China and the US: Parry and
thrust
By Ehsan
Ahrari
The Pentagon's latest report to Congress
on China's military power is a wonderful insight on what
is the "latest and the greatest" inside the People's
Liberation Army (PLA), and what's important from the
viewpoint of the United States. For the US military
establishment learns from, and bases much of its
strategy on, what the Chinese military establishment is
doing, and vice versa. And what the military
establishments in both countries do affects wider,
non-military aspects of each country's foreign policy.
Since the US military's thinking is heavily
influenced by the National Security Strategy (NSS) - a
congressionally mandated document prepared by the
president each year, which becomes the basis for
development of the National Military Strategy prepared
by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - the
Pentagon's report pays special attention to the Chinese
document that comes closest to the NSS, Beijing's "grand
strategy". It is defined as the "overall strategy of a
nation". The purpose of the grand strategy is to balance
two "often competing objectives": developing
"comprehensive national power" and "exploiting to
maximum advantage the existing 'strategic configuration
of power' ... to preserve national independence and
enable China to build 'momentum' in its efforts to
increase national power".
The "relative
priority" of these competing objectives "is subject to
adjustment and change, depending on how China assesses
the opportunities and challenges in the 'strategic
configuration of power'". In fact, both the late Deng
Xiaoping and President Jiang Zemin "have indicated
publicly that the goal of re-establishing a favorable
'strategic configuration of power' would override the
goal of developing national power if China faced a
fundamental threat to its national unity, internal
stability, or sovereignty". From the perspective of the
US military, it is an important observation, since it
explains how China would react in case of a US
intervention involving Taiwan, whose reunification is a
primary aspect of the unfinished business of national
unity.
A quick reading of China's "security
assessment" underscores the fact that it envisages the
United States as a "significant long-term challenge",
largely because it "seeks to maintain a dominant
strategic position by containing the growth of Chinese
power, and ultimately 'dividing' and 'Westernizing'
China, and preventing a resurgence of Russian power".
Here are selected highlights from the Pentagon
report:
It notes the prominence given in Chinese warfare
doctrine to the concept of "pre-emption and
surprise".
China's defense budget is estimated at about US$65
billion.
The United States remains the central focus of
China's military, with emphasis on "attacking stealth
aircraft, cruise missiles, and helicopters, while
defending against precision strikes, electronic warfare,
and enemy reconnaissance".
Longer-range intercontinental ballistic missiles
(ICBMs), CSS-4 Mod 2, are replacing the older-generation
CSS-4 Mod 1. China is also developing DF-31, which is "a
solid-propellant, mobile ICBM and a solid-propellant
submarine-launched ballistic missile".
There are 350 short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs)
"already in [China's] deployed inventory", and China
continues to add 50 missiles per year.
The PLA Navy (PLAN) is in possession of its first
Russian-made Sovremenny-class destroyer since 2000, and
has placed an order for two more.
PLAN also owns a Russian-made Kilo-SS, "one of the
quietest submarines in the world". China is also
producing the diesel-electric SONG submarine, which is
"designed to carry the development YJ-82, China's first
encapsulated anti-ship cruise missile [ASCM] capable of
launching from a submerged submarine".
Lethality and accuracy of Chinese missiles are also
on the rise.
China is building "variants of the CSS-6 that enable
attacks against Okinawa when forward deployed or against
Taiwan when deployed further inland".
China
remains quite wary of the rising tide of globalization,
which, according to the Pentagon report, is seen as a
threat to its economic security and information
security, and is as a phenomenon eroding China's
national power. The notion of information security
itself underscores the growing sense of vulnerability
inside China vis-a-vis the information revolution -
itself an essential aspect of globalization.
The
Chinese leadership is borderline paranoid about the
information revolution because it is ceaselessly
expanding its scope in a nation that has a split
personality. Politically, China is strongly
authoritarian, almost totalitarian. But in the realm of
economic activities, it is more of an open society.
