While China marches, the US
guesses By Law Siu-lan
As the National People's Congress (NPC),
China's Parliament, began to convene its two-week
annual session on March 5, China's growing defense
spending once again became a focus of the
international media.
Several days before
the NPC session opened, the US Department of
Defense released its 2008 report on China's
military power, as a counter-balance to the
Chinese government's official report about the
country's military budget this year, to be
reported to the NPC. The Pentagon stresses the
lack of transparency in China's military,
demanding China to make public its true intention
to increase defense spending. However, analysts
view such a demand by US as unreasonable and
unlikely to be met in practice.
The
Pentagon delivered The Military Power of the
People's
Republic
of China 2008 to the Congress unusually in time
(the annual report is required to be delivered
before March 1, though in the past it was
delayed.). Compared with last year's report, this
one is rather drab with nothing really striking in
its content.
The report says that last
year China successfully test-fired an
anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon, strengthened its
cyber-war capability, deployed new
intercontinental missiles and improved
medium-range ballistic missiles. It adds that in
possible conflicts in the future, communications
and reconnaissance satellites of potential
adversaries are likely to be among the priority
targets attacked by the Chinese military, and
China's mid-range missiles will be able to strike
against sea targets such as aircraft carriers.
Moreover, the report estimates China's
total military spending last year should be
something between US$97 billion and $139 billion,
twice or even three times China's
officially-reported figure.
On March 4,
one day after the Pentagon released its report,
NPC spokesperson Jiang Enzhu disclosed at a press
conference in Beijing that China's defense budget
for the year 2008 is around US$57.2 billion, a
growth of 17.6% from last year. The increased
budget will mainly be used to improve the income
and living standards of officers and soldiers, to
increase the expenditure on fuel purchase and to
increase the budget on equipment development.
The Pentagon report has successfully dawn
outside critical attention to China's defense
budget. But except for this, its content could be
described as "new wine in an old bottle". Even
David Sedney, US deputy assistant secretary of
defense for East Asia, admitted at the press
conference for the launch of the report that it
could hardly be said that the Chinese military has
made new striking changes in some specific domains
since the release of last year's report.
"The real story is the continuing
development, the continuing modernization, the
continuing acquisition of capabilities and the
corresponding and unfortunate lack of
understanding, lack of transparency about the
intentions of those and how they are going to be
employed. What is China going to do with all
that?" Sedney said.
These remarks rightly
highlight the difficulty in military exchanges
between big powers, because it is impossible for
each to tell the other its true military
intentions. From this perspective, while the US
repeatedly stresses that China must increase its
military transparency, this goal could hardly be
attained in reality.
For instance, not
long ago the US Navy fired a Standard-3 missile to
shoot down a disabled spy satellite of its own.
This is an obvious ASAT test to showcase its
dominance in space weaponry development, a
tit-for-tat response to China's ASAT test last
year and an attempt to prevent China from catching
up in the field. However, for publicity, the US
government simply said that the move was to
destroy the rogue satellite, and prevent potential
damage had it fallen to Earth with its toxic fuel
tank. And thus it was a move benefiting humankind.
Nothing was mentioned about the nature of the
military experiment. This is evidence that the US
itself is hardly transparent with its military
intentions.
As for China, what the US
demands for military transparency is certainly not
limited to such information as its military
expenditure and latest weapons. For, with the
mammoth US intelligence networks, the Pentagon
must already have such data and does not really
need China to tell them.
The US hopes to
gain clear knowledge about the People's Liberation
Army's real intentions in proactively building up
its muscle in recent years. The US military is
worried that China's military buildup already far
exceeds its need for reunification with Taiwan,
suspecting China's intention is to challenge the
US's status in Asia-Pacific or even its global
leadership.
The problem lies in that
military intention is something that can only be
pursued, but not talked about, let alone to be
publicly admitted. For example, the US invaded
Iraq in 2003 with its publicized reason that the
Saddam Hussein regime attempted to develop weapons
of mass destruction. But there were analyses
saying the US, in fact, fought for oil, with its
real aim to control the oil resources on Iraqi
soil.
Others suspected the Bush
administration acted in retaliation to Saddam who
was said to have once plotted to assassinate
former president George H W Bush, father of
President George W Bush. All in all, no country
will publicly talk about, or admit, the real
intention of its military activities, just like
China will never admit the real intention of its
active upgrading of its military.
National
defense and military agencies are the least
transparent of all state affairs. The US
repeatedly assails China with demands for military
transparency, and calls for Beijing to publicize
its true intentions in upgrading its armed forces.
This is like trying to force a country to do
something it is unwilling and unable to do.
Imagine if China made a public acknowledgement
that it intended to challenge US hegemony, what
would happen?
In reality, it is an art of
war to cheat your opponent. Therefore, it is
better to "hedge the unknown" than to attempt to
make an adversary admit its ambition.
Law
Siu-lan is a contributor to the Chinese
version of Asia times Online.
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
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