Before Deng Xiaoping came to power in the late 1970s, the PLA—as all the branches of China’s military are collectively called—was a huge force of 4 million officers and troops, whose fighting experience was limited to land warfare within and in close proximity to China’s borders. Its leadership consisted of aging revolutionaries, many of whose fighting credentials dated back to the 1940s or earlier. Its soldiers were drawn mainly from the rural countryside. Many were illiterate. The forces used antiquated weaponry, primitive logistics, and rudimentary communications. The air and naval components were small and backward. The most modern arm was a small nuclear-equipped missile force. Deng Xiaoping summarized the PLA’s problems as “bloating, laxity, conceit, extravagance, and inertia.”1
Changes in the security environment required changes in the military. When Deng came to power, the opening to the U.S. had alleviated but not removed the Soviet threat; the U.S. was still arming Taiwan, confronting North Korea, and promoting the growth of Japanese military power; and competition was heating up with China’s neighbors over control of island groups in the South China Sea. Moreover, the early success of Deng’s economic-reform program made China increasingly dependent on the security of far-flung sea lanes to carry resources into the country and send manufactured goods to markets abroad. Even as new military missions took shape, other militaries in the region were modernizing. The PLA needed new capabilities just to keep up.
Even so, Deng gave priority to economic rather than military reform in the first decade of his rule. He told his generals that military modernization required money and technology that could be provided only by economic growth. But even in this first phase he pushed the military to make changes. In the first years of the PRC and again during the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s, the armed forces had been closely involved in all aspects of the economy, with soldiers growing food and officers running local government and managing factories. Deng began to move the military out of the economy and civilian governance, as well as reduce military manpower. He initiated a retirement system for officers, began to restore the system of professional military education, and reshaped PLA doctrine away from the outdated concept of “People’s War” to a new concept of “local war under modern conditions,” which pointed to the need to confront neighboring armies in geographically limited but technically demanding conflicts.
That these efforts were not enough was driven home by a series of strategic shocks starting in 1989. The Tiananmen incident in that year and the collapse of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in 1990–1991 highlighted the need to improve the capabilities of the domestic security and paramilitary services and to cement the military’s political loyalty to the regime. The stunning victory of the U.S.-led coalition forces over the Iraqi military in the Gulf War in 1990–1991, broadcast on global television, awakened the Chinese generals to the existence of a new technological horizon in warfare: the Americans’ Revolution in Military Affairs. The revolution centered on the use of information technology to coordinate large, complex operations and to deliver violence with precision, capabilities far beyond the PLA’s reach at that time. In 1995–1996, the U.S. surprised China by dispatching two aircraft carrier strike groups to the vicinity of the Taiwan Strait (chapter 9), which led the Chinese to conclude that they needed a real military option—not just an empty threat—to solve the Taiwan problem in case their political–economic strategy failed and that the military option would have to include the ability to deter or defeat an American intervention. The U.S. deployment helped China’s naval strategists argue that the nation faced an important new strategic frontier at sea and would have to expand its maritime forces to achieve security.2
MILITARY REFORM AND RESTRUCTURING
In response to these shocks, Deng launched a more expensive and arduous second phase of military modernization, which his successors continued to pursue after his death. It involved every element of military organization from doctrine to weaponry.
REVISING DOCTRINE
Military doctrine tells an army what kinds of war it should prepare to fight and how to fight them. It starts with an appraisal of the security environment, identifies potential enemies and their capabilities, and assesses the adversary’s and one’s own strong and weak points. The most authoritative articulations of PLA doctrine are found in documents issued by the CMC. The most important of these documents are the Military Strategic Guidelines (MSG, Junshi zhanlue fangzhen). Amendments and new MSGs are promulgated infrequently, usually only when major changes in the security environment or nature of warfare demand it. In the Mao period, the generals were told to prepare either for an invasion by the U.S. or the Soviet Union or both or for a nuclear conflagration between the two superpowers that would inflict severe collateral damage on China. An invasion would lead to a protracted war of attrition on Chinese soil, during which all of Chinese society, with the PLA at its core, would seek to wear down the invading enemy. A superpower war would also require a massive PLA, living close to the people, to wait out the nuclear holocaust so that China with its huge population could rise from the ashes.
Mao characterized these two scenarios under the common rubric of “early, major, and nuclear war.” To prepare for either eventuality, the PLA had to be large, dispersed, low tech, and politically integrated with the people. It would draw on its pre-1949 experience as a guerrilla army, sustain itself as self-sufficiently as possible without complex logistics, cultivate good relations with the masses, and stand ready to wait out and wear out the enemy. Soldiers would operate as fish among a sea of civilians. A vast rural militia, divided into three levels (ordinary, basic, and armed), would assist the guerrilla fighters and harass the enemy. The population would practice civil defense, “digging tunnels deep and storing grain everywhere.” The core idea was defense in depth (“luring the enemy deep”) to trade space for time. Mao referred to this strategy as “People’s War.” “[I]f the United States with its planes plus the A-bomb is to launch a war of aggression against China,” he said, “then China with its millet plus rifles is sure to emerge the victor.”3
Under changed strategic circumstances, Deng Xiaoping saw war as less likely and less total, but if it occurred as more technologically demanding. He said that the main world trends for the 1980s and beyond were “peace and development.” If war took place, it would not be on Chinese soil, but in a limited geographic area on China’s periphery, such as the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea or East China Sea, Vietnam, or Korea. The enemy—the U.S., Japan, or other neighbors—would command advanced technology. The war would be brief and would end not with the total destruction of one side’s forces, but with decisive blows that would deliver a psychological victory. The PLA was instructed to prepare to “fight a quick battle to force a quick resolution.”
In keeping with these ideas, the CMC in 1985 adopted a new MSG to prepare for “local war under modern conditions.” This MSG was then modified in 1993 to replace “modern conditions” with “high-technology conditions” and again in 2002 to read “local war under conditions of informatization.” In all these formulations, what was meant by “local war” (jubu zhanzheng, also translatable as “partial war” or “limited war”) was that the war would occur in a limited area, extend for a limited time period, have limited aims, and require less than full military mobilization. By “modern,” “high technology” and “informatization,” the CMC referred to the need for China to be able to contend with the U.S. and its allies with their advanced logistics, comprehensive real-time battlefield information systems, and precision weapons targeting. In this context, the CMC recast Mao’s concept of “active defense” from a tactical and operational tenet to a strategic-level principle. Rather than wait for an adversary to attack, the PLA would prepare to strike first outside its borders if necessary to prevent an impending attack or a sharp degradation of its ability to enforce territorial claims.
There was a strong chance that such a war would be fought in large part at sea, so the navy needed new capabilities to operate at significant distances from China’s coast and block interference by high-tech navies such as those of the U.S. and Japan. Chinese officers saw the key to the Revolution in Military Affairs as information technology—computers, satellites, sensing and targeting devices—that would provide instant communication among scattered military units. In this area of specialization—information operations and information warfare—their strategy focused on acquiring niche capabilities that would impede, hamper, and perhaps even defeat the U.S. military in the Taiwan Strait. The PLA aimed to disable U.S. space satellites, sabotage computer networks, and hit U.S. bases and ships in the western Pacific with ballistic missiles in order to implement what U.S. military analysts dub “anti-access” and “area denial” strategies.
In a major speech to the CMC in 2004, Hu Jintao articulated a set of four broad mission areas for the PLA, quickly dubbed the New Historic Missions. These missions were, first, “providing an important guarantee of strength for the party to consolidate its ruling position”; second, “providing a strong security guarantee for safeguarding the period of important strategic opportunity for national development”; third, “providing powerful strategic support for safeguarding national interests”; and fourth, “playing an important role in safeguarding world peace and promoting common development.”4 The speech permitted Hu to put his stamp on military doctrine and hence lay claim to the stature of his predecessors, each of whom had made contributions to the evolution of PLA strategy. His list of missions highlighted the continuing importance of First Ring security for the Chinese armed forces, the growing importance of territorial disputes in the Second Ring, the need to provide secure access to resources for China’s economic growth, and the imperative of maintaining a deterrent capability that would prevent other powers from launching a major war against China.
STREAMLINING FORCE STRUCTURE
To prepare for a new kind of war required a smaller, more educated, and better-trained PLA with expanded air and naval components. The government conducted three rounds of demobilization to reduce and upgrade the force. Between 1985 and 1996, an estimated 1.1 million troops were taken out of service. From 1996 to 2000, an estimated half a million more uniformed personnel were demobilized. The third round of cuts occurred between 2003 and 2005 and removed a further 200,000 personnel. These cuts, spread out over twenty years, reduced the size of the PLA by almost half. As of 2012, the PLA had approximately 2.25 million men and women in uniform, making it still the largest army in the world, but by a much smaller margin than previously. The government mounted a huge national effort to find jobs for the demobilized officers and troops. Many were assigned to the newly reestablished People’s Armed Police (discussed more fully later). Others were posted to specialized security units, local governments, schools, and enterprises. The task was especially challenging because the manpower reduction focused on those who were illiterate, undereducated, and underskilled and who were therefore hard to place in new jobs. But it was carried out without disruption, testimony to the regime’s organizational effectiveness.
Most of the PLA’s ground forces had previously been organized into units called “armies,” each comprising three large-scale infantry divisions, and all similarly equipped regardless of their different missions and locations. The 1980s reforms created new units called “group armies” (jituan jun) of between 30,000 and 50,000 men that are about half the size of the former armies, currently are composed typically of brigades (approximately 3,000 to 5,000 strong) rather than divisions (8,000 to 10,000), and include a more flexible mix of infantry, armor, and artillery formations. Each military region (MR) was assigned at least one rapid-reaction unit, or “fist force,” and such units were supposed to be able to reach any destination within China’s borders within forty-eight hours. The two-day window is necessary because the units usually rely on road or rail transportation; China still lacks airlift capabilities adequate to the task.
