You were at the Inauguration; China was planning for war

You were at the Inauguration; China was planning for war
Thu, 01/22/2009 - 11:44am

By Dan Twining

While everyone here in the United States and beyond was focused on Barack Obama's Inauguration on Tuesday, China chose that day to slip this little item under the door --China’s National Defense in 2008, their annual white paper detailing plans for increased defense spending and military modernization.

While significantly understating real military spending, this latest defense white paper is revealing in its attempts to reassure an outside world deeply concerned about the country’s aggressive pace of non-transparent military modernization. It also teaches us something about China’s own strategic priorities –- and insecurities. Here are a few key themes of the paper, as well as my quick take on what lies behind the rhetoric:

1. China is an indispensable player in a shifting global balance of power that features trends toward both cooperation and conflict. Commendably, China seeks a “harmonious world of enduring peace and common prosperity” –- and while China cannot develop in isolation from the world, “nor can the world enjoy prosperity and stability without China.” Complex interdependence and enhanced cooperation make major wars unlikely -- but there are also tendencies toward more intense strategic competition among rising and developed powers, fueled by military modernization, arms races, and the struggle to secure energy resources. There is a tension here: China’s military wants to reassure other powers that it foresees a cooperative international system, but it needs to justify its continuing expansion and growing sophistication with reference to a widening array of threats, many of them emanating from the United States.

2. The world is increasingly multipolar and China increasingly powerful, but a militarized United States will resist the rise of China by promoting outmoded “hegemonism and power politics.” Without mentioning the United States by name, China's white paper uses clear code to condemn America’s ongoing military transformation, including force realignment, missile defense, and leadership of the Revolution in Military Affairs. An aggressive, unilateralist America seeks to weaken China, “supporting diplomatic struggles with military means.” Unlike the United States, China will “oppose the enlargement of military alliances, and acts of aggression and expansion.” In fact, in comparison with the world’s current superpower, “China will never seek hegemony or engage in military expansion now or in the future, no matter how developed it becomes.” No rising power has ever kept such a promise, but it is reassuring to hear nonetheless.

3. The United States under President Bush upped its game in Asia, to Beijing’s consternation. Chinese leaders and analysts appreciate the stability of U.S.-China relations since 2001. But the white paper attests that, notwithstanding American critics who charge that Washington has neglected Asia while firefighting in the Middle East, the U.S. has paid careful attention to Asian power dynamics, and has positioned America to continue to lead in the region. Rather than ignoring Asia, “the U.S. has increased its strategic attention to and input in the Asia-Pacific region, further consolidating its military alliances, adjusting its military deployment and enhancing its military capabilities.” Indeed, polling by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs shows that America’s soft power in Asia greatly exceeds that of China. Despite conventional wisdom that China’s rise erodes America’s staying power in the region, both popular polls and worries of China's military suggest that the United States has been doing something right in Asia.

4. The core threats to Chinese national security are internal, or arise from external support for internal separatists and dissidents. Outsiders underestimate the degree to which the sources of Chinese insecurity are internal rather than exogenous. The nightmare for Chinese security planners, based on their reading of China’s predation by foreign powers during the age of imperialism, is of external sponsorship of “splittist” or dissident movements that undermine the cohesion of the Chinese state. “[D]omestic security and international security are interwoven and interactive,” says the new white paper. China “faces strategic maneuvers and containment from the outside while having to face disruption and sabotage by separatist and hostile forces from the inside.” Hence the need for strong and technologically sophisticated military forces.

5. China is pursuing “leapfrog development” of advanced capabilities by undertaking military modernization in a high-tech environment. Beijing foresees comparative advantages stemming from its development of asymmetric capabilities, including in electronic warfare; from preparing to wage modern war in a battlespace where information dominance is a key to victory (China “aims at winning local wars in conditions of informationization”); and from undertaking military modernization with the benefit of new technologies not available to great powers that modernized earlier in history. China’s replication of American rhetoric about force doctrine, the Revolution in Military Affairs, and information warfare is striking.

Bottom line: This white paper is a useful reminder that China’s is the only military in the world explicitly training and equipping to fight the United States.
Dan Twining | Permalink | | Comments? Login or register
( filed under:

* China | Military | Science & Technology | U.S. Foreign Policy

)


Advertisement
Click Here!

possibly
by Dre on Fri, 01/23/2009 - 1:22pm

The military industrial complex made billions in the last five years. The spick-et is trickling or they wanted more flow. I think the sellers where just looking for buyers. And China is not just a big fish its their whale. So, some clever marketers from the military industry used theoretical sales techniques.

* Login or register to post comments

While China may be
by billslayer on Fri, 01/23/2009 - 3:23pm

While China may be "explicitly training and equipping to fight the United States" they are only doing so in their own theater, they are not positioned or equipping themselves to be positioned for global force projection.
The only countries that really have something to fear are Taiwan, India, and Vietnam and possibly the Phillipines over the Spratlys.
You may also want to take Taiwan off that list bc of improving relations and the concrete reality that a large part of China's growth is due to Taiwanese investment.
The countries that really have something to fear are India and Vietnam.

* Login or register to post comments

It's the economy not the military.
by awr on Fri, 01/23/2009 - 3:45pm

If China should ever want to attack the US, it would be say a cable to Switzerland on the first day offering to sell about$100 billion of US Treasury Bonds and on the second day $200 billion. This could go on for quite awhile. It would be an economic attack not a military one. Both are unlikely.

* Login or register to post comments

The chinese freaked out when
by J Thomas on Sat, 01/24/2009 - 12:52am

The chinese freaked out when we put two carrier groups near them. They freaked out when we had an exercise with three carrier groups at guam. They freaked out in 2004 when we had an exercise with seven carrier groups that various people predicted would involve all seven off the chinese coast, or maybe only five. Now we say it was only two carrier groups coordinating off the chinese coast and the other five were elsewhere, but the chinese still took it very seriously.

So, for example, we conducated big antisubmarine exercises because we said china's submarines were a threat. And then a little while after that a chinese submarine popped up close to a US aircraft carrier, after getting by all our detection. Our navy was embarrassed. The chinese said it was a coincidence.

It's like our navy guys and their navy guys keep on getting into confrontations. It's built into the system. Our navy is their main justification, and their navy (and their shore-based missiles etc) is the only significant threat to our navy. Each of them has to play up the threat of the other to get funding. This makes them de facto allies, and they cooperate in creating incidents to scare the citizens and legislatures.

Now the chinese are building their own aircraft carriers, and the first might be ready in 2018 or 2020 or so, probably after it becomes obvious that aircraft carriers are obsolete.

http://houston.china-consulate.org/eng/nv/t147243.htm

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,200716,00.html

http://www.china.org.cn/international/opinion/2008-07/01/content_15916848.htm

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-492804/The-uninvited-guest-Chinese-sub-pops-middle-U-S-Navy-exercise-leaving-military-chiefs-red-faced.html

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/editorial/taiwan%20issues/2008/04/22/152983/What-are.htm