The core driving force of the People’s Republic of China is the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Often expressed as socialism with Chinese characteristics, it focuses on ruling with an iron hand, quelling dissent of all kinds internally while asserting its global dominance. These fiercely promoted “Thoughts/Theories” of the CCP advocate blatant expansionist claims along its borders and have become a central threat of our times, undermining global stability to serve its own hegemonic ambitions.
Xi Jinping, the General Secretary of the CCP and President of the PRC since 2013, has pursued a more aggressive foreign policy, particularly with regard to China’s relations with the US, Europe, and its immediate neighbours. The most defining aspects of this policy include economic engagements with the West and territorial disputes, notably the nine-dash line in the South China Sea and the Sino-Indian border. In these areas, China has espoused belligerency as a means of expanding its power and influence at the expense of others.
Chinese Grey Zone Warfare
By definition, grey zone tactics are coercive geopolitical, economic, cyber, and information operations within the continuum of conflict resolution that lie beyond regular diplomatic initiatives but below the use of kinetic military force, instituted at the international, bilateral, regional, and grassroots levels.
Over the past several decades, China’s international status as a “great power” has become undeniable. China’s “peaceful rise” has included substantial investments in liberalised economic growth, military modernisation, and an increasingly assertive regional posture. While China has not waged any conventional war since the 1962 war with India, it frequently resorts to “grey zone tactics”—threats, intimidation, and shows of armed confrontation—to advance its strategic aims in the regional context. The Galwan skirmish in eastern Ladakh against India and the sea-borne intimidation in the South China Sea and East China Sea against Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Japan starkly reflect China’s aggressive foreign policy in Asia. China claims such actions are merely defensive responses to provocations by these states, thus legitimising its aggressive pursuits.
However, China’s regional ambitions are evident from its repeated coercive threats and often armed intimidation against neighbours like Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, India, and the Philippines. These limited, localised, and controlled coercive actions are calibrated responses in pursuit of its claims while restraining itself from full-blown war, primarily due to the fear of economic repercussions that the country can ill afford. Consequently, the CCP, driven by its ideological compulsions, actively resorts to grey zone actions beyond established norms of conflict resolution, diplomatic interventions, and social engagement, while deliberately avoiding an all-out armed conflict. A prime example is the surreptitious war against Taiwan and the domination of the South China Sea.
From a Chinese standpoint, grey zone activities are a natural extension of its national power, albeit in a clandestine mode. These activities pressure target countries to act in accordance with Beijing’s interests—advancing its domestic, economic, foreign policy, and security objectives—without triggering backlash or conflict. The RAND Corporation refers to this as an operational space between peace and war, involving coercive actions to change the status quo below a threshold that, in most cases, would prompt a conventional military response, often by blurring the line between military and non-military actions and the attribution for such events. Grey zone situations typically include: 1) fait accompli; 2) deterrent ambiguities; and 3) proxy warfare.
Southeast Asian nations bordering the South China Sea have encountered all three types dealt by China. As a fait accompli, China’s massive island-building and fortification work in the South China Sea is difficult to dislodge without a conventional confrontation, which these countries can ill afford. The second, deterrent ambiguities, involves a series of below-the-threshold actions that, over time, erode the victim’s power or position. Beijing has passed new domestic maritime laws that seek to strengthen its administration in the South China Sea, even though they violate international law. Regarding proxy warfare, China’s People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia (PAFMM) has been known to “swarm, ram, and sink” foreign vessels in disputed waters and high seas with impunity. Over the past decade, China has extensively employed grey zone tactics using all instruments of national power against Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, India, and the Philippines.
Matrix of Grey Zone Tactics
At the international level, grey zone tactics entail supporting adversaries or rival countries of the target nation using political, economic, and military means. Notable examples include tacit support to Russia in the ongoing Ukraine war and support to Pakistan against India. Economically, these tactics involve instituting unfair trade practices, providing infrastructure funds at exorbitant interest rates aimed at subsuming the lendee, flooding the target market with spurious goods, and creating conditions of high inflation, thereby forcing economic dependence. Additionally, there is a deliberate attempt to limit international sanctions imposed against nations inconsistent with the world order but allied with China. Chinese support of Russia in the Ukraine war is a classic example.
At the regional level, grey zone tactics include the use of all actions other than war, overt and covert, designed to undermine the credibility of the target nation among the comity of nations. This often involves diplomatic or political threats to disrupt normal political and business processes within the target nation by surreptitiously interfering with routine political, military, and economic activities. Examples include deliberate interference with the host nation’s election process, instituting false narratives, disrupting the normal flow of critical commodities to leverage scarcity as a means of forced dependence, and extensive engagement in cyber operations against the target government or military. These actions are closely followed by ratcheting up land-based border skirmishes or sea-borne maritime intimidation to reinforce its claim lines.