The PLA reserves were reconstituted in the 1980s and revamped in the 1990s to back up and supplement the regular PLA in time of war. There are approximately 510,000 reservists, most of whom have not served on active duty but who have technical skills needed in the force. The reserves are distinguished from the militia by a higher level of readiness and integration with the regular military. Reserve units conduct training exercises with regular PLA forces, and individual reservists are groomed to serve as replacements in regular PLA formations.
The PLA is backed up by a militia of 8 million. In the early reform period, the militia had become inactive as rural men and women focused on expanding agricultural output and engaging in sideline production for personal gain. But in the 2000s it was revived and extended to urban areas. In addition to serving as an adjunct to the regular military and reserves in wartime, the militia helps to maintain domestic order; assists in border patrol; helps guard roads, railways, and bridges; and participates in disaster relief after earthquakes, floods, and snowstorms.
Another important step in streamlining the PLA was reducing the number of MRs to seven from eleven in 1985. Fewer MRs meant fewer headquarters, which reduced bureaucratic bloating. With the demise of the Soviet Union, the three northern MRs (Beijing, Shenyang, and Jinan) saw reductions in the manpower of main-force units. Since the late 1990s, six group armies have been redistributed among the Beijing MR (crucial for political stability), the Shenyang MR (facing Korea), and the Jinan MR (facing Japan). There has been no change in the number of group armies garrisoning the Chengdu MR, which includes most of the Tibetan Autonomous Region as well as Yunnan and Sichuan provinces and faces Burma, or in the number garrisoning the Lanzhou MR, which covers the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, westernmost Tibet, and other provinces and which faces Central Asia. Nor has there been any change in the number of group armies stationed in the Nanjing and Guangzhou MRs in the south.
With the military pared down in size, ramped up in technology, and focused on more specialized skills, the government created separate formations with primary responsibility for domestic security tasks. In 1983, a paramilitary force that had gone out of existence during the Cultural Revolution, the People’s Armed Police (PAP), was reestablished with the task of controlling major outbreaks of civil disorder. Its roster eventually came to include as many as 1.5 million troops, many transferred from the PLA during the demobilization of the 1980s. In addition to riot-control forces, the PAP has units specializing in border security, firefighting, and guard duty for gold mines, forests, hydroelectric facilities, and high-level government officials. In training and equipment, the PAP stands between the more lightly armed Ministry of Public Security and the more heavily armed PLA, serving as a gendarmerie. It operates under a dual chain of command, responsible to both the CMC and the civilian State Council.
PROFESSIONALIZING PERSONNEL
At the end of the Mao era, many Chinese officers had served for decades and had little formal education and few modern military skills. Deng complained in 1980 that some of them could not even read maps. Around that time, he instituted a system of retirement ages and raised educational standards for promotion. By 2000, the percentage of PLA officers with some college education had risen from 10 percent to 75 percent. The average age of CMC members dropped from seventy-five in 1989 to sixty-three in 2003, and average ages declined by comparable amounts in the lower echelons.5
During the Cultural Revolution, some two-thirds of the PLA’s education and training establishments shut their doors. During the 1980s and 1990s, the professional military education system was restored and overhauled from the top down. At the apex were two universities. The National Defense University, modeled on its U.S. namesake, was established in 1985 in Beijing, and it came to be nicknamed the “cradle of generals.” The National Defense Science and Technology University, located in Hunan Province, was reopened in 1978 and reorganized in 1999. Below these two institutions, dozens of military academies and technical schools were reestablished. The PLA also tapped into civilian universities through an ambitious reserve-officer training program that has attracted thousands of bright young people with desirable specialties to military service. Moreover, a small but significant number of officers were allowed to expand their horizons by going abroad—some to study, others for visits as part of delegations, and others on peacekeeping and, most recently, antipiracy missions. The leadership that has emerged from this system is well educated, with a substantial engineering and armaments background and a fondness for high-tech weaponry.
In 1999, the PLA began to expand the size and role of its noncommissioned officer (NCO) corps. NCOs form the backbone of most modern militaries, playing key roles in training, disciplining, and mentoring the rank and file, thereby freeing up higher officers from most of the mundane day-to-day responsibilities of supervising enlisted personnel. PLA leaders concluded, after studying the system in the U.S. armed forces, that a strong cadre of professional and experienced NCOs is crucial for combat effectiveness in the modern era. The expansion of the NCO corps allowed the PLA’s officer corps to be downsized, with 70,000 officer billets reportedly redesignated for NCOs. At the enlisted level, China continues to rely on a conscription system, with quotas for each military district. Conscripts serve for a minimum of two years. The PLA has found it challenging to retain the best enlisted personnel beyond their conscription period.
To upgrade the skills of those in uniform and improve their ability to work together, the PLA improved training, with more realistic force-on-force and live-fire exercises. It began to conduct specialized exercises such as search and rescue, counterterrorism, and amphibious operations. It has conducted combined arms training and has also attempted joint exercises, so far with limited success.6 In the long run, seamless coordination among branches and services will be necessary for the kind of complex military operations that would be required, for example, for an attack on Taiwan. The consensus of outside observers is that standards have significantly improved but remain deficient compared to the best militaries in the region or to U.S. capabilities. Foreign military attachés invited to observe PLA exercises compliment the troops more frequently on their bravery, fitness, and drilling than on their operational skills.
The PLA also began to conduct multinational exercises with other countries. The first such exercise China undertook on foreign soil was a bilateral two-day counterterrorism exercise held in Kyrgyzstan in 2002 with approximately three hundred troops backed up by armored vehicles and helicopters. The first multinational exercise on Chinese soil was held in Xinjiang under the auspices of the SCO in 2003. It involved Chinese and Kyrgyz forces as well as Russian, Kazakh, and Tajik observers. Small-scale exercises have been conducted with the militaries of other countries, including India, Pakistan, Thailand, and the U.S. The largest and most ambitious multinational exercise to date was Peace Mission 2005, held on Chinese soil with approximately 8,000 Chinese troops and almost 2,000 Russians, including air force and marines. Such exercises have multiple purposes: they provide valuable experience to the troops, build trust with neighbors, and send a signal of determination to potential rivals.
BOOSTING THE BUDGET
Modernization meant freeing the PLA from its traditional interpenetration with the civilian economy. During the pre-1949 era, PLA soldiers had been guerilla fighters trying to live off the land without placing an undue burden on the local peasantry. Under Mao, the country’s economy was completely oriented toward national defense, and society was perpetually primed to mobilize in the event of invasion. The PLA and the militia were organically inseparable from and enmeshed in the economy, with the country on a permanent war footing. Even in the 1980s, because of budgetary stringency, in the context of economic liberalization Deng had allowed the PLA to commoditize some of its assets—such as land, airports, and personnel—so as to make money from a wide range of ventures such as factories, hotels, and transport facilities. But in the mid- and late 1990s, when the government had enough money to increase the defense budget, Deng and his successor, Jiang Zemin, forced the army to divest itself of such commercial ventures. By the end of the century, the PLA no longer had a business empire, nor did it engage directly in military production, and civilian defense industries took over the conduct of most foreign arms sales. However, military units continued to operate farms to meet their own food needs and sold some produce, with the profits going to benefit the unit.
The government compensated the army for the loss of self-generated income with an increased budgetary allotment. Under Mao, the PLA had received a relatively modest amount of money from the central government, never exceeding 17 billion renminbi or more than 25 percent of central-government expenditures in the period after the Korean War. After 1989, the military budget started to see significant annual increases. There may have been several reasons for the timing of these increases—the need to reward the military for its loyalty during the Tiananmen crisis, increasingly tense relations with Taiwan and the U.S., initial awareness of the Revolution in Military Affairs, and the greater availability of funds because the economy was growing and because changes in the tax system started to bring a larger proportion of GDP into the central government’s coffers. Starting in 1990, the officially announced defense budget has risen in double digits virtually every year, more than doubling from 1989 to 1998, more than doubling again between 1998 and 2003 and yet again between 2003 and 2008. In 2010, the defense budget officially reached 532.1 billion renminbi.7 Although these increases were much less dramatic than they appear when adjusted for inflation, they have been significant, especially since the late 1990s. The division of budget increases among the service arms is not known, but it appears from the buildup that followed that the navy got a disproportionate share, followed by the air force and the missile service, with the land forces getting a lesser share of the increase.
Real military spending is larger than the publicly budgeted amount because the defense budget does not include certain large expenditures that are found in other countries’ comparable budgets. These expenditures include foreign arms purchases, research and development, testing of weapon systems, pensions, and the costs of the reserves. In addition, the national defense budget is supplemented with funding provided by provincial and local governments in those localities where the troops are billeted, and China’s defense dollar buys more than those of other countries because of the lower price of labor and food in the Chinese economy. Most analysts consider that a more accurate estimate of total defense spending on a comparable basis to other countries’ defense budgets would be double the official figure. In 2009, for example, according to a U.S. Department of Defense estimate, the official level of the Chinese defense budget expressed in U.S. dollars was about $70 billion, and the actual total of military-related spending was about $150 billion.8
Although China’s defense spending has risen to second in the world after that of the U.S., there is still a big gap between China’s spending even at its estimated actual level and U.S. defense spending at about $690 billion in 2010. Also, China provides entirely for its own defense, whereas the U.S. military has the support of close allies such as Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan, whose own defense budgets are among the largest in the world after those of the U.S. and China. All that said, the real measure of each military’s fighting strength is the fit of its resources to the missions it has to perform.
