If we look back at the history of US China policy during 1970s, we see that President Nixon and President Carter were preoccupied with the power of the Soviet Union. Of course China felt threatened by Moscow too: otherwise no agreement would have been possible. But as the diplomacy played out, it became clear that the United States felt more urgency, was less skilled at bargaining, and more willing to make concessions than China. The eventual result was the agreements Carter made in 1979 that established full diplomatic relations with China, and broke all official relations with Taiwan not even acknowledging any longer that it was a state having its own government, and ushered in an unprecedented degree of intelligence cooperation with China, for example through advanced monitoring posts near the Soviet border in Xinjiang.
However neither Nixon or Carter seemed concerned about the rights of the Chinese people. They knew that China was a communist dictatorship comparable to the Soviet Union. But somehow they saw it through different eyes. I have always felt they never got beyond the fact that the people who live there were "Chinese" having a difficult ideographic language, distinct culture, seemingly uniform appearance, etc. they never got beyond all of that to grasp that they were also people having the same rights as any others. They also believed that Mao had somehow solved China's problems and that the system they saw would endure.
So that was the strategic partner phase. Next came the China will change phase. Reagan shifted attention away from Beijing and undid some of the damage to Taiwan. He focused on the USSR directly, calling upon Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin wall, and making clear that the United States no longer felt so weak as she had in the 1970s. The result was --with the Berlin Wall actually coming down and Communism ending in the USSR in 1991.
The democracy movement in China fed hope that China too would change. Already all sorts of economic change had been begun after Mao's death in 1976. But no serious institutional change took place or has taken place up to the present. Private property is not guaranteed, law and justice do not exist -- instead the Party decides what is to be done --and no genuinely significant steps have been taken toward democratization or freedom of speech and conscience.
Nevertheless, during this period the hope and expectation in Washington was that China was going to change -- and become more tolerant, liberal, and so forth, even democratic. Clinton ran on a ticket of supporting democracy in China.
Today, academics and foreign policy analysts increasingly describe China as a "peer competitor" of America. By that they mean that China's economic power-reflected in its huge trade imbalance with America, its appetite for oil, and its challenge to us on many economic fronts-makes China our near equal. That may be true economically, but the "peer competitor" label implies both peaceful intent and alignment with Western values. More accurately, China is a "peer antagonist.
For all the hopeful rhetoric in diplomatic and media circles, China remains a totalitarian state, governed by a man Parade magazine included in its list of the world's ten worst dictators in 2005: Bu ]intao.( http://www.parade.com/archive.jsp) Some 250,000 Chinese are serving sentences in "re-education and labor camps." China executes more people than all other nations combined, often for nonviolent crimes. The death penalty can be given for burglary, embezzlement, counterfeiting, bribery or killing a panda. Hu's government controls all media and Internet use. Defense lawyers who argue too vigorously for clients' rights may be disbarred or imprisoned. And if minorities (such as Tibetans) speak out for autonomy, they're labeled "terrorists," imprisoned and tortured.
China's gross domestic product has quadrupled in the last twenty seven years, but at an enormous environmental cost. China uses coal to produce electricity, so much of its urban environments suffer from high levels of pollution. According to the CIA, China has lost one-fifth of its arable land since 1949 and suffers water shortages, water pollution from dumping untreated wastes, and deforestation. (CIA World Factbook, August 2005.)
China's leaders, reverting to Communist formula, have slowed the pace of economic reform over the last two years. Facing continued crises in labor, agriculture, and heavy industries, the government of Hu Jintao has stopped privatizing industries and has imposed new controls on foreign investment in the retail markets. In addition, Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao have, according to the Heritage Foundation's 2004 Index of Economic Freedom, "ordered the government to bail out state-owned banks burdened with cumbersome non-performing loans." (2004 Index of Economic Freedom, 2004, 139.) Unemployment in China is steady at almost 10 percent.
Just as before Mao's Cultural Revolution, China's experiments with economic freedom have led to political unrest and increasing demands for personal freedom. Also the current President, Hu ]intao, was one of the three provincial leaders who announced support for the "Party Center"-immediately after the Tiananmen Square massacre. (Tkacik, Fewsmith and Kivlehan, "Who's Hu?" )
On February 20, 1989, Hu, ordered 1,700 armed police into the Tibetan capital of Lhasa. On March 5, the police opened fire on civilian rioters, killing at least forty. Martial law was declared and China's armed forces kept the area quiet through the summer of 1989. (Ibid.)
The lessons Beijing learned in Tiananmen Square and Tibet were the same as those taught by Mao in the Cultural Revolution and in Quotations from Chairman Mao, the famous Little Red Book the Red Guards carried as their totem: democracy is not an irresistible force, and power grows from the barrel of a gun. But China's leaders are worried about the increasing level of unrest in their country.