At the grassroots level, grey zone tactics involve clandestine operations interfering with the entire governance machinery of the target nation by using and/or providing support to individual elites, political leaders, political parties, groups, or organisations acting on behalf of China in all facets of governance. Additionally, these tactics promote Chinese economic or civilian activities in or near key geopolitical locations termed disputed Chinese territory. China has deliberately bought or controlled existing target nations’ print and electronic media outlets directly or through proxies to further its strategic interests.
In Chinese parlance, grey zone tactics are a traditional approach to statecraft conceptualised as military operations other than war (MOOTW) aimed at furthering national interest with the sole aim of ensuring territorial integrity and maintaining territorial sanctity by leveraging all forms of state and non-state actors and means. In short, it is carefully scripted brinkmanship designed to gradually accentuate successes while avoiding military escalation. The repetitive action inherent in China’s grey zone approach continually ratchets up its belligerent actions on land, sea, and air, aiming to subvert the target nation into accepting the predicament as a new normal over time.
Sea Tactics: China and the Philippines have been in a deepening crisis over the ownership of a group of islands within the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). China’s latest escalation involves deliberately damaging a Philippine Coast Guard vessel and injuring its crew members. Past actions suggest such violence may worsen.
Air Tactics: China’s consistent intimidation of airspace, sometimes by armed aircraft intruding into Taiwanese and Japanese Air Defence Identification Zones (ADIZ), poses a constant threat of escalation. Responding to these incursions is taxing for both Taiwan and Japan, as any retaliatory action may result in escalation. The recent firing of ballistic missiles by China into the sea has further heightened tensions over Taiwan and Japan’s EEZ. Late last year, China started sending balloons over Taiwan at altitudes similar to those of commercial airliners. In January, China announced it would unilaterally move eastward into a mutually agreed civil aircraft flight corridor in the Taiwan Strait, potentially causing Chinese civil aircraft to intrude into Taiwan’s ADIZ. To the north, China is heightening tensions by stationing four warships on the boundaries of an ADIZ which China has declared as its maritime territory in the East China Sea. These ships now instruct all non-Chinese civilian aircraft in the ADIZ to immediately leave, threatening “defensive emergency measures” if an aircraft fails to do so. This is another step in turning international airspace into China’s territorial airspace.
Land Tactics: China and India remain at odds over Chinese border incursions for decades. The recent standoff in eastern Ladakh indicates potential future clashes. China is now building robust infrastructure in terms of military billets, airstrips, housing, and roads on territory adjoining the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and McMahon Line, as well as areas claimed by Bhutan.
In 2020, the clash in Galwan Valley marked a significant shift in the dynamics of grey zone warfare. Indian troops’ retaliation against Chinese aggression sent a strong message, challenging China’s previously unchecked regional dominance
Global Grey Zone Operations
Globally, China is aggressively expanding its influence through predatory economic practices, including massive subsidies to favoured companies, intellectual property theft, forced technology transfers, and corrupt trade and investment practices. The CCP blatantly violates world trading norms and standards through CCP-controlled firms that undersell competitors to gain unfair market access. China’s One Belt One Road Initiative (BRI or OBOR) preys on other countries via unsustainable and corrupt lending practices, ignoring global labour and environmental standards. These practices undermine host economies, erode the rule of law, infringe on sovereignty, and unfairly benefit Chinese workers and firms, while applying economic leverage to bully governments on unrelated political and strategic issues.
Militarily, China seeks to project power by establishing military bases worldwide through the BRI and military cooperation deals, aiming to dominate the Indo-Pacific region and challenge the United States globally. Domestically, Beijing continues to accelerate its secret nuclear weapons build-up, potentially tripling its arsenal within a decade. From the South China Sea to the Himalayas, Beijing increases the risk of conflict by using its military to bully neighbours, threaten maritime shipping lanes, and destabilise borders.
China’s coercive media initiatives spread propaganda worldwide by manipulating foreign news and entertainment media to advance its orthodoxy through patronage of proxies. These proxies pressurise and co-opt foreign officials at all levels of government, the Chinese diaspora, and varied business interests to voice CCP’s false narratives. The CCP’s presence on overseas campuses aims to subvert academic freedom and undermine the integrity of international research enterprises by enticing foreign researchers to engage in deceptive and illegal activities for China’s economic, scientific, and military gains. A stark example is the attempt to subsidise 5G vendors like Huawei and ZTE, then bully and bribe foreign countries to select them, allowing China to gain access to personal data, intellectual property, and control of critical infrastructure.
