The 5-3 decision is a sweeping rebuke of the administration's policy, saying it went too far in planning tribunals for Guantanamo prisoners.
By David G. Savage
Los Angeles Times, 30 June 2006
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court declared Thursday that President Bush had overstepped his authority in the war against terrorism, ruling he does not have the power to set up special military trials at Guantanamo Bay without the approval of Congress.
In a 5-3 decision, the high court said the planned military tribunals lacked the basic standards of fairness required by the nation's Uniform Code of Military Justice and by the Geneva Convention.
The ruling is the most sweeping legal defeat for the administration in the 5-year-old war on terrorism, and it rejects the president's broad claim that the commander in chief can make the rules during an unconventional war.
Since 1929, the Geneva Convention has set rules for the conduct of wars and the treatment of prisoners, but Bush and his top advisors have maintained that it does not apply to suspected terrorists.
Still, the practical impact of Thursday's decision may be limited. The court said terrorism suspects could be tried under the rules for courts-martial used by the American military or under new rules that could be passed by Congress.
The decision does not free any terrorism suspects, as the president noted, nor does it change the status of the approximately 450 detainees at the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Only 10 of them have been charged with war crimes.
The opinion was delivered by Justice John Paul Stevens, 86, the court's last veteran of World War II. He set forth a view of the Constitution in wartime that stood in sharp contrast to that of the president and his lawyers.
The Constitution gives Congress the power to make the laws and set the rules for handling wartime captives, Stevens said. It says Congress shall "make rules concerning captures on land and water," and also says Congress shall define the "offenses against the law of nations."
Despite those words, the president contended that as commander in chief of the armed forces, he had the power to decide how suspected terrorists would be held, how they were to be treated, how they would be tried and what offenses amounted to war crimes.
But Justice Stephen G. Breyer, in a concurring opinion, said: "The court's conclusion ultimately rests upon a single ground: Congress has not issued the executive a 'blank check.' "
Guantanamo Bay has become the focal point of international criticism of Bush's willingness to set aside established U.S. and international laws in the war against terrorism.
Civil libertarians hailed the ruling as a repudiation of that approach.
"The Supreme Court's decision reaffirms the importance of one of this country's founding principles: Trials conducted in the name of the United States must be full, fair and according to law," said Deborah Pearlstein, a lawyer for Human Rights First.
The case decided Thursday began two months after the Sept. 11 attacks. In November 2001, the White House issued an executive order announcing the Pentagon would set up special military commissions to try Al Qaeda suspects. The president said that he did not need the approval of Congress and that the federal courts had no jurisdiction over the cases.
Moreover, the White House said the Geneva Convention did not apply to terrorists because this was not a conflict between nations and their armies.
It took four years for a challenge to that order to make its way to the Supreme Court. No one has been tried and convicted under the Bush administration's rules, which were challenged by Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a onetime driver for Osama bin Laden who was charged with conspiring with Al Qaeda to kill Americans.
Hamdan, who was captured in Afghanistan in November 2001 and has been held at Guantanamo since June 2002, has admitted he was Bin Laden's driver, but said he was a $200-a-month hired hand, not a terrorist.
In the sweeping decision, the justices rejected all of the key assertions made by the president and struck down the military commissions set up by the Pentagon. The court also cast doubt on whether the general charge of conspiracy that Hamdan faced was a war crime.
As Stevens noted, the Bush administration's rules would have allowed the use of evidence obtained through coercion, and could have resulted in a defendant and his lawyer being excluded from the trial.
Bush said he planned to work with lawmakers to develop a process to deal with terrorism suspects.
"To the extent that there is latitude to work with the Congress to determine whether or not the military tribunals will be an avenue in which to give people their day in court, we will do so," he said.
Two key Senate Republicans, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Arizona's Jon Kyl, said they were disappointed with Thursday's court decision. "However, we believe the problems cited by the court can and should be fixed," they said in a joint statement. "We intend to pursue legislation … granting the executive branch the authority to ensure that terrorists can be tried by competent military commissions."
Some legal authorities suggested that applying traditional rules of evidence and due process in proceedings against the detainees could pose problems for prosecutors.
"They can come up with a viable system that would pass judicial scrutiny. But I am not sure that it is going to result in convictions," said retired Rear Adm. John Hutson, a former judge advocate of the Navy and now dean of Franklin Pierce Law Center.
"It is going to be real hard to prosecute these guys," Hutson said.
One part of the court's decision suggests that the Geneva Convention protects captured terrorism suspects. Stevens said that Article 3 covered all people caught up in a conflict, even if they were not regular soldiers and not entitled to be treated as prisoners of war. Quoting that section, Stevens said these people must be tried "by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples."
The Geneva Convention does not define a "regularly constituted court," but five justices agreed Thursday that such a tribunal must meet "the standards of our military justice system." Besides Stevens and Breyer, Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg agreed on this holding in Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld.
Some legal experts said the ruling could extend the protections of the Geneva Convention to all people held in the war on terrorism, including Al Qaeda members being detained abroad in secret prisons.
But the court stopped well short of saying that suspected terrorists were entitled to be treated as prisoners of war.
Four justices — Stevens, Breyer, Souter and Ginsburg — said that they would have thrown out the charge against Hamdan because conspiracy was not a war crime. Stevens said a war crime required some evidence that the defendant took some "overt act," beyond joining an organization.
Kennedy did not join in that opinion, leaving the court short of a majority on that issue.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. did not take part in the decision because he was on the U.S. Court of Appeals last year that considered Hamdan's case and voted to uphold the president's special military trials.
Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissented Thursday. Scalia and Thomas took the rare step of reading their dissents in the courtroom.
Scalia said the court had no authority to decide the case. In late December, Congress passed the Detainee Treatment Act and stripped federal judges of their power to hear claims from the Guantanamo Bay detainees.
Stevens and the majority said this provision applied only to new claims, not to pending cases like Hamdan's.
In his dissent, Thomas said the court's opinion "flouts our well-established duty to respect the executive's judgment in matters of military operations and foreign affairs."
Alito, who joined the court just before the case was heard, said he believed that the Pentagon's rules were fair and that they complied with the standards set by military law and the Geneva Convention.
The court's ruling was the second defeat for the administration in its handling of the prison at Guantanamo Bay.
Two years ago, the justices said the detainees were entitled to hearings to argue that they were being wrongly held. The Constitution says no one held by the United States "shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law." Although the foreign detainees are not entitled to full trials, they are entitled to basic hearings, the court said in a 6-3 ruling in Rasul vs. Bush.
Like that ruling, Thursday's decision does not require that these detainees be given the same trials due civilians, but only that they be tried under the military's system of justice.
The Geneva Convention "obviously tolerates a great deal of flexibility in trying individuals captured during armed conflict; its requirements are general ones, crafted to accommodate a wide variety of legal systems," Stevens said. "But requirements they are nonetheless. The commission that the president has convened to try Hamdan does not meet those requirements."
Times staff writer Richard B. Schmitt contributed to this report.
*
(INFOBOX BELOW)
Defendant rights
Although the Supreme Court ruled that Guantanamo Bay detainees may not be tried by military commissions, the justices said the suspected terrorists could be subject to the rules used in military courts-martial. Here is a comparison of defendant rights in those two systems and in federal court:
Presumption of innocence: Presumed innocent.
Courts-martial: Presumed innocent.
Military commissions: Presumed innocent.
---
Right to remain silent
Federal courts: The 5th Amendment provides the right against self-incrimination.
Courts-martial: Members of the military can't be compelled to confess; coerced confessions are not admissible.
Military commissions: Not provided; a rule against using coerced statements was adopted in March.
---
Freedom from unreasonable search and seizure
Federal courts: The 4th Amendment prohibits unreasonable search and seizure.
Courts-martial: Rules prohibit the use of evidence obtained through unlawful search or seizure.
Military commissions: Not provided. Private conversations between detainees and lawyers cannot be used.
---
Jury
Federal courts: The 6th Amendment provides for trial by jury.
Courts-martial: Rules prohibit the use of evidence obtained through unlawful search or seizure.
Military commissions: No jury. Trial is by a commission picked by the military. Detainees have challenged panel members.
---
Presence at trial
Federal courts: Defendants have the right to be present at every stage of the trial.
Courts-martial: The presence of the accused is required, unless the accused waives the right or engages in conduct justifying removal.
Military commissions: The accused shall be present to "the extent consistent with the need to protect classified information" and national security.
---
Right to counsel
Federal courts: Gideon vs. Wainright established the right to counsel under the 6th Amendment.
Courts-martial: Defendants have a right to military counsel at government expense and can also hire a civilian lawyer.
Military commissions: Defendants are provided a military lawyer. May hire a civilian attorney but the lawyer is not guaranteed access to classified evidence.
---
Right of Appeal
Federal courts: Federal convictions can be appealed to the Court of Appeals and then to the Supreme Court.
Courts-martial: Defendants may pursue military appeals. After military appeals, they may go to civilian court.
Military commissions: No right to appeal sentences shorter than 10 years. A review panel makes recommendations to the Defense secretary.
Sources: Department of Defense, Congressional Research Service
--------------------------
Citation: David G. Savage. "High Court Rejects Bush's Claim That He Alone Sets Detainee Rules," Los Angeles Times, 30 June 2006.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-scotus30jun30,1,3624356.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage&track=crosspromo
--------------------------
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30 June 2006
Most foreign fighters in Iraq come from Egypt: US military
Agence France Presse, 29 June 2006
The US military has said that it has several hundred foreign fighters in custody in Iraq and that most of them come from Egypt, followed by Syria, Sudan and Saudi Arabia.
"We have several hundred foreign fighters in captivity at this point of time and the greatest number come out of Egypt," spokesman Major General William Caldwell told reporters Thursday.
"The top four countries are -- the first is Egypt, followed by Syria, then Sudan and Saudi Arabia."
The US military has already claimed that the new Al-Qaeda in Iraq chief is Egyptian Abu Ayub al-Masri, saying he took over from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, killed in an US air strike on June 7.
The military believes Masri is the same person as Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, named by an Al-Qaeda-led coalition as Zarqawi's successor.
Caldwell said the US military tries to identify the nationalities of these fighters primarily through "passport verification."
"We try hard to identify them when we capture them because at some point of time these people will be facing Iraqi civil authorities and court and when they do we want to be able to ascertain that they are here illegally and not at the request of the government of Iraq," Caldwell said.
Caldwell also said at least "57 foreign fighters were killed by Iraqi and US forces in the month of June" in a series of nation-wide operations.
And in the week ended June 28 about 587 suspected insurgents have been detained, he added.
Meanwhile, Masri remains the "number one target", Caldwell said.
"A lot of resources are committed to finding him. We are working hard to get him. There is no question that if we take him down that will just disrupt the organisation beyond a point where it will be ineffective for a long period of time.
Al-Qaeda "is very disorganised right now and very disrupted right now. The reason we were able to pick up and track some of the middle-level people is because their system is so disrupted and that has given us the opportunities to find them, track them and go get them."
-----------------------------
Citation: " Most foreign fighters in Iraq come from Egypt: US military," Agence France Presse, 29 June 2006.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060629/wl_mideast_afp/iraqunrestusfightersegypt
The US military has said that it has several hundred foreign fighters in custody in Iraq and that most of them come from Egypt, followed by Syria, Sudan and Saudi Arabia.
"We have several hundred foreign fighters in captivity at this point of time and the greatest number come out of Egypt," spokesman Major General William Caldwell told reporters Thursday.
"The top four countries are -- the first is Egypt, followed by Syria, then Sudan and Saudi Arabia."
The US military has already claimed that the new Al-Qaeda in Iraq chief is Egyptian Abu Ayub al-Masri, saying he took over from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, killed in an US air strike on June 7.
The military believes Masri is the same person as Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, named by an Al-Qaeda-led coalition as Zarqawi's successor.
Caldwell said the US military tries to identify the nationalities of these fighters primarily through "passport verification."
"We try hard to identify them when we capture them because at some point of time these people will be facing Iraqi civil authorities and court and when they do we want to be able to ascertain that they are here illegally and not at the request of the government of Iraq," Caldwell said.
Caldwell also said at least "57 foreign fighters were killed by Iraqi and US forces in the month of June" in a series of nation-wide operations.
And in the week ended June 28 about 587 suspected insurgents have been detained, he added.
Meanwhile, Masri remains the "number one target", Caldwell said.
"A lot of resources are committed to finding him. We are working hard to get him. There is no question that if we take him down that will just disrupt the organisation beyond a point where it will be ineffective for a long period of time.
Al-Qaeda "is very disorganised right now and very disrupted right now. The reason we were able to pick up and track some of the middle-level people is because their system is so disrupted and that has given us the opportunities to find them, track them and go get them."
-----------------------------
Citation: " Most foreign fighters in Iraq come from Egypt: US military," Agence France Presse, 29 June 2006.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060629/wl_mideast_afp/iraqunrestusfightersegypt
28 June 2006
The Role of the Chinese Communist Party Coming to an End
By C. H. Kwan
Voice, July 2000
This article was published in Voice in Japanese, as the lead article in a special section on "Will the 21st Century be an Asian Century?"
The 21st century will not be an Asian Century unless China succeeds in its modernization drive. In turn, China needs to adopt a market economy based on private property, replace its one-party dictatorship with a democratic system, and cooperate with the international community (Japan and the United States, in particular). Should China become a rich country where the rights of its citizens are properly protected, unification will become an attractive option for Taiwan.
Among the structural problems facing the Chinese economy, stagnation of the state-owned sector is particularly serious. Low efficiency is a common problem of state-owned enterprises everywhere, and in China the poor performance of state-owned enterprises has contrasted sharply with the dynamism in the newly emerging private sector. Realizing this simple fact, the government has gradually broadened its interpretation of "socialist public ownership." Currently, it still insists to own over 50 percent of the equity shares of large enterprises, but at the same time it also allows small- and medium-sized enterprises to go private under the policy of "grasping the big ones and letting the small ones free." In the end, China has no choice but to privatize the large enterprises as well, which would amount to abandoning public ownership completely. The Communist Party may then lose its legitimacy to rule and find it difficult to maintain the status quo of a one-party dictatorship. In terms of Marxian dialectics, China's success in its transition to a market economy, and thus economic development, hinges crucially on how the growing contradiction between the economic base and the superstructure can be resolved.
Until now, although China has maintained a one-party dictatorship, it has been steadily giving up the traditional socialist economic system based on economic planning and public ownership of the means of production. Thanks to this policy change, China has achieved a growth rate of almost 10% a year since the shift to economic reform and door opening in the late 1970s. The demand for democracy has been increasing along with incomes, however, while the reputation of the Communist Party has been badly hurt by widespread corruption among government officials and a rising crime rate. The "policy mix" of economic liberalization and political dictatorship has reached its limit; the Communist Party needs to reform itself or it will face grave consequences.
In retrospect, the 20th century was a drama featuring the rivalry between capitalism and communism, which ended with the total defeat of communism, as symbolized by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Even in China where the Communist Party has managed to survive into the 21st century, few people even within the Party truly believe in communism. For the Chinese leadership, communism is still a means to stay in power, but for the Chinese people, it is neither a means nor an end. The task from now on is not to build a communist utopia but to abandon the one-party system and shift to a democratic one. While the idea of "peaceful evolution," whereby democratization leads to the demise of the communist regime and the transition to a capitalist system, scares the Chinese Communist Party, it is probably the best scenario if China is to avoid the kind of turmoil that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Although democratization in China is still suffering the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen incident, it would be too pessimistic to think that democracy can never take root in China. There are already many cases in which economic development has paved the way for democracy, as in Korea and Taiwan since the mid-1980s. Taiwan held its first direct presidential election in 1996, giving rise to a government based on public support. In March 2000, Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party won the second direct presidential election, and a peaceful transition of power from the ruling Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) to the opposition party took place for the first time. Taiwan's experience shows that when the time is ripe the realization of democracy is possible in a Chinese society. If China continues its rapid pace of economic growth, the time will soon come when the role of the Communist Party will be over.
In addition to pursuing economic and political reforms, China needs to maintain a stable international environment in order to achieve modernization. The most cost-effective way to do so is to allow the United States and Japan to play larger roles in regional security and economic matters respectively. At the risk of over-simplification, China should act as a free rider to take advantage of the public goods of a stable international environment provided by the United States and Japan. Unfortunately, judging by this criterion, China's diplomacy has been a total failure.
China's handling of relations with Japan provides typical examples. First, President Jiang Zemin angered most Japanese by repeatedly emphasizing the historical issue when he visited Japan in November 1998. Sino-Japanese relations have stayed in the doldrums, despite the late Prime Minster Obuchi's subsequent visit to China, and Japanese investment in China has continued to fall. No doubt China suffered immense losses during the Japanese invasion, but continuing to accuse others prevents China from learning from its own failures. More than fifty years have passed since the end of the Second World War, and it is the time for the two countries to shift from a backward-looking to a forward-looking way of thinking. In this respect, the recent improvement in relations between Japan and South Korea provides a good example for China to follow. Second, China declined Japan's offer to participate as an observer in the G-8 Okinawa Summit to be held in July this year, probably for the simple reasons that it was a Japanese initiative and that China would prefer to participate as a full member. As a result, China missed a golden opportunity to repair its relations with Japan and to strengthen its ties with leading industrial nations. Finally, for the sake of regional stability, China should have supported instead of rejected Japan's proposal to set up an Asian Monetary Fund shortly after the onset of the Asian crisis in the summer of 1997.
Likewise, the prevailing hostility between China and the United States does not favor China's modernization. The diplomatic rhetoric of a strategic partnership between the two countries offers no assurances, as bilateral relations have been plagued by conflicts over a wide range of issues, including trade, human rights, and cross-strait relations. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the tendency for the United States to target China, the only remaining communist giant, as a hypothetical enemy has become more and more apparent. Indeed, the United States has continued to embargo the export of many high-tech products to China, while at the same time at best only passively supported China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO). In order not to give the United States an excuse to pursue a policy of containment, China should speed up its economic and political reforms and change as soon as possible the name of the Communist Party, which has become incompatible with China's new reality.
Finally, unification with Taiwan should come as a natural consequence of China's success in achieving modernization, rather than stand as a goal of its own to be pursued hastily even at the expense of economic development. While China has kept warning Taiwan not to seek independence under any circumstances, China should realize that conquering Taiwan by force is not a viable option. In the first place, given the current military balance, it is doubtful whether China has the upper hand. Furthermore, the possibility of military intervention by the United States cannot be ruled out. Even if China won, it would likely face economic sanctions imposed by the industrial powers and their adverse consequences for the Chinese economy. A Taiwan conquered by force would prove to be a burden rather than an asset to China, as its economy would stagnate amidst massive brain drain and capital flight.
Peaceful unification between China and Taiwan requires convergence in both the level of economic development and the political system, and it will therefore be a long-term process. Although most Taiwanese people acknowledge their Chinese identity, they would oppose unification if it implies a sharp fall in their standard of living. Furthermore, they do not trust the Communist Party and would certainly like to keep the fruits of democratization that they have achieved so far. Should China succeed in its modernization drive, however, people in Taiwan will become proud of being Chinese and the time will then be ripe for unification.
--------------------------
Citation: C. H. Kwan. "The Role of the Chinese Communist Party Coming to an End," Voice, July 2000.
Original URL: http://www.brookings.edu/dybdocroot/views/articles/fellows/200007kwan.htm
--------------------------
Voice, July 2000
This article was published in Voice in Japanese, as the lead article in a special section on "Will the 21st Century be an Asian Century?"
The 21st century will not be an Asian Century unless China succeeds in its modernization drive. In turn, China needs to adopt a market economy based on private property, replace its one-party dictatorship with a democratic system, and cooperate with the international community (Japan and the United States, in particular). Should China become a rich country where the rights of its citizens are properly protected, unification will become an attractive option for Taiwan.
Among the structural problems facing the Chinese economy, stagnation of the state-owned sector is particularly serious. Low efficiency is a common problem of state-owned enterprises everywhere, and in China the poor performance of state-owned enterprises has contrasted sharply with the dynamism in the newly emerging private sector. Realizing this simple fact, the government has gradually broadened its interpretation of "socialist public ownership." Currently, it still insists to own over 50 percent of the equity shares of large enterprises, but at the same time it also allows small- and medium-sized enterprises to go private under the policy of "grasping the big ones and letting the small ones free." In the end, China has no choice but to privatize the large enterprises as well, which would amount to abandoning public ownership completely. The Communist Party may then lose its legitimacy to rule and find it difficult to maintain the status quo of a one-party dictatorship. In terms of Marxian dialectics, China's success in its transition to a market economy, and thus economic development, hinges crucially on how the growing contradiction between the economic base and the superstructure can be resolved.