In July 2005, Public Security Minister Zhou Yongkang said that the number of "mass incidents"-protests and even riots-was rising fast across China. (Washington Post, August 10, 2005.) As the Washington Post reported , "In 2004, Zhou said, 3.76 million of China's 1.3 billion people took part in 74,000 such protests, which he said represented a dramatic increase." (ibid.)
The regime has other problems as well. The Financial Times reported in September 2005, citing an Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) study, that corruption in China is so severe and widespread that it threatens the country's economic development and "is becoming a major source of social discontent and poses a threat to the legitimacy of the country's leaders."
The "cell phone revolution" has meant that more and more protests are organized across geographic borders. Recent protests about water pollution and the SARS virus were organized by village elders in different provinces. Thus a battle is shaping up between the center and the periphery in China. The tools include regulations and government pronouncements, but these are often ignored, and given the sheer size of the Chinese bureaucracy, the chances of being the one official targeted by the center are similar to those of winning the lottery. A recent example (but there will be many others) is when on March 7 the governor of China's Guangdong Province said in Beijing that the police officers responsible for shooting and killing at least three protesters outside Shanwei on Dec. 6, 2005, are in detention and disobeyed orders when they fired at the crowd. The comments come as China's National People's Congress debates the stresses created by the widening urban-rural gap, and point to conciliatory measures at least in Guangdong to reduce the risks of further protests. Thus the center is wielding the rural masses as a tool to pressure the regions, and Huang is one of the first, and most significant, to try to deflect the blows. And he is doing it at the heart of the debate, in Beijing, as the NPC discusses the central leadership's economic and social programs. Thus the center is wielding the rural masses as a tool to pressure the regions, and Huang is one of the first, and most significant, to try to deflect the blows. And he is doing it at the heart of the debate, in Beijing, as the NPC discusses the central leadership's economic and social programs.
The Chinese government wants it both ways. On the one hand, it does not want unrest among farmers. On the other hand, the Communist Party elite in Beijing live by patronage. They have risen through the system because of the web of relationships that makes Chinese industrialization possible. They can, in very specific cases, take action against cases of corruption. However, a systematic attack on the causes of corruption is impossible, without a systematic attack on their own infrastructure.
The shooting in Shanwei (on which we reported five months ago), for example, was being portrayed as a local issue, triggered by fear in the local security forces, which reportedly were being barraged with Molotov cocktails and dynamite after dark. This leaves higher authorities in the clear and portrays the incident as one where a highly stressful and dangerous situation simply got out of hand. But it also leaves plausible deniability for higher authorities, who can claim this unfortunate isolated incident was outside of their control while sending a clear signal that social disturbances are no longer going to be treated with kid gloves.
Many China policy experts believe the threat to the Beijing regime is substantial, but the Communist Party is so well entrenched, and its power to crush protests so well organized and brutal, that a national revolution has to be considered extremely unlikely. Beijing's strategy for defusing protests includes "protest villages" outside the center city where protesters can present their petitions to the government, coupled with prison camps for recalcitrant political activists. Beijing outlawed torture in 1996 but, according to a December 2005 report by Manfred Nowak, the United Nations' special "rapporteur" on torture, Beijing's use of it is still "widespread" in Chinese detention centers. Nowak's report cited the use of "electric shock batons, cigarette burns and submersion in pits of water or sewage." He also raised the problem of psychological torture, "which he said was designed to alter the personality of detainees .
From a historical perspective, China's apparently stunning economic success stems from the pursuit and implementation of the quintessential Asian economic plan, which can be summed up as "growth for the sake of growth." Japan, South Korea, most of the Southeast Asian "tigers" and China all facilitated their economic "miracles" by focusing on the flow-through of capital, without regard for profits. As long as money was flowing in, there could be jobs. As long as there were jobs, there was a stabilizing social force. There was also an overall rise in personal wealth, though rarely was it evenly spread.
The coastal provinces and cities became the focal points for international investments in manufacturing, as investors exploited preferential government policies and cheap labor. The rural areas -- traditionally the backbone of China's economy -- and the petroleum and heavy industry of the northeast (which had been core to early Communist Chinese economics) faded in relevance. Though Beijing occasionally promoted more inland development and investment opportunities, geography and a lack of infrastructure made these unappealing to investors. The concentration of wealth in the coastal regions was a source of minor social tensions, but restrictions on internal migration kept a buffer between rural and urban populations, and social frictions remained comparatively low. These restrictions, however, have been only selectively enforced as of late, and many are being lifted.
