by James E. Fanell
Beijing’s charm offensive is no outreach but strategy: RIMPAC must remain closed to the PLA Navy, whose past “engagement” yielded spying, coercion, and weakened U.S. alliances.
This past week, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) ideological mouthpiece, the Global Times, published a psychological operations (PsyOp) piece entitled “More differences mean you need more exchange programs” that rhapsodized about enhancing engagement between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the U.S. However, the article was a shot across the bow in the CCP’s renewed cognitive warfare campaign against America’s national security posture in the Pacific. The bottom line up front: the CCP is laying the groundwork to appeal to the Trump administration to re-invite the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLA Navy) to participate in the 30th iteration of the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC), the world’s largest international maritime exercise, scheduled for summer 2026. President Trump cannot allow this to happen.
The author’s formulaic PsyOp piece begins by extolling the warm ‘Aloha Spirit’ the PLA Navy experienced during its previous visits to the Hawaiian Islands. Then, the author subtly segues to the real Global Times agenda: that the PRC has not been invited to a RIMPAC naval exercise since 2016. Additionally, the author asserts, incorrectly, that “China was invited for the first time in 2014 and the second time in 2016.”
As a leading propaganda outlet for a totalitarian regime, Global Times has little interest in getting petty issues such as “facts” right, but for the record (and known from the author’s first-hand experience), the PRC was invited to RIMPAC 2012 by then Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. The Chinese feigned outrage over being invited to participate as observers instead of being allowed to send warships to their first RIMPAC—a standard protocol for all first-time participants. To add insult to ingratitude, because of this perceived slight, then-PLA Navy Chief Admiral Wu Shengli dispatched an intelligence-collection ship (AGI) to Hawaii to spy on the exercise. Even though this PLA Navy AGI was present and spying on the exercise, then-Commander of U.S. Pacific Command Admiral Sam Locklear inexplicably refused to publicize its presence until after the exercise was concluded.
Following the Global Times formula, the writer then bemoans the first Trump administration for disinviting China to the 2018 RIMPAC—something the author alleges was “a horrible mistake.” On the contrary, it was an unprecedented and wise decision. Fortunately, Trump’s former Deputy National Security Advisor, Matt Pottinger, understood both the insidious nature of the CCP’s “elite capture” political warfare strategy and how the CCP used military-to-military exchanges to promote “engagement” as a tool to spy on and weaken America’s network of alliances in the Pacific. He saw through Beijing’s ruse to capture American elites with theatrically forlorn allegations that there have been an inadequate number of engagements between the two countries and that such engagement is “critical” for the U.S. to avoid misunderstanding and miscalculation regarding the PRC.
Then, consistent with Global Times journalistic ethics, its propagandist takes the Big Lie to a new level. First, he acknowledges that there have been “stories” about Chinese and U.S. naval warships coming in close contact in the South China Sea. Childish obfuscation, of course, as there have been repeated, verified reports of unsafe encounters at sea, all of which were initiated by the PLA. Then the writer takes the PsyOp piece into pure fantasyland by alleging: “But the situation got defused because it turned out that the two captains knew each other from the RIMPAC drills and ended up chatting about the lunch they had that day.” All a lie, but still a powerful narrative for those in Washington, DC, who are willfully ignorant, intellectually dishonest, and/or remain lifelong adherents to the school of unconstrained and unaccountable engagement with the PRC.
Despite its egregious simpering and spying that should have precluded any follow-on invitation to RIMPAC, Secretary Panetta eagerly solicited the PLA Navy to join RIMPAC 2014. Unsurprisingly, the PRC accepted, much to its delight. It must have been immensely gratifying to see how well the CCP had managed its cognitive supremacy over what constituted American national defense leadership at that time.
For the 2014 RIMPAC exercise, the PLA Navy dispatched four warships to Pearl Harbor. This author visited these ships during this unprecedented port call. Yes, unprecedented, as no adversary of the U.S. had sent an armed naval flotilla of this size to Pearl Harbor since the Imperial Japanese Navy bombed the same harbor on December 7, 1941.
