently a fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, provided some of the content of his presentation and his position on CCP actions in Europe to 19FortyFive.
Fanell had a 30-year career as a naval intelligence officer specializing in Indo-Asia Pacific security affairs, emphasizing the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and its operations. His most recent assignment was as the Director of Intelligence and Information Operations for the entire US Pacific Fleet at PACOM in Hawaii.
His position has long been that the CCP and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) are actively engaging throughout Europe to carry out what Chinese military theorists call the “three warfares” strategy (TWS). This is an integrated and synergistic set of three non-kinetic activities: Public Opinion Warfare, Psychological Operations Warfare, and Legal Warfare, or what many would call “lawfare.”
These political and information warfare strategies utilize media, psychological, and judicial actions to weaken adversaries—in this case, the US and its European allies. The intended effect is to help China achieve its long-time goal of “win without fighting” or to win outright if conflict does break out.
Chinese Sabotage
The available evidence is the CCP strategy is working. Fanell and others pointed out that brazenly destructive actions by the Chinese go unpunished, and Beijing feels emboldened enough to never respond to demands for its actions to be explained or compensated for.
One example is the October 2023 breaking of the Balticconnector, a 77-kilometer-long gas pipeline that connects Finland and Estonia, both NATO members, beneath the Baltic Sea. The pipeline was determined to have been damaged around 7-8 October (the same dates as the massacre of over 1200 Israeli civilians by Hamas), along with two telecom cables that connect those two nations to Sweden.
Finnish authorities who investigated the incident determined the culprit was a Chinese container ship, Newnew Polar Bear, which is accused of dragging its anchor along the Baltic Sea seabed to demolish the cables and gas lines. Authorities discovered the anchor, which weighs in at 6,000 kilograms, detached from the ship and settled a few meters from the site of the damage.
Finland’s Minister of European Affairs Anders Adlercreutz stated it was hard to believe the severing of this undersea gas pipeline was accidental—or that it happened at all—without Beijing’s knowledge.
“Everything indicates” the Chinese ship intentionally damaged the Baltic pipeline, the Finnish minister said in an interview. “I’m not the sea captain,” he said. “But I would think that you would notice that you’re dragging an anchor behind you for hundreds of kilometers. I [also] think everything indicates that it was intentional. But of course, so far, nobody has admitted to it.”
Chinese admission of culpability came almost a year later, but Beijing stated the entire incident was an “accident” due to a heavy storm at sea.
Germany’s Failure
Why the PRC would commit such an act “is easy to understand if you know the Chinese playbook for something along the lines of how to compromise NATO and convince various members the Atlantic alliance has no teeth—or no relevance to them,” said an alliance member intelligence officer with long experience dealing with the PRC.
“There are two reasons for this attack.” He pointed out. “One is that it was committed against smaller, sparsely populated NATO members. Therefore they have minimal economic leverage against Beijing and also lack the resources to police their territorial waters as thoroughly as others.
“But the other reason is the big NATO states who do have the economic wherewithal to give the Chinese pause has basically shown they will never use it when it is most needed. A clear case of failed deterrence.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping. Image Credit: CCP.
He specifically referred to news reporting that in 2018, the German government produced a classified internal intelligence assessment concluding that Beijing was aggressively attempting to influence every level of German government, society, and business. The report’s existence was revealed not by any German sources but instead only two years later in 2020 by two former US intelligence officials.
The assessment was described as casting “a particularly harsh light on the intimate ties between German business and the Chinese government.”
The document was circulated to a select few senior government offices in draft form but, according to the same sources, before the report could be distributed across numerous agencies within the German government, “as had been intended, a high-ranking official intervened.”
The intelligence assessment was deep-sixed “over concerns that it would negatively impact German-Chinese business relations,” according to several reports also published in 2020 when its existence was finally revealed.
“There you have it,” said the NATO-nation intelligence officer. “Business is more important than democracy, rule of law, standing up for human rights, etc. No wonder the Chinese think that can do whatever they please in Europe. No wonder the Russians thought they could get away with invading Ukraine. When the economic powerhouse of the EU engages in the long-honored practice of ‘don’t know because don’t want to know’ you can get away with murder.”
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson is a survivor of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and is now an Expert on Foreign Military Affairs with the Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego in Warsaw. He has been a consultant to the Pentagon, several NATO governments and the Australian government in the fields of defense technology and weapon systems design. Over the past 30 years he has resided in and reported from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Brazil, the People’s Republic of China and Australia.