The booming coastal economies created clear opportunities for corruption. As provincial and local Party cadre and political leaders became the gatekeepers for foreign investments, they also became mini-emperors of their own economic fiefdoms. Collusion and nepotism -- always a part of Chinese political society -- became even more entrenched as the money flowed in. With the central government fixated on growth, the best-performing local leaders were rewarded. The more foreign capital they were able to attract, the greater their personal influence and takings. These officials were not measured on efficiency or profitability, but on total flow-through of capital, rates of growth, employment and social stability.
This partly explains why attempts by the previous government to address the unequal development in China failed. Each time former President Jiang Zemin or former Premier Zhu Rongji tried to adjust policies and financial flows to the interior, there were strong objections from the wealthier coastal provinces. When they launched anti-corruption campaigns, the graft their investigators uncovered was deep and wide, and in some cases even threatened to reach up to the top echelons of power -- at times implicating Jiang himself. This only further entrenched the problem and removed incentives for Jiang and Zhu to act; after all, both were part of the so-called Shanghai clique and derived their political support from the coastal regions.
Under these two leaders, the government was much more successful in reducing the independence of the military, as neither Jiang nor Zhu had significant ties into the institution. But because the economic and political elite in the coastal regions were the source of the central leadership's power, they were able to repel reforms sought by the central government.
This all changed with the coming of Hu and Wen, both of whom are from rural areas. Wen, a perennial political survivor known for his ability to connect with the "common man," has been practically deified among rural-dwellers on account of his 10-year-old coat. That the premier still wears the same coat after 10 years is a clear sign (according to ample coverage by the news media and blog sites) of his care for the people, rather than for himself.
Herein lies the secret of Hu and Wen's strategy to regain control over the local and regional governments and Party officials. Whereas Jiang and Zhu tried using anti-corruption campaigns -- only to end up implicating themselves and their core supporters -- Hu and Wen are moving to harness the power of China's rural masses. Depending on which Chinese official you believe, this is a mass of humanity numbering from 700 million to 950 million people. Even at the low end of the estimates, however, rural-dwellers make up more than half of China's population -- and greatly outnumber the 300 million middle- and upper-class Chinese living mainly in Beijing and the coastal cities.
Chinese leaders have a long history of using the masses as weapons when challenges to central authority arise -- from the attempts to harness the Boxers at the turn of the 20th century to Mao's communist revolution to the Cultural Revolution. In each case, the process was chaotic and the outcomes were uncertain. Though Mao eventually succeeded in rallying the rural populace to effect his communist revolution, it simply served as a starting point for a new Chinese system. The use of the Boxers led to the dissolution of the Chinese dynastic system, and the Cultural Revolution wiped out whatever economic gains had been made, leaving China to start nearly from scratch once again.
What Hu and Wen intend to do is rally the masses to pressure local leaders into returning authority to the center. From this, centralized economic direction will, they hope, lead to more equalized development without significantly undermining the country's growth (though a slight slowing will be expected). Ultimately, the causes of social discontent would be mitigated and social frictions reduced as money is shifted to the interior.
This is a rather risky proposal, but China's core leadership sees this as the least distasteful among a poor selection of options. The initiative is being presented not as a disruptive social revolution, but as the duty of those who got rich first to assist those who trail them. The initial details of the official plan include greater spending in rural areas on infrastructure, education, healthcare and agriculture, with funding coming primarily from the urban centers. The plan already is meeting with mixed reactions from China's regional leaders -- and while the NPC is expected to approve the plan, that doesn't mean that they like it.
However, as the government's core leadership has pointed out ad nauseum over the past year, the Chinese economy is in a fragile state, and the rural/urban inequalities threaten to undo everything China has built up since the economic opening and reform program began. Unless the central government regains complete control over economic strategy and tactics, there is a fear that China ultimately would fracture into competing regions, largely independent of any central authority -- a sort of economic warlordism reminiscent of the final days of previous Chinese dynasties.
Beijing's choice, then, is between taking no action against local governments, out of fears of triggering massive capital flight or inadvertently crippling investment and export activity, or rallying the rural masses -- which would be another avenue toward recentralizing control.
Thus, the central government has made a point of publicizing ever-more-dire statistics concerning rural and urban unrest. The Ministry of Public Security reported 87,000 cases of public disturbances in 2005, up from 74,000 in 2004 and 58,000 in 2003. (The numbers are high, but the definition of "disturbance" remains ambiguous.) The ministry has also warned of an imminent "period of pronounced contradictions within the people" in which "unpredictable factors affecting social stability will increase." Meanwhile, Wen has repeated that the cause of many protests is the confiscation of rural land for development and industrial projects -- projects that often are linked to corrupt local officials or are local initiatives that don't match the central priorities.
