Chad Sbragia
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for China
Chad Sbragia earned his undergraduate degree from Arizona State University, attended the Naval Postgraduate School, the Defense Language Institute, and studied Chinese at Capital Normal University in Beijing.
He served in the U.S. Marine Corps for eight years, first as a combat engineer and later as an infantry officer and China foreign area officer. He led Marines up through the battalion level and deployed across the Middle East, Africa, and the Indo-Pacific. He was the U.S. Marine Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. He served as the Deputy Director of the China Strategic Focus Group, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, for eight years. He also served as the Country Director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia under the J5 Strategic Planning and Policy Directorate. He was the Director of the China Research Group for the Marine Corps, serving as principal adviser on China to the Deputy Commandant for Information and Director of Intelligence.
Since 2018, Mr. Sbragia has served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for China in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs.
In the News…
By the end of this decade, China is expected to operate as many as 400 ships according to a new report from the Pentagon that catalogs the pace and extent of China’s ambitious military modernization. The U.S. Navy has 293 ships, and some leaders and observers in the Navy say pure numbers may not ultimately be the measure of superiority.
When addressing the new Pentagon report, Chad Sbragia, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for China, said, “There is certainly more to naval power than ship counts, total counts of the Chinese vessels, there’s tonnage… but I would also draw your attention to weapons systems and it’s important to highlight the Chinese shipbuilding advantages in terms of the size of fleet.”
“China domestically produces its naval gas turbine and diesel engines, as well as almost all shipboard weapons and electronic systems, making it nearly self-sufficient for all shipbuilding needs,” the Pentagon report states.