UPGRADING WEAPONRY AND EQUIPMENT
A significant part of the budget increases went to upgrading weapons and equipment. The pattern of arms acquisitions provides insight into the evolution of Chinese strategy. Top priority has been given to building up the PLA Navy. Starting in the 1990s, China’s shipbuilding complex began to produce a dozen new classes of ocean-going vessels with advanced weapon systems, including four types of submarines, five types of guided-missile destroyers, and three types of guided-missile frigates. The acquisitions enabled the navy to make the initial transition from a coastal defense force to an ocean-going, or blue water, force. Of particular concern to the U.S. has been the development of over-the-horizon radar and electronic warfare capabilities, which contribute to a capability to deter or prevent the U.S. from intervening successfully in a war over Taiwan. Leading strengths of the PLA Navy include diesel-powered submarines and antiship cruise missiles, which can damage or sink an American aircraft carrier. The navy acquired four Russian-built Sovremenny-class destroyers equipped with “Sunburn” antiship cruise missiles, as well as Chinese-made Luyangclass destroyers equipped with radar to help guide its Chinese-made Hai Hongqi-9 anti-air missiles. It also upgraded and enhanced the capabilities of its patrol boats operating in littoral waters and of its amphibious ships designed for the task of landing troops on Taiwan.
Other acquisitions indicate that the navy is preparing for expeditionary maritime missions: recent ocean-going additions include a hospital ship and replenishment oilers. In addition, it is actively working to commission an aircraft carrier. The first is likely to be the Varyag, purchased in 1998 from Ukraine, renovated in Dalian, and taken on sea trials in 2011. It will probably serve as a training vessel for the foreseeable future as Chinese crews and naval aviators learn to operate this complex system of systems. In addition to expanding its surface fleet, the PLA Navy has enhanced its submarine force with advanced weapons and sensors. As of 2010, the fleet consists of a handful of nuclear attack submarines and more than fifty diesel subs (ballistic missile submarines are discussed later in this chapter). These appear aimed at enabling China to enforce its maritime territorial claims and to protect the sea lanes in the western Pacific. A large new naval base on Hainan Island completed in the late 2000s signaled Beijing’s intent to continue a robust submarine program and a commitment to defend its claims in the South China Sea.
The PLA Air Force has engaged in a wholesale modernization of its inventory. It retired some 70 percent of its air fleet between 1990 and 2010, amounting to approximately 3,500 aircraft, and acquired several hundred advanced fighter planes more capable of defending Chinese territory. In 2011, China tested a prototype of a fifth generation J-20 stealth fighter. It is also developing fighter jets capable of operating from an aircraft carrier. It has midair refueling capabilities, but they remain limited because of the small size of the tanker fleet and limited number of appropriately fitted aircraft. The air force is upgrading its H-6 bomber fleet and arming it with land attack cruise missiles. Its ability to transport ground forces beyond—or even within—China’s borders remains a weak point. For example, most of the 1,600 Chinese troops who participated in Peace Mission 2007 with Russia were transported by rail from Xinjiang, requiring some two weeks to travel 6,000 miles to the site of the exercise (the circuitous route was necessary because Kazakhstan denied the Chinese forces transit). All provisions, logistics, and security were provided by their Russian counterparts. Moreover, in the spring of 2008 the PLA was desperately short of fixed-wing and rotary aircraft (especially the latter) to come to the relief of earthquake victims in Sichuan when roads were impassable or completely destroyed. Although some troops, equipment, and supplies were airlifted or parachuted in, the lion’s share of rescue personnel and supplies were brought in by vehicle or on foot, with inevitable delays in reaching the disaster zones. The air force has reportedly ordered thirty-four additional Il-76 transports from Russia, but they have been slow in coming, and it has had to make do with about twenty Il-76s and various Y-8 aircraft. In addition, China has worked hard to improve its air defenses—a continuing priority for an air force that has long anticipated battling a foe with vastly superior airpower. The PLA Air Force has acquired one of the world’s largest surface-to-air missile forces and is enhancing its system for detecting attacks, including the use of a small number of airborne early-warning and control aircraft—a less-sophisticated version of the American airborne command-and-control system.
As for the ground forces, they have also acquired new hardware, although it has attracted less attention than the other services’ new weaponry. Notable additions have included third-generation Type-99 main battle tanks, which are gradually being introduced to group armies throughout China, as well as armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles. A new generation of artillery and multiple rocket launchers is also being introduced.
The Second Artillery is in charge of China’s ballistic missile forces, which include both nuclear and conventional warheads, deliverable by intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), intermediate-range ballistic missiles, medium-range ballistic missiles, and short-range ballistic missiles. The greatest expansion has taken place in China’s arsenal of short-range ballistic missiles, which numbered as many as twelve hundred by 2011. By virtue of sheer numbers, improved accuracy, and greater mobility, these conventionally armed rockets pose significant challenges to Taiwan and potentially also to countries around China’s periphery.
Cyber operations, which fall under the purview of the General Staff Department, have been a focus of growth in PLA capabilities. Hacker attacks emanating from China have hit businesses, NGOs, individuals, and government offices around the world, including in the U.S., Germany, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom. It is difficult to know which of these attacks were launched by private hackers and which by Chinese military or intelligence agencies, but the best guess is that the attacks represent wholesale cyber espionage and are the surface manifestation of a larger effort directed at building the capability to disrupt Internet operations in case of a conflict with U.S. or other advanced forces that are highly dependent on information technology. Unlike in the U.S., where space programs are spearheaded by a civilian agency (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration), in China a good chunk of space exploration, including the manned space program, belongs to the PLA’s General Armaments Department. Although China and ninety-six other states are bound by the provisions of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which commits signatories to pursue only “peaceful purposes” beyond the earth’s atmosphere, the vaguely worded provisions can be interpreted liberally. As the U.S. and other countries utilize space assets for military purposes, so too China is developing its capabilities to compete with rivals on this new military frontier. In 2003, Lieutenant Colonel Yang Liwei successfully orbited the planet, making China only the third country in the world to send a human into space. In 2008, China launched the Shen Zhou 7 with a crew of three. Although the military applications of the manned flight program are unclear, many aspects of China’s space program have defense dimensions, including its satellite program, with its launch of navigation satellites and remote-sensing satellites, the development of improved launch rockets, and construction of a new satellite launch center on Hainan Island. China’s capabilities were demonstrated by the 2007 destruction of an aging weather satellite in orbit approximately six hundred miles above the earth with a ground launched ballistic missile. Because advanced militaries—especially that of the U.S.—depend heavily on satellites for intelligence and communication, this act signaled that China was working on capabilities to blind the American military in case of a conflict.
In the mid-1980s, Beijing launched the High-Technology Research and Development Plan with a focus on national-priority high-tech projects, including military programs. The initiative, personally approved by Deng Xiaoping, is better known as “Project 863,” named after the year and month of its conception. Spearheaded by a group of top civilian scientists and senior military leaders, the effort has since its inception reportedly provided tens of billions of U.S. dollars worth of funding to more than ten thousand projects. Two of the initial seven research areas, space technology and lasers, were undertaken by military researchers. One project in the former area produced the Shen Zhou space module, and another project in the latter area achieved significant progress in synthetic aperture radar, which can provide high-resolution images invaluable for satellite surveillance, reconnaissance, and precision-guided munitions.
In 1998, the PLA created the General Armaments Department and charged it with acquiring high-tech weapons indigenously. To handle research, testing, development, and evaluation of new systems, the government reconstituted a civilian-administered entity, the Commission on Science and Technology in National Defense, and then in 2008 renamed it the State Administration for Science, Technology, and Industry for National Defense (SASTIND), demoted it from ministry level to bureau level, and merged it into the new superbureaucracy, the Ministry of Industry and Informatization. As a result, SASTIND has relatively great autonomy from the military chain of command, which ensures that research, testing, development, and evaluation processes are kept separate from procurement. SASTIND oversees a military–industrial complex of ten large defense–industrial corporations that employ at least 2.5 million civilian workers.9
Improvements in the country’s industrial base have allowed the PLA to produce more of its own advanced equipment. Globalization reduced the effectiveness of rules and regulations used by the West to limit the flow of sensitive technologies to the PRC.10 A mix of technology transfer through access to foreign commercial technology, technical assistance from Russia and Israel, espionage, and domestic research and development allowed China to attain near world levels in aerospace, information technology, telecommunications, and shipbuilding. It has been successful in indigenous military production in many areas such as ballistic missiles and anti-ship cruise missiles as well as in modern systems such as fighter aircraft, frigates, submarines, main-battle tanks and armored personnel carriers.
Despite its achievements, the defense establishment has been slow to research, develop, mass-produce, and deploy in a timely fashion high-tech Chinese-made weapon systems to meet all of the PLA’s needs. The military–industrial complex has long been forced to purchase high performance aircraft and naval vessels from Russia or to coproduce them with Russia under license in China. In many cases, although the basic frame is built in China, the electronics and other high-tech components must be imported. The bottom line is that although indigenous military production capabilities have improved significantly in recent decades, it will still be necessary for China to continue to import some kinds of full systems and many component systems for the foreseeable future.