The message to the local leaders, of course, is that China's masses are on the move. In discussing the rural/urban gap, Chen Xiwen -- deputy director of the Office of the Central Financial Work Leading Group -- noted recently (and somewhat ominously) that 200 million farmers have left the countryside; Chen warned that "to increase the living standard of these farmers, China should spare no efforts to build the new socialist countryside." In essence, Beijing is threatening the local leaders with the spectre of a rural rising. The class struggle is on, and the farmers far outnumber the city-dwellers. The implicit message is that, for the safety of the city, the farmers must be funded and rural areas built up.
At the same time, Beijing is looking at a wholesale change in the local leadership, beginning with the Party secretaries and chiefs of China's 2,861 counties. New regulations -- not altogether welcomed by the existing Party cadre -- will require new county-level Party secretaries and chiefs to be around 45 years old and possess at least a bachelor's degree. These individuals would be less likely to have already built up their personal economic connections, and be more beholden to the central government for legitimacy and support. Beijing is also increasing supervision and admonition of Party and government officials.
But to make these changes last, Beijing needs to give the lower cadre some incentive to follow the central government's demands -- even if it means a reduction in local investments or a rise in local unemployment. Beijing must ensure that local officials are more closely tied to the central leadership in Beijing than to foreign investors and shareholders in Japan or the United States. For this, Beijing needs to make it utterly clear what risks the local government leaders face. Threats of prosecution and even the token executions of some officials have not worked, but the potential for more and larger social uprisings might.
This means Beijing needs to allow, if not subtly encourage, more localized demonstrations. And that apparently is where Hu and Wen intend to go. The central government's response to stories of rural unrest has remained rather low-key thus far. In reference to the Dongzhou protests in December 2005, where at least three were killed when local security forces opened fire on the crowd, officials on the sidelines of the NPC session recently made it a point to say the officers in question are under detention and did not follow orders. In other uprisings, there even have been suggestions of sympathy from the center. In the cost-benefit analysis, Beijing apparently has determined that the risks of allowing the current trend of growing regionalized power to continue outweigh the risks of trying to manipulate popular sentiment against local officials.
This, perhaps more than anything, underscores the severity of the economic and governing problems facing China's central leadership.
The strategy of unleashing the rural masses, allowing and even subtly encouraging protests could quickly get out of hand. However, given the wide array of localized concerns, there is a natural disunity that could be expected to constrain protesters -- keeping demonstrations locally significant but nationally isolated. So long as protesters don't join across provinces and regions, so long as no interest is able to link the disparate demonstrations, the central leadership will retain some leeway to implement its policies.
Still, there is another phenomena, China has about twenty-three million more young men than young women. (International Herald-Tribune, September 14, 2005.)
That's a tiny fraction of China's population now, but the number will grow, and with it the possibility of severe social dislocation. China is taking a great many of its poor, unmarried young men into its People's Liberation Army and People's Armed Police and it is all too easy to imagine the government diverting their passions to war. (Ibid.)
China And Warfare
Since 1985, China has reduced the size of its military forces, mainly its army, from about 4.2 million men to the present strength of about 2.3 million active-duty troops. China has learned-from watching the American military-the importance of high-tech weapons, network-centric warfare;" and "jointness.""Jointness"-an awkward word even by U.S. government standardsreally means focusing on cooperation and interoperability between services. The Chinese substituted the word "reorganization" for "jointness," but the idea is the same. In 1999, two active-duty Chinese colonels, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, wrote, in light of America's "jointness" reforms, "Any country which hopes to win a war in the twenty-first century must inevitably face the option of either 'reorganizing' or being defeated. There is no other way."( Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, Unrestricted Warfare (1999, republished in English by Pan American Publishing, 2002, 53.)
By 2003, America had taken the concept of "jointness" to another level: what military professionals now call "network-centric warfare," often shortened to net-centric warfare. In net-centric warfare, everyone from the soldier in the remotest corner of the battlefield to the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon is linked, in real time, by a network of computers and communication interfaces that multiply military effectiveness. It's best explained by the example of one of its parts: the "JSTARS" aircraft. Calling it a "spy plane," as one commentator did, is like calling an Olympic decathlete a "runner."
JSTAR5-the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System aircraft Ca much-modified Boeing 707)-combines many sensors, including radars, computers, and communications, to provide a true "battle management system." Combatant commanders use it to identify and track friendly and enemy forces on the ground, on the water, and in the air. It gives them a real-time three-dimensional picture of what used to be called the "battlefield" and is now more aptly called the "battlespace." Net-centric warfare boils down to information sharing. As practiced by the American military, it means that communication, decision making, and shared awareness of the military situation among troops and commanders result in better and quicker collaboration in accomplishing the mission.