It was during RIMPAC 2014 that the pro-CCP “Engagers” within the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community came out in their full support of the PLA Navy’s visit and sold the Obama Administration on the “benefits” of having four PLA Navy warships pierside in Pearl. They naively assumed there was no serious threat posed by the thousands of PLA sailors allowed free access around the harbor, the home to the U.S. Pacific Fleet Headquarters and the Submarine Forces Pacific Fleet Headquarters. The same PLA officers and sailors were also allowed to roam freely around Honolulu, where they supported CCP United Front operations, according to reports from those tracking the off-base activities. Further, while other allied nations participating in this RIMPAC may have felt pressure from the then U.S. Pacific Fleet Commander, Admiral Harry Harris, to publicly welcome PLA participation, in private, these same nations conveyed deep concern that the presence of the PLA in the exercise was, at a minimum, intimidating and counterproductive.
If this were not enough, the Obama administration once again invited the PRC to RIMPAC 2016. This time, the PLA dispatched five warships to the exercise in Pearl Harbor and in Hawaiian waters. By this time, the CCP was confident enough in its PsyOp to have the PLA Navy “call the shots” for the RIMPAC exercise by ignoring its central tenets of reciprocity, cooperation, and diplomatic courtesy. During this RIMPAC, the PLA Navy barred Japanese Navy officers from boarding a PLA Navy warship during the in-port “open ship” phase of the exercise. It was an unprecedented breach of protocol.
Worse still, and as a sign of just how successful the CCP’s elite capture had been against the U.S. military, the then-Commander of the U.S. Pacific Command and former U.S. Pacific Fleet Commander, Admiral Harry Harris, and the then-Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Admiral Scott Swift, effectively turned their backs on our treaty ally, Japan. These two four-star U.S. Navy admirals neither requested an apology from the PLA Navy side nor, even more appropriately, requested the PLA Navy’s expulsion from the exercise and return to the PRC. While our Japanese allies made a public show of shrugging off this egregious PLA insult and cowardly U.S. response, those who follow Japan-U.S. relations understood that it really bothered our Japanese Self-Defense Force allies. And rightly so. Like the Obama administration’s abandonment of our treaty ally, the Philippines, over the PRC taking Scarborough Shoal in 2012, this was a damning signal of U.S. unreliability, not lost on the rest of Asia. Even more so than in 2014, other nations participating in RIMPAC 2016 found the PLA presence to be harmful and counterproductive. There is no evidence that any senior American leader showed any interest in our allies’ deep concerns, though.
Which brings us to the current CCP PsyOp to force the PLA Navy into RIMPAC 2026.
This concern is accentuated by the statement in the latest U.S. National Defense Strategy (NDS) that the Department of War “will therefore seek and open a wider range of military-to-military communications with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) with a focus on supporting strategic stability with Beijing as well as deconfliction and de-escalation.” This statement is an invitation to disaster, as it will be used by the CCP to reinsert the PLA Navy into RIMPAC 2026. This legitimate concern is further accentuated by the President’s upcoming visit to Beijing in April and the importance the President has placed on signing an economic trade deal with Chairman Xi Jinping.
While the President’s visit and trade deals are of great importance, the President should not be deceived by either Xi Jinping or by pro-engagement advocates who will suggest that the President can use RIMPAC as a negotiating tool to finalize his economic agenda.
History has shown that the PRC desires to attend RIMPAC for its own selfish national security objectives: 1) to gain more intelligence on the U.S. military/navy in order to destroy it when it is strong and confident enough to do so, and 2) to diminish America’s network of alliances in the Indo-Pacific. Japan and the Republic of the Philippines, among other frontline states in Asia and the Pacific Islands, will be especially chagrined and confused at a PLA Navy presence in RIMPAC 2026.
The U.S. naively invited the PLA to three previous RIMPACs. In return, the PLA used that opportunity to gain access to our military installations and forces and surrounding communities for intelligence and political warfare purposes. Further, the PRC also used its overbearing presence in previous RIMPACs to undermine American alliances. The President cannot let this happen again.
President Trump must resist both the PRC PsyOp efforts and the PRC enablers within the U.S. government to avoid yet another Pearl Harbor invasion.
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James E. Fanell served as a career naval intelligence officer whose positions included senior intelligence officer for China at the Office of Naval Intelligence and chief of intelligence for CTF-70, Seventh Fleet, and the U.S. Pacific Fleet. He is the co-author of the book Embracing Communist China: America’s Greatest Strategic Failure.
Source: https://amgreatness.com/2026/02/17/dont-let-the-chinese-navy-invade-pearl-harbor-again/
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