STRENGTHENING MECHANISMS OF CCP CONTROL OVER THE ARMY
The PLA’s allegiance to the CCP remains strong, but civil–military relations have become more complex, and mechanisms of civilian control and coordination are underinstitutionalized, especially at the apex. The CMC (chapter 2) is less a mechanism for party control than an arena for the military to lobby the party on behalf of the PLA’s institutional interests. The central mechanism of civilian control is the quasi-formalized post of paramount leader, the one civilian in a position to exercise control. Paramount leaders of the post–Long March generation, such as Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, have had to work hard to earn the respect and allegiance of senior soldiers. They have largely succeeded by supporting sustained budget increases, championing aggressive defense modernization, cultivating relationships with senior military leaders, and making their own highly publicized contributions to PLA strategy and doctrine.11
Throughout the military, allegiance to the party is reinforced by the political commissar system, party committees within military units, and disciplinary inspection commissions. At each level of command—MR, group army, fleet, and below—a commander is paired with a political commissar, the former with a chain of command running through the General Staff Department and the latter with a chain of command running through the General Political Department. The commander and the commissar exercise joint leadership.
What is called “political work” in the PLA is less about substantive indoctrination of soldiers on the finer points of Maoism and more about hammering home the sacred link between the party and the army. The core of the so-called New Historic Missions articulated by Hu Jintao in 2004 was notably not new: the PLA’s first and most important mission has always been to defend the party against all enemies. The CCP defines national security as including regime security and the national interest as including the party’s interests.
With military modernization, a sense of PLA corporate identity distinct from that of the CCP has emerged, along with increasingly separate service identities, as the navy, air force, and Second Artillery rise in influence vis-à-vis the ground forces. There are signs that some within the military aspire to evolve from an army loyal to a particular party to an army loyal to the state, an identity that some soldiers consider more modern and cosmopolitan. But this desire has not yet manifested itself in any concrete act of disloyalty to the CCP. Despite this loyalty, party leaders find the ideas of “statification” (guojiahua) and depoliticization (feizhengzhihua) dangerous enough to condemn them openly in the official media.
The military’s ethos and organization make it almost unthinkable that the PLA might mount a coup d’état or other political intervention against the will of a united party leadership. The only post-1949 incident that qualifies as a coup was the 1976 arrest of the Gang of Four. This incident occurred during a leadership succession crisis in the immediate aftermath of Mao’s death and was carried out at the behest of a section of the party leadership. This kind of political split in the civilian leadership has been rendered less likely by the post-Deng institutionalization of leadership transitions. Also arguing against the likelihood of a coup is the fact that the broad security apparatus is organized in such a complex manner, with so many overlapping agencies and competing chains of command, that it would be difficult for any military or security leader or organization to plan a coup without being discovered.
CORE MISSIONS
All these defense modernization efforts were configured to prepare the PLA to perform three specific missions today and a possible fourth in the future. Within China’s borders, the PLA must be able to participate with other agencies to maintain domestic stability. At the borders, the PLA must be prepared to defend the country’s territorial integrity, which means defending the territory that the PRC already holds from being attacked and preventing moves by rival claimants to consolidate control over territory that the PRC claims but does not hold, including Taiwan. Beyond the borders, the PLA is charged with maintaining the capability to deter nuclear attack by the U.S. or any other nuclear power. As these three sets of capabilities are consolidated, the PLA is likely to aspire to a fourth mission of projecting power into regions beyond China’s immediate periphery. How future leaders define the fourth mission will depend on their assessment of the geostrategic challenges China faces at that time.
THE FIRST MISSION: DEFEND CCP RULE
The PLA’s first mission is to serve as the ultimate backup for other security forces to protect the ruling regime against domestic challenges. Standing on the first line of defense for internal security is the Ministry of Public Security. Its functions include population registration, neighborhood policing, crime control, firefighting, and traffic control. The ministry also has specialized units that surveil and suppress political dissidents (the so-called guobao or national security police) and that control the Internet (euphemistically referred to as the Public Information Network Security Supervision Bureau). Its total personnel reportedly number 1.7 million. If one takes this figure as accurate, then China’s police manpower per capita is less than 50 percent that of the U.S., in part because civil order functions are separately delegated to other groups, including locally hired adjunct “contract police” and the PAP.12 According to Ministry of Finance figures, in 2010 China spent more on public security than it did on national defense. The comparison is only indicative, because the official defense budget does not include all national defense spending, and China’s public-security budget does not include internal security expenditures by provincial and local authorities. Moreover, most government entities and corporations have their own security forces, and this additional manpower serves to supplement the Ministry of Public Security’s relatively modest size.
Alongside the Ministry of Public Security is the Ministry of State Security, which is charged with both espionage and counterespionage functions—a single entity combining the intelligence duties of the CIA and the counterintelligence duties of the FBI. There are no known figures for this ministry’s manpower or budget.
The third line of defense against civil disorder is the paramilitary PAP, which is deployed around the country and coordinates with both local government agencies and the MR commanders. PAP troops undergo training similar to that of the PLA but are differently equipped, with batons, rubber bullets, electric cattle prods, shields, tear gas, and armored cars. In addition to these organizations, major domestic security roles are performed by the party and state discipline-inspection commissions, whose key job is to investigate officials who are suspected of corruption, and by a variety of specialized guard forces and security services that protect key economic institutions, key party and state offices, and top leaders.13
The PLA serves as the final line of domestic defense. The role of fallback internal security force is deeply rooted in PLA history. The PLA was founded as a revolutionary army whose mission was to defeat the KMT’s armed forces in a civil war. In the last stage of the civil war in the late 1940s, it made the transition from a guerilla force to a regular infantry. After victory, its major mission was to subdue the CCP’s remaining internal enemies: scattered KMT units that remained on the mainland, landlord militias, clan armies, bandits, and armed minority fighters in Tibet and elsewhere, some of whom were aided by the KMT and the U.S. The PLA was later called upon to control internal migration and unrest associated with tumultuous events such as the famine triggered by the Great Leap Forward (1958–1962) and the chaos unleashed by the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976).
Following the first phase of the Cultural Revolution, Mao ordered the military to step in and directly run the country. The party and government apparatuses had been destroyed in political strife. Some 2 million soldiers became the leaders and main staff of what were called “revolutionary committees,” which assumed the day-to-day administration of township, county, municipal, and provincial jurisdictions and of communes, factories, and schools across the country.14 At this point, Mao’s government was virtually a military regime. The military served not only as an instrument of state control over society, but also as Mao’s instrument of control over the administrative machinery and as the main tool in his personal power struggles with his rivals. The two power instruments that Mao never relinquished throughout his turbulent political career were his chairmanship of the CMC and his direct control of the Zhongnanhai guard corps, which provided security for all the top leaders and could arrest any of them at Mao’s behest.
Deng Xiaoping’s and his successors’ power continued to rest to some extent on a military base, although not as exclusively as Mao’s had done in the late phase of his career. After Mao’s death, a group of generals and some civilian party leaders decided to arrest Mao’s wife and other close colleagues—the so-called Gang of Four—and these generals played a large role in supporting Deng’s rise to power. Deng gradually moved the military out of day-to-day politics and tried to reduce its role in maintaining civil order by reviving the PAP. The military nevertheless remained the ultimate bulwark of regime survival. The civilian authorities called in the PAP to suppress demonstrations in Lhasa in 1989 supported by the PLA. They employed PAP units later that year to disperse crowds in Beijing but finally had to call in the PLA to suppress the Tiananmen demonstrators. The PAP has been strengthened since 1989 and is routinely called upon to deal with disturbances in locales across China. In particularly seriously cases, such as the 2008 unrest in Lhasa and the 2009 disturbances in Urumqi, the PAP is still backed up by the PLA.
Starting in the 1980s, the PLA’s domestic security role was codified in legal documents. The 1982 Constitution allowed the State Council or the NPC Standing Committee to impose martial law but gave no further guidance about the operations of troops to maintain martial law. In 1996 and 1997, the NPC adopted the Law on Martial Law and the National Defense Law, respectively. The former specified the circumstances that would necessitate the imposition of martial law (in case of “serious turmoil, riots or disturbances that endanger national unity, security, or public security”). The latter highlighted that the PAP had the primary mission for maintaining order but said that the PLA “may assist in maintaining public order according to the law.” The decision whether to deploy the PLA after receiving a request from civilian authorities is vested in the CMC, a provision that in effect keeps ultimate power in the hands of the top party official, who also chairs the CMC. Once deployed, troops used to maintain martial law are authorized to ban assemblies, marches, demonstrations, strikes, and other crowd activities; to control news and communications; to restrict travel, impose curfews, ban public access to certain areas; and to take a wide variety of other measures, including, if necessary, shooting people identified as threats.
In 2004, a constitutional amendment replaced the legal term martial law, burdened with negative baggage from 1989, with the more innocuous-sounding state of emergency. Three years later the NPC adopted the Emergency Response Law. The law defines emergencies broadly enough to include not only nonpolitical events, but also threats to social stability. With respect to the PLA’s role, the law authorizes the military as necessary to set up security cordons and checkpoints; control traffic and communications; guard key installations; control fuel, power, and water supplies; and use force to quell resistance.
The prominence of the PLA’s internal mission shows in its deployment. The ground forces make up approximately 70 percent of total manpower. Even though each of China’s seven MRs faces a potential battlefront directly across its border, most troops are not deployed close to the borders but are distributed widely across the landscape in camps located in and around China’s major population centers. Within each major municipality, a garrison command maintains liaison with local civilian authorities and coordinates units stationed in and around the city, including PAP units, reserve units, and militia units. (In comparison, U.S. ground forces compose about 53 percent of total manpower. U.S. forces are deployed in a wide variety of locales across the fifty U.S. states and dependent territories as well as overseas but are geared to undertake or support missions overseas rather than at home.)