In the 1990s, Chinese military doctrine focused on fighting "local wars under high-tech conditions." In 2004, having digested the lessons of Iraq, a Chinese Defense White Paper described Chinese military doctrine in terms only a bureaucrat could love: "local wars under the condition of informationalization." It is clear that the "condition of informationalization" is China's catchphrase for net-centric and high-tech warfare.
In a 2005 press conference, before he became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine general Peter Pace said, "You judge military threat in two ways: one, capacity, and two, intent .... There are lots of countries in the world that have the capacity to wage war. Very few have the intent to do so. And, clearly, we have a complex but good relationship with China. So there's absolutely no reason to believe there's any intent on their part." (US Air Force Magazine, September 2005, 14.)
According to Chen Yonglin, a recent defector who worked at the Chinese foreign ministry, the Communist regime now speaks of creating a "Greater Neighboring Region,"40 which sounds uncomfortably like Imperial Japan's "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere." Japan conquered Korea, Taiwan, Indochina, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Manchuria as part of this "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere," and fought China, Britain, India, Australia, and the United States. Does China plan similar aggression? It plainly intends to swallow Taiwan, and it is ramping up nationalist hatred of Japan, not only for its brutal conduct in World War Il, but also in diplomatic disputes over oil and gas rights in the South and East China seas. China ignores Japanese claims to gas reserves close to Japan's home islands and parades its military might with increasing frequency in those waters. (http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune)
Another way to measure China's intent is to look at its defense budgets. According to our best estimates, the PRCs defense budget in 2005 was about $90 billion, and in 2006 will be about $100 billion. That equaled, in 2005,7.5 percent of China's $1.2 trillion gross domestic product, more than double the percentage America spends on defense. At that spending level, China has the third-largest military budget in the world, behind only the United States and Russia. And that is lowballing Chinese expenditures, because a dollar buys more in China than it does in the United States. Even allowing that half of China's military expenditures might be spent abroad, we can reasonably assume that in terms of what economists call "purchasing power parity," the Chinese military budget for 2005 is closer to $150 billion. And what is China buying? The answer is telling: a mix of weapons, a major portion of which cannot be labeled defensive. They fall into five major categories.
Deploying anti-satellite weapons is one of China's highest military priorities. Why? Because satellites are the foundation of America's battlespace superiority. They enable commanders to communicate with ground, sea, and air forces, and' for those forces to talk to each other. They give "smart bombs" the precise navigational and positioning information that makes them smart. They tell soldiers and airmen where they are and give rapid and accurate reconnaissance of both friend and foe.
The Chinese are studying net-centric warfare as assiduously as Americans are evolving and practicing it.
In an assessment of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the campaign that ousted Saddam Hussein's regime, the PLA deputy chief of general staff, General Xiong Guangkai, made several observations, among them:
·
"U.S. armed forces are ever smaller in number but ever more highly trained,
are of a lighter type, and have an ever higher mobility."
·
"U.S. troops used as many as ninety military satellites, which provided
continuous intelligence information and played a most important role in
directing the war, especially in launching accurate attacks."
"The U.S. and
British allied forces gave full expression to the joint warfare theory
[and] had all their arms and services ... coordinate their actions in all
directions and at all times to achieve rapid dominance on the battlefield,
and their actions included air strikes, ground attacks, sea-based missile
launches, satellites and information warfare." Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui,
Unrestricted Warfare 1999, republished in English by Pan American Publishing,
2002, 19.)
In the 1990s,
Chinese military doctrine focused on fighting "local wars under high-tech
conditions." In 2004, having digested the lessons of Iraq, a Chinese Defense
White Paper described Chinese military doctrine in terms only a bureaucrat
could love: "local wars under the condition of informationalization." It
is clear that the "condition of informationalization" is China's catchphrase
for net-centric and high-tech warfare. (Ibid., 16.)
In a 2005 press conference, before he became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine general Peter Pace said, "You judge military threat in two ways: one, capacity, and two, intent .... There are lots of countries in the world that have the capacity to wage war. Very few have the intent to do so. And, clearly, we have a complex but good relationship with China. So there's absolutely no reason for us to believe there's any intent on their part. "
American military leaders don't take these things for granted. In fact, losing our satellites to enemy action is one of their gravest concerns.There are hundreds upon hundreds of satellites in orbit, so the first step, if you want an anti-satellite capability, is to develop a targeting mechanism. To that end, China is building a satellite tracking and identification network. It already has the a,bility, as do America and Russia, to destroy enemy satellites by launching a nuclear weapon and detonating it near the target. But that is a confessedly crude system, and China, unlike America, isn't stopping there.