Until now, although China has maintained a one-party dictatorship, it has been steadily giving up the traditional socialist economic system based on economic planning and public ownership of the means of production. Thanks to this policy change, China has achieved a growth rate of almost 10% a year since the shift to economic reform and door opening in the late 1970s. The demand for democracy has been increasing along with incomes, however, while the reputation of the Communist Party has been badly hurt by widespread corruption among government officials and a rising crime rate. The "policy mix" of economic liberalization and political dictatorship has reached its limit; the Communist Party needs to reform itself or it will face grave consequences.
In retrospect, the 20th century was a drama featuring the rivalry between capitalism and communism, which ended with the total defeat of communism, as symbolized by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Even in China where the Communist Party has managed to survive into the 21st century, few people even within the Party truly believe in communism. For the Chinese leadership, communism is still a means to stay in power, but for the Chinese people, it is neither a means nor an end. The task from now on is not to build a communist utopia but to abandon the one-party system and shift to a democratic one. While the idea of "peaceful evolution," whereby democratization leads to the demise of the communist regime and the transition to a capitalist system, scares the Chinese Communist Party, it is probably the best scenario if China is to avoid the kind of turmoil that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Although democratization in China is still suffering the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen incident, it would be too pessimistic to think that democracy can never take root in China. There are already many cases in which economic development has paved the way for democracy, as in Korea and Taiwan since the mid-1980s. Taiwan held its first direct presidential election in 1996, giving rise to a government based on public support. In March 2000, Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party won the second direct presidential election, and a peaceful transition of power from the ruling Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) to the opposition party took place for the first time. Taiwan's experience shows that when the time is ripe the realization of democracy is possible in a Chinese society. If China continues its rapid pace of economic growth, the time will soon come when the role of the Communist Party will be over.
In addition to pursuing economic and political reforms, China needs to maintain a stable international environment in order to achieve modernization. The most cost-effective way to do so is to allow the United States and Japan to play larger roles in regional security and economic matters respectively. At the risk of over-simplification, China should act as a free rider to take advantage of the public goods of a stable international environment provided by the United States and Japan. Unfortunately, judging by this criterion, China's diplomacy has been a total failure.
China's handling of relations with Japan provides typical examples. First, President Jiang Zemin angered most Japanese by repeatedly emphasizing the historical issue when he visited Japan in November 1998. Sino-Japanese relations have stayed in the doldrums, despite the late Prime Minster Obuchi's subsequent visit to China, and Japanese investment in China has continued to fall. No doubt China suffered immense losses during the Japanese invasion, but continuing to accuse others prevents China from learning from its own failures. More than fifty years have passed since the end of the Second World War, and it is the time for the two countries to shift from a backward-looking to a forward-looking way of thinking. In this respect, the recent improvement in relations between Japan and South Korea provides a good example for China to follow. Second, China declined Japan's offer to participate as an observer in the G-8 Okinawa Summit to be held in July this year, probably for the simple reasons that it was a Japanese initiative and that China would prefer to participate as a full member. As a result, China missed a golden opportunity to repair its relations with Japan and to strengthen its ties with leading industrial nations. Finally, for the sake of regional stability, China should have supported instead of rejected Japan's proposal to set up an Asian Monetary Fund shortly after the onset of the Asian crisis in the summer of 1997.
Likewise, the prevailing hostility between China and the United States does not favor China's modernization. The diplomatic rhetoric of a strategic partnership between the two countries offers no assurances, as bilateral relations have been plagued by conflicts over a wide range of issues, including trade, human rights, and cross-strait relations. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the tendency for the United States to target China, the only remaining communist giant, as a hypothetical enemy has become more and more apparent. Indeed, the United States has continued to embargo the export of many high-tech products to China, while at the same time at best only passively supported China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO). In order not to give the United States an excuse to pursue a policy of containment, China should speed up its economic and political reforms and change as soon as possible the name of the Communist Party, which has become incompatible with China's new reality.
Finally, unification with Taiwan should come as a natural consequence of China's success in achieving modernization, rather than stand as a goal of its own to be pursued hastily even at the expense of economic development. While China has kept warning Taiwan not to seek independence under any circumstances, China should realize that conquering Taiwan by force is not a viable option. In the first place, given the current military balance, it is doubtful whether China has the upper hand. Furthermore, the possibility of military intervention by the United States cannot be ruled out. Even if China won, it would likely face economic sanctions imposed by the industrial powers and their adverse consequences for the Chinese economy. A Taiwan conquered by force would prove to be a burden rather than an asset to China, as its economy would stagnate amidst massive brain drain and capital flight.
Peaceful unification between China and Taiwan requires convergence in both the level of economic development and the political system, and it will therefore be a long-term process. Although most Taiwanese people acknowledge their Chinese identity, they would oppose unification if it implies a sharp fall in their standard of living. Furthermore, they do not trust the Communist Party and would certainly like to keep the fruits of democratization that they have achieved so far. Should China succeed in its modernization drive, however, people in Taiwan will become proud of being Chinese and the time will then be ripe for unification.
--------------------------
Citation: C. H. Kwan. "The Role of the Chinese Communist Party Coming to an End," Voice, July 2000.
Original URL: http://www.brookings.edu/dybdocroot/views/articles/fellows/200007kwan.htm
--------------------------
Iraqi forces will not be independent for some time: general
Agence France Presse, 27 June 2006
Iraq's security forces will not become capable of fully independent operations for some time, the US general responsible for building the force said.
"It's just not appropriate yet to be thinking in terms independent anything in Iraq. This, remember, is a nation at war," said Lieutenant General Martin Dempsey.
The strength of the Iraqi security forces, however, is a lynchpin of the US strategy for reducing the size of its 127,000-member force in Iraq.
The White House acknowledged this week that it is considering a reported plan to reduce US combat forces in Iraq by some 30,000 by the end of 2007 as Iraqi forces assume more responsibility for security.
Dempsey said the Iraqi security forces should be armed and trained by the end of 2006, but still lack the institutional underpinnings to sustain them.
The police force, which is about 82 to 83 percent trained and equipped, is subject to corruption, local influence and infiltration by militias particularly in contested areas like Baghdad, Al-Anbar province and lately Basra, he said.
"We think we'll have to be closely partnered with the ministries for at least two years," Dempsey said.
The Iraqi security forces now stand at 263,400, according to the
Pentagon.
The goal is to field a total Iraqi force of 315,500, both military and police.
"We fully anticipate that we will achieve the desired endstate number by the end of calendar year '06," Dempsey said.
Dempsey suggested that the transition to Iraqi security forces could be eased if a national reconciliation process launched by the new Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki leads to reduced violence.
"That will be the precursor, potentially and hopefully, of a reduction of the insurgency and a corresponding willingness on the part of the militias to disband, disarm and integrate," he said.
He said he was prepared to advise the government on how to integrate militias and insurgents into the security forces.
"I think this issue of national reconciliation has to progress before you make that move against militias," he said.
"Because until the militias are convinced that the legitimate government is acting on their behalf there is little incentive for them to disband," he said.
--------------------------
Citation: "Iraqi forces will not be independent for some time: general," Agence France Presse, 27 June 2006.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060628/wl_mideast_afp/usiraqmilitary
--------------------------
Iraq's security forces will not become capable of fully independent operations for some time, the US general responsible for building the force said.
"It's just not appropriate yet to be thinking in terms independent anything in Iraq. This, remember, is a nation at war," said Lieutenant General Martin Dempsey.
The strength of the Iraqi security forces, however, is a lynchpin of the US strategy for reducing the size of its 127,000-member force in Iraq.
The White House acknowledged this week that it is considering a reported plan to reduce US combat forces in Iraq by some 30,000 by the end of 2007 as Iraqi forces assume more responsibility for security.
Dempsey said the Iraqi security forces should be armed and trained by the end of 2006, but still lack the institutional underpinnings to sustain them.
The police force, which is about 82 to 83 percent trained and equipped, is subject to corruption, local influence and infiltration by militias particularly in contested areas like Baghdad, Al-Anbar province and lately Basra, he said.
"We think we'll have to be closely partnered with the ministries for at least two years," Dempsey said.
The Iraqi security forces now stand at 263,400, according to the
Pentagon.
The goal is to field a total Iraqi force of 315,500, both military and police.
"We fully anticipate that we will achieve the desired endstate number by the end of calendar year '06," Dempsey said.
Dempsey suggested that the transition to Iraqi security forces could be eased if a national reconciliation process launched by the new Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki leads to reduced violence.
"That will be the precursor, potentially and hopefully, of a reduction of the insurgency and a corresponding willingness on the part of the militias to disband, disarm and integrate," he said.
He said he was prepared to advise the government on how to integrate militias and insurgents into the security forces.
"I think this issue of national reconciliation has to progress before you make that move against militias," he said.
"Because until the militias are convinced that the legitimate government is acting on their behalf there is little incentive for them to disband," he said.
--------------------------
Citation: "Iraqi forces will not be independent for some time: general," Agence France Presse, 27 June 2006.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060628/wl_mideast_afp/usiraqmilitary
--------------------------
Fear and Posing in Baghdad
In a city where violence defies logic and nearly anyone could be on a hit list, pretending to be somebody else makes sense.
By Megan K. Stack
Los Angeles Times, 28 June 2006
BAGHDAD — You don't want to draw attention, so you keep a battered car even if you can afford a fancier model. You don't wash it; better to let dust smear the windows. Night falls, curfew clamps down, and all those dirty old cars wend their way back to the homes of the capital. The eyes of neighbors slide after them.
Where are the drivers coming from? Some work for the government. Some fight with insurgents or death squads. Some are employed by Americans. No one asks, and no one tells; nobody knows who's who.
Bloodshed has turned Iraq into a country defined by disguise and bluff. Violence in the streets has begun to defy logic, and this is part of the fallout: A lively city where people used to butt gleefully into one another's business has degenerated into a labyrinth of disguises, a place where neighbors brush silently past one another like dancers in a macabre costume ball.
"Everything is hidden among Iraqis; people are very suspicious of one another," said 66-year-old Hayawi Mahdi Abaasi, a successful lawyer who says he won't repair his tumble-down house or replace his 1982 Toyota for fear the wrong people would notice.
"Why should I call the attention of terrorists to me? I try to be very common like everyone else," he said.
Rich people hide their jewelry and dig frayed clothes from the back of their closets to evade ransom-seeking kidnappers. Muslims claim to be Sunni or Shiite, depending on circumstance. Christians pose as Muslims. Lying about employment is de rigueur. Street police wrap their faces in masks so nobody will recognize them.
Everybody, it seems, is pretending to be somebody else, adopting a fake identity in the terrified hope of staying safe. Baghdad residents reason that no matter who you are, you're probably on somebody's hit list.
"It's not a matter of lying or not lying," said Ali Abdullah. "It's a matter of life or death."
Abdullah is a 31-year-old Sunni with dark skin, a strapping build and a bushy strip of mustache. Like most people in Baghdad, he is a man of secrets.
He was trained as an engineer in Saddam Hussein's Iraq but now works for an American nonprofit organization. His life has been threatened and his wife begs him to quit, but he says he can't — the money is too good, and they have a 3-year-old son to think about.
Abdullah takes a taxi to work so his car won't be recognized. He uses different streets each time and changes his telephone number every few months.
He splurged on a $100 Swatch watch in neighboring Jordan, but now he's afraid to wear it in public. When people ask about his job, he lies and says he owns a computer shop.
Rule No. 1, he says: Never, under any circumstance, intimate to the neighbors on his predominantly Sunni street that he's sold out to the foreigners.
"This is a killer, if my neighbors find out where I work," he said. "This is the first thing that must be maintained, that my neighbors can't know what I do."
For Abdullah and his family, that has meant isolation. He shrinks from possible conversations, taking care not to linger in his doorway, make eye contact or trade small talk. When he caught sight of an old college friend across a crowded restaurant recently, he turned on his heels and rushed away to avoid conversation.
When they talk about the loss of intimacy, many Iraqis are mournful. Like members of most Middle Eastern societies, Iraqis have traditionally prized warmth and valued social interchange over what Westerners might regard as personal privacy. In the old Iraq, it was better to err on the side of nosiness than to appear cold or distant. It was perfectly normal to grill strangers on their marital status and the price of their possessions.
Little by little, that warmth has been bled away by war. Tension pulls on the city now. The atmosphere is thick with intrigue; it feels film noir, cloak-and-dagger. Except it is real — and deadly.
"Behavior has changed from rational behavior into instinctive, animalistic behavior," said Ehsan Mohammed Hassan, one of Iraq's leading sociologists and a professor at Baghdad University. "The individual is not safe from the others. He has to hide. He doesn't want people to see him because he thinks the people are evil."
Amid the fear and loathing, a long-standing tribal tradition has disappeared.
Etiquette used to require men to ask one another about their jobs; it was a way of showing concern for a friend's livelihood and to demonstrate willingness to help a man if he had fallen on hard times.
These days, though, to ask about jobs is impolite — perhaps even dangerous. Instead, men find themselves throwing out other questions: How are you? What are you doing here?
"A lot of people are killed for no reason. So what do you think they'll do if you work for the Americans?" Abdullah asked. "That's it. You're a traitor."
Working for the Iraqi government is no better — everybody from university professors to national athletes to traffic police has been slaughtered by insurgents determined to bludgeon civic and social life to a standstill.
Iraq may be the only country in the world where militia members and anti-government insurgents walk the streets with bare faces while government workers, soldiers and cops cower behind masks.
"I wear a mask because I don't want people to know I'm working for the police," a 34-year-old officer named Ahmed Ali said on a recent afternoon. It was lunch hour, and he and some of his colleagues had driven across Baghdad through the 110-degree heat to gobble down lamb kebabs in a neighborhood where they knew fewer people.
The men are stationed in the volatile Dora area, south of downtown and one of Baghdad's bloodiest sectarian battlefields. Clad in matching blue button-downs and navy trousers, their pistols holstered on their waists, they said they didn't dare bring their badges or uniforms home, not even to launder them.
They described slipping from the house in civilian clothes, creeping into the station and changing hurriedly into their uniforms.
"In Dora, I'm well known," Ali said. "I have to wear a mask and sunglasses." Gunfire rattled a few blocks away as he spoke, but none of the police officers so much as glanced in that direction.
Amid the fear, some profit. The document forger, for one.
Assad Kheldoun, a 29-year-old who operates out of the religiously mixed neighborhood of Shaab, grinds out fake identity cards for about $30 apiece. "Exactly like the original," he boasts. But with one difference: a false name.
He's not selling to hustlers or mischief makers. Most of his clients are bus drivers, highway workers or car repairmen — people forced to make their living in Iraq's mean streets.
Last names are sectarian giveaways in Iraq, often deriving from tribes commonly known to be either Sunni or Shiite. Jaabour or Dulaimi, for instance, mean "Sunni" to Iraqis; so does the first name Omar.
Bayati is a popular surname for Iraqis looking to hide behind an adopted handle. So are Obeidi and Saadi. Those names are deliberately ambiguous, common to both Sunnis and Shiites. With a name that can go either way, Iraqis hedge their bets.
"People are getting killed because of their names," Kheldoun said. "In the past few months, everybody is asking for a false identity card. It's a phenomenon now. The people are scared."
At the nearly deserted Abu Tariq car dealership, the owners loitered wearily among their polished models on a recent afternoon. Business is grinding along slowly for the car salesmen — even those Iraqis reaping enough cash to treat themselves to new wheels are terrified of conspicuous consumption.
"A car like this could mark the end of your life," said the owner of the dealership, 60-year-old Abu Tariq.
His partner, 48-year-old Faiq Ubaidi, pointed a finger toward a $19,000 Toyota Avalon and an $11,000 Super Saloon Toyota. The cars have been gathering dust for the last year without a single inquiry, he griped.
"People say if they buy a car like this today, they'll be killed tomorrow," he said. "I myself would like to drive it downtown with my family and enjoy the air conditioning, but I wouldn't dare."
Fear gets fundamental in today's Baghdad: The Christian woman in an Islamic headdress won't give her name for fear of getting killed. She is 33, lives with her parents on a street dominated by Muslims and risks her life after breakfast every morning by slipping into the Green Zone for work.
She is terrified that word of her job will leak out to neighbors — even her cousins don't know that she works in the heart of the U.S.-backed Iraqi government.
"I deny everything," she said.
But religious isolation has been the most painful of all. She and her family no longer dare attend church on Sundays. And she has been forced to hide her identity with Islamic dress — a head scarf, or hijab, and robe, or abaya.
"It scares me: There are people who believe that all Christians are with the Americans," she said. "We can't trust each other now. I have to keep all my secrets and everything to myself, because I don't know the people in front of me."
Suhail Ahmad in The Times' Baghdad Bureau contributed to this report.
-------------------------------------
Citation: Megan K. Stack. "Fear and Posing in Baghdad," Los Angeles Times, 28 June 2006.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/complete/la-fg-disguise28jun28,1,4735074.story?coll=la-iraq-complete
-------------------------------------
By Megan K. Stack
Los Angeles Times, 28 June 2006
BAGHDAD — You don't want to draw attention, so you keep a battered car even if you can afford a fancier model. You don't wash it; better to let dust smear the windows. Night falls, curfew clamps down, and all those dirty old cars wend their way back to the homes of the capital. The eyes of neighbors slide after them.
Where are the drivers coming from? Some work for the government. Some fight with insurgents or death squads. Some are employed by Americans. No one asks, and no one tells; nobody knows who's who.
Bloodshed has turned Iraq into a country defined by disguise and bluff. Violence in the streets has begun to defy logic, and this is part of the fallout: A lively city where people used to butt gleefully into one another's business has degenerated into a labyrinth of disguises, a place where neighbors brush silently past one another like dancers in a macabre costume ball.
"Everything is hidden among Iraqis; people are very suspicious of one another," said 66-year-old Hayawi Mahdi Abaasi, a successful lawyer who says he won't repair his tumble-down house or replace his 1982 Toyota for fear the wrong people would notice.
"Why should I call the attention of terrorists to me? I try to be very common like everyone else," he said.
Rich people hide their jewelry and dig frayed clothes from the back of their closets to evade ransom-seeking kidnappers. Muslims claim to be Sunni or Shiite, depending on circumstance. Christians pose as Muslims. Lying about employment is de rigueur. Street police wrap their faces in masks so nobody will recognize them.
Everybody, it seems, is pretending to be somebody else, adopting a fake identity in the terrified hope of staying safe. Baghdad residents reason that no matter who you are, you're probably on somebody's hit list.
"It's not a matter of lying or not lying," said Ali Abdullah. "It's a matter of life or death."
Abdullah is a 31-year-old Sunni with dark skin, a strapping build and a bushy strip of mustache. Like most people in Baghdad, he is a man of secrets.
He was trained as an engineer in Saddam Hussein's Iraq but now works for an American nonprofit organization. His life has been threatened and his wife begs him to quit, but he says he can't — the money is too good, and they have a 3-year-old son to think about.
Abdullah takes a taxi to work so his car won't be recognized. He uses different streets each time and changes his telephone number every few months.
He splurged on a $100 Swatch watch in neighboring Jordan, but now he's afraid to wear it in public. When people ask about his job, he lies and says he owns a computer shop.
Rule No. 1, he says: Never, under any circumstance, intimate to the neighbors on his predominantly Sunni street that he's sold out to the foreigners.
"This is a killer, if my neighbors find out where I work," he said. "This is the first thing that must be maintained, that my neighbors can't know what I do."
For Abdullah and his family, that has meant isolation. He shrinks from possible conversations, taking care not to linger in his doorway, make eye contact or trade small talk. When he caught sight of an old college friend across a crowded restaurant recently, he turned on his heels and rushed away to avoid conversation.
