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China's military struts its stuff
By Cristian Segura and Wu Zhong
BEIJING and HONG HONG - Celebrations to mark the 60th anniversary of the
founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) reached a climax on Thursday
morning with a grand military parade in Tiananmen Square in the capital to
showcase the rise of the Middle Kingdom.
Some advanced hardware developed and made in China and which has been kept
secret, such as the People's Liberation Army's (PLA's) airborne early warning
and control aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles, were on display during the
parade, which was reviewed by President Hu Jintao and other Chinese leaders.
The massive parade featuring thousands of troops - a Xinhua report said it
involved nearly 200,000 servicemen and women and civilian - also showcased
tanks and trucks carrying nuclear
missiles, as fighter planes screamed overhead and a 2,000-strong military band
belted out martial tunes.
Following a 60-gun salute, the Chinese flag was hoisted in the square where Mao
Zedong had announced the birth of the republic on October 1, 1949.
Hu, who is also chairman of the Central Military Commission, reviewed the
troops from a black open-roof limousine. He wore a black Mao-style tunic,
viewed by analysts as a symbol of his control of the military.
In a speech delivered from the same place where Mao spoke 60 years ago, Hu said
China had a bright future and that it had taken strides in the economic world,
and that the country would unite all cultures and ethnicities.
"Today, a socialist China [is] geared toward modernization, the world and the
future, and towers majestically in the East," Hu said.
What is novel in this year's military parade is not only the display of
hitherto classified weapons, but also Beijing's unprecedented transparency in
the release of information regarding military modernization, as well as the
organization of the parade itself. Analysts say this shows Beijing's growing
confidence in opening up its military to improve its image overseas.
In the past, what weapons were to be displayed in a parade and the training of
the guard of honor were kept top secret. But this year, weeks ago, PLA generals
began to reveal what weapons were to be showcased. Rehearsals for the parade on
weekend evenings were also open to the media. Chinese journalists were invited
to camps to cover the training of the guards of honor of the three services.
For instance, on September 21, Lieutenant General Fang Fenghui, general
director of the military parade, told the state-run Xinhua News Agency that 52
types of new weapons systems, all developed with Chinese technology, were to be
showcased.
Chinese Minister of Defense General Liang Guanglie also proudly said the
Chinese defense industry had been upgraded from copying Russian-made weapons in
the 1950s and the 1960s to become self-reliant in design and manufacture from
the 1970s onwards. He announced that some of China's most advanced weaponry was
already being used.
A senior PLA officer based in the southern city of Shenzhen told Asia Times
Online, "The increased transparency shows our growing confidence in modernizing
the military with our own efforts. In the past, we were shy to show our
weapons, largely because they were quite backward. But now we are catching up
rapidly. We are confident that we can create a weaponry system of our own
comparable to those of the United States, Russia and European nations."
Li Daguang, a senior military expert at the PLA University of National Defense,
told the Global Times, a sister publication of the Communist Party's People's
Daily, "A Chinese weaponry system, which is practical, cheap and suitable for
defense on home soil, will eventually come into being."
China has to rely on its own efforts because "the international environment
happens to be unhelpful for China's weapon development", he said, citing
weapons embargoes against China by the European Union and the United States.
As part of Beijing's efforts to increase transparency in its military and
improve its image overseas, as well as to showcase the advancement of its
military industry, the PLA opened a camp in Beijing to foreign journalists on
the eve of Army Day on August 1.
On July 28, Colonel Leng Jiesong stood alone on a dias in the conference hall
of the PLA's Third Guard Division base in Beijing, looking anxious as a horde
of journalists settled themselves. The colonel commands 10,000 disciplined
soldiers at the base, and the unruly media visibly unsettled him.
Leng said he was glad the PLA could finally meet the international media
because it was "a big step forward in the process of opening up" the army, and
he proudly proclaimed that all of the hardware to be displayed on October 1
would be Chinese-made.