China is developing and may have already tested ground-based lasers to "blind" or even destroy satellites instantly. In addition, China is developing small, lightweight "microsatellites" that can be prepared and launched quickly. Though the microsatellites launched so far are not believed to have offensive capability, others could be armed with a variety of anti-satellite weapons. Moreover, these non-offensive microsatellites could replace Chinese or Russian satellites accidentally destroyed in a nuclear space strike against D.S. satellites. There is no reason for China to develop anti-satellite weapons except to attack. China knows our satellites are large and expensive. They cannot be readily stockpiled.
According to the US Defense Department's 2005 report:
China's computer
network operations (CNO) include computer network attack, computer network
defense, and computer network exploitation. The PLA sees CNO as critical
to seize the initiative and "electromagnetic dominance" early in a conflict,
and as a force multiplier. Although there is no evidence of a formal Chinese
CNO doctrine, Chinese theorists have coined the term "Integrated Network
Electronic Warfare" to describe the Chinese approach. This concept outlines
the integrated use of electronic warfare, CNO, and limited kinetic strikes
against key C4 nodes to disrupt the enemy's battlefield network information
systems. The PLA has likely established information warfare units to develop
viruses to attack enemy computer systems and networks, and tactics to protect
friendly computer systems and networks. The PLA has increased the role
of CNO in its military exercises. Although initial training efforts focused
on increasing the PLA's proficiency in defensive measures, recent exercises
have incorporated offensive operations, primarily as first strikes against
enemy networks.
There are many
reasons for nations dependent on technology (as America is and China aspires
to be) to build defenses for their computer networks against adversaries'
attacks. But China isn't choosing defensive measures-it's choosing offensive
ones.
The US Defense Department believes that China presently has only a limited ability to "project conventional military power beyond its periphery." (Defense Department report, executive summary. Defense) That is changing as China acquires ships, missiles, submarines, and aircraft that can project its power across the oceans.
With about three thousand miles of coastline, China needs a navy that can do two things: protect the sea lanes it depends on for oil and other imports, and protect its coast from smugglers or other unauthorized landings. The navy China is buying and building has little to do with these defense interests. By early 2005, the Chinese navy had sixty-four major surface combatants, about fifty-five attack submarines, more than forty medium and heavy amphibious lift ships, and about fifty coastal patrol missile boats. This force is not an "area denial" force such as would protect the Strait of Malacca, the eight hundred miles of ocean between Indonesia and the Malaya Peninsula (passing across Singapore) through which about 65 percent of China's oil imports travel. Rather, many, if not most, of those ships are designed for warfare against other navies.
· In 1996, China bought two Sovremenny-class guided missile destroyers from Russia. Each of the first two was bought at a price of $400 million. Another two are being built now at a reported price of $1 billion. They are the largest and most powerful warships ever operated by the Chinese navy. Sovremenny destroyers are designed to kill ships at long range with supersonic cruise missiles and to defend surface ships from both submarine and air attack. Russia designed the Sovremenny to destroy American aircraft carriers that operate within its range.
· By 2010, the PIA navy may have a fleet of fifty nuclear and nonnuclear submarines, equal in number to the entire D.S. submarine fleet. Among them will be new Type 093 nuclear attack submarines armed with land attack cruise missiles and Type 094 ballistic missile nuclear submarines (both capable of operating in U.S.coastal waters); eight new Russian-built Kilo-class diesel-electric submarines at a reported price of $1.6 billion; and as many as twenty new Chinese-built boats of similar type.
Four types of
surface combatants with reduced radar signatures qualify as "stealth" ships;
there are numerous other ships, some of which also have stealthy designs,
to carry troops and heavy vehicles, including tanks. (Testimony of Richard
Fisher, vice president of the International Assessment
and Strategy
Center, to the House Armed Services Committee, July 27, 2005.)
Such a robust shipbuilding program costs tens of billions of dollars. Plus China now has at least seven hundred combat aircraft within non-refuel range of Taiwan. Among them, in great numbers, are highly advanced aircraft such as the Russian-built Sukhoi SU-30MKK fighter-bomber and SU-30MKK2 maritime strike aircraft. China also has other highly capable and advanced aircraft, such as the SU-27.
How good are these aircraft? In early 2004, the US. Air Force engaged in a very large air combat war game against the Indian air force. USAF pilots were flying our primary air defense fighter, the F-15. Indian pilots were engaging them with SU-30s, French-built Mirage 2000s, and old Russian MiG-21s. Though the results of the exercise are still classified, it is clear that the US. fighters were defeated in a great many engagements by the Indians piloting the Russian-built SU-30S.