When they talk about the loss of intimacy, many Iraqis are mournful. Like members of most Middle Eastern societies, Iraqis have traditionally prized warmth and valued social interchange over what Westerners might regard as personal privacy. In the old Iraq, it was better to err on the side of nosiness than to appear cold or distant. It was perfectly normal to grill strangers on their marital status and the price of their possessions.
Little by little, that warmth has been bled away by war. Tension pulls on the city now. The atmosphere is thick with intrigue; it feels film noir, cloak-and-dagger. Except it is real — and deadly.
"Behavior has changed from rational behavior into instinctive, animalistic behavior," said Ehsan Mohammed Hassan, one of Iraq's leading sociologists and a professor at Baghdad University. "The individual is not safe from the others. He has to hide. He doesn't want people to see him because he thinks the people are evil."
Amid the fear and loathing, a long-standing tribal tradition has disappeared.
Etiquette used to require men to ask one another about their jobs; it was a way of showing concern for a friend's livelihood and to demonstrate willingness to help a man if he had fallen on hard times.
These days, though, to ask about jobs is impolite — perhaps even dangerous. Instead, men find themselves throwing out other questions: How are you? What are you doing here?
"A lot of people are killed for no reason. So what do you think they'll do if you work for the Americans?" Abdullah asked. "That's it. You're a traitor."
Working for the Iraqi government is no better — everybody from university professors to national athletes to traffic police has been slaughtered by insurgents determined to bludgeon civic and social life to a standstill.
Iraq may be the only country in the world where militia members and anti-government insurgents walk the streets with bare faces while government workers, soldiers and cops cower behind masks.
"I wear a mask because I don't want people to know I'm working for the police," a 34-year-old officer named Ahmed Ali said on a recent afternoon. It was lunch hour, and he and some of his colleagues had driven across Baghdad through the 110-degree heat to gobble down lamb kebabs in a neighborhood where they knew fewer people.
The men are stationed in the volatile Dora area, south of downtown and one of Baghdad's bloodiest sectarian battlefields. Clad in matching blue button-downs and navy trousers, their pistols holstered on their waists, they said they didn't dare bring their badges or uniforms home, not even to launder them.
They described slipping from the house in civilian clothes, creeping into the station and changing hurriedly into their uniforms.
"In Dora, I'm well known," Ali said. "I have to wear a mask and sunglasses." Gunfire rattled a few blocks away as he spoke, but none of the police officers so much as glanced in that direction.
Amid the fear, some profit. The document forger, for one.
Assad Kheldoun, a 29-year-old who operates out of the religiously mixed neighborhood of Shaab, grinds out fake identity cards for about $30 apiece. "Exactly like the original," he boasts. But with one difference: a false name.
He's not selling to hustlers or mischief makers. Most of his clients are bus drivers, highway workers or car repairmen — people forced to make their living in Iraq's mean streets.
Last names are sectarian giveaways in Iraq, often deriving from tribes commonly known to be either Sunni or Shiite. Jaabour or Dulaimi, for instance, mean "Sunni" to Iraqis; so does the first name Omar.
Bayati is a popular surname for Iraqis looking to hide behind an adopted handle. So are Obeidi and Saadi. Those names are deliberately ambiguous, common to both Sunnis and Shiites. With a name that can go either way, Iraqis hedge their bets.
"People are getting killed because of their names," Kheldoun said. "In the past few months, everybody is asking for a false identity card. It's a phenomenon now. The people are scared."
At the nearly deserted Abu Tariq car dealership, the owners loitered wearily among their polished models on a recent afternoon. Business is grinding along slowly for the car salesmen — even those Iraqis reaping enough cash to treat themselves to new wheels are terrified of conspicuous consumption.
"A car like this could mark the end of your life," said the owner of the dealership, 60-year-old Abu Tariq.
His partner, 48-year-old Faiq Ubaidi, pointed a finger toward a $19,000 Toyota Avalon and an $11,000 Super Saloon Toyota. The cars have been gathering dust for the last year without a single inquiry, he griped.
"People say if they buy a car like this today, they'll be killed tomorrow," he said. "I myself would like to drive it downtown with my family and enjoy the air conditioning, but I wouldn't dare."
Fear gets fundamental in today's Baghdad: The Christian woman in an Islamic headdress won't give her name for fear of getting killed. She is 33, lives with her parents on a street dominated by Muslims and risks her life after breakfast every morning by slipping into the Green Zone for work.
She is terrified that word of her job will leak out to neighbors — even her cousins don't know that she works in the heart of the U.S.-backed Iraqi government.
"I deny everything," she said.
But religious isolation has been the most painful of all. She and her family no longer dare attend church on Sundays. And she has been forced to hide her identity with Islamic dress — a head scarf, or hijab, and robe, or abaya.
"It scares me: There are people who believe that all Christians are with the Americans," she said. "We can't trust each other now. I have to keep all my secrets and everything to myself, because I don't know the people in front of me."
Suhail Ahmad in The Times' Baghdad Bureau contributed to this report.
-------------------------------------
Citation: Megan K. Stack. "Fear and Posing in Baghdad," Los Angeles Times, 28 June 2006.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/complete/la-fg-disguise28jun28,1,4735074.story?coll=la-iraq-complete
-------------------------------------
The Zarqawi effect
Bush's Mideast policies have turned a brutal terrorist into an icon of resistance -- and made violent fundamentalism more popular.
By Juan Cole
Salon.com, 27 June 2006
Whatever the meaning of the killing of Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi by a U.S. airstrike earlier this month, it has not lessened Iraq's violent nightmare, or calmed tensions in the Middle East. Al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri called him "the prince of martyrs" and vowed revenge on the U.S. Some reports suggest that the two U.S. soldiers captured at Yusufiyah were tortured and killed by Zarqawi's shadowy successor. The three weeks after his death have witnessed daily bombings with dozens of casualties throughout Iraq. And Zarqawi's demise has stirred up trouble throughout the region, as controversies on how to respond to it have erupted among secularists and fundamentalists, Sunnis and Shiites.
Outside Iraq, the most public dispute has raged in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Jordan has refused to accept Zarqawi's body, which will likely be unceremoniously dumped in an unmarked grave in Iraq, lest it become a shrine. I was in Amman the week after Zarqawi's death, and Jordan was abuzz with reports of the deep involvement of that country's security forces in the operation against him. Indeed, Jordanian newspapers called the campaign "Operation Hotel Martyrs," seeing the airstrike on his safe house in Hibhib as payback for the deadly explosions at the Radisson, the Hyatt and the Days Inn in Amman last November. It has now been revealed that one of those who betrayed Zarqawi was a Jordanian in his own circle, likely a double agent recruited by Amman's formidable intelligence service.
On June 10, I attended the military parade that commemorated the early 20th century Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire, and found throngs of enthusiastic Jordanian nationalists cheering their military men as they passed by in tanks and armored vehicles. Children impudently clambered atop police SUVs to get a better look at the passing troops, and girls in head scarves and long embroidered black tunics shouted approval in their Bedouin-accented Arabic, all hard G's and glottal stops. King and nation clearly retain substantial popularity. But currents of dissatisfaction are moving beneath the surface, which could pose a serious challenge to the Jordanian government and America's geo-strategic plans for the region.
I was in the audience on June 12 when Prince Hassan, Jordan's former heir apparent, addressed more than 1,300 Middle East experts at the Cultural Center, condemning supporters of terrorism and urging Muslims to return to their moderate roots as a way of mediating conflicts. The urbane, mustachioed and balding royal denounced the appropriation of religious terminology by violent political movements. "Using religious names and definitions is not serving religious causes," he said. He warned that if Muslims do not moderate, "The future is either one of Balkanization, ethnic and sectarian strife, or surrendering to the extremists."
Jordan's King Abdullah II finds himself caught between the two horns of Bush administration policy in the region. On the one hand, Bush's push for a hasty and simplistic "democratization" process has led to a Hamas win in Palestine, an unprecedentedly strong showing by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egyptian parliamentary elections, a Shiite fundamentalist takeover of Iraq, and the admission for the first time of the Lebanese Hezbollah to the government in Beirut. The secular-leaning Jordanian government is deathly afraid that Hamas will gain influence in Jordan itself, and has already accused the party of attempting to smuggle arms into the kingdom.
The other outcome of Bush administration policy has been the rise of Islamist terrorism in Sunni Arab Iraq, as formerly secular Iraqis have turned to religious fundamentalism as a way of combating what they see as U.S. occupation. Both a revived political Islam in the region and a rampaging faith-based terrorism next door in Iraq represent dire threats to Jordan's government.
Zarqawi, whose real name was Ahmad Fadil al-Khalayla, hailed from the Jordanian city of Zarqa, and his radicalism must be understood in a Jordanian context. Although an overwhelmingly conservative Sunni Muslim country, Jordan has not been predominantly an Islamist one. The majority ideology has tended to be some form of Arab nationalism rather than religious fundamentalism. Palestinians displaced by the 1948 war and their descendants, who form some 60 percent of Jordan's population, have historically tended to support the secular Palestine Liberation Organization. The Jordanians of indigenous East Bank or Bedouin background value tribe and king. In both cases, though, some have started turning to political Islam -- an ominous development for Jordan and for the United States, which values the Hashemite Kingdom as an oasis of moderation in the region.
Zarqawi formed part of a minority Islamist political tendency in Jordan, but his radicalism and violence put him on the fringes even of it. He was arrested in 1994 for joining a conspiracy to overthrow King Hussein. His organization, Monotheism and Holy War, is thought to be responsible for several terrorist attacks or foiled plots in Jordan. On Nov. 9, 2005, members of his group, rebranded al-Qaida in Mesopotamia, detonated powerful bombs at the three tourist hotels in Amman, killing 60 Jordanians.
The hotel bombings stirred widespread outrage in Jordan because they targeted Jordanians, whom Zarqawi and his group had branded infidels and apostates because they did not accept his fundamentalist vision. After his death, 67 percent of Jordanians rejected the notion that Zarqawi should be considered a martyr, and nearly 60 percent branded him a terrorist. Seventy percent said that even offering condolences on his death was unacceptable. But 15 percent saw him as either a martyr or an "ordinary citizen" -- and ominously, these were mainly young people.
The narrative of the Arab Revolt is the cornerstone of Jordanian political identity and offers a powerful challenge to the Muslim revivalist or "Salafi" vision of history. From 1916, the Sharif of Mecca and his sons, scions of the Prophet Muhammad and leading notables in the city of his birth, led a nationalist rebellion against the Ottoman Empire, whose sultans had recently begun styling themselves caliphs, or a sort of Sunni "pope." Sharif Hussein and his sons Faisal and Abdullah, who possessed their own religious charisma as Meccan leaders claiming descent from the Prophet, rejected that claim. They were perfectly happy to take help from the British Empire, which was fighting the Germans and Ottoman Turks in World War I and used the Arabs as a guerrilla force to attack the Ottoman rear. One of the British agents lending the Arabs aid, T.E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia"), presented himself as the hero of the story, but Arabs know who really led the Arab revolt.
The British and French then divided up the spoils in the Sykes-Picot Agreement. The British rewarded Sharif Hussein's sons for their help in chasing the Ottomans out of the Arab world. They bestowed the Trans-Jordan, a region that includes present-day Jordan, Israel and the occupied territories, on Abdullah. They tried to install Faisal, who conquered Damascus, as king of Syria, but the French invaded to claim what they had been promised. The British then made Faisal king of Iraq, but his dynasty was overthrown in the popular revolution of 1958. Of the great protagonists of the Arab Revolt, only Abdullah still has a direct legacy, in the form of his descendant and namesake, Abdullah II, the king of Jordan.
The parade for the Arab Revolt, combined with a kind of Army Day, thus functions as a nationalist ritual, one that implicitly disputes the radical Islamist understanding of modern history. The Muslim radicals tend to see the Ottoman rulers as righteous caliphs, and lament the fragmentation of the Muslim world into nation-states that ensued from the breakup of the last major Muslim empire. (Osama bin Laden has made references to dates in some of his speeches that clearly lament the end of the Ottoman Empire.) The radicals see all Western influence as pernicious. But the heirs of the Arab Revolt have the opposite perspective. Their ancestors helped overthrow the caliph, and they made a strong alliance with the West to do so. The Jordanian monarchy has ever after navigated between Western power (increasingly actually American power) and local nationalisms and religious movements.
On Sunday, June 11, four members of parliament from the Muslim Brotherhood visited Zarqa to express their condolences to the al-Khalayla clan on Zarqawi's death. The Jordanian regime immediately ordered them detained and is having them investigated. Human Rights Watch condemned the arrest as lacking any legal grounds, but their arrest was renewed on Sunday.
King Abdullah II rejected the criticism and called on HRW to apologize to the Jordanian people. He also said, "Zarqawi was a mass murderer, not only killing innocent people in Jordan, but also in Iraq and elsewhere. I cannot fathom how some people can make this man a hero." He insisted on a "zero-tolerance" policy toward "people who incite and support terrorism in any form." In reply, Muslim Brotherhood head Salem Falahat said, "This latest crisis is fabricated. Is this to find excuses and justifications to harm the [Muslim Brotherhood] movement and stir incitement against it ... because of its widening appeal?"
There is a real distinction between political Islam and Islamist terrorism. The problem is that Bush's rash policies have blurred the sharp edges that formerly distinguished the two. Many Sunni fundamentalists who before Bush's invasion would never have accepted Zarqawi's brutal tactics clearly have a soft spot in their hearts for him. They admire him as an anti-imperialist fighter, and his religious fundamentalism, while more extreme than their own, makes him seem a kindred spirit to many of them.
Hamas in Palestine expressed its condolences on his death, calling him a "brother" and a "martyr." The provincial legislature of Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province, dominated by the fundamentalist Jama'at-i Islami, held mourning prayers for Zarqawi after the federal parliament of Pakistan voted against doing any such thing. The NWFP abuts Afghanistan and the tribal areas where the Taliban and al-Qaida still have some strength.
The old Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, now a sworn enemy but once a close ally of the U.S. who received perhaps a billion dollars in aid from the Reagan administration in the 1980s, issued a statement calling on Iraqis to continue Zarqawi's fight. "Zarqawi is not dead but he is alive as his colleagues are struggling for independence," he affirmed. The leader of the Hizb-i Islami Party, which has targeted NATO and U.S. troops in Afghanistan, continued, "Those who bow before the enemies or intruders are considered dead. Whereas the followers of Zarqawi are alive and struggling against the aggressive forces."
In contrast, the Shiite religious parties of the region rejoiced at Zarqawi's death. Iraqi Shiites in cities like Basra fired their guns in the air and danced in the streets at the news of Zarqawi's death. This was hardly surprising: Zarqawi had singled out innocent Shiites for gruesome bombings. He viewed Shiites as non-Muslims deserving of death, and worked to foment a sectarian civil war that would have the effect of driving the U.S. out of Iraq. Rejecting any power for Shiites, he attacked the Lebanese Hezbollah and called for it to be disarmed. On his death, a spokesman for the Hezbollah Party in Beirut condemned him, saying: "His criminal acts aimed at igniting civil wars and inciting sectarian fighting." Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi remarked, "Zarqawi's death sparked joy among Iraqis, which shows he was hated by the Iraqi people. We are also happy about what happened." Zarqawi's papers revealed that he hoped to provoke a war between the United States and Iran.
The fault lines revealed by Zarqawi's death lie not just between the Sunni and the Shiite, but between the secular nationalists and the fundamentalists. The danger is that his successors will find ways of surmounting terrorism to become a genuine political force. The U.S. military occupation of a major Arab country is in danger of discrediting moderate governments such as that of Jordan, and of pushing ordinary Arabs into the arms of the fundamentalists. His carefully hidden body must not be exhumed for beatification. Will the Arab Revolt as a narrative of nationalism, Islamic charisma, and an alliance with the West, always be as popular in Jordan as it is now? That Zarqawi's biggest approval rating in Jordan comes from the young is not a good sign for the future. Were the Sunni Arabs of the region to turn in large numbers to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, the stage would be set for a debilitating struggle with the Shiites of Lebanon and Iraq. The Palestinians of Jordan, the majority of the population, could turn to Hamas if they are forced into despair by Israeli oppression of their brethren on the West Bank. The Muslim Brotherhood is strong in Jordan and Syria, and it could be radicalized by the U.S. and Israeli occupations of Muslims. It could also eventually come to power.
Zarqawi must not be enabled to achieve in death what escaped him in life, the radicalization and polarization of the whole region.
-------------------------------
Citation: Juan Cole. "The Zarqawi effect," Salon.com, 27 June 2006.
Original URL: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/06/27/zarqawi/
-------------------------------
By Juan Cole
Salon.com, 27 June 2006
Whatever the meaning of the killing of Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi by a U.S. airstrike earlier this month, it has not lessened Iraq's violent nightmare, or calmed tensions in the Middle East. Al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri called him "the prince of martyrs" and vowed revenge on the U.S. Some reports suggest that the two U.S. soldiers captured at Yusufiyah were tortured and killed by Zarqawi's shadowy successor. The three weeks after his death have witnessed daily bombings with dozens of casualties throughout Iraq. And Zarqawi's demise has stirred up trouble throughout the region, as controversies on how to respond to it have erupted among secularists and fundamentalists, Sunnis and Shiites.
Outside Iraq, the most public dispute has raged in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Jordan has refused to accept Zarqawi's body, which will likely be unceremoniously dumped in an unmarked grave in Iraq, lest it become a shrine. I was in Amman the week after Zarqawi's death, and Jordan was abuzz with reports of the deep involvement of that country's security forces in the operation against him. Indeed, Jordanian newspapers called the campaign "Operation Hotel Martyrs," seeing the airstrike on his safe house in Hibhib as payback for the deadly explosions at the Radisson, the Hyatt and the Days Inn in Amman last November. It has now been revealed that one of those who betrayed Zarqawi was a Jordanian in his own circle, likely a double agent recruited by Amman's formidable intelligence service.
On June 10, I attended the military parade that commemorated the early 20th century Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire, and found throngs of enthusiastic Jordanian nationalists cheering their military men as they passed by in tanks and armored vehicles. Children impudently clambered atop police SUVs to get a better look at the passing troops, and girls in head scarves and long embroidered black tunics shouted approval in their Bedouin-accented Arabic, all hard G's and glottal stops. King and nation clearly retain substantial popularity. But currents of dissatisfaction are moving beneath the surface, which could pose a serious challenge to the Jordanian government and America's geo-strategic plans for the region.
I was in the audience on June 12 when Prince Hassan, Jordan's former heir apparent, addressed more than 1,300 Middle East experts at the Cultural Center, condemning supporters of terrorism and urging Muslims to return to their moderate roots as a way of mediating conflicts. The urbane, mustachioed and balding royal denounced the appropriation of religious terminology by violent political movements. "Using religious names and definitions is not serving religious causes," he said. He warned that if Muslims do not moderate, "The future is either one of Balkanization, ethnic and sectarian strife, or surrendering to the extremists."
Jordan's King Abdullah II finds himself caught between the two horns of Bush administration policy in the region. On the one hand, Bush's push for a hasty and simplistic "democratization" process has led to a Hamas win in Palestine, an unprecedentedly strong showing by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egyptian parliamentary elections, a Shiite fundamentalist takeover of Iraq, and the admission for the first time of the Lebanese Hezbollah to the government in Beirut. The secular-leaning Jordanian government is deathly afraid that Hamas will gain influence in Jordan itself, and has already accused the party of attempting to smuggle arms into the kingdom.
The other outcome of Bush administration policy has been the rise of Islamist terrorism in Sunni Arab Iraq, as formerly secular Iraqis have turned to religious fundamentalism as a way of combating what they see as U.S. occupation. Both a revived political Islam in the region and a rampaging faith-based terrorism next door in Iraq represent dire threats to Jordan's government.
Zarqawi, whose real name was Ahmad Fadil al-Khalayla, hailed from the Jordanian city of Zarqa, and his radicalism must be understood in a Jordanian context. Although an overwhelmingly conservative Sunni Muslim country, Jordan has not been predominantly an Islamist one. The majority ideology has tended to be some form of Arab nationalism rather than religious fundamentalism. Palestinians displaced by the 1948 war and their descendants, who form some 60 percent of Jordan's population, have historically tended to support the secular Palestine Liberation Organization. The Jordanians of indigenous East Bank or Bedouin background value tribe and king. In both cases, though, some have started turning to political Islam -- an ominous development for Jordan and for the United States, which values the Hashemite Kingdom as an oasis of moderation in the region.