In the human rights domain, there is an utter disregard for human values. Driven by Marxist-Leninist ideology and imperialist nostalgia, the CCP silences dissent and restricts the rights and freedoms of Chinese citizens, including forced population control, arbitrary detention, censorship, forced labour, violations of religious freedom, and pervasive media and internet censorship. Internally, China continues to commit abuses against Uyghurs, Christians, and other religious and ethnic minorities. It maintains an iron grip on Tibet, asserts control in Hong Kong, and reaffirms its intention to unify Taiwan. It manipulates international organisations, democratically elected governments, and companies to mask its human rights abuses at home and abroad.
China’s environmental record is abysmal. It is the world’s largest annual emitter of greenhouse gases and creator of marine debris, and it is the top builder of coal-burning plants worldwide. It is the worst perpetrator of illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, and the world’s largest consumer of illegal wildlife and timber products. Beijing threatens the world’s economy and public health by unsustainably exploiting natural resources and exporting its reckless disregard for the environment via the BRI. These actions starkly constitute grey zone tactics.
To effectively counter China’s grey zone operations, affected nations are increasingly looking to forge credible global military alliances with Western powers. These coalitions aims to present a formidable opposition across all domains of warfare—air, land, sea, and space
Response to Grey Zone Warfare
While grey zone operations have historical precedence, in the Chinese context, they remain predominantly regional. China, as a vast nation with significant military and economic power, overshadows all neighbouring states within its territorial ambit. Consequently, nations subjected to or concerned by Chinese grey zone actions have remained cautious, often seeking to de-escalate tensions rather than retaliate. While this approach may seem prudent, it has proven ineffective. The time is ripe for a change in tactics.
Grey zone actions are inherently theatrical, requiring countermeasures designed to intimidate, confuse, or deceive China’s political and military leadership. These responses should mirror the initial actions, creating a dilemma for Chinese leadership regarding their escalatory responses. Such countermeasures can be more effective at sea than in the air or on land, as situations at sea develop gradually. Responses should involve reciprocating Chinese actions. For instance, if Chinese Coast Guard ships use water cannons against fishing vessels and coast guard ships, affected nations could respond similarly. Leasing large vessels to crowd out and block Chinese coast guard or armed militia vessels, similar to China’s tactics against smaller navies and commercial fishing boats, could be a viable strategy. Sealight, a maritime transparency project at Stanford University, has published a useful Chinese grey zone playbook outlining various Chinese actions that could be reciprocated.
While reciprocation raises concerns over military escalation, the risk of escalation to armed conflict would signify a significant failure for China. China has not engaged in a war for over 40 years, and generations of its military personnel have remained deskbound without practical combat experience since the 1962 war with India. The arms twisting of Taiwan under the One China policy of unification is fraught with the predictable backlash from the US in the event of armed aggression. Nonetheless, any pushback carries inherent risks and requires prudent management. For example, China’s aggressive stance in Galwan saw armed retaliation resulting in the death of several PLA personnel on the India-China border in 2020. This reciprocation sent a strong message to China to reduce its grey zone belligerency. Such concerted reciprocation would expose Chinese complaints or claims as hypocritical and challenge its outdated territorial claims while the rest of the world progresses.
Takeaways
Unless reciprocation is instituted as a strategic necessity, China’s use of grey zone tactics will intensify. This worsening trend has been evident for several years and appears to continue unabated. Therefore, nations must adapt their strategies to effectively counter China’s grey zone operations.
Until the retaliation in Galwan by Indian troops, China remained largely unchallenged in its pursuit of grey zone operations. However, the landscape is shifting. Recently, the Philippines accused China’s Coast Guard of launching a brutal assault during a clash in the South China Sea, marking a significant escalation that threatens to draw the United States into another global conflict. The Philippines, like India, is standing firm against Chinese aggression.
Given these developments, the time has come for a robust and consistent challenge to China’s grey zone actions. Unilateral reciprocation of every aggressive move by China is necessary to put an end to its predatory practices. Simultaneously, forging credible global military alliances of affected nations with Western powers will present a formidable counterbalance across all domains of warfare—air, land, sea, and space. This coalition will serve as a strong opposition to China’s grey zone strategy, ensuring regional stability and deterring further aggressive actions.
–The writer is a former GOC of the Indian Army and presently serves as a Strategic Consultant and Principal Advisor. The views expressed are of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of Raksha Anirveda