The two most powerful group armies are stationed not on the borders, but close to the political center of the country, the Thirty-Eighth Group Army in the Beijing MR and the Thirty-Ninth Group Army in the Shenyang MR; the majority of the other group armies are located in densely populated eastern China. By contrast, the vast western areas of the country—the Lanzhou and Chengdu MRs, which include Xinjiang and Tibet—are relatively lightly garrisoned. Although each of these MRs has some units deployed close to its international borders, their largest units are located near their own major population centers. Xinjiang is also home to the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, a military-cum-civilian organization that both serves as a garrison and functions as an agricultural and industrial productive force. The corps has an estimated 2.5 million personnel, of which 100,000 are reportedly organized into a militia force. It reports jointly to the PRC central government and the government of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region and is not included in the official PLA manpower count.
Even though the expansion of the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of State Security, the PAP, and other specialized forces has left the PLA with a more limited domestic security role than it had in the Mao era, the internal security mission remains sufficiently important and wide ranging to constitute a “domestic drag” that constrains the military from further reducing manpower and to decrease the energy and resources it can devote to its technologically more demanding missions beyond China’s borders.
THE SECOND MISSION: TERRITORIAL DEFENSE
The PLA’s second mission is to protect national territory from foreign challenge. Because of the length and contested nature of China’s borders and its formidable array of potential enemies, this mission is complex. It has taken three forms: deterring or defeating a foreign attack or invasion; preemptively striking at forces on the other side of the border that seem poised to attack PRC territory; and upholding China’s position with respect to territory that the PRC claims but does not control.
First, during the Cold War the PLA had to be prepared to deal with potential attacks or invasions, even though in the end they did not occur. On at least four occasions, such attacks seemed possible. During the Korean War, Beijing feared nuclear or conventional attack by U.S. forces. Then, in the Taiwan Strait crisis of 1958, China faced Matador surface-to-surface missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, which the U.S. had shipped to Taiwan the previous year. During the Vietnam War, the U.S. Air Force made regular incursions into Chinese airspace, with an ever-present possibility of further escalation. Most threatening of all was the possibility of a large-scale Soviet invasion of Northeast or North China in the 1960s (chapter 2).
Any of these attacks would have been hard to resist if they had materialized. The Americans had a large air force and strategic nuclear weapons; the Soviets had tank forces and both strategic and tactical nuclear weapons. The backward Chinese forces had no way to stop such forces at the border. Instead, Mao’s strategy of a People’s War spoke bravely of making advantages out of China’s weaknesses—low technology, high population, large territory, peasant masses, undereducated officer corps, poor internal communications and transport, and lack of allies. Despite the rhetoric, it is doubtful that Mao regarded these weaknesses as ideal strengths; they were simply the resources he had to work with. He may even have exaggerated the likelihood and scale of a possible invasion to keep domestic political tensions high in support of his project of continuous internal revolution and to justify the militarization of the economy and society. In any case, his strategy did help to deter any possible American and Soviet attacks or invasions. Both superpowers were afraid of getting bogged down in a country so large and ungovernable and with a reputation for “absorbing conquerors.”
With the end of the Cold War, the risk of attack diminished, but the defense-in-depth mission continues to occupy an important place on the PLA’s agenda. The potential future enemy—most likely the U.S. reacting to a PRC assault on Taiwan, but in the longer run possibly Japan, India, or even Russia in some future scenario—is considered less likely to invade with ground troops and more likely to use air power to strike air and naval bases, missile sites, and other targets deep within Chinese territory. The military regions accordingly give great attention to training in the use of anti-aircraft artillery and developing integrated air defenses. Through a nationwide system of National Defense Mobilization Commissions, established in 1994, local governments and their counterparts in the military regions coordinate the militia with PAP and PLA forces in training to resist attack or invasion.
Second, China has on four occasions tried to prevent the anticipated invasion of territory it controlled by striking at an enemy just beyond its borders. These wars have taken place on land and, thanks to Chinese preemption, have taken place on a neighbor’s territory or on contested land controlled by the other side rather than on the Chinese side. The first such case occurred when U.S. forces were moving northward on the Korean Peninsula toward the Chinese border in late 1950. Beijing did not wait to find out if the American forces would cross the border and so launched a preventive attack across the Yalu River. In 1962, China fought a border war with India that was triggered by Indian probes on contested territory held by China; Chinese forces attacked Indian-held territory, then pulled back to the original line of control. In 1969, China fought a series of border clashes with Soviet troops. In the first engagement, orchestrated by Beijing, Chinese forces ambushed Soviet troops. By acting in a provocative yet measured manner, China sought to signal to the Soviet Union its readiness to fight despite its relative military weakness and the political upheaval of the Cultural Revolution.15 In 1979, China sent forces into Vietnam, partly in response to a series of clashes along the two countries’ disputed border, although the invasion also had other purposes (chapter 6).
All four episodes required projecting conventional land forces over short distances. The terrain was rugged and remote and was not conducive to campaigns employing armor formations or large-scale maneuvers. The Chinese displayed little in the way of mechanization, no naval dimension and, with the exception of Korea, no use of airpower. Chinese tactics were characteristic of early- to mid-twentieth-century land warfare: infantry massed at the point of attack, with concentrated artillery support where available, utilizing stealth and the element of surprise to gain the advantage.
Today, the possibility of challenges to Chinese land borders have been reduced but not eliminated. Relations between Beijing and New Delhi have thawed, and confidence-building measures have lowered tensions. But their territorial disputes remain unresolved (chapter 6), and border incidents occur periodically.16 China is sensitive over its border with North Korea, which has been extremely porous in recent years. China and North Korea are unlikely to clash over border issues as long as they remain allies, but tensions may rise if relations fray. And Beijing must stand ready to conduct at least a limited military intervention into North Korea should it become necessary to do so to protect China’s interests if the Pyongyang regime collapses.
Other land borders must also be protected against infiltrators and refugees, including those with the three Central Asian states that adjoin Xinjiang and with Burma and Laos. Primary responsibility for border security in peacetime lies with the Ministry of Public Security and the PAP, but the PLA plays an important support role. Each military region must maintain the capability to deal with more serious contingencies by responding either defensively or preemptively. Limited interventions in countries around China’s periphery are conceivable if core interests—such as the safety of Chinese citizens or access to energy resources—come under threat. It is for these reasons that confidence-building measures with SCO members have not required the elimination of forces near the borders, only pullbacks.
The third dimension of the military’s territorial protection mission requires it to assert or enforce PRC claims over disputed territories. The first example of such a mission was the invasion of Tibet in 1951, which established control over a large and strategically crucial piece of territory over which the PRC claimed sovereignty.
The other cases of protecting territorial claims have taken place at sea. The primary example is the buildup of a capability to coerce or conquer Taiwan, which we discuss in the next section. Another important priority has been to push back against what China believes are illegitimate incursions by U.S. Navy and Air Force craft into its territorial waters. The PRC takes the position that the UNCLOS forbids another power to conduct military surveillance anywhere within China’s 200-nautical-mile EEZ or along its continental shelf, which according to Beijing extends all the way west past Okinawa. The U.S., which has not ratified the convention but says it observes its provisions, holds that the convention gives it the broad freedom to conduct surveillance operations throughout these same waters.17 This disagreement has generated frequent episodes of friction and occasional confrontations. In two of many examples, a Chinese fighter jet collided with an American EP-3 surveillance plane flying some 75 miles away from the Chinese coast in 2001, leading to the death of the Chinese pilot and an emergency landing of the American aircraft on Hainan Island; and a PLA Navy submarine surfaced dangerously close to the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk in 2006.
The mission of enforcing maritime territorial claims is undertaken not just by the PLA Navy, but by an array of other entities, including the Coast Guard, the State Fisheries Administration, the State Oceanographic Administration, and the Marine Surveillance Service (sometimes aided as well by commercial vessels that may be under PLA Navy command). In order to assert Chinese claims, Chinese maritime forces clashed with Vietnamese forces in 1974 and 1988, confronted Filipino forces in the 1990s, conducted maneuvers in the vicinity of the Senkaku Islands in the 1990s and the 2000s, and conducted a range of operations in the South China Sea in the early 2000s. On many occasions, Chinese ships threatened or clashed with Japanese, Vietnamese, and Filipino naval or commercial vessels. China was not the only state to behave this way: the maritime services of other countries engaged in similar behavior toward the ships of other claimant states. But it was the state with the widest claims and the one with the largest set of maritime security forces among regional states.
China’s behavior toward its territorial claims has been assertive but not expansionist. In light of the fact that the Qing dynasty covered a much larger sweep of territory than the PRC does today, Beijing could potentially lodge claims to irredenta throughout the Russian Far East, Central Asia, Korea, and Southeast Asia, but it has not done so. To be sure, it took maximum advantage of the newly enacted UNCLOS, which came into force in 1994, to lodge sometimes implausibly expansive claims in all its surrounding seas, but it was not alone in this way of interpreting the UNCLOS. Some see signs of Chinese expansionism in the new Chinese historiography on the ancient state of Koguryo in what is now Korea (chapter 5). But it is unlikely that Beijing is using this body of historical writing to build a case for a territorial claim. To lodge new claims against Korea or any other neighboring state would be inconsistent with China’s larger strategy of trying to stabilize its borders and reassure its neighbors.