Zarqawi formed part of a minority Islamist political tendency in Jordan, but his radicalism and violence put him on the fringes even of it. He was arrested in 1994 for joining a conspiracy to overthrow King Hussein. His organization, Monotheism and Holy War, is thought to be responsible for several terrorist attacks or foiled plots in Jordan. On Nov. 9, 2005, members of his group, rebranded al-Qaida in Mesopotamia, detonated powerful bombs at the three tourist hotels in Amman, killing 60 Jordanians.
The hotel bombings stirred widespread outrage in Jordan because they targeted Jordanians, whom Zarqawi and his group had branded infidels and apostates because they did not accept his fundamentalist vision. After his death, 67 percent of Jordanians rejected the notion that Zarqawi should be considered a martyr, and nearly 60 percent branded him a terrorist. Seventy percent said that even offering condolences on his death was unacceptable. But 15 percent saw him as either a martyr or an "ordinary citizen" -- and ominously, these were mainly young people.
The narrative of the Arab Revolt is the cornerstone of Jordanian political identity and offers a powerful challenge to the Muslim revivalist or "Salafi" vision of history. From 1916, the Sharif of Mecca and his sons, scions of the Prophet Muhammad and leading notables in the city of his birth, led a nationalist rebellion against the Ottoman Empire, whose sultans had recently begun styling themselves caliphs, or a sort of Sunni "pope." Sharif Hussein and his sons Faisal and Abdullah, who possessed their own religious charisma as Meccan leaders claiming descent from the Prophet, rejected that claim. They were perfectly happy to take help from the British Empire, which was fighting the Germans and Ottoman Turks in World War I and used the Arabs as a guerrilla force to attack the Ottoman rear. One of the British agents lending the Arabs aid, T.E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia"), presented himself as the hero of the story, but Arabs know who really led the Arab revolt.
The British and French then divided up the spoils in the Sykes-Picot Agreement. The British rewarded Sharif Hussein's sons for their help in chasing the Ottomans out of the Arab world. They bestowed the Trans-Jordan, a region that includes present-day Jordan, Israel and the occupied territories, on Abdullah. They tried to install Faisal, who conquered Damascus, as king of Syria, but the French invaded to claim what they had been promised. The British then made Faisal king of Iraq, but his dynasty was overthrown in the popular revolution of 1958. Of the great protagonists of the Arab Revolt, only Abdullah still has a direct legacy, in the form of his descendant and namesake, Abdullah II, the king of Jordan.
The parade for the Arab Revolt, combined with a kind of Army Day, thus functions as a nationalist ritual, one that implicitly disputes the radical Islamist understanding of modern history. The Muslim radicals tend to see the Ottoman rulers as righteous caliphs, and lament the fragmentation of the Muslim world into nation-states that ensued from the breakup of the last major Muslim empire. (Osama bin Laden has made references to dates in some of his speeches that clearly lament the end of the Ottoman Empire.) The radicals see all Western influence as pernicious. But the heirs of the Arab Revolt have the opposite perspective. Their ancestors helped overthrow the caliph, and they made a strong alliance with the West to do so. The Jordanian monarchy has ever after navigated between Western power (increasingly actually American power) and local nationalisms and religious movements.
On Sunday, June 11, four members of parliament from the Muslim Brotherhood visited Zarqa to express their condolences to the al-Khalayla clan on Zarqawi's death. The Jordanian regime immediately ordered them detained and is having them investigated. Human Rights Watch condemned the arrest as lacking any legal grounds, but their arrest was renewed on Sunday.
King Abdullah II rejected the criticism and called on HRW to apologize to the Jordanian people. He also said, "Zarqawi was a mass murderer, not only killing innocent people in Jordan, but also in Iraq and elsewhere. I cannot fathom how some people can make this man a hero." He insisted on a "zero-tolerance" policy toward "people who incite and support terrorism in any form." In reply, Muslim Brotherhood head Salem Falahat said, "This latest crisis is fabricated. Is this to find excuses and justifications to harm the [Muslim Brotherhood] movement and stir incitement against it ... because of its widening appeal?"
There is a real distinction between political Islam and Islamist terrorism. The problem is that Bush's rash policies have blurred the sharp edges that formerly distinguished the two. Many Sunni fundamentalists who before Bush's invasion would never have accepted Zarqawi's brutal tactics clearly have a soft spot in their hearts for him. They admire him as an anti-imperialist fighter, and his religious fundamentalism, while more extreme than their own, makes him seem a kindred spirit to many of them.
Hamas in Palestine expressed its condolences on his death, calling him a "brother" and a "martyr." The provincial legislature of Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province, dominated by the fundamentalist Jama'at-i Islami, held mourning prayers for Zarqawi after the federal parliament of Pakistan voted against doing any such thing. The NWFP abuts Afghanistan and the tribal areas where the Taliban and al-Qaida still have some strength.
The old Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, now a sworn enemy but once a close ally of the U.S. who received perhaps a billion dollars in aid from the Reagan administration in the 1980s, issued a statement calling on Iraqis to continue Zarqawi's fight. "Zarqawi is not dead but he is alive as his colleagues are struggling for independence," he affirmed. The leader of the Hizb-i Islami Party, which has targeted NATO and U.S. troops in Afghanistan, continued, "Those who bow before the enemies or intruders are considered dead. Whereas the followers of Zarqawi are alive and struggling against the aggressive forces."
In contrast, the Shiite religious parties of the region rejoiced at Zarqawi's death. Iraqi Shiites in cities like Basra fired their guns in the air and danced in the streets at the news of Zarqawi's death. This was hardly surprising: Zarqawi had singled out innocent Shiites for gruesome bombings. He viewed Shiites as non-Muslims deserving of death, and worked to foment a sectarian civil war that would have the effect of driving the U.S. out of Iraq. Rejecting any power for Shiites, he attacked the Lebanese Hezbollah and called for it to be disarmed. On his death, a spokesman for the Hezbollah Party in Beirut condemned him, saying: "His criminal acts aimed at igniting civil wars and inciting sectarian fighting." Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi remarked, "Zarqawi's death sparked joy among Iraqis, which shows he was hated by the Iraqi people. We are also happy about what happened." Zarqawi's papers revealed that he hoped to provoke a war between the United States and Iran.
The fault lines revealed by Zarqawi's death lie not just between the Sunni and the Shiite, but between the secular nationalists and the fundamentalists. The danger is that his successors will find ways of surmounting terrorism to become a genuine political force. The U.S. military occupation of a major Arab country is in danger of discrediting moderate governments such as that of Jordan, and of pushing ordinary Arabs into the arms of the fundamentalists. His carefully hidden body must not be exhumed for beatification. Will the Arab Revolt as a narrative of nationalism, Islamic charisma, and an alliance with the West, always be as popular in Jordan as it is now? That Zarqawi's biggest approval rating in Jordan comes from the young is not a good sign for the future. Were the Sunni Arabs of the region to turn in large numbers to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, the stage would be set for a debilitating struggle with the Shiites of Lebanon and Iraq. The Palestinians of Jordan, the majority of the population, could turn to Hamas if they are forced into despair by Israeli oppression of their brethren on the West Bank. The Muslim Brotherhood is strong in Jordan and Syria, and it could be radicalized by the U.S. and Israeli occupations of Muslims. It could also eventually come to power.
Zarqawi must not be enabled to achieve in death what escaped him in life, the radicalization and polarization of the whole region.
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Citation: Juan Cole. "The Zarqawi effect," Salon.com, 27 June 2006.
Original URL: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/06/27/zarqawi/
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27 June 2006
Private Sector in Control of China Economy, Survey Says
By Richard McGregor
Financial Times, 13 September 2005
The private sector in China is now responsible for about three-quarters of economic output and employment, according to a new survey, making the ruling Communist party more dependent than ever on entrepreneurs to sustain the high-speed growth underpinning its rule.
The survey by CLSA, the brokerage, to be released in Hong Kong today, says that "tens of millions of small and medium-sized enterprises have wrested control" of the economy from the state sector that dominated business for half a century following the 1949 revolution.
Private companies are more profitable, more efficient and carry less debt than the state sector, the report says, giving the economy significantly more flexibility as it enters a possible slowdown in coming months.
The dominance of the private sector is also important politically, as the Chinese government will not be able to roll back market reforms, as it did the last time the economy slowed sharply in 1990, in the aftermath of the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square.
"The party is going to have stick to the dance partner that delivered the past few years of strong growth - China's entrepreneurs," the report says.
The report's assertion about the high contribution of the private sector to the economy is not without controversy.
The Chinese government's own official statistics in 2003 said that only 22 per cent of gross domestic product was generated by local companies registered as private enterprises.
The CLSA report arrives at the much higher figure by counting all enterprises defined as "collectives" or "joint-stock companies" as private companies, an assertion that is still debated in China.
The report also factors in the underground economy.
In a high-profile case last year, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (Sasac), which oversees government enterprises, announced that Haier, the country's largest white goods company, was owned by the state.
Haier was set up as a collective in the 1980s under the Qingdao city government but had long been privately managed.
Zuo Xiaolei, the chief economist with Galaxy Securities in Beijing, said ownership was usually defined according to the largest shareholder.
"But this is a very vague and confusing area, as China's privatisation has been fraught with irregularities," he said.
"As long as companies like Haier keep their ownership structure from the public, it will be hard to define whether these enterprises are privately run or state owned."
In any case, the trend towards greater private ownership and a smaller state sector is openly encouraged by the central government.
Li Rongrong, the head of Sasac, which has 169 central government companies under its control, said in a speech last week that Beijing aimed eventually to whittle them down to about 80 to 100, or even lower.
Mr Li said that Beijing would accelerate reforms to ensure that state companies were internationally competitive, and concentrated in strategic sectors and those that affect "national security".
"Temasek only controls 20 to 30 companies, but we have to manage 100 to 200. How can we run them well?" he said. Temasek is Singapore's main state investment vehicle.
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Citation: Richard McGregor. "Private Sector in Control of China Economy, Survey Says," Financial Times, 13 September 2005.
Original URL: http://taiwansecurity.org/News/2005/FT-130905.htm
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Financial Times, 13 September 2005
The private sector in China is now responsible for about three-quarters of economic output and employment, according to a new survey, making the ruling Communist party more dependent than ever on entrepreneurs to sustain the high-speed growth underpinning its rule.
The survey by CLSA, the brokerage, to be released in Hong Kong today, says that "tens of millions of small and medium-sized enterprises have wrested control" of the economy from the state sector that dominated business for half a century following the 1949 revolution.
Private companies are more profitable, more efficient and carry less debt than the state sector, the report says, giving the economy significantly more flexibility as it enters a possible slowdown in coming months.
The dominance of the private sector is also important politically, as the Chinese government will not be able to roll back market reforms, as it did the last time the economy slowed sharply in 1990, in the aftermath of the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square.
"The party is going to have stick to the dance partner that delivered the past few years of strong growth - China's entrepreneurs," the report says.
The report's assertion about the high contribution of the private sector to the economy is not without controversy.
The Chinese government's own official statistics in 2003 said that only 22 per cent of gross domestic product was generated by local companies registered as private enterprises.
The CLSA report arrives at the much higher figure by counting all enterprises defined as "collectives" or "joint-stock companies" as private companies, an assertion that is still debated in China.
The report also factors in the underground economy.
In a high-profile case last year, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (Sasac), which oversees government enterprises, announced that Haier, the country's largest white goods company, was owned by the state.
Haier was set up as a collective in the 1980s under the Qingdao city government but had long been privately managed.
Zuo Xiaolei, the chief economist with Galaxy Securities in Beijing, said ownership was usually defined according to the largest shareholder.
"But this is a very vague and confusing area, as China's privatisation has been fraught with irregularities," he said.
"As long as companies like Haier keep their ownership structure from the public, it will be hard to define whether these enterprises are privately run or state owned."
In any case, the trend towards greater private ownership and a smaller state sector is openly encouraged by the central government.
Li Rongrong, the head of Sasac, which has 169 central government companies under its control, said in a speech last week that Beijing aimed eventually to whittle them down to about 80 to 100, or even lower.
Mr Li said that Beijing would accelerate reforms to ensure that state companies were internationally competitive, and concentrated in strategic sectors and those that affect "national security".
"Temasek only controls 20 to 30 companies, but we have to manage 100 to 200. How can we run them well?" he said. Temasek is Singapore's main state investment vehicle.
-------------------------------
Citation: Richard McGregor. "Private Sector in Control of China Economy, Survey Says," Financial Times, 13 September 2005.
Original URL: http://taiwansecurity.org/News/2005/FT-130905.htm
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Rise of Asian powerhouse challenges economic order
By Mure Dickie
Financial Times, 29 December 2005
The pre-Christmas news that China's economy was 17 per cent bigger than previously reported had resonance far beyond its statistical significance. With China now officially the world's sixth largest economy and catching up fast with France and the UK for fifth and fourth place, the message was clear: the integration of the most populous nation into the global economic system is no longer a theoretical issue but a reality with immediate implications.
Already in 2005, the impact of that integration had been felt more widely than ever before.
European and US failure to prepare for an end to textile quotas left policymakers scrambling to respond to a flood of cheap Chinese clothes. The European Union impounded 77m sweaters, trousers and bras at its borders, and Beijing was forced into months of tetchy talks with Washington and Brussels before accepting temporary restrictions on the textile flow.
Such talks were complicated by the view of many in the US that China was using an artificially cheap renminbi to support its soaring bilateral trade surplus. Beijing won only temporary respite from its critics with a 2.1 per cent revaluation against the US dollar in July - and further disappointed them by keeping the currency on a tight leash thereafter.
In turn, vocal opponents in the US Congress were able to help to sink an unprecedented Dollars 18bn (Euros 15bn, Pounds 10.3bn) bid for the US energy group Unocal by the Chinese state-controlled oil major CNOOC.
Still, the bid was both a signal of China's determination to win access to the energy it needs to fuel its development and a harbinger of offshore investment to come. Beijing's "Go Global" policy already has a poster-child. With the completion in May of Lenovo's Dollars 1.75bn acquisition of IBM's personal computer unit, the Chinese company became the world's third largest PC producer and its first truly global electronics brand.
At home angry anti-Japan demonstrations in Chinese cities were a reminder of regional tensions. China's decision to enshrine in law its threat of force against rival Taiwan helped to kill EU moves towards ending its arms embargo. The year saw no resolution of questions about the ways in which China's rise will affect the world. But it left few in any doubt that its effects will be far-reaching.
------------------------------
Citation: Mure Dickie. "Rise of Asian powerhouse challenges economic order," Financial Times, 29 December 2005.
Original URL: http://taiwansecurity.org/News/2005/FT-291205.htm
------------------------------
Financial Times, 29 December 2005
The pre-Christmas news that China's economy was 17 per cent bigger than previously reported had resonance far beyond its statistical significance. With China now officially the world's sixth largest economy and catching up fast with France and the UK for fifth and fourth place, the message was clear: the integration of the most populous nation into the global economic system is no longer a theoretical issue but a reality with immediate implications.
Already in 2005, the impact of that integration had been felt more widely than ever before.
European and US failure to prepare for an end to textile quotas left policymakers scrambling to respond to a flood of cheap Chinese clothes. The European Union impounded 77m sweaters, trousers and bras at its borders, and Beijing was forced into months of tetchy talks with Washington and Brussels before accepting temporary restrictions on the textile flow.
Such talks were complicated by the view of many in the US that China was using an artificially cheap renminbi to support its soaring bilateral trade surplus. Beijing won only temporary respite from its critics with a 2.1 per cent revaluation against the US dollar in July - and further disappointed them by keeping the currency on a tight leash thereafter.
In turn, vocal opponents in the US Congress were able to help to sink an unprecedented Dollars 18bn (Euros 15bn, Pounds 10.3bn) bid for the US energy group Unocal by the Chinese state-controlled oil major CNOOC.
Still, the bid was both a signal of China's determination to win access to the energy it needs to fuel its development and a harbinger of offshore investment to come. Beijing's "Go Global" policy already has a poster-child. With the completion in May of Lenovo's Dollars 1.75bn acquisition of IBM's personal computer unit, the Chinese company became the world's third largest PC producer and its first truly global electronics brand.
At home angry anti-Japan demonstrations in Chinese cities were a reminder of regional tensions. China's decision to enshrine in law its threat of force against rival Taiwan helped to kill EU moves towards ending its arms embargo. The year saw no resolution of questions about the ways in which China's rise will affect the world. But it left few in any doubt that its effects will be far-reaching.
------------------------------
Citation: Mure Dickie. "Rise of Asian powerhouse challenges economic order," Financial Times, 29 December 2005.
Original URL: http://taiwansecurity.org/News/2005/FT-291205.htm
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Second Thoughts About China's Military Power
By Avery Goldstein
Foreign Policy Research Institute, April 1998
Is China on the verge of possessing the military capabilities of a great power? Answering this question is crucial as analysts attempt to forecast the role that China may play in world politics, a role that will be shaped by its capabilities as well as its intentions and the international context in which it must operate. In the 1990s, many analysts began to take note of what seemed to be a concerted effort to modernize the country's military. Unlike the generally positive international reaction to China's economic miracle, however, the reaction to China's military modernization was one of concern, and often alarm. Beijing clearly was determined to improve the aging, third- rate military establishment that Mao had bequeathed to his successors. Less clear, however, were the results of this effort and the extent to which it portended the imminent arrival of China as a world-class military power. A second look at the claims of those who sounded the alarm follows.
CLAIM #1: Chinese military spending is rising rapidly and is already much higher than most have supposed.
True, following a decade during which the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) budgets were kept relatively low as domestic economic development was accorded top priority, China's government in the late 1980s announced a succession of large peacetime increases in military spending. However, most analysts had long recognized that China's official military budget (less than $10 billion) substantially understated actual spending. A consensus on very rough estimates hovered around $30 billion, with much of the early 1990s increases absorbed by personnel costs and the effects of inflation.
Those who offered much higher estimates ($50-100 billion), taken to be a clear indication of an ambitious China's crash program of military modernization, depended on folding in widely recognized, officially "hidden" sources of PLA revenue. But estimates of such revenues, (chiefly international arms sales and PLA commercial enterprises) are often exaggerated. The most thorough analyses suggest that China's arms exports together with earnings from the PLA's commercial activities probably generate on the order of $2-3 billion annually, more than Beijing admits, but far short of the $5-20 billion essential to the calculations of those who posit Chinese military budgets in excess of $50 billion. Aside from questions about the amounts earned, the net effects of maintaining these supplemental sources of income for the PLA are unclear. Although the military business complex provides hidden revenues, it also exacts hidden costs, spreading corruption within the military, diverting the PLA's attention from its principal responsibility to ready itself for possible armed conflict, and redirecting the focus of China's defense industry away from strategically important military, to economically profitable civilian, production.
CLAIM #2: Although the PLA as a whole is a poorly organized, ill-equipped military, a substantial fraction of the whole is becoming a first-rate fighting force.
True, by the mid-1990s, China had reorganized between 15 and 25 percent of the PLA (several hundred thousand troops) into elite units, so-called rapid-response or fist forces, that are better supplied and take the lead in using more advanced equipment to master the techniques of combined arms and joint service operations These efforts to prepare for local and limited wars began in the mid-1980s when the threat of major war with the Soviet Union was discounted. They accelerated after the breathtaking demonstration of advanced military technology in the Gulf War. As regional disputes in locations beyond the PLA's largely continental range of operation intensified, Beijing made it a priority to prepare for the possibility of "limited war under high-technology conditions" that would necessitate a modernized power projection capability.
However, China has a long road to travel from aspiration to accomplishment. China's force modernization has improved the quality of the selected portions of the PLA some analysts label "pockets of excellence," but the practical significance of these changes remains limited. Although recently constituted elite units have undertaken widely noted exercises, simultaneous deployment of forces from multiple services and their use of multiple categories of armaments should not be mistaken for the existence of a well-trained force with the doctrinal understanding and command and control capabilities essential to genuinely effective combined arms operations. Enduring shortcomings in the PLA's ability to coordinate tactical air power with quickly evolving ground or sea operations also cast doubt on the actual capabilities of China's new elite units.
CLAIM #3: China is rapidly upgrading its air and naval capabilities for power projection."
