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	November 30, 1999	atimes.com

China

THE MIDDLE KINGDOM: 'Our own efforts'
By Bradley Martin

In the surge of reporting from China about new, high-tech gizmos with which to subdue the recalcitrant Taiwan regime and achieve Beijing's destiny as a global military power, an interesting sub-theme is the need for weapons self-sufficiency.

It might have been easy to miss in a long-winded speech by President Jiang Zemin, in his capacity as chairman of the Central Military Commission, to the All-Army Conference of Chiefs of Staff on November 12. But plow through Xinhua's summary (for domestic consumption) of the speech, past the part about a military strategy ''based on winning wars fought with modern technology'', and there it is. ''As in the past when we developed the 'two bombs and one satellite','' Jiang said, ''we must carry forward the spirit of relying on our own efforts.''

And why is that important? Jiang didn't say, on that occasion. But the long and important October 27 article by Zhang Zuqian in Hong Kong's mainland-owned Ta Kung Pao, ''National Defense Modernization and the Taiwan Question'', which we cited in an earlier column, explains the reasons in detail.

''In recent years, our country has imported some armaments from Russia, such as SU-27 fighter aircraft and Kilo-class submarines,'' writes Zhang. That's all well and good to the extent such imports add to Beijing's weight in the cross-strait balance of power, Zhang says. ''However we should not overestimate the effect'' - for two reasons. One reason is pretty obvious: ''Because of consideration of its own interest and suspicions of China, Russia would not sell the most advanced weapons to our country.''

The other reason may be slightly less obvious. ''In order not to damage its relations with the West, especially the United States, in relation to arms sales to our country, Russia has provided the United States with detailed information on the weapons with each sale,'' Zhang alleges. And Japan - which is engaged in its own military buildup while sniffing annoyingly around the Taiwan issue - is importing some SU-27s for use as target practice. Zhang assumes that if a cross-strait war broke out, Taiwan, thanks to its friends, would be in possession of enough information on the Russian-made weapons to greatly reduce their effectiveness.

Zhang tellingly cites the 1982 Malvinas Islands war. Argentina's air force used a French-made Exocet missile to sink a British destroyer, he notes - but then the French gave the British helpful information on the missile and in further firings it proved to be far less deadly. The lesson, to Zhang, is obvious: ''Therefore, in our military struggle against the Taiwan authorities, we must rely on advanced weapons that we have developed independently.''

But wasn't it an arms race that brought down the Soviet Union? No, says Zhang, that was a minor factor. The real problem for Moscow was ''an unsound system'', one that constrained productive forces and undermined popular support for the regime. In China's case, ''the acceleration of the modernization of national defense, if handled well, will definitely advance our country's scientific and technological development'' - and will even help in the reform of state-owned enterprises and in economic development generally.

For examples of arms development as ''a force propelling economic development'', Zhang cites the United States, of course. And then there's France, which, with a population of only 57 million, has ''a system that is capable of developing and producing all kinds of advanced weapons, including nuclear weapons and aircraft carriers''. China, for its part, has 1.2 billion people and a 3-million member military. ''Why can we not ultimately build a system of military scientific research and arms industry several times or even 10 times as large as the French system?''

That's something to think about when we read claims such as one from China's Press Digest, quoted by Reuters on November 19, that said the country had developed an anti-missile defense system - including a recently test-fired surface-to-air missile with capability of ''simultaneously meeting several enemy missiles head-on'', and a mobile surface-to-air missile equipped to counter Taiwan's electronic jamming. While foreign diplomats quoted by Reuters were skeptical that Beijing's capability had advanced so far, there's no doubt that this is the sort of thing China wants to achieve in weapons development - and on its own, thank you.

(Special to Asia Times Online)

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