pronged adherence’ towards relations with the PICs that linked the PRC’s efforts to improve relations with PICS with foreign policy principals.
Wang’s visit came on the heels of the April 2022 announcement that the PRC and the Solomon Islands had signed a security cooperation agreement. According to a draft copy of the China-Solomon Islands Security Agreement, China would be permitted to send armed policy and military personnel to the Solomon Islands to help maintain order, though Honiara denied this would lead to a PRC military base. Beijing probably seeks to use security agreements with the PICs to justify the expansion of PLA security activities in the region.
PRC Relationship with Iranian Proxies. The PRC almost certainly does not have extensive relations with Iranian proxies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, or Iranian-backed militia groups in Iraq. PRC officials, including the PRC’s Special Envoy to Syria, have publicly met with Hezbollah officials to discuss the Syrian civil war, but such engagements almost certainly are perfunctory and focused on advancing the PRC’s responsible great power narrative rather than the PRC seeking to expand ties with these groups. PRC officials probably calculate that expanding relations with Iranian proxies, especially Iranian-backed militia groups in Iraq, would alienate regional governments and disrupt the PRC’s regional objectives such as promoting the expansion of BRI projects in the Middle East.
The PRC has also maintained diplomatic, economic, and some security ties with the Assad Regime Syria.Since 2016, the PRC’s special envoy to Syria has focused the PRC’s efforts on political support to the Assad regime, facilitating a political resolution to the civil war, humanitarian assistance, reconstruction, and counterterrorism. In 2022, the PRC reached an agreement with Syria to join the BRI, demonstrating the PRC’s efforts to promoted economic relations with Syria.
CHINA’S TERRITORIAL DISPUTES IN CONTEXT
The PRC’s use of force in territorial disputes has varied widely since 1949. Some disputes led to war, as in border conflicts with India in 1962 and Vietnam in 1979. China’s contested border with the Soviet Union during the 1960s raised the possibility of nuclear war. In recent cases involving land border disputes, China has sometimes been willing to compromise with and even offer concessions to its neighbors. Since 1998, China has settled 11 land-based territorial disputes with six of its neighbors. However, within the last decade China has employed a more coercive approach to deal with several disputes over maritime features, ownership of potentially rich offshore oil and gas deposits, and border areas.
Tensions with India along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) sparked a standoff between Chinese and Indian forces in mid-May 2020, which persisted into the winter. The standoff escalated on 15 June 2020 after a skirmish ensued in the Galwan Valley between Indian Army and PLA forces that ended with 20 Indian soldiers and four PRC soldiers dead. In late 2022, Chinese and Indian forces engaged in an unarmed clash near Tawang along the Eastern Sector of the LAC separating Tibet and the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. This was the first such clash since the 2020 Galwan
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OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE
Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China