Re-equipped Air Forces? True, in the 1990s the PLA Air Force has begun to overhaul a fleet dominated by thousands of obsolete, first- and second-generation fighter aircraft based on 1950s Soviet designs, with an eye to improving both the combat effectiveness and range of forces that would have to play a key role in projecting China's power across the Taiwan Straits or in the South China Sea. However, the operational significance of China's determined effort to re- equip its air forces is debatable. The longstanding weaknesses of China's aircraft industry limited Beijing's ability to rely on indigenous production of modern fighters and bombers, and even to upgrade existing platforms without foreign assistance. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the diplomatic fence-mending with Russia provided China a golden opportunity to circumvent the cutoff of access to most Western military technology after the Tiananmen Square incident and to purchase advanced aircraft and license production from this new eager seller. Compared with the fighters available to the PLAAF just a decade earlier, deployment of as many as several hundred Soviet/Russian Su- 27s (along with the long-delayed advent of a next generation of Chinese fighters) should constitute an upgrade in capabilities.
Even so, questions remain about how much of this potential will be realized. It is unclear whether China's military and defense industry yet has the ability to maintain the advanced equipment it is importing and coproducing. At a minimum, such problems cast doubt on the PLAAF's ability to smoothly translate new equipment purchases into operational pockets of excellence, especially since the latter will depend also on extensive training of personnel and the integration of better equipment with revised doctrine for its use. The linked issues of training, maintenance, and doctrine also raise questions about China's ability to quickly translate its reported purchases of AWACS and in- flight refueling equipment into a militarily meaningful capability.
Re-equipped Naval Forces? True, China's navy (PLAN) is also in the process of selective modernization focused on deploying vessels that have greater range, are more survivable, and carry more lethal weapons systems than the largely obsolete, vulnerable, coastal defense force China possessed at the end of the Cold War. However, shortcomings in China's shipbuilding industry, as in its aircraft industry, not only explain the extent to which the current naval modernization effort has depended on importing foreign equipment and technology, but also raise doubts about the prospects for rapid improvement.
China is upgrading a portion of its own surface fleet and beginning to deploy small numbers of its own new frigates and destroyers. The highlight of PLAN modernization, however, is the agreement to purchase from Russia at least two Sovremennyi-class guided missile destroyers (a larger, less vulnerable, and much more lethal ship than any in the PLAN's inventory) and between four and twenty Kilo-class conventional submarines (two of which are the advanced "project 636" version rated by the U.S. Office of Naval intelligence as comparably quiet to the Los Angeles-class SSN). Again, issues of training and maintenance will determine whether the naval component of China's power projection capability is realized. In this regard, it is worth noting that serious problems with the operability the first two Kilo submarines have already surfaced. An additional handicap facing even China's best naval forces is that with few exceptions the surface fleet is still fitted with inadequate air and missile defense systems. The resulting vulnerability not only constrains the PLAN's ability to project power, but also helps explain the apparent delay, if not cancellation, of China's plans to purchase or construct an aircraft carrier -- an unattractive investment unless its prospects for survival are good.
The point of the preceding brief review is not to argue that China's PLA is failing to modernize. On the contrary, compared with the legacy of the Maoist era, by the mid-1990s China's military profile, like its economic profile was being dramatically transformed. The point instead, is that the process is a difficult one that will take time. China's leaders speak of comprehensive military modernization by the middle of the next century, with pockets of excellence emerging sooner. Available evidence supports a conclusion that China may gradually realize the goal of selective modernization in the coming decades, but only if it is able to surmount the sorts of obstacles noted above. And these obstacles cannot be overcome simply by tapping a rapidly expanding economy. Although China's growing economic wealth may be a necessary condition for sustaining the military modernization program, it is not sufficient. Money alone cannot transform a research, development, engineering and industrial system handicapped by its Soviet-era origins. Money alone cannot substitute for the time required for military officers and the soldiers they command to master new doctrine and new equipment. And money alone cannot ensure the stability that enables the country to generate the wherewithal for more guns and butter while permitting the PLA to focus its attention on military rather than political responsibilities.
Moreover, the improvement in China's military forces, however impressive in absolute terms, looks much less impressive in relative terms. Successful modernization will leave China with forces by the second or third decade of the next century, most of which would have been state of the art in the 1990s. Relative to other advanced industrial states, certainly the U.S., but most likely also Japan, China continues to fall short of the quantity and quality necessary to enable it to effectively overcome others' resistance far from its shores. Successful modernization may not even yield much of a military advantage for China in its disputes with Taiwan and the ASEAN states. Taiwan's military investments in the 1990s have thus far offset any gains by the PRC. China's success in confrontations with the ASEAN states, several of whom have more experience with more advanced equipment than the PLA possesses, depends on Beijing confronting these states singly rather than in combination, and on their failure to secure support from major states who have expressed concern about the region, including Australia, Britain, and the U.S.
In sum there are multiple reasons to discount the short-term significance of China's improving military capabilities. Despite its remaining weaknesses, however, China's PLA is on the verge of posing new problems for U.S. policy in East Asia. The deployment of well-armed Su-27s, Sovremennyi destroyers, and Kilo-class submarines, when combined with slowly improving Chinese air and naval forces will not turn the waters of East Asia into a Chinese lake, but it will create a situation in which the U.S. can no longer expect easily to dominate in limited conventional military engagements. Together with China's (slowly) improving ballistic missile and nuclear forces, the ability to preclude swift, decisive outside intervention and to require even its most potent adversary to run the risk of nuclear escalation may be all that Beijing needs in confrontations over interests it deems vital. Whether China's military modernization will also yield the clout necessary to play the role of a global great power, one that poses more daunting challenges for the U.S., remains an open question whose answer lies well down the road.
Avery Goldstein is Director of FPRI's Asia Program, Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Christopher H. Browne Center for International Politics at the University Of Pennsylvania. This essay contains material included in his article, "Great Expectations: Interpreting China's Arrival," International Security, Winter 1997/98.
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Citation: Avery Goldstein. "Second Thoughts About China's Military Power," Foreign Policy Research Institute, April 1998.
Original URL: http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/asia/goldstein0498.html
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Foreign Policy Research Institute, April 1998
Is China on the verge of possessing the military capabilities of a great power? Answering this question is crucial as analysts attempt to forecast the role that China may play in world politics, a role that will be shaped by its capabilities as well as its intentions and the international context in which it must operate. In the 1990s, many analysts began to take note of what seemed to be a concerted effort to modernize the country's military. Unlike the generally positive international reaction to China's economic miracle, however, the reaction to China's military modernization was one of concern, and often alarm. Beijing clearly was determined to improve the aging, third- rate military establishment that Mao had bequeathed to his successors. Less clear, however, were the results of this effort and the extent to which it portended the imminent arrival of China as a world-class military power. A second look at the claims of those who sounded the alarm follows.
CLAIM #1: Chinese military spending is rising rapidly and is already much higher than most have supposed.
True, following a decade during which the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) budgets were kept relatively low as domestic economic development was accorded top priority, China's government in the late 1980s announced a succession of large peacetime increases in military spending. However, most analysts had long recognized that China's official military budget (less than $10 billion) substantially understated actual spending. A consensus on very rough estimates hovered around $30 billion, with much of the early 1990s increases absorbed by personnel costs and the effects of inflation.
Those who offered much higher estimates ($50-100 billion), taken to be a clear indication of an ambitious China's crash program of military modernization, depended on folding in widely recognized, officially "hidden" sources of PLA revenue. But estimates of such revenues, (chiefly international arms sales and PLA commercial enterprises) are often exaggerated. The most thorough analyses suggest that China's arms exports together with earnings from the PLA's commercial activities probably generate on the order of $2-3 billion annually, more than Beijing admits, but far short of the $5-20 billion essential to the calculations of those who posit Chinese military budgets in excess of $50 billion. Aside from questions about the amounts earned, the net effects of maintaining these supplemental sources of income for the PLA are unclear. Although the military business complex provides hidden revenues, it also exacts hidden costs, spreading corruption within the military, diverting the PLA's attention from its principal responsibility to ready itself for possible armed conflict, and redirecting the focus of China's defense industry away from strategically important military, to economically profitable civilian, production.
CLAIM #2: Although the PLA as a whole is a poorly organized, ill-equipped military, a substantial fraction of the whole is becoming a first-rate fighting force.
True, by the mid-1990s, China had reorganized between 15 and 25 percent of the PLA (several hundred thousand troops) into elite units, so-called rapid-response or fist forces, that are better supplied and take the lead in using more advanced equipment to master the techniques of combined arms and joint service operations These efforts to prepare for local and limited wars began in the mid-1980s when the threat of major war with the Soviet Union was discounted. They accelerated after the breathtaking demonstration of advanced military technology in the Gulf War. As regional disputes in locations beyond the PLA's largely continental range of operation intensified, Beijing made it a priority to prepare for the possibility of "limited war under high-technology conditions" that would necessitate a modernized power projection capability.
However, China has a long road to travel from aspiration to accomplishment. China's force modernization has improved the quality of the selected portions of the PLA some analysts label "pockets of excellence," but the practical significance of these changes remains limited. Although recently constituted elite units have undertaken widely noted exercises, simultaneous deployment of forces from multiple services and their use of multiple categories of armaments should not be mistaken for the existence of a well-trained force with the doctrinal understanding and command and control capabilities essential to genuinely effective combined arms operations. Enduring shortcomings in the PLA's ability to coordinate tactical air power with quickly evolving ground or sea operations also cast doubt on the actual capabilities of China's new elite units.
CLAIM #3: China is rapidly upgrading its air and naval capabilities for power projection."
Re-equipped Air Forces? True, in the 1990s the PLA Air Force has begun to overhaul a fleet dominated by thousands of obsolete, first- and second-generation fighter aircraft based on 1950s Soviet designs, with an eye to improving both the combat effectiveness and range of forces that would have to play a key role in projecting China's power across the Taiwan Straits or in the South China Sea. However, the operational significance of China's determined effort to re- equip its air forces is debatable. The longstanding weaknesses of China's aircraft industry limited Beijing's ability to rely on indigenous production of modern fighters and bombers, and even to upgrade existing platforms without foreign assistance. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the diplomatic fence-mending with Russia provided China a golden opportunity to circumvent the cutoff of access to most Western military technology after the Tiananmen Square incident and to purchase advanced aircraft and license production from this new eager seller. Compared with the fighters available to the PLAAF just a decade earlier, deployment of as many as several hundred Soviet/Russian Su- 27s (along with the long-delayed advent of a next generation of Chinese fighters) should constitute an upgrade in capabilities.
Even so, questions remain about how much of this potential will be realized. It is unclear whether China's military and defense industry yet has the ability to maintain the advanced equipment it is importing and coproducing. At a minimum, such problems cast doubt on the PLAAF's ability to smoothly translate new equipment purchases into operational pockets of excellence, especially since the latter will depend also on extensive training of personnel and the integration of better equipment with revised doctrine for its use. The linked issues of training, maintenance, and doctrine also raise questions about China's ability to quickly translate its reported purchases of AWACS and in- flight refueling equipment into a militarily meaningful capability.
Re-equipped Naval Forces? True, China's navy (PLAN) is also in the process of selective modernization focused on deploying vessels that have greater range, are more survivable, and carry more lethal weapons systems than the largely obsolete, vulnerable, coastal defense force China possessed at the end of the Cold War. However, shortcomings in China's shipbuilding industry, as in its aircraft industry, not only explain the extent to which the current naval modernization effort has depended on importing foreign equipment and technology, but also raise doubts about the prospects for rapid improvement.
China is upgrading a portion of its own surface fleet and beginning to deploy small numbers of its own new frigates and destroyers. The highlight of PLAN modernization, however, is the agreement to purchase from Russia at least two Sovremennyi-class guided missile destroyers (a larger, less vulnerable, and much more lethal ship than any in the PLAN's inventory) and between four and twenty Kilo-class conventional submarines (two of which are the advanced "project 636" version rated by the U.S. Office of Naval intelligence as comparably quiet to the Los Angeles-class SSN). Again, issues of training and maintenance will determine whether the naval component of China's power projection capability is realized. In this regard, it is worth noting that serious problems with the operability the first two Kilo submarines have already surfaced. An additional handicap facing even China's best naval forces is that with few exceptions the surface fleet is still fitted with inadequate air and missile defense systems. The resulting vulnerability not only constrains the PLAN's ability to project power, but also helps explain the apparent delay, if not cancellation, of China's plans to purchase or construct an aircraft carrier -- an unattractive investment unless its prospects for survival are good.
The point of the preceding brief review is not to argue that China's PLA is failing to modernize. On the contrary, compared with the legacy of the Maoist era, by the mid-1990s China's military profile, like its economic profile was being dramatically transformed. The point instead, is that the process is a difficult one that will take time. China's leaders speak of comprehensive military modernization by the middle of the next century, with pockets of excellence emerging sooner. Available evidence supports a conclusion that China may gradually realize the goal of selective modernization in the coming decades, but only if it is able to surmount the sorts of obstacles noted above. And these obstacles cannot be overcome simply by tapping a rapidly expanding economy. Although China's growing economic wealth may be a necessary condition for sustaining the military modernization program, it is not sufficient. Money alone cannot transform a research, development, engineering and industrial system handicapped by its Soviet-era origins. Money alone cannot substitute for the time required for military officers and the soldiers they command to master new doctrine and new equipment. And money alone cannot ensure the stability that enables the country to generate the wherewithal for more guns and butter while permitting the PLA to focus its attention on military rather than political responsibilities.
Moreover, the improvement in China's military forces, however impressive in absolute terms, looks much less impressive in relative terms. Successful modernization will leave China with forces by the second or third decade of the next century, most of which would have been state of the art in the 1990s. Relative to other advanced industrial states, certainly the U.S., but most likely also Japan, China continues to fall short of the quantity and quality necessary to enable it to effectively overcome others' resistance far from its shores. Successful modernization may not even yield much of a military advantage for China in its disputes with Taiwan and the ASEAN states. Taiwan's military investments in the 1990s have thus far offset any gains by the PRC. China's success in confrontations with the ASEAN states, several of whom have more experience with more advanced equipment than the PLA possesses, depends on Beijing confronting these states singly rather than in combination, and on their failure to secure support from major states who have expressed concern about the region, including Australia, Britain, and the U.S.
In sum there are multiple reasons to discount the short-term significance of China's improving military capabilities. Despite its remaining weaknesses, however, China's PLA is on the verge of posing new problems for U.S. policy in East Asia. The deployment of well-armed Su-27s, Sovremennyi destroyers, and Kilo-class submarines, when combined with slowly improving Chinese air and naval forces will not turn the waters of East Asia into a Chinese lake, but it will create a situation in which the U.S. can no longer expect easily to dominate in limited conventional military engagements. Together with China's (slowly) improving ballistic missile and nuclear forces, the ability to preclude swift, decisive outside intervention and to require even its most potent adversary to run the risk of nuclear escalation may be all that Beijing needs in confrontations over interests it deems vital. Whether China's military modernization will also yield the clout necessary to play the role of a global great power, one that poses more daunting challenges for the U.S., remains an open question whose answer lies well down the road.
Avery Goldstein is Director of FPRI's Asia Program, Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Christopher H. Browne Center for International Politics at the University Of Pennsylvania. This essay contains material included in his article, "Great Expectations: Interpreting China's Arrival," International Security, Winter 1997/98.
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Citation: Avery Goldstein. "Second Thoughts About China's Military Power," Foreign Policy Research Institute, April 1998.
Original URL: http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/asia/goldstein0498.html
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The Case Against Containment: Treat China Like an Enemy and That's What It Will Be
By Joseph Nye, Jr.
Global Beat, 22 June 1998
Washington's current hysteria about China is largely driven by domestic politics. Three times in two weeks, the House of Representatives rebuked the president over China. In an election year, Republicans seize on allegations of campaign finance scandals, and illegal technology transfers to build campaign issues. Democrats looking forward to the year 2000, split over how to handle human rights during Clinton's trip.
It would be a pity if domestic politics caused Americans to lose sight of our long-term strategic interest in East Asia. Clinton defended his trip in a recent speech. Disagreeing with those who want to isolate China, he argued that such a course would make the world more dangerous. I agree.
When I served in the Pentagon in the first Clinton administration, my concern was how to manage a balance of power in East Asia. After careful studies of the current and projected power of the United States, Japan and China, we developed a four-part strategy: Maintain the forward presence of roughly 100,000 troops in the region. Support multilateral institutions such as ASEAN Regional Forum. Put our alliances, particularly with Japan, on a firm post-Cold War basis.
From that position of strength, encourage China to define its interests in ways that in the long run could be compatible with ours. Clinton accomplished an important part of this strategy in April 1996, when he and Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto publicly affirmed the yearlong work of a joint group that redefined the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty as the basis for stability in the Pacific in the next century. As a result, China cannot play a Japan card against us or try to expel us from the region.
He also made progress during Jiang Zemin's visit last year on the crucial second stage of the strategy, the constructive engagement of China. His current trip is the next step. Ever since Thucydides and the ancient Greeks, historians have known that great wars are often caused by the rise of new powers and the fears such change creates in established powers. But it is not true in every case. New powers can be accommodated if they can be persuaded to define their interests in responsible ways. That is the overarching question the United States faces in its relations with China.
Pessimists about China's future and about America's continuing strength argue for a policy of containment analogous to our response to the Soviet Union after World War II. But the current debate between containment and engagement is too simple. For one thing, a crude policy of containment would not work.
Three Fatal Flaws
Containment has three fatal flaws. First, it exaggerates current and future Chinese strength. Unlike the Soviet Union, which had an expansionist ideology and conventional military superiority in Europe, China lacks the capacity to project military power much beyond its borders. Moreover, in the new dimensions of military strength in the information age, America's edge will continue to persist.
Second, as a quick survey of Asian capitals makes clear, the United States could not now develop a coalition to contain China even if we tried. China's neighbors do not see it as a current threat in the way the Soviet Union's neighbors did during the Cold War. Only if China's future behavior becomes more aggressive could such a coalition be formed. In that sense, only China can produce an effective containment policy.
Third, containment is mistaken because it discounts the possibility that China can evolve to define its interests as a responsible power. If we treat China as an enemy now, we are guaranteeing ourselves an enemy, particularly given the fact that nationalism is rapidly replacing communism as the dominant ideology among the Chinese people. No one knows for certain what China's future will be, but it makes no sense to throw away the more benign possibilities at this point. Containment is likely to be irreversible, while engagement can be reversed if China changes for the worse.
Engagement, on the other hand, is more an attitude than a detailed policy. It does not prescribe how to handle hard issues like Taiwan, trade or human rights. The United States and China will continue to have important disagreements, and we will often need to take actions China will not like - such as sending two carriers near Taiwan in 1996, or insisting on proper conditions for joining the World Trade Organization.
Two Nations, Common Interests
At the same time, we also have important areas of common interests with China. We both want prosperity in the region, and China has acted responsibly in the Asian financial crisis. Neither country wants a conflict on the Korean Peninsula or a nuclear arms race in the region following the Indian and Pakistani tests.
A weak or chaotic China that could not feed its people, stem the flow of refugees, or manage its environmental problems is not in our interest either. In some areas, like nuclear nonproliferation or the comprehensive test ban, China over the past decade has come to define its interests in directions more like ours and has greatly improved its behavior.
If China can be brought into a network of rule-based relations, such an evolution may continue. Will this strategy work? No one can be certain, but it is clearly better than the containment strategy advocated by many who object to Clinton's trip. It would be one of history's tragic ironies if domestic politics leads to an unnecessary Cold War in Asia that will be costly for this and future generations of Americans.
Joseph S. Nye, Jr. is dean of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and former assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs.
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Citation: Joseph Nye, Jr. "The Case Against Containment: Treat China Like an Enemy and That's What It Will Be," Global Beat, 22 June 1998.
Original URL: http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/asia/china/06221998nye.html
------------------------------------
Global Beat, 22 June 1998
Washington's current hysteria about China is largely driven by domestic politics. Three times in two weeks, the House of Representatives rebuked the president over China. In an election year, Republicans seize on allegations of campaign finance scandals, and illegal technology transfers to build campaign issues. Democrats looking forward to the year 2000, split over how to handle human rights during Clinton's trip.
