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The PLA, the Pentagon, and
politics
By David Isenberg
China is rapidly modernizing its military with
the goal of countering US power in the Pacific and
pressing Taiwan to accept unification, according to a
Pentagon study released last Friday. Yet there are few
new revelations in the report, whose real aim may be to
bolster the already well-known attitudes toward China
held by President George W Bush's conservative
Republican administration.
The Annual Report on
the Military Power of the People's Republic of China,
released pursuant to congressional legislation, is the
first assessment of the Chinese military under the Bush
administration. It addressed Chinese strategy, Chinese
military forces, China's arms acquisitions from the
former Soviet Union and the security situation in the
Taiwan Strait. But the last section received the most
attention, as exemplified by the headline in the Wall
Street Journal, "China buildup is a threat to Taiwan, US
says" and "Chinese buildup targets Taiwan" in the
Washington Times.
However, despite major strides
in improving its armed forces, China would still have
trouble invading Taiwan, according to the report. In
discussing the success of an invasion scenario, it
stated, "Beijing would have to possess the capability to
conduct a multi-faceted campaign, maritime area denial
operations, air superiority operations and conventional
missile strikes. The PLA [People's Liberation Army]
likely would encounter great difficulty conducting such
a sophisticated campaign throughout the remainder of the
decade."
Interestingly, the report does not
analyze other scenarios such as a phased invasion, one
that ratchets up the level of offensive operations,
staged from the Peng Hu Islands (formerly the
Pescadores) that sit astride the invasion routes across
the Taiwan Strait. Such a scenario was the subject of an
article in the Autumn 2001 issue of the US Naval War
College Review.
But actually the report is more
nuanced than most press reports suggest. The report
begins with an acknowledgement that there are "gaps in
US knowledge about Chinese military power".
Among the key developments in Chinese military
capabilities identified in the report are a doctrine of
pre-emption and surprise in the opening phase of a
campaign, as part of a coercive strategy to bring Taipei
to terms quickly; improvements in training and joint
operations that increasingly focus on the United States
as an adversary; an increase in its short-range
ballistic missile (SRBM) inventory; the acquisition and
integration of fourth-generation fighter aircraft into
its operational units, such as the Su-30 and Su-27,
advanced guided Sovremenny missile destroyers and Kilo
diesel-electric submarines from Russia; and improvements
in both its command, control, communications, computers,
and intelligence (C4I) and intelligence, surveillance
and reconnaissance capabilities. None of this, however,
is new.
The report states that China's defense
budget now totals as much as US$65 billion a year, more
than triple the $20 billion China publicly reported in
March. That confirms the estimates long made by
independent analysts. According to the Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute, the level of
China's total military expenditure during the 1990s was
consistently about 70-80 percent higher than its
official defense budget.
In regard to the SRBMs,
China has located all of its 350 short-range missiles in
a province near Taiwan and its buildup threatens not
only the island, but Japan and the Philippines as well.
The report also stated that China is replacing
all 20 of its older CSS-4 intercontinental ballistic
missiles, also known as the Dong Feng 5, with
longer-range versions known as CSS-4 Mod 2s, that will
be deployed by "mid-decade".
"In addition, China
is developing three solid-propellant ICBMs
[intercontinental ballistic missiles]," the report said.
"Development of the DF-31, a mobile, three-stage,
solid-fueled ICBM with an estimated range of 8,000
kilometers, is progressing, and deployment should begin
before mid-decade. China also is developing two
follow-on extended-range versions of the DF-31: a
solid-propellant, mobile ICBM and a solid-propellant
submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM)."
Yet according to the latest annual survey by the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, even with
the modernization of its strategic nuclear forces China
still has the least advanced nuclear arsenal of the five
declared nuclear-weapons states. The Chinese doctrine is
centered on the maintenance of a "minimum nuclear
deterrent" capable of launching a retaliatory strike on
a small number of countervalue targets (such as cities)
after an adversary's nuclear attack.
Although
China has the world's largest military "it lacks the
technology and logistical support to project and sustain
conventional forces much beyond its borders", according
to the Pentagon report.
While the report notes
China's recent multibillion-dollar purchases of advanced
Russian warships, submarines and fighter jets - seen by
the US as hardware capable of blockading Taiwan - it
does not note that Taiwan has sought similar weapons
from the United States.
The fact that the
Pentagon increasingly sees China as a future adversary
is hardly news. Last year, as part of the Pentagon's
Quadrennial Defense Review, it was widely leaked to the
media that Andy Marshall, head of the Pentagon's Office
of Net Assessment, recommended a shifting away from
Europe toward Asia, especially to counter China. In
fact, many of the report's findings are similar to
assessments completed under the Bill Clinton
administration, although the new report is more alarmist
in its analysis of China's ambitions in the region and
potential threat to the United States. The report's
harsher tone is also in keeping with the Republican
Party's conservative wing, which denounced Democratic
president Clinton and congressional Democrats for being
soft on China. In many respects, the study preaches to
the converted - the US Congress, a place where Taiwan
has many supporters across the political divide.
It may also serve to justify the Bush team's
increased arms sales and a range of other overtures to
Taiwan, but a range of analysts believe it does not
herald a sweeping departure from America's "one China"
policy.
While China may not have articulated a
"grand strategy" as the Pentagon report asserts, it has
been somewhat open about its military ambitions. Its
strategy paper China's National Defense in 2000,
published in October 2000, listed policy and
restructuring priorities for the next five years. The
principle rationale for change is given as the need to
respond to the strengthening US-Japan alliance, US
weapons sales to Taiwan, and concerns about US missile
defense plans in the region. A specific requirement is
for strategies to combat US carrier groups. The purchase
from Russia of Sovremenny-class destroyers armed with
SS-N-22 missiles indicates that this need is being
addressed.
According to the Pentagon report,
China calculates that US efforts to develop missile
defenses will challenge the credibility of its nuclear
deterrent and eventually be extended to protect Taiwan,
degrading the coercive value of its growing conventional
theater ballistic missile capability opposite Taiwan.
According to Lawrence Korb, formerly assistant
secretary of defense in the Ronald Reagan
administration, the United States should understand that
Beijing's ambition to build a powerful military to
complement its growing economy and strategic positions
in Asia is not necessarily to America's detriment. In an
article in the current issue of Insight magazine, he
writes: "China remains and will remain too weak to
challenge US power even in its own neighborhood.
Consider the gap between China's acknowledged $20
billion defense budget (or even the estimated $45
[billion] to $150 billion) and the US defense budget of
about $400 billion. And this does not even take into
account the immense and growing technological gap
between the militaries of the two countries or the
strength enjoyed by the United States because of its
multiple alliances. China is not, and is extremely
unlikely to be, a strategic military threat the way the
Soviet Union once was."
(©2002 Asia Times Online
Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
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