The Chinese air force might have three hundred SU-27s, including the F-11, a Chinese-built version, as well as seventy-six SU-30MKKs. The Chinese naval air force has about forty-eight SU-30MKK2s. These aircraft can play offensive and defensive roles. China is also apparently pursuing aircraft that are purely offensive.
Readers of Tom Clancy's novels know about the TU-22M Backfire bomber. It is the Russian equivalent of the B-1 Lancer that the US. Air Force has been using to great advantage in Afghanistan. Like the B-1, the Backfire is a supersonic, long-range, nuclear-capable bomber that is designed primarily to perform strategic missions. Russia is marketing the improved TU-22M-3 version to China. It has a range of about four thousand miles. Details of China's plans to purchase the Backfire are vague, but the profound impact of its doing so is not. Were China to acquire even a few of these aircraft, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and even much of India would be within range. Aircraft such as the Backfire are different from missiles in that their use is imaginable in many short-ofArmageddon scenarios. Because the possibility of their use in an attack is all too real, they are even more menacing than Chinese ICBMs that are, right now, pointed at Taiwan or America.
One advantage American air forces usually have is the airborne warning and control system (AWACS) aircraft. (NATO AWACS aircraft were among the first in America's skies after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, directing the "combat air patrols" over New York and Washington, DC). China, using a Russian A-50 aircraft and Israeli Phalcon phased-array radar, was building its own AWACS aircraft until intense American pressure forced the Israelis to terminate the Phalcon radar sale. Since then, the Chinese have substituted less capable radars.
The difference between a local power that cannot project its influence and a regional or global power can be found in one simple, mundane aircraft: the air refueling tanker. In the words of former USAF chief of staff General John Jumper, "We are a global air and space power because of these tankers." (Jed Babbin, "New Fuel for Scandal," American Spectator, March 2005, 18.)
Jumper explained, "The first thing that happens in any contingency is that you put the tanker bridge up there. We deploy tankers to places such as Spain, Hawaii, Guam, and their sole purpose is to get large numbers of transport aircraft halfway around the world without stopping." No tankers, no superpower.(ibid.)
China understands that all too well. It has already converted a number of its H-6 bombers to serve as air refueling tankers and, according to one respected source, is about to purchase six Russian Il-78 tankers that could enable Chinese aircraft to strike targets more than 1,500 miles from the Chinese coast, including the U.S. airbase on Guam. Forwardbasing of these tankers, in places ranging from South Pacific islands to the Middle East or even Venezuela, could extend that range.
China calls its strategic missile forces the "Second Artillery." It has about seven hundred short-range ballistic missiles deployed within range of Taiwan and is increasing that number by about a hundred missiles every year. (Defense Department report, 4.) Its ICBM force is being modernized with a road-mobile missile, the DF-31 (including an extended-range version), and the JL-2 submarinelaunched ballistic missile.China is arming its other forces-air, land, and sea forces-with.land attack cruise missiles.
Even with its continued reduction in size, the People's Liberation Army numbers at least 2.3 million. According to Defense Department analysts, the reduction in the PLA's size is accompanied by an improvement in its quality. China's revolution in military affairs is transforming its army into one capable of using all the advantages that joint operations and net-centric warfare afford. In its officer education system-establishing a corps of professional noncommissioned officers and using a system much like the U.S. Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) to train future officers during a civilian college education-China is reforming its ground, naval, and air forces to match its changes in operational doctrine. According to the Defense Department Report, China is upgrading its reserve forces-comprised of several millions, and previously made up of "grunts" who were not very well trained, to include experts in computer operations and other "skilled" positions.
As it is reduced in size, China's military manpower is being increased in its ability to conduct net-centric warfare, to maneuver, and to conduct operations outside China's mainland. One hallmark of the transformation of the PLA is the Chinese effort to create a large force of unmanned aerial vehicles (DAYs). It is reportedly converting old fighter aircraft to perform this mission, and in 2003 and 2004 acquired Israeli Harpy DAYs to assist in air defense of ground units. In 2004, the PLA began converting older army formations, including "motorized rifle" and armored infantry brigades, to mechanized infantry. More important, at least with respect to Taiwan, is the formation of the first and second airborne armies and China's investment to equip them with light armored vehicles that can be airdropped onto a battlefield.62 It is also developing, and probably mass-producing, advanced troop and vehicle landing craft, including the stealthy ones previously described.