It would be a pity if domestic politics caused Americans to lose sight of our long-term strategic interest in East Asia. Clinton defended his trip in a recent speech. Disagreeing with those who want to isolate China, he argued that such a course would make the world more dangerous. I agree.
When I served in the Pentagon in the first Clinton administration, my concern was how to manage a balance of power in East Asia. After careful studies of the current and projected power of the United States, Japan and China, we developed a four-part strategy: Maintain the forward presence of roughly 100,000 troops in the region. Support multilateral institutions such as ASEAN Regional Forum. Put our alliances, particularly with Japan, on a firm post-Cold War basis.
From that position of strength, encourage China to define its interests in ways that in the long run could be compatible with ours. Clinton accomplished an important part of this strategy in April 1996, when he and Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto publicly affirmed the yearlong work of a joint group that redefined the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty as the basis for stability in the Pacific in the next century. As a result, China cannot play a Japan card against us or try to expel us from the region.
He also made progress during Jiang Zemin's visit last year on the crucial second stage of the strategy, the constructive engagement of China. His current trip is the next step. Ever since Thucydides and the ancient Greeks, historians have known that great wars are often caused by the rise of new powers and the fears such change creates in established powers. But it is not true in every case. New powers can be accommodated if they can be persuaded to define their interests in responsible ways. That is the overarching question the United States faces in its relations with China.
Pessimists about China's future and about America's continuing strength argue for a policy of containment analogous to our response to the Soviet Union after World War II. But the current debate between containment and engagement is too simple. For one thing, a crude policy of containment would not work.
Three Fatal Flaws
Containment has three fatal flaws. First, it exaggerates current and future Chinese strength. Unlike the Soviet Union, which had an expansionist ideology and conventional military superiority in Europe, China lacks the capacity to project military power much beyond its borders. Moreover, in the new dimensions of military strength in the information age, America's edge will continue to persist.
Second, as a quick survey of Asian capitals makes clear, the United States could not now develop a coalition to contain China even if we tried. China's neighbors do not see it as a current threat in the way the Soviet Union's neighbors did during the Cold War. Only if China's future behavior becomes more aggressive could such a coalition be formed. In that sense, only China can produce an effective containment policy.
Third, containment is mistaken because it discounts the possibility that China can evolve to define its interests as a responsible power. If we treat China as an enemy now, we are guaranteeing ourselves an enemy, particularly given the fact that nationalism is rapidly replacing communism as the dominant ideology among the Chinese people. No one knows for certain what China's future will be, but it makes no sense to throw away the more benign possibilities at this point. Containment is likely to be irreversible, while engagement can be reversed if China changes for the worse.
Engagement, on the other hand, is more an attitude than a detailed policy. It does not prescribe how to handle hard issues like Taiwan, trade or human rights. The United States and China will continue to have important disagreements, and we will often need to take actions China will not like - such as sending two carriers near Taiwan in 1996, or insisting on proper conditions for joining the World Trade Organization.
Two Nations, Common Interests
At the same time, we also have important areas of common interests with China. We both want prosperity in the region, and China has acted responsibly in the Asian financial crisis. Neither country wants a conflict on the Korean Peninsula or a nuclear arms race in the region following the Indian and Pakistani tests.
A weak or chaotic China that could not feed its people, stem the flow of refugees, or manage its environmental problems is not in our interest either. In some areas, like nuclear nonproliferation or the comprehensive test ban, China over the past decade has come to define its interests in directions more like ours and has greatly improved its behavior.
If China can be brought into a network of rule-based relations, such an evolution may continue. Will this strategy work? No one can be certain, but it is clearly better than the containment strategy advocated by many who object to Clinton's trip. It would be one of history's tragic ironies if domestic politics leads to an unnecessary Cold War in Asia that will be costly for this and future generations of Americans.
Joseph S. Nye, Jr. is dean of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and former assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs.
------------------------------------
Citation: Joseph Nye, Jr. "The Case Against Containment: Treat China Like an Enemy and That's What It Will Be," Global Beat, 22 June 1998.
Original URL: http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/asia/china/06221998nye.html
------------------------------------
China's Rusting Sword: Despite Nuclear Status and Large Army, China has Little Offensive Capability
By June Teufel Dryer
Global Beat, 22 June 1998
Although the People's Liberation Army would be no match for U.S. forces in a major war, it is feared by neighboring powers and could conceivably do considerable damage to American forces in an Asian regional scenario. China's aim may be to build a military that is perceived as so powerful that neighboring states with whom it has territorial disputes will capitulate rather than contest their claims.
This primer assesses China's military capabilities in five categories: defense posture, strategic forces, ground forces, naval forces, and air and air defense.
I. Defense posture
Although China's military - the People's Liberation Army - would be no match for U.S. forces in a major war, it is feared by neighboring powers and could conceivably do considerable damage to American forces in an Asian regional scenario. The military modernization of the PLA is expected to focus on three areas: small high-tech forces for use in regional scenarios; large low-to-medium tech forces for internal security purposes; and a strategic nuclear force sufficiently potent to provide a deterrent to other powers. China's aim may be to build a military that is perceived as so powerful that neighboring states with whom it has territorial disputes will capitulate rather than contest their claims.
Deployment
Ground and air forces are divided into seven military regions each covering several provinces apiece; The navy into three fleets (North, East, and South) on China's eastern coast. Ground troops (approximately half of total) are heavily concentrated in the north and northeast around Beijing and near the border with Russia. The bulk of marines are attached to South Sea Fleet, reflecting territorial disputes with neighbors involving sovereignty over Taiwan, the Spratlys, Paracels, and Senkaku/Diaoyutai islands.
Readiness
Varies widely, with elite rapid reaction units at the high end. Readiness levels are not available on unclassified basis. Despite recent improvements, training methods continue to be deficient. Officers are better educated but the poor educational levels of rank-and-file troops remains a limitation. Time in-air and at-sea for air force and the navy remain well below NATO standards.
Defense spending
The published defense budget has been rising by approximately 10 percent annually since 1988. China defends this by pointing out that these increases barely keep pace with inflation. But actual defense spending is estimated to be three to four times the published budget. Moreover, this year's increase to the published defense budget, 12.8 percent or about $11 billion, occurs as inflation rate is estimated to be under three percent.
Doctrine
The expectation is that the PLA must be prepared to fight local, limited, high-tech wars on China's periphery, presumably including ethnic conflict within China's borders. China has accused unspecified foreign forces of instigating these ethnic conflicts. The country does not fear attack on Chinese territory but has defined all disputed territorial claims as strictly domestic (see Deployment). China does fear a U.S.-Japan alliance to "contain" China which may impede recovery of these "lost territories."
Political aspects
There has been no PLA presence in the powerful Standing Committee of the Political Bureau since the 15th Party Congress in the fall 1997. However, all top generals have been appointed by President Jiang Zemin and are believed loyal to him. Some analysts believe that the military leadership has been urging a harder foreign policy line on Jiang but hard evidence is lacking.
II. Strategic Forces
China's strategic force constitutes a credible deterrent but is not regarded by military experts as a force with a first strike posture. China has world's third-largest nuclear weapons arsenal and is expected to field ICBMs with multiple independently targeted warheads (MIRVs) by 2010.
Nuclear warheads
At least 100; some estimates say as high as 1,000. U.S. Air Force sources estimate 17-20 are targeted at U.S.; it is likely some can reach east coast cities.
Rocket forces and bombers
Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles: 17 or more, 7 being fitted with multiple (MIRVed) independently targeted warheads; 10 plus or more older types. Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles: About 46. Long-range bombers: None known.
Ballistic missile submarines:
One Xia-class SSBM carrying 12 intermediate ranged ballistic missiles.
III. Ground forces
A total of 2,090,000 personnel are under arms in China. But ground forces have received lowest priority for modernization after naval, air, and strategic forces. Consequently, the infantry will probably absorb the bulk of a planned reduction of 500,000 in the size of the PLA. Apart from a small number of rapid reaction units, the ground forces lack firepower and mobility. Modernization efforts include upgrading logistics capabilities and firepower of ground forces in general and increasing the number of rapid reaction units.
Main armor
Overall vastly inferior to comparable Western main battle tanks. China operates 8, 500 large tanks, primarily severely outdated indigenously-produced copies of Soviet T-54s. These are being phased out as more modern Chinese-made Type 85 IIMs, equipped with Israeli technology, come on line.
Other armor
China maintains about 1200 Type 63 amphibious light tanks and 800 Type 62 light tanks.
Artillery
Except for the HJ-8 anti-tank weapons, these are Soviet - or Chinese versions of Soviet - designs which have been around since the 1950s or earlier. However, some are still effective weapons.
Towed artillery
About 14,500 total barrels, though numbers are not certain. They break down as follows:
* Multiple rocket launchers: 122 mm/130 mm/273 mm
* Mortars: 82 mm/100 mm/120 mm/160 mm.
* Anti-tank guided weapons: HJ-73 (similar to Soviet Sagger); HJ-8 anti-tank weapons.
* Air Defense guns: 23 mm/37 mm/57 mm/85 mm/100 mm.
Armored personnel carriers
5,500, comparable to older Soviet wheeled BTR series.
Regular army
2,090,000 organized into 24 group armies of 60,000-90,000 each. Group armies composed of three infantry divisions plus tank, artillery, air defense, and support units. Composition and readiness vary from group army to group army; figures not available on an unclassified basis.
Elite units
Fifteen to twenty percent of ground forces belong to commando units with superior training and weapons and capable of rapid deployment.
Marines
One brigade plus special reconnaissance units, about 5,000 men, under naval command.
Airlift capability
Insufficient to transport all airborne units at once.
IV. Naval forces
The PLA's Navy - the PLAN - operates approximately 970 ships, most of which are small and obsolete. Naval modernization is underway, including construction and deployment of Luhu-class destroyers and Jiangwei-class frigates capable of carrying helicopters. Ships are being retrofitted with new types of missiles; Kilo-class submarines and advanced radar systems have been purchased from Russia. However, these improvements will not address PLAN's fundamental problem: its inability to mount sustained, coordinated operations and protect itself while doing so.
Ballistic missile submarines
One Xia, with 12 intermediate ranged ballistic missiles.
Attack submarines
There are 59 or 60 attack submarines
* Nuclear powered submarines: 5 Han-class with 533 mm torpedo tubes;
* Cruise missile submarines: 1 ex-Soviet Romeo-class with with 6 C-801 (similar to French Exocet) SSM and 533 mm torpedo tubes;
* Diesel submarines: 53-54, mostly older ex-Soviet Romeos, but including 3-to-4 more modern Russian-purchased Kilo-class with advanced radar systems.
Destroyers
There are 18 mostly obsolete destroyers.
Frigates
There are approximately 36 frigates, mostly Jiangwei-class. A few Jiangwei carry one French Dauphin helicopter each, but most are equipped with guns and anti-submarine weapons from the '70s and '80s.
Patrol boats
About 830 missile boats, torpedo boats and patrol boats, plus about 120 mine-countermeasure craft. Some of these have been assigned to paramilitary forces, including the People's Armed Police, the border guards; the militia and Customs Services. While it is difficult to be certain of their numbers, overall combat effectiveness is low.
Amphibious warfare
There are 71 LST/LSM types plus 140 smaller craft; can be supplemented by civilian craft. Lift for 1 or two 2 divisions, but limited capacity for assault landings or large-scale amphibious operations. Sufficient sealift for marines but little evidence that other ground forces have amphibious training.
V. Air and air defenses forces
The People's Liberation Army Air Force - the PLAAF - has a large number of combat aircraft, about 5,150. But most of its mainstays are modeled after first and second-generation fighters of the former Soviet Union. In recent years, China has developed and deployed new-type fighters such as the J-8 II (F-8 II) and purchased Sukhoi Su-27 fighters plus permission to produce Su-27s domestically under license from Russia. Modernization plans center on developing strategic airlift, aerial refueling, ground attack capabilities and a new generation of air-superiority fighters. A total of about 470,000 personnel fall under the air and air defense category.
Bombers
The U.S. National Defense University 1997 report says "180 nuclear capable bombers," but that includes some planes which might not prove very useful in wartime. For instance, the authoritative Institute for International Strategic Studies 1997-98 Military Balance says that of 100 H-6 medium bombers, "some may be nuclear-capable." H-6s are copies of Russian Badgers, lumbering Tupolov planes which first flew in 1952.China also operates about 200 H-5 medium bombers, copies of Soviet-built Beagles, Ilyushin planes which first flew in 1948.
Fighters
Forty Su-27; Eight Su-27 B; Two-thousand J-6; Five hundred J-7; Two hundred J-8.
Ground attack
More than 400 Q-5 attack jets, comparable to old American A-4.
Transports
Ten Soviet Il-76, with 12 more rumored to have been purchased; 18 British BAe Trident; about 400 older aircraft, again copies of Soviet types. Some are configured as tankers, but China has no real air-to-air refueling capability.
Command and control capabilities
China maintains tracking stations in Xinjiang and Shanxi that are phased-array radar complex for ballistic missile early warning.
Air defense
Sixteen divisions under the air force, plus navy and ground force units. Guns and older Surface-to-air missiles (SAM) systems.
Naval Air Force
535 land-based aircraft of the same types as the air force are under the command of the navy.
June Teufel Dreyer is professor of political science at the University of Miami Department of Political Science.
She wrote this primer for "The Challenge of China," a project of MSNBC and the New York University Center for War, Peace, and the News Media.
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Citation: June Teufel Dryer. "China's Rusting Sword Despite Nuclear Status and Large Army, China has Little Offensive Capability," Global Beat, 22 June 1998.
Original URL: http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/asia/china/06221998dryer.html
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Global Beat, 22 June 1998
Although the People's Liberation Army would be no match for U.S. forces in a major war, it is feared by neighboring powers and could conceivably do considerable damage to American forces in an Asian regional scenario. China's aim may be to build a military that is perceived as so powerful that neighboring states with whom it has territorial disputes will capitulate rather than contest their claims.
This primer assesses China's military capabilities in five categories: defense posture, strategic forces, ground forces, naval forces, and air and air defense.
I. Defense posture
Although China's military - the People's Liberation Army - would be no match for U.S. forces in a major war, it is feared by neighboring powers and could conceivably do considerable damage to American forces in an Asian regional scenario. The military modernization of the PLA is expected to focus on three areas: small high-tech forces for use in regional scenarios; large low-to-medium tech forces for internal security purposes; and a strategic nuclear force sufficiently potent to provide a deterrent to other powers. China's aim may be to build a military that is perceived as so powerful that neighboring states with whom it has territorial disputes will capitulate rather than contest their claims.
Deployment
Ground and air forces are divided into seven military regions each covering several provinces apiece; The navy into three fleets (North, East, and South) on China's eastern coast. Ground troops (approximately half of total) are heavily concentrated in the north and northeast around Beijing and near the border with Russia. The bulk of marines are attached to South Sea Fleet, reflecting territorial disputes with neighbors involving sovereignty over Taiwan, the Spratlys, Paracels, and Senkaku/Diaoyutai islands.
Readiness
Varies widely, with elite rapid reaction units at the high end. Readiness levels are not available on unclassified basis. Despite recent improvements, training methods continue to be deficient. Officers are better educated but the poor educational levels of rank-and-file troops remains a limitation. Time in-air and at-sea for air force and the navy remain well below NATO standards.
Defense spending
The published defense budget has been rising by approximately 10 percent annually since 1988. China defends this by pointing out that these increases barely keep pace with inflation. But actual defense spending is estimated to be three to four times the published budget. Moreover, this year's increase to the published defense budget, 12.8 percent or about $11 billion, occurs as inflation rate is estimated to be under three percent.
Doctrine
The expectation is that the PLA must be prepared to fight local, limited, high-tech wars on China's periphery, presumably including ethnic conflict within China's borders. China has accused unspecified foreign forces of instigating these ethnic conflicts. The country does not fear attack on Chinese territory but has defined all disputed territorial claims as strictly domestic (see Deployment). China does fear a U.S.-Japan alliance to "contain" China which may impede recovery of these "lost territories."
Political aspects
There has been no PLA presence in the powerful Standing Committee of the Political Bureau since the 15th Party Congress in the fall 1997. However, all top generals have been appointed by President Jiang Zemin and are believed loyal to him. Some analysts believe that the military leadership has been urging a harder foreign policy line on Jiang but hard evidence is lacking.
II. Strategic Forces
China's strategic force constitutes a credible deterrent but is not regarded by military experts as a force with a first strike posture. China has world's third-largest nuclear weapons arsenal and is expected to field ICBMs with multiple independently targeted warheads (MIRVs) by 2010.
Nuclear warheads
At least 100; some estimates say as high as 1,000. U.S. Air Force sources estimate 17-20 are targeted at U.S.; it is likely some can reach east coast cities.
Rocket forces and bombers
Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles: 17 or more, 7 being fitted with multiple (MIRVed) independently targeted warheads; 10 plus or more older types. Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles: About 46. Long-range bombers: None known.
Ballistic missile submarines:
One Xia-class SSBM carrying 12 intermediate ranged ballistic missiles.
III. Ground forces
A total of 2,090,000 personnel are under arms in China. But ground forces have received lowest priority for modernization after naval, air, and strategic forces. Consequently, the infantry will probably absorb the bulk of a planned reduction of 500,000 in the size of the PLA. Apart from a small number of rapid reaction units, the ground forces lack firepower and mobility. Modernization efforts include upgrading logistics capabilities and firepower of ground forces in general and increasing the number of rapid reaction units.
Main armor
Overall vastly inferior to comparable Western main battle tanks. China operates 8, 500 large tanks, primarily severely outdated indigenously-produced copies of Soviet T-54s. These are being phased out as more modern Chinese-made Type 85 IIMs, equipped with Israeli technology, come on line.
Other armor
China maintains about 1200 Type 63 amphibious light tanks and 800 Type 62 light tanks.
Artillery
Except for the HJ-8 anti-tank weapons, these are Soviet - or Chinese versions of Soviet - designs which have been around since the 1950s or earlier. However, some are still effective weapons.
Towed artillery
About 14,500 total barrels, though numbers are not certain. They break down as follows:
* Multiple rocket launchers: 122 mm/130 mm/273 mm
* Mortars: 82 mm/100 mm/120 mm/160 mm.
* Anti-tank guided weapons: HJ-73 (similar to Soviet Sagger); HJ-8 anti-tank weapons.
* Air Defense guns: 23 mm/37 mm/57 mm/85 mm/100 mm.
Armored personnel carriers
5,500, comparable to older Soviet wheeled BTR series.
Regular army
2,090,000 organized into 24 group armies of 60,000-90,000 each. Group armies composed of three infantry divisions plus tank, artillery, air defense, and support units. Composition and readiness vary from group army to group army; figures not available on an unclassified basis.
Elite units
Fifteen to twenty percent of ground forces belong to commando units with superior training and weapons and capable of rapid deployment.
Marines
One brigade plus special reconnaissance units, about 5,000 men, under naval command.
Airlift capability
Insufficient to transport all airborne units at once.
IV. Naval forces
The PLA's Navy - the PLAN - operates approximately 970 ships, most of which are small and obsolete. Naval modernization is underway, including construction and deployment of Luhu-class destroyers and Jiangwei-class frigates capable of carrying helicopters. Ships are being retrofitted with new types of missiles; Kilo-class submarines and advanced radar systems have been purchased from Russia. However, these improvements will not address PLAN's fundamental problem: its inability to mount sustained, coordinated operations and protect itself while doing so.
Ballistic missile submarines
One Xia, with 12 intermediate ranged ballistic missiles.
Attack submarines
There are 59 or 60 attack submarines
* Nuclear powered submarines: 5 Han-class with 533 mm torpedo tubes;
* Cruise missile submarines: 1 ex-Soviet Romeo-class with with 6 C-801 (similar to French Exocet) SSM and 533 mm torpedo tubes;
* Diesel submarines: 53-54, mostly older ex-Soviet Romeos, but including 3-to-4 more modern Russian-purchased Kilo-class with advanced radar systems.
Destroyers
There are 18 mostly obsolete destroyers.
Frigates
There are approximately 36 frigates, mostly Jiangwei-class. A few Jiangwei carry one French Dauphin helicopter each, but most are equipped with guns and anti-submarine weapons from the '70s and '80s.
