China as a Military Power

The paper examines CHINA'S defence potential and was prepared by Dr RONALD N MONAPERTO, senior fellow at the US Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) from the testimany before a US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations

Military Modernization and Regional Uncertainties

Among the many uncertainties of the Asian security environment, none is more compelling than that surrounding the modernization program of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. For some observers, the combination of economic growth and force improvement signals Beijing's intention to establish regional hegemony.

Others acknowledge that the PLA can spoil United States' interests. But, citing the selective nature of PLA force improvements, Beijing's interest in regional stability, and the growing conventional capabilities of other regional powers, they tend to discount a PLA military threat. Chinese secrecy compounds the difficulty.

China has greater military power today than it did a decade ago. If Beijing were willing to pay the price, the PLA could wreak great damage. However, in assessing China's future threat potential, it is essential to consider the economic, political, and strategic constraints on PLA modernization. Such considerations suggest that the PLA is years away from achieving the capability to project military force in a sustained manner.

Strategic Intentions:

National Objectives and National Strategy

PLA officers enthusiastically support the defining objective of Beijing's national strategy, which is to see China assume the status of a great power. Nationalism and the weight of the past are important factors. A strong China will never again be subject to the humiliations of the past.

China's leaders believe that the key to great power status is to build a world-class economy and military. This requires maintaining a stable external environment to support high levels of economic growth. Conflict is to be avoided. Obvious exceptions involve sovereignty issues such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, or the South China Sea.

PLA leaders actively support China's present economic policies. Military leaders feel that, in addition to serving national strategic objectives, the policies provide the best means of acquiring the capabilities required in high-technology warfare. Reconstituting the PLA into a modern military force has been the goal of the military modernization program the PLA has pursued since the early 1980s. Lack of information about the military modernization program, in turn, is also the source of much of the uncertainty about China's future intentions.

Uncertain Progress

During the last decade, the military reduced its numbers by more than one million, introduced ranks, reformed education and training systems, implemented a reserve system, began to modernize its doctrine, and entered upon a modest program of weapons and equipment modernization. The military modernization program has produced a self-sustaining cadre of highly professional officers; and the PLA is slowly developing the doctrinal concepts required for high-technology warfare. The effort to procure and field modern weapons, however, proceeds at a snail's pace.

Continuing Difficulties

Two sets of factors constrain overall progress. At the conceptual level, the PLA lacks a strategic focus. China's strategists must determine the most likely sources of any future conflict. PLA analysts divide over which sets of regional relations will have the most impact on the future. Many seem to believe that relations between Washington and Beijing will drive regional events.

Senior military officers are suspicious of the long-term strategic intentions of the United States. They see in U.S. policies on Taiwan and Tibet, the World Trade Organization, and continuing pressures on human rights a challenge to Chinese sovereignty.

They also find evidence of a desire to slow China's economic growth and provoke a challenge to its domestic political stability. These suspicions produced a major disruption of bilateral ties in June 1995 with charges that Washington had adopted a policy of Containment. Nonetheless, PLA leaders agreed that confrontation would not serve China's strategic interests and they supported the effort to arrest the decline in bilateral relations.

Other analysts judge that competition between the United S tates and Japan will emerge as a new source of regional instability. Still others think that the engine of regional change will be differences between the rich and poor nations. Finally, a few analysts see a future shaped by regional resistance to American efforts to maintain a defining role in Asia. It is important to note that the United States figures prominently in all scenarios.

Another conceptual constraint involves the need to create the operational doctrine that will permit the PLA to translate modern technologies into modern weapons, once it gains wide access to them.

This is a difficult task because PLA leaders have only recently jettisoned Maoist notions of a People's War. These views anticipated the need to defend against a land invasion by an external power. The approach was to gain victory after a long war of attrition by trading space for time. But now, the absence of any such threat and the revolution in military affairs make such a strategy obsolete.

In 1985, the PLA decided that the most likely form of future conflict would be the so-called Local War of Limited Duration. To prosecute such conflicts successfully requires the capability to mount an Active Defense.

The Gulf War convinced Chinese military strategists that the war of the future is most likely to be localized, fought to achieve limited political objectives, and won by whichever side is better able to concentrate high-technology force at some distance from the national borders in a decisive strike.

However, many years will pass before the PLA can adopt doctrinal changes that match even today's standards.  The second set of constraints is material. Equipment modernization is the PLA's most important technical priority. However, it lacks the funds to procure modern equipment in sufficient quantities.  In the last six years, China's official defense budget has more than doubled to reach the 1995 figure of approximately US$8 billion. Because the Chinese do not reveal a significant portion of total expenditures for defense, any figure must include an estimate of military funds from other sources. Most outside observers accept estimates of US$20-25 billion. Some of these monies have been used to finance the purchase of modern military equipment and military technologies from abroad, particularly from Russia. However, the quantities involved are small. It is likely that the lion's share of the recent increases has been used to compensate for years of very low defense budgets during the 1980s, to offset the effects of inflation which has consistently approached 20% for the last several years, and to improve the quality-of-life for the forces. For example, in 1994, there was an across-the-board increase in the monthly wages of all PLA officers, with those at the top receiving an increase of more than 50%. Finally, the PLA may be losing access to funds generated by the sale of civilian products produced in defense industry facilities and by the enterprises it owns. In 1994, citing an adverse impact on morale, PLA leaders announced that most military units would have to divest themselves of their business holdings. If such funds were to be withheld, the military could lose nearly one quarter of its budget. The difference would have to be made up from a shrinking pool of official funds.