THE SECOND MISSION, CONTINUED: TAIWAN
Within the second mission of protecting national territory, the PLA’s most important task is to prepare to enforce China’s claim to Taiwan in case the government’s long-term peaceful strategy fails to work. Until the Taiwan problem is resolved, the PLA considers Taiwan its primary war-fighting scenario. Preparation for this task has absorbed the lion’s share of the military modernization effort since the mid-1990s.
Starting in 1950, when the U.S. interposed its forces in the Taiwan Strait, Chinese strategy toward Taiwan had been nonmilitary in emphasis. The two Taiwan Strait crises in 1954–1955 and 1958 were not attempts to take the island, but efforts to signal Beijing’s determination not to abandon its claim to sovereignty. But the third Taiwan Strait crisis in 1995–1996 persuaded Chinese leaders that they needed a military option in case political trends in Taipei and Washington continued to move against them (chapter 9). This determination was expressed in Article 8 of the 2005 Antisecession Law, which stated, “In the event that the ‘Taiwan independence’ secessionist forces should act under any name or by any means to cause the fact of Taiwan’s secession from China or that major incidents entailing Taiwan’s secession from China should occur or that possibilities for a peaceful reunification should be completely exhausted, the state shall employ nonpeaceful means and other necessary measures to protect China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” The PLA was charged with preparing for this task.
The challenge is daunting. The first obstacle is posed by geography: Taiwan is an island, and therefore the relatively straightforward option of overland invasion is not available. Winning control of the air, securing sea access across the turbulent 100-mile-wide Taiwan Strait—which is characterized by idiosyncratic tides and frequent bad weather—not to mention conducting amphibious landings on Taiwan’s rocky shores are all significant operational challenges.
Second, the PLA would face the resistance of ROC forces. Despite personnel reductions, Taiwan’s military remains one of the twenty largest armed forces in the world, with some 270,000 active-duty troops and a defense budget of some $10 billion. It is defended against missile attack with several hundred sophisticated, U.S.-built PAC-2 and PAC-3 surface-to-air missiles. To protect Taiwanese air space it possesses more than 50 French Mirage fighter jets, approximately 150 U.S. F-16s, and 130 Indigenous Defense Fighters. The navy continues to develop more advanced versions of its own Hsiung-Feng III antiship missile and to acquire from the U.S. electronic warfare and early-warning/reconnaissance planes. The ROC Navy possesses a modest but capable force of U.S. and French-built destroyers (4) and frigates (22), missile boats (61), and a handful of diesel submarines.
In the 2000s, adverse domestic and international trends weakened ROC preparedness. At home, the KMT-dominated legislature refused to pass an arms budget submitted by the DPP administration. Abroad, PRC pressure on the U.S., France, and other suppliers reduced their willingness to supply advanced arms to Taiwan. At the same time, ironically, many in Taiwan felt a diminished sense of threat, which undercut public support for more robust self-defense efforts, as reflected in a substantial decline in the level of Taiwan’s defense spending—more than 50 percent between 1993 and 2005 when adjusted for inflation. The sense of security is grounded in the assumptions either that China is all bark and no bite or that if China does attack, the U.S. will come to the rescue. U.S. military experts have criticized the Taiwan leadership for lacking a clear defense strategy and the military for lax training and weak attention to professionalism.18
Since 2008, under the Ma Ying-jeou administration, the ROC government has pursued both a more conciliatory approach toward China and a “hard ROC” defense policy. Although problems remain in Taiwan’s preparedness—difficulties in acquiring desired weapons systems, the transition from a conscripted to an all-volunteer force, and the continuing vulnerability of key facilities—the ROC can be expected to impose high costs on an attacking Chinese military.
Third, the PLA expects to have to deal with an American intervention, which despite a U.S. policy of “strategic ambiguity,” is understood by most Washington decision makers to be mandated by the 1979 TRA and other policy statements. At a minimum, this intervention would presumably include the dispatch of aircraft carrier strike groups and aircraft from U.S. bases in the Asia-Pacific to repel an attack on Taiwan. Nor can the PLA overlook the possibility of significant escalation of such a battle beyond the confines of the Taiwan Strait to a wider conflagration that involves parts of the mainland or embroils neighboring countries allied with the U.S. or both.
Facing these obstacles, the PLA has prepared itself to use a mixture of elements from four generic strategic options if it has to attack Taiwan.19
Blockade. The PRC might declare that Taiwan is in a state of rebellion and thus might exercise the right it claims as the sovereign power to forbid all air and sea transport to and from the island. Simply announcing a blockade or quarantine around the island would have a major psychological impact, potentially resulting in a massive outflow of capital and a plunge in the Taipei stock market. To make a blockade threat credible, the PLA’s most potent assets are its missiles and submarines, which would remain largely unseen but very threatening. China could mine Taiwan’s major ports of Kaohsiung, Keelung, Tsoying, and Suao or otherwise bottle up military and commercial vessels in these ports with relative ease. Such a move would require only modest actions by China and incur no immediate casualties on either side. With luck, it might produce quick and easy victory.
However, a blockade might stiffen the Taiwan population’s resistance and degenerate into a protracted test of wills across the strait. During this interval, the Taiwan air force and navy might attack the blockade forces or escort planes and ships across the blockade lines, daring the PLA to inflict the first casualties and incur global condemnation that would undo years of diplomatic effort to reassure China’s neighbors of its benevolent intentions. If the crisis were to drag on for more than a few days, the Americans would almost certainly enter the fray. The PLA would then have to use its electronic warfare capabilities, antiship missiles, and submarines to attack the U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups, thus courting escalation in the possible form of American attacks on missile and air bases on the mainland. If Taiwan resistance and U.S. involvement defeated the embargo, China would face the difficult decision of whether to back down or escalate.
Missile attacks. To reduce these risks, the PLA might precede a blockade with a series of missile strikes on Taiwan, using the more than one thousand short-range missiles it has put in place in various locations in the Nanjing MR across the strait. The missiles are conventional tipped; a nuclear attack on the island would incur more damage to the island, to China’s reputation, and to the mainland itself than it would be worth militarily. The missiles would presumably be targeted at airfields, naval bases, and infrastructure facilities. Despite Taiwan’s missile defense capabilities, the sheer volume of missiles the Second Artillery might rain down on the island would almost certainly overwhelm them. Precision missile attacks on a dozen or so runways might ground the ROC air force (unless runways can be rapidly repaired) and destroy navy vessels at anchor before they have a chance to move and, by destroying infrastructure, demoralize the Taiwan leadership and population enough to bring surrender. The only fully effective American response would be an attack on the missile batteries on Chinese territory, which would be an act of war that the Americans might be reluctant to undertake. If U.S. military support were not able to arrive swiftly, Taiwan’s will and capability to fight might rapidly erode. And if China were to gain rapid control of the air, this action could pave the way for an amphibious invasion.
However, PRC missile attacks might stiffen the resistance of people in Taiwan, create a strong international reaction, and give the U.S. Air Force and Navy reinforcements time to arrive. These reactions might consolidate Taiwan’s will to resist and generate international support for Taiwan independence. The ultimate outcome might be defeat for the PRC.
Amphibious landing. If a blockade or missile attack did not produce surrender, the PLA would face the prospect of launching an amphibious invasion of Taiwan. China is developing this capability, acquiring appropriate equipment such as fighter jets to clear the airspace and amphibious landing craft to deposit the troops, and since 1999 the PLA has conducted training in joint operations and amphibious operations. China might reduce the chances of American intervention by choosing an auspicious moment marked by tension in U.S.–Taiwan relations, a favorable atmosphere in U.S.–China relations, or American engagement in crises elsewhere. Given the civilianization of Taiwan’s population and potential Taiwanese isolation, a single successful beachhead might spell a quick end to the battle.
However, amphibious operations are among the most complex in warfare, putting tremendous strain on logistics, communication, jointness of operations, and the tactical flexibility of officers in the field—all of which remain weak points of Chinese military organization. The defending side enjoys an inherent advantage because it has to mass forces only where the enemy tries to land. A failed amphibious assault might spell the permanent end of China’s claim to Taiwan.
Decapitation. A fourth instrument the PLA leadership might consider—we do not know if it is doing so because planning for this option would produce little observable evidence—would be an unconventional operation targeting Taiwan’s top leadership. Many senior military and security officers in Taiwan come from mainlander backgrounds, and senior officials and businesspeople have occasionally been arrested for espionage. Mainland agents have no doubt smuggled themselves onto the island over the years in the guise of students, fishermen, or spouses of local people. The increasing flow of personnel between the two sides for business, tourism, and study since the 1980s must have helped the PRC enlarge its network of agents on the island. These forces might mount an attack on the ROC’s top leadership and take over the island at low cost, with minimal casualties, and with little or no damage to Taiwan’s infrastructure.20
Of course, such operations almost never go according to plan. The cost of trying and failing might be diminished by denying any connection with the plotters, but there is a high risk that such denials would be proven to be false. It is unknown whether the PLA and their civilian superiors think such an option is worth planning for.
Although the PLA is likely preparing for at least the first three of these four options, this does not mean that Chinese soldiers are eager to implement any of them. Any combination of the four military strategies presents not only tremendous military difficulties, but grave political risks, including those of turning the Taiwan public irrevocably against any form of unification with the mainland, spurring a U.S. shift to a policy tilted more to containment than engagement, contributing to the remilitarization of Japan, driving most of Southeast Asia into the arms of the U.S., and putting India decisively on its guard against China. Policymakers still prefer and indeed expect the political, diplomatic, and economic prongs of their strategy to work. For the time being, the military options serve more as supports for the other three prongs than as operational intentions.
