Posted on 12/19/2001 1:38:36 PM PST by super175
Set against the impressive display of American might in Afghanistan right on China's Western borders, Beijing's expressions of indignation over the US decision to drop the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty have been muted.
''I expected much fiercer opposition,'' said Dr Jean-Pierre Cabestan, director of the French Centre for Research on Contemporary China.
Both Chinese and US analysts seem convinced no fresh crisis in Sino-American relations is brewing, even after the People's Daily described the treaty as a ''bedrock'' of global security.
China is not a signatory to the agreement, which was designed to stop the Soviet Union and America from developing the technology to shoot down nuclear missiles, yet its status as a nuclear power partly rests on the absence of such technologies.
Dr Bates Gill, of the Brookings Institution in Washington, an expert on Chinese military strategy, thinks China's leaders had as early as March accepted the inevitability of the American deployment of a National Missile Defence (NMD), leading their rhetoric to be relatively mild.
''Beijing realised this was going through and there was nothing China could do about it,'' he said. ''Vocal opposition would make matters worse and it was better to seek dialogue.''
The People's Daily on Tuesday published an analysis which warned that US President George W. Bush had precipitated a new and costly arms race. But Chinese experts dismissed this as unlikely.
''China will not get into an arms race,'' said Dr Zhao Kejin, of the American Affairs Research Centre at Fudan University, in Shanghai.
Instead, analysts suspect Chinese military thinkers are busy putting forward responses to the way American technology, of all kinds, is changing the future of warfare.
''This will affect the quality and quantity of their nuclear modernisation. It will help the Chinese determine where they need to go,'' Dr Gill said.
''If the United States builds a shield, China loses its second strike capability. Russia has a lot of missiles, China doesn't, so that's why it is against NMD,'' said Professor Guo Xiangang, of the China International Relations Research Institute. ''But China wants to develop its economy.''
Dr Gill and others think China would have expanded its missile strike forces whether or not the US built an arms shield.
China has about 20 intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of hitting the US after suffering a first strike. These are moved around on mobile missile launchers to prevent them from being targeted in the first strike. China's deployment of extra missiles has been slow and analysts say it seems more concerned with developing better kinds of missiles.
''But I think they will move into a higher gear now,'' predicted one American analyst.
Dr Cabestan said: ''I think the critical thing is that China is being given guarantees that it can keep a second strike capability.''
With the two sides resuming high-level military talks on such issues, the key question is how this affects Taiwan's fate.
''Taiwan is the mission of the Chinese military,'' said Dr Gill. The chief aim of China's military modernisation was not achieving parity with the US but developing the capacity to launch a successful invasion, he said.
China may be reassured by the fact that while the US is abandoning the treaty, it appears to be cutting back the scale of its NMD ambitions.
Experts also noted that under the arms package which President Bush offered Taiwan earlier this year, he omitted the third and latest update of the Patriot missile defence system and the Aegis naval system, both of which serve as limited-theatre missile defence systems.
''They want to keep it as a bargaining chip. They want China to freeze its missile build-up,'' Dr Cabestan said.
Taiwan also repeated that it was building its own missile defence system so it did not have to rely on the US.
China knows it cannot win just by firing missiles against Taiwan. Taipei also knows that with such a defence system, it cannot be sure of defending itself.
''It will be a big psychological boost for Taiwan if they can make it work for themselves, though,'' Dr Cabestan said.
Besides, the US is suspected to be busy in the background helping Taiwan's missile defence research and development efforts.
Dr Zhao is confident NMD will change nothing. ''We still have the ability to take Taiwan by force,'' he said.
Most analysts are doubtful. The bombing of Afghanistan, and before that, of Yugoslavia, during the Kosovo campaign convincingly demonstrated that the gap between the US and China is widening, not narrowing.
''People will be worried. This is bound to stir up a debate in Chinese military circles,'' said an American military expert.
Overall the Chinese military now looks not 20 years but 50 years behind the US, although some Chinese elite troops may be keeping pace with changes. The Gulf War prompted a major re-think of Chinese military modernisation. Priorities may have to be adjusted again. This could happen. Chinese television programmes have been showing how bombs guided by lasers relying on geo-positioning systems (GPS) work.
Reporting has sometimes verged on admiration and astonishment as it did initially after the swift victories during the Gulf War. ''Control of the air space is very important in modern war. Whoever lacks the capacity to control the air will lose. This is the lesson from all the wars conducted by the Americans in the past decade,'' wrote Jiang Guoning in Guangzhou newspaper Southern Weekend.
China has tried to channel spending into modernising its air force and navy, but may now have to give greater attention to boosting its communications and intelligence capabilities.
The PLA still lacks a command system suitable for modern warfare that would allow it to co-ordinate different forces quickly on any battlefield.
''They need a lot of basic stuff like satellites for better reconnaissance,'' Dr Gill said.
The PLA needs to undertake a lot of fundamental development steps before it can use GPS targeting systems, say experts.
''One example is they must digitalise the Earth's surface, to create maps to use this technology,'' said a US military expert.
The emphasis on high technology does not impress some Chinese. ''The Americans believe that hi-tech can help it dominate the world, and solve all its problems. That is also the thinking behind the NMD,'' said Dr Zhao.
''But the United States cannot solve all its challenges with hi-tech.''
Despite such scepticism, the speed at which the US assembled and deployed a hi-tech force in one of the world's most remote and rugged war zones did come as a surprise.
It could challenge the Chinese military to switch reliance on huge numbers of slow-moving and heavy forces towards expanding the units of small mobile rapid-reaction forces first set up in the wake of the Gulf War.
Jasper Becker is the Post's Beijing bureau chief.
We just need to help Taiwan help herself as much as possible.
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