U.S. Attitude Shifts as China’s Military Improves
By WILLIAM MATTHEWS, Defense News, July 11th, 2005
In 1991, U.S. precision weapons, night vision, stealth and other technologies dazzled the world by obliterating the Iraqi Army in four days. Among those most profoundly impressed by the U.S. accomplishment was China.
Awed by the power of U.S. technology, the Chinese military launched a sustained effort to modernize and reorganize its military, said David Finkelstein, an Asia expert at the Center for Naval Analysis.
A decade and a half later, it’s Americans who are beginning to be awed by what China has achieved.
The Chinese military has acquired an assortment of new weapons: Russian submarines and jet fighters, destroyers with state-of-the-art phased-array radar, airborne early warning aircraft, cruise missiles and wake-homing torpedoes, among others.
Stressing quality over quantity, China has cut the size of its military, yet increased its capability, Finkelstein said. It has developed new command-and-control doctrines and new standards for training troops.
Chinese military leaders “know what’s broken and what has to be fixed to make themselves a more capable, professional institution,” Finkelstein said July 7 during a discussion on the Chinese military at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank.
China’s Ultimate Goal?
The question for the U.S. military is: What does China plan to do with its improving military power?
For U.S. military planners, who are conducting the Defense Department’s Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), Finkelstein said,”it would be prudent to assume” that China will continue to improve its military.
But it would be a mistake to assume that China inevitably harbors hostile intent toward the United States, he said.
That seems to be the assumption President George W. Bush and his administration are making, another expert said.
As recently as December, former Secretary of State Colin Powell referred to the U.S. relationship with China as the best in 30 years. But since then, there has been a noticeable shift in the way top administration officials discuss China, said John Tkacik, a research fellow in China policy at the Heritage Foundation.
In June, for example, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld questioned continued increases in Chinese military spending.
“Since no nation threatens China, one must wonder: Why this growing investment?” Rumsfeld said.
Finkelstein contends that China perceives that it has legitimate defense needs. China fears Japan, wants to protect the access of its burgeoning industries to shipping lanes, and has reasons to worry about the aspirations of Asian neighbors such as India.
Tkacik offers this answer: China is preparing for a major war over Taiwan.
The U.S. military should pay attention to China’s military advances, said Daniel Gouré, vice president of the Lexington Institute, a defense research center in Arlington, Va. “There aren’t many uses for these advanced weapons except against an equally large and capable foe,” he said
Gouré cautioned against those who have advised that the QDR focus on the war against terrorism. China and its role as a rising world power are at least as important as the war on terrorism, he said.
The forces needed to check the military power that China may become are substantially different from those optimized for the global war on terrorism.
Among the U.S. capabilities that have a clear impression on China is the ability “to go downtown,” Gouré said. China is pursuing defenses against the capabilities that enabled the United States to strike with impunity in Belgrade and Baghdad, he said.
If the Chinese succeed, the United States will be unable to operate aircraft other than stealth planes anywhere near China, Gouré said.
For the U.S. military, that creates a clear role for planes like the F/A-22, the B-2 bomber and a B-2 follow-on, he said. It also could increase the requirement for electronic warfare capabilities and very high-speed or hypersonic strike aircraft, he said.
In response to the Chinese military buildup, Gouré said U.S. planners conducting the QDR should give consideration to:
• Maintaining a strong nuclear attack submarine fleet. Talk of reducing the fleet raises questions about how the Navy would maintain an adequate undersea presence in Asia.
• Equipping aircraft carriers with better early warning aircraft, long-range unmanned aerial vehicles and stealthy F-35 fighters.
• Keeping ship-based ballistic missile defenses in the region.
“And we need a ground force capable of taking the war to China if that becomes necessary,” he said. It may not be necessary — or possible — to march the U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Division into Beijing, Gouré said. But U.S. military planners should consider “putting U.S. troops on Chinese soil in ways that are persuasive.”
There’s another threat the United States has yet to address: cyber defense.
“There’s a lot of talk these days about the terrorist cyber threat. That pales in comparison” to the ability of countries like China “to put 10,000 or 20,000 trained people on the hacking circuit if they want to do so,” he said. That “is something you simply cannot ignore.”
If all that sounds daunting to the United States, it may be more daunting to the Chinese, according to Finkelstein.
China’s military modernization is occurring amid extraordinary economic growth, modernization and change in its society. In recent weeks, for example, riots have erupted among farmers over land disputes, students over rising university fees and peasants over the growing gap between rich and poor.
For Chinese government officials, “the biggest problems lie not beyond the water’s edge, but right at their doorstep,” Finkelstein said.
“The big story is about whether the Chinese Communist Party will succeed or fail in managing the rise of China at home,” he said. •
Thanks for the ping!