Defense is the only industrial sector in which China has moved forward without
strong support from the US, the EU and Japan. Since the 1989 Tiananmen Square
crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators, the US and the EU have maintained a
weapons embargo on China that limits defense trade between their national
companies.
This has resulted in China struggling to keep the PLA's equipment updated,
especially in comparison to neighbors such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and
even India, which this year built its first nuclear-powered submarine in
collaboration with several Western suppliers.
All the same, China is the world's leading weapons importer, according to the
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), with more than 90% of
its foreign purchases coming from Russia. In terms of investment per infantry
unit, the Chinese military muscle is much lower than other top countries
because the PLA is the biggest army in the world, with 2.3 million soldiers.
Even this is down from the six million in service 25 years ago.
Former US intelligence officer Dennis J Blasko writes in his 2006 book The
Chinese Army Today that most of the imports go to the navy and the air
force, while "the vast majority of equipment in the PLA ground forces is
produced by the Chinese defense industries. Much of the ground forces' weaponry
is based on Soviet designs of the 1950s and 1960s, which have been modified and
upgraded for contemporary use."
The US government is firmly committed to the weapons embargo, while this is not
the case in the EU. SIPRI notes that in 2008, French contractors sold China
US$72 million in military equipment, 4% of total French military exports. The
United Kingdom sold $30 million and Germany $5 million.
Gudrun Wacker, a China expert at the German Institute for International and
Security Affairs, says such sales are possible because "the embargo is not
legally binding. Especially, the UK and France declared in the 1990s that they
have their own interpretation of the embargo."
The exports are "mainly engines for helicopters or radars, but no platforms and
no 'lethal weapons'," says Wacker. She believes that a priority for the PLA is
to improve its professionalism. One of the weakest points of the PLA is a lack
of combat experience. The country's last major conflict was in 1978, when China
failed to invade Vietnam after the latter occupied Cambodia with the blessing
of the Soviet Union. "The lack of experience is one of the reasons why China is
doing more and more military exercises, including with other countries," said
Wacker.
In his book, Blasko recounts that ancient war treatises are important for the
PLA. "These ancient and modern texts provide the PLA with a military heritage
that is imprinted on soldiers before they enter the service through their
social roots and then throughout their professional military education
experience." The aim of the Communist Party is to modernize the PLA in a way
that will combine this ancient knowledge with high-technology resources.
Li Shaoting, the commanding officer of the Third Guard Division, insisted that
the PLA had nothing to envy in the US or any other big power in terms of the
quality of light weapons and the skills of the infantry. The times when China
went to war with millions of soldiers to compensate for a lack of military
technology were over, he said.
Li quoted from the Defense White Book released by the government in 2008, which
introduced the mantra of a "new PLA". "The priority is a technological
revolution, to move from mechanization to informationalization." This evolution
is first to be achieved in the navy and the air force; it is imperative that
China can control sea trade lanes and gain air superiority.
Ten years ago, the 50th anniversary parade was used to indicate the direction
in which the PLA was heading and which military areas required significant
investments. Foreign governments and defense corporations will be paying close
attention to Thursday's parade for the same reason.
Defense Minister Liang recently told Xinhua that China had drawn up a
three-step development strategy to modernize its military by 2050. According to
the blueprint, the army will give priority to nationwide mobility, instead of
regional defense. The navy will develop strong coastal defense capabilities, as
well as means to fight further out to sea. The air force will be upgraded from
mere territorial defense to a combination of offense and defense. And finally,
China's missile systems will be used for both conventional and nuclear
launches.
While reviewing the troops on Thursday, President Hu shouted through a
microphone, "Greetings, comrades" and "Comrades, you are working hard." The
soldiers barked back in unison, "Greetings, leader" and "We serve the people".
Clearly, Beijing has decided that the troops will have the best possible arms
and equipment to do their job.
Cristian Segura is Beijing correspondent of the Spanish daily newspaper
AVUI. Wu Zhong is China Editor of Asia Times Online.
(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about
sales, syndication and
republishing.)
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