Patrol boats
About 830 missile boats, torpedo boats and patrol boats, plus about 120 mine-countermeasure craft. Some of these have been assigned to paramilitary forces, including the People's Armed Police, the border guards; the militia and Customs Services. While it is difficult to be certain of their numbers, overall combat effectiveness is low.
Amphibious warfare
There are 71 LST/LSM types plus 140 smaller craft; can be supplemented by civilian craft. Lift for 1 or two 2 divisions, but limited capacity for assault landings or large-scale amphibious operations. Sufficient sealift for marines but little evidence that other ground forces have amphibious training.
V. Air and air defenses forces
The People's Liberation Army Air Force - the PLAAF - has a large number of combat aircraft, about 5,150. But most of its mainstays are modeled after first and second-generation fighters of the former Soviet Union. In recent years, China has developed and deployed new-type fighters such as the J-8 II (F-8 II) and purchased Sukhoi Su-27 fighters plus permission to produce Su-27s domestically under license from Russia. Modernization plans center on developing strategic airlift, aerial refueling, ground attack capabilities and a new generation of air-superiority fighters. A total of about 470,000 personnel fall under the air and air defense category.
Bombers
The U.S. National Defense University 1997 report says "180 nuclear capable bombers," but that includes some planes which might not prove very useful in wartime. For instance, the authoritative Institute for International Strategic Studies 1997-98 Military Balance says that of 100 H-6 medium bombers, "some may be nuclear-capable." H-6s are copies of Russian Badgers, lumbering Tupolov planes which first flew in 1952.China also operates about 200 H-5 medium bombers, copies of Soviet-built Beagles, Ilyushin planes which first flew in 1948.
Fighters
Forty Su-27; Eight Su-27 B; Two-thousand J-6; Five hundred J-7; Two hundred J-8.
Ground attack
More than 400 Q-5 attack jets, comparable to old American A-4.
Transports
Ten Soviet Il-76, with 12 more rumored to have been purchased; 18 British BAe Trident; about 400 older aircraft, again copies of Soviet types. Some are configured as tankers, but China has no real air-to-air refueling capability.
Command and control capabilities
China maintains tracking stations in Xinjiang and Shanxi that are phased-array radar complex for ballistic missile early warning.
Air defense
Sixteen divisions under the air force, plus navy and ground force units. Guns and older Surface-to-air missiles (SAM) systems.
Naval Air Force
535 land-based aircraft of the same types as the air force are under the command of the navy.
June Teufel Dreyer is professor of political science at the University of Miami Department of Political Science.
She wrote this primer for "The Challenge of China," a project of MSNBC and the New York University Center for War, Peace, and the News Media.
---------------------------
Citation: June Teufel Dryer. "China's Rusting Sword Despite Nuclear Status and Large Army, China has Little Offensive Capability," Global Beat, 22 June 1998.
Original URL: http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/asia/china/06221998dryer.html
---------------------------
Awakening the Dragon: Needlessly Antagonizing China
By Leon V. Sigal
Global Beat Syndicate, 24 February 2006
NEW YORK, February 23, 2000—A decision to deploy missile defense systems will do little to protect the United States against potential threats but it is sure to stir Chinese antagonism. And it could also alienate America's allies and destabilize relations in Northeast Asia.
Ostensibly, the defense systems are intended to counter an emerging missile threat from North Korea. But Beijing believes Washington has exaggerated that threat while at the same time refusing to deal with Pyongyang.
China knows that North Korea has conducted just two ballistic missile tests in the past decade -- both of them failures. It also knows of North Korea's interest in a deal to end missile exports and stated willingness to negotiate an end to development of missiles in talks with the United States—a willingness North Korean negotiators underscored last September in Berlin by agreeing to a moratorium on missile tests.
Until recently, however, Washington has been reluctant to deal. It did not open missile talks until April 1996 and has held just two rounds of talks since, without making anything like an acceptable offer for an end to North Korea's missile exports and development. In 1993, the United States pressured Israel to break off negotiations with North Korea designed to end its missile exports to the Middle East and Persian Gulf in return for hundreds of millions of dollars in investment and technical assistance and the start of diplomatic relations.
Beijing concluded that American missile defenses were aimed at it, not North Korea, and sent a subtle warning to Washington not to proceed. As the Cox Commission report on the transfer of U.S. missile technology to China pointed out last year, a Chinese national "under the direction of PRC intelligence" turned over a document in 1995 containing stolen information on the W-88 warhead. The Cox report speculates whether the information enabled China to develop W-88s of its own to arm missiles with multiple warheads. That is one way to counter U.S. missile defenses.
But the Cox report neglects to pose the most important question: why did China let the U.S. know it had acquired the technology to develop multiple warheads? The year 1995 was a watershed in the politics of missile defense. In 1994, the Republicans adopted missile defense as a major plank in its Contract with America and captured both houses of Congress. To protect itself against Republican attack, the Clinton administration stepped up spending on such a system. By its disclosure, the Chinese were saying, "Don't deploy defenses because we can defeat them."
China has better ways than the W-88 warhead to defeat defenses. The most obvious one is to build more missiles. To date, China has deployed just 18 missiles capable of reaching the United States. It has not even put nuclear warheads on the missiles, but stored them separately. China has long had the capability to build more missiles and put them on higher alert. Why hasn't it?
One reason is its long-stated policy of renouncing the first use of nuclear arms. But the deeper explanation is that China's military leaders prefer to modernize their conventional forces, which are equipped largely with relics of the 1940s and 1950s. That is why China has begun buying 1970s aircraft, tanks, ships, and submarines on sale in Russia and elsewhere.
China's defense budget is about one-ninth that of the United States. It fell throughout the 1980s and resumed growing steadily only six years ago. Competing claims constrain military spending. China's regions want to invest more in infrastructure to fuel growth and absorb new entrants into the labor force who would otherwise migrate to rapidly growing cities. With tax evasion rampant, the central government's revenue base is too small to satisfy all the demands.
If the United States deploys a missile defense system, then the Chinese military will deploy more missiles. But the Chinese leadership will demand a hike in defense spending to pay for the missiles rather than cut back on conventional arming. A reallocation of resources from domestic needs to defense will prompt an intense struggle in which the United States will be cast as China's antagonist. That will make Sino-American cooperation all but impossible.
It will also put America's allies, Japan and Taiwan, in an untenable position. While they are reluctant to offend a Congress that makes defenses a litmus test of alliance, they also want to avoid arousing China's hostility. It is for that reason that Japan has put much more money behind negotiating a missile deal with North Korea than it is willing to spend on missile defense. It is also for that reason that well-placed politicians in Taiwan's ruling party and opposition quietly favor a negotiated solution to missile threats in Northeast Asia. The United States should follow their lead before it turns China into an outright foe.
-------------------------------
Citation: Leon V. Sigal. "Awakening the Dragon: Needlessly Antagonizing China," Global Beat Syndicate, 24 February 2006.
Original URL: http://147.71.210.21/adamag/Feb00/Dragon.htm
-------------------------------
Global Beat Syndicate, 24 February 2006
NEW YORK, February 23, 2000—A decision to deploy missile defense systems will do little to protect the United States against potential threats but it is sure to stir Chinese antagonism. And it could also alienate America's allies and destabilize relations in Northeast Asia.
Ostensibly, the defense systems are intended to counter an emerging missile threat from North Korea. But Beijing believes Washington has exaggerated that threat while at the same time refusing to deal with Pyongyang.
China knows that North Korea has conducted just two ballistic missile tests in the past decade -- both of them failures. It also knows of North Korea's interest in a deal to end missile exports and stated willingness to negotiate an end to development of missiles in talks with the United States—a willingness North Korean negotiators underscored last September in Berlin by agreeing to a moratorium on missile tests.
Until recently, however, Washington has been reluctant to deal. It did not open missile talks until April 1996 and has held just two rounds of talks since, without making anything like an acceptable offer for an end to North Korea's missile exports and development. In 1993, the United States pressured Israel to break off negotiations with North Korea designed to end its missile exports to the Middle East and Persian Gulf in return for hundreds of millions of dollars in investment and technical assistance and the start of diplomatic relations.
Beijing concluded that American missile defenses were aimed at it, not North Korea, and sent a subtle warning to Washington not to proceed. As the Cox Commission report on the transfer of U.S. missile technology to China pointed out last year, a Chinese national "under the direction of PRC intelligence" turned over a document in 1995 containing stolen information on the W-88 warhead. The Cox report speculates whether the information enabled China to develop W-88s of its own to arm missiles with multiple warheads. That is one way to counter U.S. missile defenses.
But the Cox report neglects to pose the most important question: why did China let the U.S. know it had acquired the technology to develop multiple warheads? The year 1995 was a watershed in the politics of missile defense. In 1994, the Republicans adopted missile defense as a major plank in its Contract with America and captured both houses of Congress. To protect itself against Republican attack, the Clinton administration stepped up spending on such a system. By its disclosure, the Chinese were saying, "Don't deploy defenses because we can defeat them."
China has better ways than the W-88 warhead to defeat defenses. The most obvious one is to build more missiles. To date, China has deployed just 18 missiles capable of reaching the United States. It has not even put nuclear warheads on the missiles, but stored them separately. China has long had the capability to build more missiles and put them on higher alert. Why hasn't it?
One reason is its long-stated policy of renouncing the first use of nuclear arms. But the deeper explanation is that China's military leaders prefer to modernize their conventional forces, which are equipped largely with relics of the 1940s and 1950s. That is why China has begun buying 1970s aircraft, tanks, ships, and submarines on sale in Russia and elsewhere.
China's defense budget is about one-ninth that of the United States. It fell throughout the 1980s and resumed growing steadily only six years ago. Competing claims constrain military spending. China's regions want to invest more in infrastructure to fuel growth and absorb new entrants into the labor force who would otherwise migrate to rapidly growing cities. With tax evasion rampant, the central government's revenue base is too small to satisfy all the demands.
If the United States deploys a missile defense system, then the Chinese military will deploy more missiles. But the Chinese leadership will demand a hike in defense spending to pay for the missiles rather than cut back on conventional arming. A reallocation of resources from domestic needs to defense will prompt an intense struggle in which the United States will be cast as China's antagonist. That will make Sino-American cooperation all but impossible.
It will also put America's allies, Japan and Taiwan, in an untenable position. While they are reluctant to offend a Congress that makes defenses a litmus test of alliance, they also want to avoid arousing China's hostility. It is for that reason that Japan has put much more money behind negotiating a missile deal with North Korea than it is willing to spend on missile defense. It is also for that reason that well-placed politicians in Taiwan's ruling party and opposition quietly favor a negotiated solution to missile threats in Northeast Asia. The United States should follow their lead before it turns China into an outright foe.
-------------------------------
Citation: Leon V. Sigal. "Awakening the Dragon: Needlessly Antagonizing China," Global Beat Syndicate, 24 February 2006.
Original URL: http://147.71.210.21/adamag/Feb00/Dragon.htm
-------------------------------
Strategic Implications of China's Naval Modernization
By M. Ehsan Ahrari
Global Beat, October 1998
The People's Republic of China (PRC) has already assigned its Navy a prime role ahead of its Army and Air Force. The rationale underlying this decision is quite sound. Since the overall modernization of all three services of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) will take two or possibly more decades, concentration on enhancing the offensive and defensive capabilities of one service is quite cost-effective.
The culmination of the Cold War and the implosion of the former Soviet Union have brought about an end to a long-standing Chinese fear of a potential major war with that superpower. Now the Chinese strategic doctrine of local wars has become more concerned with possible limited wars, which would necessitate limited military responses. As long as a limited war is fought on the periphery of the Chinese homeland, the PRC could rely on its Navy to contain such a conflict. Consequently, in the 1990s and beyond, the PLA Navy (PLAN) has brought about a very important change in its strategic doctrine. Traditionally, its primary focus was the defense of territorial and coastal waters. However, it has now adopted the Mahanian concepts of power projection and sea control. Thus, the reliance on the submarine force emerges as an important aspect of China's naval modernization.
Since Soviet strategic culture played an important role in the evolution of Chinese strategic culture from the 1950s onward, one also has to examine certain features of Russian naval doctrines in the 1990s to make some informed judgments about Chinese Naval doctrine as it is being evolved between now (i.e., the end of the 1990s) and for the next two or three decades. "Historically," as one study notes, "the submarine force has been a key element of Russian military power." The current Russian military establishment continues to assign an important status to submarines as "a practical option for ensuring strategic deterrence and rebuffing an enemy naval force." Even with its considerably diminished military status in the post-Cold War years, the submarine force serves as an important element of Russia's military power. To maintain its strategic deterrence, Russia has been allocating a higher percentage of its remaining warheads to ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs). "Hence, SSBNs, along with the attack submarines which protect them, are increasingly important to Russia's nuclear deterrent posture."1
The Russian Navy not only considers the attack and cruise missile submarines (SSNs and SSGNs) "as the first line of defense against enemy aircraft carriers and warships capable of launching land-attack cruise missiles," but regards the submarines "as a cost-effective combination of other key military capabilities, including the ability to destroy Western SSBNs, covertly mine enemy sea lanes, conduct covert surveillance and intelligence, and launch land-attack cruise missiles."2 This Russian reliance on submarines and submarine warfare stems from the financial crunch that country has been experiencing throughout the 1990s. This financial crunch has kept Russia from bankrolling its overall military buildup a la the days of the former Soviet Union. The Russian example of relying on their Navy for strategic defense has been adopted by the Chinese for a variety of reasons. First, aside from the previously noted similarities between the Chinese and Russian strategic cultures, an emulation of Russia's strategic doctrine is an option that is both cost-effective and complementary to Chinese strategic objectives. Naval power has always been neglected in the land-oriented strategic thinking of Mao Zedong. During the Korean war, Chinese forces were pounded by the lethality of the U.S. naval and air power. This and subsequent conflicts persuaded Mao and his successors never to allow China's enemy forces such a decisive advantage over Chinese forces in the naval and air power. Nuclear power was also an important ingredient of this thinking since the United States threatened to use nuclear weapons against China during the Korean war.3
Second, the indigenous technological capabilities of the PRC's scientific community remains too low for China to develop ambitious modernization plans affecting all three services. Thus, the PRC has to rely on a number of policy measures to pursue a modest strategy of modernizing its armed forces. These include developing weapon systems by using indigenous talents; developing various military projects; negotiating co-production agreements, off-the-shelf purchases, and contract agreements for purchase of a variety of high tech-based systems; and relying equally heavily on the development of weapon systems through reverse engineering-a process that takes about fifteen year per system, according to one study.4
Third, China's historical experience with foreign powers has made it highly suspicious and distrustful of dependence on international organizations and alliances. Its rulers are of the view that only economic wealth and power (fu qiang) will enable them to fend off foreign manipulation. Consequently, the Chinese leader continue to view a strong defense as an outgrowth of a strong economy, and assign a very high priority to the economic development of their country. 5 The implosion of the Soviet Union serves as an unhappy reminder of what a gross and systematic neglect of economic affairs at the expense of acute military buildup can do even to a military superpower. The Chinese leaders are poised to avoid the Soviet example at all costs.
Modalities of Recent Modernizing Endeavors
Given these realities, what does the PLA Navy look like toward the end of the 1990s? To start with, aircraft carriers, the main symbol of a blue water navy, are absent from the inventory of naval vessels of the PLAN. However, the PRC's fascination with owning aircraft carriers-and, indeed, with emerging as a world class naval power in the coming years-is far from absent. On the contrary, the debate within China over whether it should acquire aircraft carriers may best be described as off-again, on-again. Each carrier is a multibillion-dollar system, "pegged around a host of supporting ships-air defense escorts, anti-submarine escorts, tankers and replenishment vessels." Destroyers and cruisers, on the contrary, are "cheaper and less vulnerable ships that can be sent into troubled water unassisted." Various naval specialists are examining the option of owning surface ships armed with cruise missiles and ATBM systems. Long-range cruise missiles launched from surface ships promise to supplement or even replace conventional air attacks, "with satellite imagery providing both targeting data and most of the post-attack damage assessment."6
Toward the end of 1997, it was reported that China under the leadership of President Jiang Zemin has resolved to launch an ambitious carrier plan in the year 2000. As ambitious as the plan sounded, the PLA Navy was bound to encounter a number of highly technical problems. Realistically speaking, the PRC did not have the kind of technological sophistication that was required to build a true conventional take-off and landing (CTOL) carrier. Besides, a vital necessity for such a carrier is the availability of VTOL aircraft. And Britain was not about to sell its Harriers to Beijing. The only other country that has short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) aircraft technology, Russia, has discontinued the production of YAK-141 program. A pragmatic option for China was to develop a helicopter carrier as an interim measure. This was, indeed, reported to be what the Chinese leaders were considering, with the eventual development of true aircraft carrier being a live option over the long run.7
As shown in Table 1, under the category of strategic missile submarines, the PLAN has 1 Golf-class and 1 Xia-class submarines.8 Under the category of patrol or attack submarines, it has 5 Han (or Fleet)-class submarines (type 091), and 1 more is planned; 4 Song-class submarines (type 039), and 2 more are in reserve; 3 Kilo-class submarines (type 877 and 636, and 1 more is under order; 1 modified Romeo-class (SSG); and 36 Romeo-class (Type 033) submarines. An additional 32 of these submarines are in reserve. The PLAN also has a total of 18 destroyers, one more planned; and 35 frigates, and 2 more under construction.
The Golf-class submarine was refitted in 1995 with JL-2, two-staged solid fuel missile, with inertial guidance up to 8,000 km or 4,320 n-miles. It also contains three or four 90 kt nuclear MIRV or a single nuclear 250 MIRV kt. The Xia-class SSBN is fitted with 12-JL-2 two-stage solid fuel missiles, with inertial guidance up to 8,000 km. Its refitting process, started in 1995, is expected to be completed in 1998. The Han-class attack submarines are armed with C-801 cruise missiles, with a range of 42 km or 22 n-miles. Their original basic Russian electronic support measures (ESM or intercept) was replaced by a modern French design, possibly for long-range targeting. The Song-class submarines, "the first Chinese submarine equipped with a submerged-launched anti-ship cruise missile,"9 are still undergoing a trial period. These submarines contain an integrated bow sonar, are armed with C-801 SSMs, and their diesel engines are reported to be reverse engineered.
Table 1 - Strength of the Fleet of the PRC
Type Active (Reserve) Building (Planned)
Aircraft Carrier 0 1
SSBN 1 (1)
SSB 1 -
Fleet Submarines (SSN) 5 1
Cruise Missile Submarine (SSG) 1 -
Patrol Submarines 54 (32) 3 (2)
Destroyers 18 (1)
Frigates 35 2
Fast Attack Craft (Missile) 129 (56) 3
Fast Attack Craft (Gun) 105 (182) 65 (30)
Fast Attack Craft (Torpedo) 65 (30) -
Fast Attack Craft (Patrol) 113 6
Patrol Craft 14 2
Minesweepers (Ocean) 27 (7) -
Minesweepers (Coastal) 1 (50) -
Mine Warfare Drones 4 (42) -
Minelayer 1 -
Hovercraft 1 -
LSTs 21 (2) 2
LSMs 41 (3) 3
LCMs(LCUs 44 (230) -
Troop Transports (AP/AH) 6 -
Submarine Support Ships 5 1
Salvage and Repair Ships 3 2
Supply Ships 23+ 3
Tankers 88 -
Icebreakers 4 -
Degaussing Ships 3 -
Source: Jane's Fighting Ships 1996-1997
The Kilo-class submarines are type 877 EKM and 636 SSKs (diesel electric), with most advanced torpedoes, both originally built for the Russian Navy. The 636 is the latest design "with quieter propulsion and an automated combat information system capable of providing simultaneous fire control on two targets."10 This last mentioned capability is just one of the many new evolving features in submarine warfare that the United States Navy is likely to be keenly observing in the coming years. As one U.S. Naval publication notes:
Modern submarine combat systems combine sensors, fire control, and data management functions to reduce operator workload. This trend has been driven by the need to keep pace with the reduced manning complements on newer submarines. These systems feature multi-function consoles, standardized data buses, and modular architecture. The integrated combat system provides automated assistance to the operator in every phase of a combat mission: mission planning, contact detection, target classification, target tracking, and weapons launch.11
The Ming class submarines are armed with YU-4 (SAET60) torpedoes, with hull-mounted sonars that have active as well passive search and attack capabilities. The Modified Romeo class submarine is armed with 6 YJ-1 (Eagle Strike) and C-801 SSMs. Regarding 36 Romeo class submarines, Jane's Fighting Ships 1996-1997 notes that it is difficult to assess the exact number of operational vessels since these submarines spend "more than a few days at sea each year because there are insufficient trained men."12
Among the destroyers owned by the PLAN, the two most advanced are Russian-built Sovremenny-class guided missile destroyers. This surface strike combatant is comparable to the U.S. Navy's Arleigh Burke-class and Japan's Kongo-class guided missile destroyers. The Sovremenny was described by U.S. defense specialists in 1987 as "one of the most technologically advanced naval warships ever produced by the [Former] Soviet Union." It is armed with "eight supersonic active homing, medium-ranged SS-N-22 sunburn anti-ship missiles (mach 2.5 range 90km-120 km)," and has performance characteristics that "will increase China's ability to threaten U.S. carriers . . . "13 The PLAN's Luda-class destroyers are armed with a ballistic trajectory ASW weapon CY-1, and 8 YJ-1 missiles. The Luhu-class destroyers are also armed with 8 YJ-1 missiles. The production of these destroyers was delayed "because of problems obtaining more gas turbines and the reallocation of funds to the Sovremennys."14
The PLAN has three categories of frigates-Jiangwei-class, Jianghu III- and IV-class, and Jianghu I-class. All of these are armed either with surface-to-surface missiles (SSMs) YJ-1 (Eagle Strike) or Hy-2 (C-201-also a SSM). All these frigates are expected to undergo extensive upgrading and modifications in the coming years. The PLA Navy also owns a very large number of fast attack crafts, and quite a few minesweepers, both of which are defensive in nature. It also has a large number of drone minesweepers, which are unmanned remote control vessels used for sweeping acoustic and magnetic mines. Because they can be controlled from a distance of 5 kilometers, they can be used only for sweeping home waters.15
Reinvention of One's Great Power Status or a New Hegemonism?