Yet these options are not empty threats. According to some analysts, a shift has taken place in the balance of military power across the strait because ROC preparedness has not kept up with the growth of the Chinese military. Although the U.S. military claims to be ready, the cost of intervention to the U.S. has undeniably gotten higher. The PLA has the capability, if not to defeat the U.S., then at least to put its carrier strike groups and other assets seriously at risk—in the words of Thomas Christensen, to “[pose] problems without catching up.”21
Moreover, Beijing is convinced that it enjoys an asymmetry of motivation over the U.S. with respect to Taiwan. China has passed a tipping point in its ability to ensure that there is no low-cost option for the U.S. to intervene in a Taiwan military confrontation. And it may be nearing a second tipping point—the ability to use military action to create an irreversible momentum before the U.S. can get to the fight. By raising the cost of a potential conflict to both Taiwan and the U.S., the PLA adds to the credibility of its preferred strategy to win control over Taiwan peacefully.
THE THIRD MISSION: NUCLEAR DETERRENCE
China has developed a small but capable nuclear-tipped ICBM force whose sole function appears to be to deter nuclear attack, most prominently by the U.S., but potentially by India, Russia (if relations were to sour), or Japan or Taiwan (if either were to develop a nuclear option). All of China’s effective nuclear arsenal is land based; as of 2012, the two classes of submarines that might theoretically be used to launch ICBMs do not appear operational.
Mao made the decision to go nuclear with Soviet help in 1955. After the Soviet Union reneged on its promise to provide plans and technology, he launched a project for self-sufficient development of the bomb. The first Chinese atomic bomb test took place in 1964; China demonstrated the capability to launch the bomb on a missile a few years later.22 Mao’s nuclear strategy was unclear, probably even to him. Nuclear weapons were a symbol of determination, a mark of national prestige, and in these ways a (relatively) cheap substitute for military modernization. But the small arsenal was not much of a deterrent to superpower attack. Indeed, it functioned more as an inducement to attack. Both the Americans (in 1963) and the Soviets (in 1969) gave serious consideration to bombing the Chinese nuclear weapons program at Lop Nor in Xinjiang to block its further development. Had such an attack taken place, it is unknown whether China had developed a second-strike capability against the Soviet Union. It certainly did not have one against the U.S.
By 1981, China had developed the capability for an ICBM strike against the continental U.S. By the early twenty-first century, it possessed an estimated forty ICBMs capable of reaching U.S. territory. The number has remained relatively stable for some time, suggesting that China does not seek to expand the size of its ICBM arsenal, but it is moving forward to harden silos, to use solid fuel, which provides quicker launch times, as well as to build entirely new types of ICBMs capable of being mounted on mobile launchers, with improved guidance, and smaller warheads. Once the PLA Navy’s upgraded strategic nuclear submarine force is operational, as many as five Jin-class nuclear submarines will enhance the country’s second-strike capability.
Although the deterrent intent is clear, Beijing’s calculus of deterrence is not. The PRC has never produced an official articulation of its nuclear doctrine. The most accepted view among outside analysts is that it intends to exert what is called “minimum deterrence”—that is, to mount a force just large and survivable enough to prevent a better-armed power from initiating a nuclear attack.23 But others argue that China seeks to create what is called a “limited deterrent,” one that is large enough to deter the launch or escalation of war in any form—not only nuclear—by an adversary. For example, limited deterrence might prevent the U.S. from entering a war in the Taiwan Strait. There is also, in theory, the potential for nuclear weapons to be used for actual war fighting in Korea or Taiwan or as “coercive diplomacy” against India or even the U.S., but these possibilities seem remote. China officially adheres to a no-first-use pledge. Although there is debate within the Chinese military establishment about the merits of this approach and whether it should be reinterpreted, the pledge costs China nothing and promotes a positive image.
China has long opposed any U.S. defense program that threatens to undermine its nuclear second-strike capability. Beijing’s reliance on a relatively small nuclear arsenal and missile force helps explain its consistent opposition over the years to the Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars”) launched by Ronald Reagan and to its successors, “national missile defense” and “theater missile defense.” Any of these programs potentially threatens the deterrent function of China’s strategic force against the U.S. China is also concerned that enhanced missile defense for Japan, even if justified on the basis of a North Korean ballistic missile threat to that country, erodes Beijing’s capability to hold at risk American targets in Japan. Finally, China worries that a theater missile defense deployed in Japan with American cooperation might be used to defend Taiwan from missile attack. Such considerations help explain why in 1999 China proposed a “prevention of an arms race in outer space” treaty that would ban the weaponization of space.
Proliferation: A road not taken. In theory, Beijing might also make strategic use of its missiles and nuclear weapons by proliferating such technologies to countries or nonstate actors that are unfriendly to Washington, but it does not seem to be doing so. The export of missile and nuclear weapons technology and sometimes of the weapons themselves did play a role in Chinese foreign policy from the 1970s through the 1990s. However, the motives appear to have been a mix of regional power politics (strengthening Pakistan against China’s rival India by aiding its nuclear weapons program), diplomatic bridge building (consolidating friendships with North Korea by selling missiles, with Iran by selling dual-use nuclear technology and antiship missiles, and with Saudi Arabia by selling intermediate-range ballistic missiles), and commercial profit (by selling a nuclear reactor to Algeria and attempting to sell short-range ballistic missiles to Syria). Some of China’s nuclear technology transfers to North Korea and other states may have passed through a network run by Pakistani nuclear official Abdul Qadeer Khan without Chinese knowledge.
Instead of developing these relationships into a proliferation strategy, China has acceded step by step to the bulk of the international arms control and disarmament regime and has complied in large part, although not perfectly, with its obligations. Starting in the 1970s, the U.S. began to bring pressure to bear on China to stop proliferating nuclear and missile technology. To respond to these pressures, China developed a cadre of experts in the complex area of arms control and nonproliferation. Presumably under these experts’ advice, China began attending the UN Conference on Disarmament in 1979 and officially joined the following year. In 1995, China issued its first white paper on arms control and disarmament and subsequently included pronouncements on nonproliferation in its biannual defense white paper. In 1997, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs created the new Department of Arms Control and Disarmament. In 1984, Beijing signed the Biological Weapons Convention; in 1992 the NPT; in 1993 the Chemical Weapons Convention; and in 1996 the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. In 1994, China tightened its commitment to observe the Missile Technology Control Regime guidelines that forbid the export of middle-range missiles. In 1996, it promised to restrict nuclear cooperation with Pakistan, and in 1997 it promised not to initiate any new nuclear-cooperation efforts with Iran. In 1997–1998, it established a series of domestic regulations to tighten its control over its exports of nuclear materials and joined the Zangger Committee, whose member states agree to strict controls on nuclear exports.
By the turn of the century, China had acceded to all the main arms control treaties.24 Its policy can be attributed to several reinforcing motivations. First, Beijing needed to accommodate U.S. arms control demands in order to achieve its goals in Washington, including renewal of most-favored-nation trading status, a lifting of the U.S. ban on nuclear power plant exports to China, and a lifting of post-Tiananmen sanctions on technology transfer and diplomatic summits with China. Second, China benefited from an international ban on certain weapons that it did not want to use or to see used, such as chemical and biological agents. Third, China recognized the benefit of gaining a place at the table in international arms control negotiations and saw that positions in favor of nonproliferation and disarmament strengthened its rhetorical position as an advocate of peace and nonintervention. Fourth, as China’s interests in the Middle East and other distant regions of the world intensified, Beijing began to appreciate the danger to its own interests of regional destabilization. Finally, it came to see that arms control and arms reduction agreements might help constrain Washington’s technological edge in areas such as outer space, make it harder for rival states such as India to develop weapons systems that China already possessed, and encourage the states with the biggest nuclear arsenals, Russia and the U.S., to reduce them to sizes closer to that of China’s own arsenal.
As late as the 2000s, the U.S. imposed sanctions dozens of times on Chinese companies, including state-owned enterprises, for proliferation transgressions, most often involving the sale of nuclear and missile technology to Pakistan and Iran. China’s role in enabling North Korean proliferation is ambiguous: Beijing seems to permit Pyongyang’s ballistic missile shipments to other countries to transit Chinese territory. Despite these problems, China appears to have strengthened its system of export controls and made progress in complying with its obligations under the various arms control regimes, particularly regarding nuclear technology and material.25
THE FOURTH MISSION: BEYOND TAIWAN
If and when the Taiwan issue is settled, China’s military position will look very different.26 China will possess whatever remains of the impressive military capabilities created for the battle over Taiwan. The primary obstacle to the projection of naval and air power south and east from the mainland will be gone. Depending on the nature of its arrangement with the Taiwan authorities, the PLA may be able to use Taiwan’s ports and airfields to extend the reach of its navy and air force 200 miles farther out into the western Pacific. The PLA might be able to cooperate with—or even absorb—the ROC’s armed forces, including its fighter planes and pilots, antiship and other missiles, frigates, and advanced communications technology. In all, as PRC strategists would see it, the American policy that intentionally or not had done the most to contain China militarily for many decades would at this point come to an end.
How China uses this opportunity will be influenced by the way in which the Taiwan problem is settled. If it is settled by force, many PLA and Taiwan assets will be destroyed. China’s neighbors and the U.S. will likely view China as dangerous and will come together more strongly to resist Beijing’s next moves. If the Taiwan question is settled peacefully by negotiation—the outcome that PRC strategy aims for—the PLA assets that were built up for the attack on Taiwan will be fully available, and China’s neighbors and the U.S. are likely to accept the leap forward in China’s strategic position as inevitable and legitimate.