For a week in August 2005, Chinese and Russian military units conducted a joint exercise called "Peace Mission 2005" around the northern Russian port of Vladivostok and the Chinese Shandong Peninsula. Almost ten thousand troops-part of a force that included bomber and fighter aircraft, destroyers, frigates, submarines, and AWACS-like aircraftfirst blockaded and then sent amphibious tanks ashore in a mock invasion. The purpose of the exercise was, according to the Chinese official news service, Xinhua, to "help strengthen the capability of the two armed forces in jointly striking international terrorism, extremism and separatism. "Separatism" is Beijing's word for the Taiwanese independence movement.
The modernization of the Chinese ground forces, transforming them from a set-piece massed battle force to the lighter, quicker forces America can deploy, will take several more years. When completed, they will be able to threaten not only Taiwan, but every nation on China's periphery and in a way meant to prevent successful American intervention.
True, for most of the Chinese people, China is a less brutal country now, than before. However, behind the glittering skyscrapers and the other signs of modernity, China today is still dominated by one salient fact: the core of the regime remains unchanged, and it will do whatever is necessary to maintain its iron grip on power.
The panda huggers' Achilles heel is Taiwan, an issue which is always conveniently ignored. Once the Taiwan Straits—a flashpoint where American GIs getting killed by the People's Liberation Army remains a real possibility—is introduced into the discussion, it would make all the rosy talks on China sound hollow. Beijing now is more and not less determined to "liberate" the island democracy through the use of power as the regime is being enriched by the international business community.
According to the US State Department study this week, the Chinese have stationed almost 800 short-range missiles at garrisons opposite Taiwan. Beijing, however, understands that the main challenge to any Chinese attack on Taiwan remains the U.S. Navy. More important, so long as the U.S. Navy controls the waters near China, the country will remain vulnerable to a naval blockade. This did not matter to Maoist China, whose international trade was relatively unimportant. However, for a China that is deeply engaged in international trade, most of it by sea, U.S. naval capabilities present a serious potential challenge to its interests.
The Chinese, according to this report, are not responding by building a fleet capable of challenging the Americans -- something that would take too long and be too technologically daunting and expensive. Rather, the Chinese are deploying long-range missiles designed to attack U.S. surface vessels and submarines, as far out as Guam. According to the report, China "is engaged in a sustained effort to interdict, at long ranges, aircraft carrier and expeditionary strike groups that might deploy to the western Pacific." China reportedly is developing its own weaponry as well as buying Russian systems. According to Peter W. Rodman, assistant secretary of defense, the Chinese are developing these weapons for "contingencies other than Taiwan."
Rodman also said that while the United States believes China's pledge that it would not be the first to use nuclear weapons, the Defense Department is concerned that as Chinese capabilities evolve and strategic realities shift, Beijing's doctrine might shift as well. The DoD view is that there is a major debate under way in China on the subject right now.
From the American point of view, therefore, China is threatening U.S. naval hegemony as well as threatening to become more dangerous with its nuclear force. Either of these views, if sincerely held, means that the United States must act to counter the threat. Obviously, a China capable of and prepared to engage in a first strike represents a crisis of the first order. However, even if that is saber-rattling, the threat that the Chinese are posing to U.S. control of sea lanes is of enormous geopolitical significance.
The United States has dominated the world's oceans since the end of World War II. This has been the foundation of American national security. The Soviets tried and failed to challenge American naval power. As a result, the United States projects its force outward. Others cannot project force inward upon the United States, except as terrorists or in a nuclear strike. But if the Chinese are able to neutralize the U.S. Navy to a distance of several thousand miles from China's coast, the regional balance obviously would be shifted. If the Chinese can increase that range and combine it with a first-strike capability, the entire balance of military power shifts: Nuclear parity plus an open contest for maritime hegemony would introduce an entirely new era.
What the DoD document has said is that the fundamental long-term threat to American interests and security is not the intermittent threat of terrorist strikes by Islamist militants, but the emerging threat to the global naval and nuclear balance that is posed by China. Put differently, if the Pentagon really believes this report, it is fighting the wrong war in the wrong place. The jihadists are a threat to American lives, but China threatens fundamental, global American interests.
Whether the Pentagon's view of the Chinese threat is accurate or not is not the key point right now. That this is the view of the Chinese threat means everything. If this is the view, then it follows that U.S. military expenditures should not go toward Iraq and Afghanistan, but toward securing U.S. control of the western Pacific sea lanes through increased technologies focused on naval and space power.
Obviously, DoD is not suddenly trying to back out of Iraq and Afghanistan. But Defense officials certainly are saying -- whether they know it or not -- that the time has come to close out the war with the jihadists and shift emphasis to containing Chinese power projection. But over the next few years, this view will generate a completely different U.S. military posture.
