US Puzzles Over China's Military Might

[Ryan Ruck]

US Puzzles Over China's Military Might

For slightly more than 100 years up to World War II, the American government continued to develop plans based on the possibility of conflict with the United Kingdom. Looking back at what now seems to be an historical oddity is useful when attempting to characterize the complicated nexus that exists between the competing agendas of US and Chinese military policies.

The trajectory and overlap between planning for a particular contingency and partnership designed to avoid confrontation is never linear in matters of statecraft, and it should be of no surprise that the US military community is wrestling with an accurate portrayal of China's role in relation to both regional and global activity. If any particular aspect to this debate is most important to understand, it is this: simply because the US is currently re-evaluating its plans for how to manage a US-China military confrontation does not mean any such event is inevitable.

When the US Department of Defense (DoD) released the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Report (QDR), it identified four primary challenges to US national security: irregular warfare, catastrophic attacks, traditional war and disruptive attacks. While other developed countries friendly to the US conceptually have most, if not all, of these capabilities, China remains both the only country in the world whose political fealty to the principles that guide the US can be questioned and the only country that can field operational capabilities in three out of the four QDR areas.

Recent analysis and reports from the DoD and the US-China Economics and Security Review Commission (USCC) have suggested that the fourth area - irregular warfare - might be an area where China's export policies may be playing a facilitating role for countries or groups eager to develop such capabilities. Consequently, two primary sensitivities guide much of the DoD analysis of China's military policy: how China's military exports migrate to rogue nations and non-state actors, and how a fully modernized People's Liberation Army (PLA)negates the ability of the US to project its own foreign-policy agendas.

If the word "inevitable" can be used wisely anywhere in this discussion, it is likely to be in the realm characterizing how the PLA views American concerns. The fears on the part of the US are likely considered largely "inevitable" on the part of the PLA if China's military is to modernize. In short, US fears are considered a calculated risk for China to do what it believes it must for its own national interest.

Since the first Gulf War in 1991, the Chinese military has been painfully aware of its need to modernize. The level of technological sophistication exhibited by US forces was a moment of truth for the PLA; no longer could its leaders continue to overlook the antiquated theory and weapons' platforms that their meager war colleges and military-industrial complex produced. This realization was the spark behind China's military modernization efforts, the results of which are now obvious to all.

Understanding the extent of China's military capabilities should be the easiest part of this riddle to decipher; however, from time to time the demonstration of new capabilities on the part of China raises the question of how much the US actually knows about the hard assets of the PLA. As increasingly limited resources are diverted away from competing national-security threats and allocated toward fighting terrorism, it is likely that the US will continue to be surprised as China demonstrates new military capabilities. Witness the recent shooting down of an orbiting satellite.

China's desire to have an anti-satellite (ASAT) capability should not have caught anyone paying attention to the PLA's stated objectives by surprise. The capability itself had been debated within China at least as far back as 1994, in an article in Modern Defense Technology, Issue No 2, titled "Miniaturization and Intellectualization of Kinetic Kill Vehicle". A number of Chinese military analysts had already argued that the role of ASAT technology was critical to China's national security.

As one example, Wang Cheng, in a July 5, 2000, article from Liawang (Outlook), Volume 27, called "The US Military's 'Soft Ribs', A Strategic Weakness", said: "For countries that can never win a war with the US by using the method of tanks and planes, attacking the US space system may be an irresistible and most tempting choice."

Adding to the notion that Washington is badly preoccupied with events in the Middle East and not properly working to understand China's military intentions is Northern Command's tentative suggestion that the now-destroyed Chinese satellite FY-1C was actually the target of three previous tests dating to October 26, 2005, (the other two tests are believed to have taken place on April 20, 2006 and November 30, 2006).

If this proves to be accurate, it would suggest that the truncated communication linkage to be troubled about is not only between President Hu Jintao and the PLA, but the US intelligence community and the current Bush administration. Fortunately, portions of the DoD and policy institutions outside the government are diligently at work seeking to understand not only the extent of China's military capabilities, but the intentions that guide the PLA.
The questions of intent and transparency were very much present at last week's USCC meeting and this week's Carnegie Endowment debate in Washington, "The Implications of China's Military Modernization." USCC commissioner and participant at the Carnegie debate, Larry Wortzel, asked whether or not the PLA understanding of established international military protocols is matched by its technological aptitude.

The ASAT test is a good example of this concern. Since several Chinese defense analysts have posited that no country should be able to use surveillance satellites to look into China, the recent demonstration of ASAT capabilities has the appearance of flexing this particular doctrinal muscle. To shoot down another country's spy satellites can be considered an act of war, much like sinking a neutral ship at sea. Should China do more than demonstrate its capabilities on its own defunct orbiter, the stakes of US-China military engagement would be fundamentally heightened.

As China's development continues, its technological capabilities will need to be weighed against how far it has internalized and how much it understands the accepted standards of international statecraft. As long as any disparity between these two areas exists, it will be very important for China to make an extra effort to offer transparency in its actions and clarity in its intent. Similarly, efforts on the part of the US to understand China's policy must look beyond quantitative pieces of analysis like the QDR and delve more deeply into questions of the cultural, historical and political context within which China operates.