Because China’s security needs are so large, there are many ways that China’s future leaders can construct the fourth mission. There have already been some signs of what shape it might take.
First, the PLA has already begun to give attention to non-war-fighting tasks beyond its borders that produce political influence and foster goodwill. For these operations, it has adopted the name “Military Operations Other Than War” (MOOTW), coined by the U.S. military, but has interpreted the concept even more broadly than the U.S. does to encompass significant domestic duties consistent with PLA traditions. With the lessening of tensions in the Taiwan Strait since 2008, military leaders have seized upon this concept as a means of reminding the CCP and the Chinese citizenry of the PLA’s central place in China’s rise. The MOOTW concept helps to justify continued sizeable defense outlays even as the likelihood of war has decreased, promotes a positive image for the PLA to counter foreign perceptions of a growing Chinese military threat, contributes to dealing with nontraditional security threats, and provides valuable peacetime operational experience.27
Second, China may decide that it needs to use force to influence the distribution of power in neighboring regions. It has already done so once in its history, when it invaded Vietnam in 1979. This attack had a second-mission purpose: it was in part a response to Vietnamese probes along the two countries’ contested border. But it also had a fourth-mission purpose: to frustrate what China saw as a developing Soviet encirclement. Future Chinese leaders may want to undertake similar ventures in various places around the country’s periphery. For example, unrest, civil war, or state failure in Korea, Burma, or Central Asia may draw China in to evacuate its citizens, protect its investments in oil fields or gas pipelines deemed vital to national security, prevent flows of refugees, or stabilize local regimes. Or the PRC might intervene to prevent another major power—the U.S., India, or Russia—from taking advantage of a crisis or change of government somewhere on China’s periphery.
Third, China might want to intervene farther away, in the Fourth Ring, to protect economic interests and concentrations of personnel. Since 1992, China has deployed more than 17,000 personnel to participate in nineteen peacekeeping missions around the world (chapter 7). Although these units are small, they have developed some initial expertise in operating at great distances from the homeland. In 2006, the Foreign Ministry chartered four aircraft to pick up some four hundred PRC citizens and Hong Kong compatriots stranded in the Solomon Islands by civil unrest. In 2009, China deployed two destroyers and a supply ship to participate in a multinational mission to protect Chinese and other countries’ oil tankers and other merchant shipping as they entered and exited the Gulf of Aden. In 2011, it used several PLA Air Force transports as well as dozens of chartered commercial aircraft and ships to evacuate some thirty thousand Chinese construction workers from strife-torn Libya. All these missions were modest in scope and limited to the protection of economic interests and personnel. But as China’s investments increase in the Fourth Ring, there may be more locations where such missions become necessary, and if relevant PLA assets are available, they may be put to use.
Fourth, China’s energy imports and the rest of its foreign trade depend on sea lanes that reach to China all the way from the Middle East and the coast of Africa to the west and the North and South American coasts to the east. Most vulnerable to disruption—as well as closest to China—are the Straits of Malacca, Sunda, and Lombok, through which all traffic from the west must enter the South China Sea. Of course, ships might circumnavigate this body of water, but travel time would be lengthened by many days. For its sea-lane security, China depends on the U.S. Navy, aided by the maritime services of the littoral states (Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore) and Australia. The PLA Navy might provide assistance to the littoral states in their security operations if it were invited to do so. Passing across the Indian Ocean, Chinese shipping depends on the U.S. and Indian navies for protection. It would not be realistic for China to replace these other navies, but Chinese policymakers may see reasons to try to play a role in the protection of their own routes of commerce, as they are doing in the antipiracy mission in the Gulf of Aden. The Chinese navy might increase its influence in the Indian Ocean by using what are now purely commercial ports that China is building in Kyaukphyu in Burma, Hambantota in Sri Lanka, and Gwadar in Pakistan (chapter 6)—a series of facilities that U.S. analysts have labeled the “string of pearls.”28
But none of these “pearls” compares in magnitude or sophistication to the U.S. military base maintained on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, nor are they nearly as numerous as the ports to which the U.S. Navy has access throughout the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.
Fifth, the Chinese navy may seek to expand its reach into the western Pacific and beyond. A grand strategic vision along these lines was articulated in 1982 by the then commander of the PLA Navy, Admiral Liu Huaqing. In a first phase, by 2000, he suggested, the PLA Navy would extend its area of operations in the near seas to reach the “First Island Chain,” comprising the Kuril Islands, Japan, the Ryukyus, Taiwan, the Philippines, Borneo, and Natuna Besar. In the second phase, by 2020, the PLA Navy would extend its operational reach to the “Second Island Chain,” reaching beyond the First Island Chain to the Bonins, the Marianas, and the Carolines. Finally, by 2050, China would become a global sea power on a par with the U.S. Navy. Liu insisted that the goals of this strategy were defensive, to protect China from coastal attack and to defend its maritime territorial claims. To date, the PLA Navy’s activities and actual presence beyond the East China and South China seas have been in keeping with the timeline Liu projected. For the foreseeable future, military power projection into the Pacific will likely entail a largely symbolic presence—showing the flag through periodic port visits and humanitarian assistance on modest scale.
Nothing in publicly articulated PLA doctrine gives a clear answer to the question of what the fourth mission will be. The U.S. has long urged China to be more transparent on this point. U.S. defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously challenged the Chinese on this point in 2005 by asking, “Since no nation threatens China, one must wonder: Why this growing investment? Why these continuing large and expanding arms purchases? Why this continuing robust deployment?”29 Since 1998, Beijing has produced biannual defense white papers designed in part to answer its neighbors’ concerns about the future mission. But they do not provide complete answers. It is probably too early for Chinese leaders themselves to know what kind of fourth mission will be most necessary—and most feasible—for the PLA to perform.
CHINESE MILITARY MODERNIZATION IN PERSPECTIVE
The evolution of the PLA’s fourth mission will not take place in a vacuum. Other militaries in the region are also improving technology, increasing capabilities, upgrading training, and adjusting strategies. Although no single one of them can stand up to China alone, in the aggregate they present formidable challenges to Chinese power. Japan stands out as a country that has quietly developed a suite of cutting-edge space technologies—rockets, satellites, and spacecraft—that were originally designed for commercial applications but did not make money and moved under military sponsorship. In addition to ballistic missile defense capabilities developed in cooperation with the U.S., Japan is working on reusable launch vehicles (i.e., space planes); multifunctional satellites that provide missile early warning and help with navigation, communication, and targeting; warhead-reentry technologies that can advance the use of missiles in warfare; unmanned aerial vehicles; and technologies for space situational awareness that show concern for possible future conflict in space.30 South Korea is modernizing its military, including its navy, and starting to focus its efforts beyond the North Korea threat. India is upgrading its navy and its military satellite capabilities, although most of its defense efforts are focused on dealing with Pakistan. Vietnam and other ASEAN states are improving their militaries. The littoral states around the Straits of Malacca, Sunda, and Lombok are building up their navies, reluctant to concede to outsiders too much responsibility for security along their own shores.
Above all, the U.S. continues to improve its capabilities in the region despite the strain imposed by operations elsewhere in the world. During a 2011 visit to East Asia, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta assured U.S. allies that even after a decade of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. “will always maintain a strong presence in the Pacific.” Also in 2011, President Barack Obama made even stronger assurances during a visit to Australia, insisting that the U.S. was a “Pacific power and we are here to stay.” He backed the rhetoric with the announcement of an agreement to rotate U.S. marines in northern Australia for training and exercises. According to the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, U.S. defense posture in the Asia-Pacific and elsewhere will remain “forward stationed and [with] rotationally deployed forces, capabilities and equipment; supporting network of infrastructure and facilities; a series of treaty, access, transit, and status-protection agreements and arrangements with allies and key partners.” Budget cuts announced in 2012 were designed in such a way as to avoid weakening the U.S. posture in Asia.31
Equally important are the innovations coming on line in U.S. doctrine and technology. They include the concept of AirSea Battle, which integrates air and naval capabilities throughout the operational arenas of air, sea, land, space, and cyberspace and appears particularly appropriate for the Asia-Pacific region, and the use of unmanned-aircraft systems, which have proved their worth in operations against terrorists in the Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan theaters. These systems significantly enhance the accuracy and expand the reach of U.S. intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and strike capabilities.
In effect, the Asia-Pacific is experiencing a permanent, almost routinized, multilateral arms race. In the Fourth Ring as well, the U.S. maintains a formidable presence, European powers cultivate a presence in their traditional colonies, and newly rising powers continue to build their military strength, among them Turkey, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. In this environment of change, episodes of friction among militaries will continue to occur, and shifts will take place in the relative balance of power in various theaters. But China, for all its growing military strength, will not be able to expel other major militaries either from its own region or from regions farther away, except if other nations pull back from their own programs of military development.
Nor will the PLA’s first three missions disappear. Domestic security will continue to absorb a significant part of the PLA’s effort, and the army will accordingly continue to be deployed overwhelmingly within China’s borders. Protection of national territory from invasion and of territorial claims from erosion will remain high on the military’s task list. Nuclear deterrence will remain a priority. The fourth mission, whatever it may be, is more likely to focus on areas closer to China’s periphery and less likely to develop in a major way in more distant theaters. Even as Chinese military power grows, it is tied down by many nearby challenges. It cannot mount a challenge of geostrategic proportions to the militaries of major rivals unless those rivals make their own decisions to yield.