January 27, 2000	atimes.com

China ANALYSIS: The China-Taiwan military balance PART FOUR Why the "China threat" looms larger than life China's export-dependent economy and rapid demilitarization since the 1970s bode well for continued peace in Asia, despite occasional resort to hollow saber rattling. The sweeping economic reforms promulgated since Deng rise to power have transformed China into one of the world's fastest-growing economies. Contrary to the assumptions of most western observers, this growth has actually eroded rather than expanded China's military potential. China military-industrial complex depended on a Stalinist-style command economy to secure the resources it needed for arms production. Deng reforms have undermined that command economy and starved the military sector of resources, including skilled personnel. If reform trends continue, the decline of China's capacity for arms production will also continue. Some arms production capacity will survive, but far less than what is needed to maintain the PLA at anything like its current size. Nor will modernization of the civilian economy increase China's self-sufficiency in military technology. If anything, China will probably need to increase its reliance on imported arms technology to equip the minority of its forces that it can afford to modernize. Foreign exchange constraints on imported technology will, however, severely limit modernization. Given the existing and likely future military balance, any threats or use of force against Taiwan are likely to be counterproductive to the goal of national reunification, since China is unable to defeat Taiwan without massive use of nuclear weapons, and use of nuclear weapons would almost certainly provoke US military intervention and destruction beyond any imaginable political gain. Indecisive use of military force is unlikely to win sympathy in Taiwan for rule from Beijing, but merely alienate the people (or at least the armed forces) of Taiwan and harden their resolve to resist. Since no military means exist for China to hasten reunification of China and Taiwan, progress in relations can only come from peaceful negotiations based on mutual interest. If my analysis is correct, why are many Americans still rather fearful and pessimistic about the prospects for in Asia? I think there are two major reasons: First, many Americans still hold an image of China as the communist country where tanks attack peaceful protesters. The television imagery of Tiananmen endures. The Chinese government tends to perpetuate violent images by bellicose actions, such as the missile tests near Taiwan in 1996. Second, Americans have generally been offered an exaggerated picture of "China as emerging superpower," in part because of the corporate self-interest of those who want to sustain high military spending. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, it seems that too many US international relations commentators and military pundits cannot bear the good news. The outbreak of peace is intolerable to those who continually prophesy war and security dilemmas. The precipitous decline of the once mighty Soviet armed forces has left the US military establishment without an obvious enemy to justify its own massive expenditure of social resources. During the late 1980s there was a silly attempt to reinvent Japan as a potential military rival of the US. Iraq invasion of Kuwait and North Korea's saber rattling appeared to raise the specter of middling "rogue states" as the emerging threat in the post-Cold-War world, but the easy defeat of Iraq and the economic collapse of North Korea belay such fears. Now the primary effort of the theorists of perpetual war is directed toward imagining China as an emerging superpower and potential military rival of the US. Most of the theorists who contend that China is an emerging superpower rest their arguments on the simple fact of China huge population and rapid economic growth, which suggest that China might become the world's richest country some time in the first half of the 21st century. Even if China does eventually surpass the US in total output, it will still not be an autonomous military superpower on the order of the contending blocs in the Cold War. It will either be firmly integrated into an internationalist world business empire (which is probably a necessary condition for China to achieve such wealth), and therefore merely a constituent in a vast Kantian ?one of peace," or (less likely) it will be isolated from the global alliance of trading nations. Such isolation would only insure China relative decline, as it insured the relative decline of the Soviet bloc since the triumph of business internationalism in World War II. The debates about the significance of China rapid emergence as a major trading nation have been heavily influenced by so-called "realist" theories of international relations that conceptualize individual states as the only important centers of power and interest in the international system. This is particularly backward looking in a world in which the powers of governments are everywhere under assault and almost everywhere in decline. Today more than ever, relations across national boundaries are organized by business, not by governments. Most governments, with their remaining powers, are in fact doing their utmost to advance the liberal interests of business internationalism. With the worldwide collapse of socialism, the exceptions to this general rule are rapidly dwindling. Realists can only argue about the powers of states, e.g., whether US hegemony is declining, whether Japan is the new rising power . . . or China, but what they do not grasp is that the real global hegemon is internationalist business -- and it is still expanding its power. Within the vast sphere of this internationalist hegemony, peaceful relations are the norm: even threats of war are rare, and war itself is virtually inconceivable. However, even if we adopt a realist perspective, the relative military power of the US (the foremost gendarme of business internationalism) is greater than ever before and greater than any other power in world history. On the other hand, China military power is weak and declining relative both to that of its Asian neighbors and to US power. There are two main reasons why many analysts (realists and non-realists alike) fail to perceive these trends, because they: 1) equate long-run military power with economic output (measured by GDP)[22] and 2) often fail to remember that power is relative. This second error is common in analyses of Chinese military modernization despite the fact that all versions of realist theory emphasize the relativity of power. A surprising number of studies talk as if China's procurement of increasingly modern weapons automatically translates into increased military power without bothering to note that other armed forces in the region are also continually modernizing, and in relative terms, China continues to fall further behind. Furthermore, relative to the US, it must be remembered that the massive armed forces the US accumulated during the Cold War were dedicated principally to confronting the Soviet bloc. A major reason that the US had to limit its war with China over Korea (1950-53), for example, was the fear of diverting too much force away from the more formidable Soviet foe. Yet now, since the Soviet bloc has collapsed, the US and its