Fellow Carnegie debate participant, David Finkelstein, suggested that a proper understanding of how China views threats to its littoral is essential to properly framing the context of China's military modernization. As Finkelstein argued, the concentration of China's wealth, its technological infrastructure and much of its national pride, is located along the country's eastern seaboard. Having an appreciation of the conflicts that China has faced along this region over the past 100 years is essential if we are to understand what China views as necessary for its own national security.

This realization does help contextualize the debate, but it still leaves several questions unanswered, primarily what happens when the Chinese navy and air force develop the capability to effectively neutralize their forward deployed US equivalents? Obviously, such neutralization does not make necessary an ejection of US forces from the Asia-Pacific region; however, it does play a critical role in how strident a position the US can take on the Taiwan question.

The ever-present factor in US-China military policy is whether the question of Taiwan's future can be resolved without sparking a conflict between the US and the PLA. Because the PLA's modernization is considered inevitable, the US has a series of choices it must make: should it continue to maintain the operational delta (difference in capabilities) between the US and PLA militaries, hoping that the gap will always deter China from a force-based engagement with the US? Given the amount of investment going into anti-terrorism capabilities, is maintaining the necessary delta even possible? At the moment, the US government's position is to maintain all of its existing commitments, which by necessity requires that its position on Taiwan also not change.

The dueling realities of the PLA's modernization and the US commitment to Taiwan make the potential for miscalculation of paramount concern. As both Finkelstein and Wortzel agreed, this remains the primary challenge going forward. Because the US will continue to project itself in the Pacific Ocean, and the South China Sea, it is likely that ongoing skirmishes between the two naval and aviation forces, such as occurred in 2001, are likely to continue. If these skirmishes get out of hand, they could lead to an escalation on a par with the feared scenario of a PLA strike against Taiwan. As a result, ongoing dialogue between the two military forces and establishing lines of communication between the two at the appropriate level in the chain of command remain critical.

Globalization complicates, and perhaps constructively so, the whole question of how to respond to China's military modernization. Whether through sales of national defense capabilities to China by Russian and EU nations, or the inevitable migration of US dual-use technologies into the Chinese military-industrial complex, China would not have been able to so rapidly modernize were it not for the "flat" world we currently inhabit. But China also provides circuit boards to the only US manufacturer of sonobuoy technology, Sparton Corporation, for anti-submarine detection by the US Navy, further demonstrating the extent to which China has genuinely become the world's factory floor regardless of end-product.

This type of intersection and the overlap between competing military and economic agendas is an important distinction between Cold War thinking and today's US-China reality; however, it remains to be seen whether differences between the two results in a more interwoven world, or simply a world which manages to evolve new paradigms for confrontation, escalation and misunderstanding.

[Ryan Ruck]

Gen. Pace: China Missile Test 'Confusing'

China's anti-satellite missile test in January sent a confusing message to the world about its military plans, the United States' top military officer said on Friday, urging Beijing to be more open.

Marine General Peter Pace, chairman of the U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the United States would like to observe more Chinese exercises and suggested a hot line between the two militaries could be useful.

China shot down an aging weather satellite on January 11, but waited more than a week before officially confirming it. The government denies the test could stoke an arms race in space, and repeated that it opposes using weapons in space.

Pace said he told his Chinese counterparts it was essential that China let the world know its military intentions.

"I used the example of the anti-satellite test as how sometimes the international community can be confused, because it was a surprise, and it wasn't clear what their intent was," he told a news conference during his first visit to China.

"And when things are not clear, and there are surprises, then it tends to confuse people and raise suspicions," Pace added.

"You don't have to agree or disagree with any particular country's objective, but it's very helpful to understand what those objectives are and why they're going in that direction," said Pace, who leaves China on Sunday.

But he said the Chinese had given him no further details on the test, nor had they said what their intention was in carrying it out.

Analysts say China could use its ability to down satellites to counter any spy satellite support that Washington might offer Taiwan if war were to break out between the self-ruled island and the mainland.

China has claimed sovereignty over Taiwan since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949. Beijing has vowed to bring the self-governed democracy of 23 million people back under mainland rule, by force if necessary.

The United States switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979, recognizing "one China", but is Taiwan's main arms supplier and is obliged by the Taiwan Relations Act to help the island defend itself.

Pace also said it was important Beijing provided more information on its military budget, which will rise 17.8 percent this year to almost $45 billion.

It was important to know "not only how much of a nation's resources are being put into the budget, but what is that money buying? What is the intent of that buying?", said the Vietnam War veteran.

Pace, who described his talks with Defense Minister Cao Gangchuan and other Chinese officials as friendly and candid, said setting up a hot line to avoid misunderstandings would be a good step forward, as would doing officer exchanges.

"The biggest fear I have of the future is miscalculation, misunderstanding based on misinformation," he said.

On Taiwan, a major irritant in Sino-U.S. ties, the general said he repeated the official U.S. line to the Chinese, which is that Washington does not support the island's independence.

Pace said he did not believe war over Taiwan was inevitable.

"I believe that there are good-faith efforts amongst all the leadership to prevent that, and that's what we can focus on - not how to fight each other, but how to prevent military action," he said.