Putting its political and economic features together, it
is well nigh impossible to place that country in any
single category. Second, since China and the United
States regard each other as potential adversaries, the
leaders in Beijing have every reason to be afraid of the
information superiority of the United States, a country
that may rightly be described as a colossus in the realm
of information-related civilian and military
technologies. Now that China has become a member of the
World Trade Organization, the deleterious aspects of
globalization and the information revolution are likely
to affect it more intensely than before. The worst
challenge of globalization that worries the aging
Chinese communist leaders, as the Pentagon report notes,
is the increasing "pressure for political change".
Since the United States is the major country to
watch as a competitor and a potential enemy, the
dynamics of its military thinking are studied
assiduously and with utmost care by Chinese strategic
thinkers. A litmus test of this reality is to see what
is "current" and "hot" in the annals of America's
military periodicals and defense-related newspapers. It
used to be "revolution in military affairs" (RMA),
immediately after the Gulf War of 1991. Consequently,
Chinese military thinkers were poring over all sorts of
unclassified documents and studies that were published
by the Pentagon, military think-tanks and universities.
High-tech warfare emerged as a major cottage industry
within the United States then. Soon thereafter, China
followed suit. One could study in detail America's
military strategy of defeating and ousting Saddam
Hussein's forces from Iraq in the Chinese
politico-military writings. All of a sudden, the Chinese
military establishment adopted that strategy in its
entirety, and detailed countermeasures were also
developed. The Pentagon report makes a note of that fact
only in passing.
Similarly, China studied the US
military operations in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo
with rapt attention in China. The PLA concluded "that a
superior enemy's situational awareness and precision
strike systems could be stymied through effective and
often low-tech, counter-reconnaissance measures such as
camouflage and concealment, simple decoys, dispersion,
and frequent movement of forces". It was only after the
Kosovo operation that the PLA started focusing "on the
use of underground facilities, landline communications,
and well-concealed supply depots".
From the
perspective of operational warfare, the "role of
surprise and pre-emption in local conflicts" is
emphasized. It is interesting to note that this emphasis
aimed at offsetting the "advantages that a
technologically superior power brings to the fight", an
apparent reference to the United States' overwhelming
military superiority. "Lessons from Kosovo added impetus
to developing a capacity for offensive operations
against targets at the operational and strategic levels
of warfare."
Fighting a technologically superior
enemy has obsessed China's military planners and
strategic thinkers. In order to win, Chinese war
planners are convinced that they must conduct
"operations that will paralyze the high-tech enemy's
ability to conduct its campaign, including operations to
disrupt and delay the enemy campaign at its inception,
and operations that are highly focused on identifying
the types and locations of enemy high-tech weapons that
pose the greatest threat."
Keeping in mind the
seemingly insurmountable superiority of the United
States in space, China deems essential "mastery of outer
space ... Surface-based communication and surveillance
systems" of a superior enemy are regarded as legitimate
targets for attack by a technologically weaker military.
Captain Shen Zshongchang of the Chinese Navy Research
Institute is quoted in the Pentagon report as saying,
"The mastery of outer space will be a requisite for
military victory, with outer space becoming the new
commanding heights for combat."
In the beginning
phase of a military campaign, China is determined to
"level the technological playing field" in order to
"enhance its chances of operational success".
Consequently, the focus of the PLA's "operational
theory" on:
"Destroying the enemy command system.
"Crippling the enemy information systems.
"Destroying the enemy's most advanced weapons
systems.
"Crippling the enemy support (logistic) systems.
"Disrupting the critical links in the enemy's
campaign systems (ie, denying the enemy the synergies
that accrue from its technological superiority)."
While the civilian leadership in Washington and
Beijing works on the rational-to-non-rational ebb and
flow of the political aspects of their mutual ties,
military establishments in both countries remain focused
on systematically studying every strategic, operational
and tactical move made by the other side. In this sense,
the Pentagon report tells the world what China is up to
these days, and also signals to China that it remains
significant for America's own military planners.
Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is a Norfolk,
Virginia, US-based strategic analyst.
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