allies have huge redundant military establishments, as Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic belatedly learned. Even if the US makes substantial military cuts in the coming years, that will not erase the enormous gain to America relative power resulting from the disappearance of the Soviet threat. While the decline of Russian military power also may have eased China concerns about its northern border, Russia remaining armed forces are still powerful, and are no longer mostly pinned down along a hostile border with NATO, so China relative gain from the collapse of Soviet power is less than that of the US and its allies, especially since the US has no other potential adversaries, whereas China is surrounded by them. US public statements regarding China have often tended to exaggerate the threat, though they have become more moderate in recent years since President Clinton visit to China. The US should deal with China with confidence, not with fear. In two decades since relations were normalized, China has gradually liberalized its economy, becoming an outward-looking commercial society with many interests in common with the US. During this period, China has demilitarized to a much greater extent than has the US. If China is to be a superpower, it seems destined to be an economic one more like Japan rather than a military superpower like the USSR was. Although the US might be strong enough to bully China, we should resist that temptation, because in the long run - like the pressure against Weimar Germany in the 1920s? - bullying could divert China from its current hopeful path toward a more suspicious and hostile relationship with the outside world. Notes [1] I agree with Shaoguang Wang's ("China's Defense Expenditure," manuscript, 1995) more conservative estimate of Chinese military spending that place it at about 2.5% of GDP, rather than the higher estimates of the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) in London, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), CIA, or US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, which estimate it at up to double that percentage. The precipitous drop in Chinese arms procurement is more consistent with Wang's figures. If the higher figure were accepted, it would have to reflect higher income of soldiers (including from non-military business ventures) rather than higher spending on arms or research. [2] Spending increased briefly during 1980-81 in response to the threat perceived from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the costly 1979 border war with Vietnam. [3] Eric Arnett, "Military Technology: The Case of China," in SIPRI Yearbook 1995: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security, 362; and Jean-Claude Berth?emy and Saadet Deger, Conversion of Military Industries in China, OECD Development Centre Studies, 1995, 43-44, 51. [4] Jane's Defense Weekly, 10 July 1996, 18. [5] For example, although China is three times larger than India, and its economy produces about twice India's output, railroad mileage in the two countries is about the same. [6] The combined US combat air forces (Air Force+Navy+Army+Marines) are larger, not to mention vastly superior in training, experience and equipment. Taking quality into account, the Chinese air forces (PLAAF+naval air force) are also quite a bit weaker than the Russian. [7] Including about 400 Q-5s, which are a Chinese-designed variant of the Soviet MiG-19. Sources disagree on the numbers. A study for the US Air Force (Kenneth W. Allen, Glenn Krumel, and Jonathan D. Pollack, China's Air Force Enters the 21st Century, RAND, 1995) gives lower total figures, assuming that fewer of the older aircraft remain in service. The figures given above are from The Military Balance, 1999-2000. The RAND study, however, assumes slightly higher figures for production of the latest fighters. [8] The RAND study cited in fn7 projects continued F-7/F-8 production of about 200 per year, but the annual accounting of The Military Balance shows no increases for years until a correction in the 1999-2000 issue revised totals upward. [9]John Wilson Lewis and Xue Litai, China's Strategic Seapower, Stanford University Press, 1994. [10] A former US Navy commander of a P-3 anti-submarine patrol plane based in Japan informed me that though his crew got lots of practice tracking Russian submarines, they rarely detected a Chinese submarine out of port. The few times when they did it was at or near the surface. He said that the Navy believes that most Chinese crews are not trusted to dive their boats deeply. [11] Bertil Lintner, "Myanmar's Chinese Connection," International Defense Review, November 1994, 23. [12] Krumel and Pollack, China's Air Force Enters the 21st Century, 20, 93. [13] IISS, Strategic Survey 1979, p. 58. [14] Occasional small-scale armed actions in Tibet and Xinjiang, for example, may presage larger troubles. Traditionally, the PLA has been quite decentralized in accord with Mao's doctrine of "people's war" and because of poor transportation. About 30 percent of the PLA combat troops are local forces organized for defense of each province. Even the main force units are subordinated to military region commanders rather than to the central headquarters in Beijing. The last reorganization, in 1985, combined military regions with low population, such as Urumqi and Kunming, with populous provinces (Shaanxi and Sichuan, respectively) so that each of the seven remaining military regions is now able to be virtually self-sufficient in personnel recruitment. Soldiers tend to spend their entire careers within their home military region. Decentralization can pose political dangers. During the Tiananmen Incident, Chinese authorities were alarmed when the Beijing garrison appeared reluctant to act against protesters. More dependable troops, including airborne troops, had to be brought in from elsewhere to crush the protests. At that time, only three airborne divisions and one naval infantry brigade recruited nationally and remained under central control. With the addition of three "national rapid-reaction" divisions, central authorities now directly control about 10 percent of the main force units. [15] Krumel and Pollack, China's Air Force Enters the 21st Century, 169-70. [16] Jon Lake, "Taiwan's Indigenous Defensive Fighter," Air International 50 (June 1996): 349. [17] Gill and Kim, China's Arms Acquisitions from Abroad, 37. [18] Taiwan's F-16A/Bs are an upgraded version superior to early versions of the F-16C/D model, which is the standard lightweight fighter in US service, complementing the heavier F-15 (Jane's All the World's Aircraft 1995-96, 569). Taiwan is the first export customer for Raytheon's advanced ALQ-184 jamming pod that can help its F-16s confuse enemy radar-guided missiles (International Defense Review, July 1994, 18). [19] Lake, "Taiwan's Indigenous Defensive Fighter," 347-56. [20] Jane's All the World's Aircraft 1995-96, 617-18. [21] The other PLAN warships have anti-ship cruise missiles, but these fly higher than ASMs and are therefore much easier to detect and destroy with conventional anti-aircraft weapons. [22] This tendency has been greatly reinforced by the popularity of Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. (James H Nolt is a senior fellow of the World Policy Institute. E-mail: noltj@newschool.edu)

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