The rationale underlying the growth of military power of any country may be analyzed by studying its declared strategic objectives. In the context of this essay, these objectives may best be studied by asking the following question: what is the mission assigned to a navy by its political masters? Even if one were to refuse to categorize the escalating pace of Chinese activism in the South China Sea as a manifestation of hegemonic tendencies, the following examples will leave little doubt that China, to say the least, is in the process of reinventing itself as a great power. The PRC has reiterated its intentions to reunify Taiwan even with the use of force. It has announced a tenfold increase in the area of its strategic maritime interests from 200 km off its coast (first chain islands or diyi daolian-the Japanese home islands, the Rikuyi Islands, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Borneo) to 2000 km off its coast (second chain island or dier daolian-which includes the Marianas, Guam, and the Carolines). This change from a coastal defense to an off-shore defense (which could be described as brown water defense, as a starting point, then development of blue water defense) strategy, according to Lewis and Xue, "reflects the resolution of a long-standing debate on whether greater importance should be attached to fighting the enemy at sea or repulsing his landing operations."16
As one author notes, "Within Southeast Asia there is the belief that China regards the region as an area of influence with which relations should be structured hierarchically." The religious and cultural heterogeneity of the Southeast Asian nations and their relatively weaker military and economic status vis-Ã -vis the PRC means that the former must "negotiate the terms and conditions of an acceptable relationship with China over the many issues that concern the region."17 China has contested the ownership of Spratly Islands by five other countries-Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines, and Taiwan. The Paracel Islands-known in China as Xish Islands-are claimed by both the PRC and Vietnam. In addition, there remains a historical dispute with Japan over the ownership of the Senkakus Islands.
In 1992, the Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress passed a law that asserted China's sovereignty over water around the Paracels and Spratlys. The PRC made clear its intentions "to prevent the harmful passage of vessels through its territorial waters" (Article 8), stated that its navy "can order the eviction of foreign naval vessels" (Article 10), and gave its navy "the right to chase foreign vessels violating its regulations to the high seas." Foreign naval vessels, under this law, "must obtain China's permission before proceeding through the South China Sea and foreign submarines must surface and fly their country's flag."18
China's growing ties with Burma are a source of concern to India, for the latter envisions these ties as precursor to a Chinese presence in the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea-areas India considers falling within its own sphere of influence. The Chinese military presence in the Mergui Island, near the Strait of Malacca, caused consternation among the Japanese. It is through these strait that Middle Eastern oil shipments pass to Japan. In summary, as one author writes, "A common regional view is that China has visions of being Number 1 in East and Southeast Asia and its growing navy is an overt manifestation of this power."19
The PRC must be able to back the preceding foreign policy assertiveness with a highly proficient naval force. At the present time, the technological preparedness of the PLAN only identifies a few pockets of excellence, however. Its acquisition of Sovremenny-class destroyer and Kilo-class submarines certainly falls in this category. For instance, it has recreated its Marine Corps and deployed it on Hainan Island, closer to the Spratlys. It has acquired the Ilyushin 76 heavy transport aircraft and enhanced its airborne forces from brigades to divisions.20 Its strategic submarines, once fully developed, promise to enhance the defensive as well as the offensive capabilities of the PLAN. But for now it is "largely a defensive fleet," and is likely to be effective "only against an amphibious attack." 21 However, since the capabilities of even the brown water navies are so dependent on their air power, the PLAN is, indeed, faced with the challenging task of building a highly capable air force supporting the naval missions. The absence of aircraft carriers will appear more of a strategic gap in the next decade or so than it does toward the end of the 1990s. The absence of a degree of indigenous technological know-how, the acute underdevelopment of technological infrastructures within China, and a bare presence of integrated systems-that are the life-blood of even a moderately sophisticated navy-are likely to be some of the main obstacles in the way of the PLAN's attempts to develop as a brown water navy.
In order to enhance its power projection capabilities, China has to take a number of measures. First, it has to increase its logistic supply ships. Second, it has to modernize and increase the number of its current nuclear submarines and equip them with modern offensive platforms. Its attack submarines, destroyers, and frigates have to be similarly modernized. Third, it has to acquire state-of-the art command and control systems. However, on this issue, as on the issue of modernization at large, it is not sufficient to purchase state-of-the-art weapons; developing indigenous capabilities to maintain these imported platforms, and, more important, nurturing a corps of highly competent technicians to build these platforms are the sine qua non of a great power. Fourth, China may have to reexamine its nuclear deterrent option in order to redirect its capital investments to other military programs. The strategic realities of its neighborhood are starkly different in the 1990s than they were in the previous decades. The potential of nuclear attack has substantially subsided since the implosion of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Japan has constitutional limits regarding its development of an offensive force. India, another fledgling naval power of the region, appears to be limiting itself in the Indian Ocean. That leaves only U.S. naval forces as a potential challenge to a mounting Chinese naval presence in East Asia. However, all indicators are pointing toward a continued force drawdown of the U.S. armed forces. This means that the U.S. Navy will continue to reduce its footprints in East Asia. Thus, the Chinese military establishment is under no pressure to maintain a high level of nuclear deterrence, and will be free to focus on enhancing the conventional side of the PLAN's power projection capabilities in the coming years. Fifth, the two areas the PLAN is seriously deficient-logistics and naval air power-are likely to take several years, if not decades, to develop indigenously. The Chinese authorities are not running against any urgent deadlines to acquire these capabilities, their only challenge being the present low level of technological knowledge that prevails in the PRC.
Despite the fact that the PLAN has not yet acquired impressive technological capabilities, one should not underestimate the status of the PRC. China is an emerging great power of the 1990s, whose political and military status in the coming decades appears promising, especially if it continues its impressive economic growth without a political implosion a la the former Soviet Union. The mere acquisition of technological sophistication and conversion of this type of knowledge into military prowess is not sufficient for a country to be considered a great power, however. As Edward Luttwak notes, there are a number of equally important "tacit" preconditions to be a great power. These include a readiness to use force whenever it is advantageous to do so, and an acceptance of the resulting combat casualties with equanimity, as long as the number was not disproportionate.22 China has, indeed, fulfilled these preconditions through its willingness to get involved in military conflicts in the past decades: the Korean War of the 1950s, military action against India in 1962, military action against Vietnam in 1979, and the PRC's refusal to be intimidated by the nuclear armed former Soviet Union. That might have been one reason why the United States took seriously China's missile firing into commercial shipping and transportation lanes near Taiwan in March 1996-an action that was clearly aimed at intimidating the Taiwanese government-and sent its Second Carrier Battle Group into the waters off Taiwan.
If one follows Luttwak's argument, given the reputation of the PRC for getting involved in military conflicts even when the military odds are against it and in view of the very low level of tolerance of the American public to get involved in distant conflicts that are likely to produce high American casualties, the United States should not have risked a conflict with the PRC. However, given the reputation of U.S. military power in the aftermath of the Gulf War of 1991, it is prudent to argue that Washington made a rational calculation that the PRC would not risk a military confrontation with the United States when its ships showed up in the vicinity of the Taiwan Strait.
But by not responding in kind to the United States' show of naval power, China has not necessarily backed away from a military conflict. Quite the contrary, one can argue that given the past record of China's lack of timidity about getting embroiled in a military conflict, Beijing demonstrated its willingness to take military action, if necessary, to solve this issue. And China fired missiles toward Taiwan. Similarly, the United States went to the brink of manifesting its resolve to use military power to keep China from seeking a military solution. Both sides also demonstrated how far they can go to register their resolve and when to stop after they have registered it. Taking military action was not worth the cost at this time. The economic stakes for both sides are much too high in the 1990s to be jeopardized by impetuous military actions. Besides, while the Gulf War of 1991 has clearly demonstrated the high-tech capabilities of the U.S. armed forces, it did not prove anything about the political will of the United States to absorb human losses and continue fighting. The Chinese know that this issue continues to be the Achilles heel of the United States.
Undoubtedly, despite the considerable high-tech superiority enjoyed by the U.S. armed forces, neither side loses sight of the fact that both these countries also possess nuclear arms. Even when one stays within the range of a potential conventional military conflict between the United States and PRC, the Western military establishments need to keep in mind that the Chinese military leaders are likely to make the best of the PRC's current technological inferiority-a condition they clearly envision as transitory. Thus, they are cognizant of the fact that they must develop strategies to minimize the high-tech edge of the enemy-presumably the United States, since it epitomizes the high-tech warfare, as was clearly demonstrated in the Gulf War of 1991.
In a thoughtful essay, Su Zian, writing in Xianai Bingoi (Modern Weaponry) makes numerous observations that the Western armed forces, especially the U.S. Navy, must keep in mind for future reference. Before summarizing his observations, I should note that the focus of Su Zian's writing is on a country that is most likely to fight a largely high tech-based war. The other noteworthy characteristics of such a war are that there will be a heavy use of weapons that have an over-the-horizon potency and high precision; there is likely to be a large distance between two (or more) belligerents; and one of the belligerents' armed forces are likely to rely heavily on low-tech weapons. The following are some of Su Zian's suggestions for the benefit of a low-tech country that are relevant to this essay.
First, he suggests that the low-tech country should develop long-range precision interception weapons (e.g., the conventional cruise missiles and super guns) that should target the transport ships of the high tech enemy. He specifically mentions cruise missiles and super guns. Second, Su recommends the use of saturation tactical ballistic missile strikes on an enemy's fleet of aircraft carriers and its high-priced air defense missile systems and other large-scale equipment. "For a [low-tech] country on the defense," he writes, "surface-to-surface tactical ballistic missiles are a fine offensive weapon in that they present a major threat to the enemy and could pin it down."23
Interestingly enough, the PRC has accumulated an impressive array of cruise missiles. These include SY-1/HY-1, HY-2, HY-3/C-301, HY-4/C-201, FL-1, FL-2/SY-2, C-101, C-601, andYJ-2/C-802. All of these are anti-ship cruise missiles; the C-802 is both a land attack and an anti-ship cruise missile. The PRC has also made noteworthy advances in ballistic missile production. Its inventory of these missiles includes CSS-2 and CSS-3 (intermediate-range ballistic missiles-IRBMs); CSS-4, DF-31 and DF-41 (all short-range ballistic missiles-SRBMs); CSS-N3 and JL-2 (submarine-launched ballistic missiles-SLBMs). Of these, China has exported CSS-2 to Saudi Arabia, CSS-8 to Iran, and DF-11, also known as M-11, to Pakistan. Despite an impressive array of anti-ship missiles, the PLA Navy has "fallen short in protecting its ships from anti-ship cruise missiles . . ." and it " has no missile defense."24
Closing Observations
In summary, the best advantage the PRC enjoys in the 1990s is that its economy is performing well. Despite the recent turbulence experienced by its neighbors-Malaysia, Thailand, Korea, and even Japan-the Chinese economy has not yet suffered from the deleterious spillover effects from these economies. What China should remember is that it can go only so far in being assertive before its neighbors will construe its behavior as a manifestation of hegemonic tendencies. East Asia is already regarded as an area with the second highest military expenditures after the Persian Gulf region. The presence of China and the past dark example of Japanese militarism, along with economies that have been booming until they suffered the aforementioned turbulences, have made more than their fair share of contributions to the high military expenditures of that area.
China is also reaping the benefits of a threat-free environment of the post-Cold War years. Now Russia, aside from not being a threat, has emerged as a major supplier of sophisticated military weapons to the PRC. The United States is also eager to sell its weapons-related technologies to China, Beijing's record on human rights and its intimidation of Taiwan notwithstanding.
However, these positive developments, which have a potential of tremendously facilitating the PLAN's modernization endeavors, might come to an abrupt end if the rulers of China were to find no end to their foreign policy assertiveness. They must realize that the mere size of their country is intimidating enough for their smaller and militarily weaker neighbors. In addition, the absence of transparency in their military expenditures creates ample fears in East Asia. China can reinvent itself as a great power by continuing its march on the road to economic development. Naval modernization, indeed, the modernization of the entire PLA, is not likely to create a paranoia about its intentions among its neighbors if the PRC tones down its sustained foreign policy assertiveness, and, instead of issuing unilateral declarations of sovereignty over its territorial claims, if Beijing demonstrates its willingness to seek political solutions to these issues. Otherwise, coupled with its heightened military modernization, its foreign policy assertiveness is likely to escalate the spirals of military preparedness, whose implications are likely to be deleterious for all of East Asia.
End Notes
1 Worldwide Submarine Challenges (Office of Naval Intelligence, 1996), p. 22.
2 Ibid.
3 For a detailed discussion of this point see, John Wilson Lewis and Xue Litai, China's Strategic Seapower The Politics of Force Modernization in the Nuclear Age (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), especially chapter Nine. For a discussion of the nuclear issue, see Lewis and Xue, China Builds the Bomb (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988).
4 Christopher D. Yung, People's War at Sea (Alexandria, VA: Center for Naval Analyses, March 1996).
5 David Shambaugh, "China's Military: Real or Paper Tiger?," The Washington Quarterly, 1996, pp. 19-36. Also Shambaugh, "Growing Strong: China's Challenge to Asian Security," Survival, Summer 1994, pp. 43-59.
6 Steven Ryan, "Asia's 21st Century Navies: Time for the Renaissance of the Surface Ship," Asian Defense Journal, October 1995, pp. 24-26.
7 John Downing, "China's Aircraft Carrier Program," Asia Pacific Defense Reporter, November 1997, pp. 6-7.
8 This discussion is based on Jane's Fighting Ships 1996-1997 (Jane's Information Group, 1997), pp. 113-125.
9 "Worldwide Submarine Challenges, 1997, Statement of Rear Admiral Michael W. Cramer, Director of Naval Intelligence, Before the Subcommittee on Seapower of the Senate Armed Services Committee, 8 April 1997.
10 Ibid., p. 558.
11 Worldwide Submarine Challenges (Office of Naval Intelligence, 1996), p. 558.
12 Jane's Fighting Ships 1996-1997, op. Cit., p. 116.
13 Gary Klintworth, "The Chinese Navy to get some big guns, at last," Asia Pacific Defense Reporter, April-May 1997, p. 6-7.
14 Jane's Fighting Ships 1996-1997, op. Cit., p. 118.
15 Joseph R. Morgan, Porpoises Among Whales: Small Navies in Asia and the Pacific (Hawaii: East West Center, March 1994), p. 34.
16 Lewis and Xue, China's Strategic Sea Power , op. Cit., p. 323.
17 Lesez Bszynski, "Southeast Asia in the Post-Cold War Era: Regionalism and Security," Asian Survey, September 1992, pp. 830-847.
18.Ibid., p. 836.
19 David Winterford, "Chinese Naval Planning and Maritime Interests in South China Sea: Implication for U.S. and Regional Security Policies," The Journal of American-East Asian Relations, Vol. 2, Winter 1993, pp. 369-398.
20 Yung, op. Cit., p. 15.
21 Morgan, op. Cit., p. 34.
22 Edward N. Luttwak, "Where are the Great Powers?" Foreign Affairs, July/August 1994, pp. 23-28.
23 Su Zian, "Strategies to Minimize High-tech Edge of Enemy," originally published in Chinese on August 8, 1995, translation from Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS)-CHI96-036, pp. 1-4.
24 Eric McVadon, "PRC's Exercises: Doctrine and Tactics Toward Taiwan: The Naval Dimension," in James R. Lilley and Chuck Downs (Editors), Crisis in the Taiwan Strait (Washington, D.C.: NDU Press, 1997), pp. 249-276.
M. Ehsan Ahrari is a Professor of National Security & Strategy at the Joint & Combined Warfighting School of Armed Forces Staff College
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Citation: M. Ehsan Ahrari. "Strategic Implications of China's Naval Modernization," Global Beat, October 1998.
Original URL: http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/asia/ahrari1098.html
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Global Beat, October 1998
The People's Republic of China (PRC) has already assigned its Navy a prime role ahead of its Army and Air Force. The rationale underlying this decision is quite sound. Since the overall modernization of all three services of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) will take two or possibly more decades, concentration on enhancing the offensive and defensive capabilities of one service is quite cost-effective.
The culmination of the Cold War and the implosion of the former Soviet Union have brought about an end to a long-standing Chinese fear of a potential major war with that superpower. Now the Chinese strategic doctrine of local wars has become more concerned with possible limited wars, which would necessitate limited military responses. As long as a limited war is fought on the periphery of the Chinese homeland, the PRC could rely on its Navy to contain such a conflict. Consequently, in the 1990s and beyond, the PLA Navy (PLAN) has brought about a very important change in its strategic doctrine. Traditionally, its primary focus was the defense of territorial and coastal waters. However, it has now adopted the Mahanian concepts of power projection and sea control. Thus, the reliance on the submarine force emerges as an important aspect of China's naval modernization.
Since Soviet strategic culture played an important role in the evolution of Chinese strategic culture from the 1950s onward, one also has to examine certain features of Russian naval doctrines in the 1990s to make some informed judgments about Chinese Naval doctrine as it is being evolved between now (i.e., the end of the 1990s) and for the next two or three decades. "Historically," as one study notes, "the submarine force has been a key element of Russian military power." The current Russian military establishment continues to assign an important status to submarines as "a practical option for ensuring strategic deterrence and rebuffing an enemy naval force." Even with its considerably diminished military status in the post-Cold War years, the submarine force serves as an important element of Russia's military power. To maintain its strategic deterrence, Russia has been allocating a higher percentage of its remaining warheads to ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs). "Hence, SSBNs, along with the attack submarines which protect them, are increasingly important to Russia's nuclear deterrent posture."1
The Russian Navy not only considers the attack and cruise missile submarines (SSNs and SSGNs) "as the first line of defense against enemy aircraft carriers and warships capable of launching land-attack cruise missiles," but regards the submarines "as a cost-effective combination of other key military capabilities, including the ability to destroy Western SSBNs, covertly mine enemy sea lanes, conduct covert surveillance and intelligence, and launch land-attack cruise missiles."2 This Russian reliance on submarines and submarine warfare stems from the financial crunch that country has been experiencing throughout the 1990s. This financial crunch has kept Russia from bankrolling its overall military buildup a la the days of the former Soviet Union. The Russian example of relying on their Navy for strategic defense has been adopted by the Chinese for a variety of reasons. First, aside from the previously noted similarities between the Chinese and Russian strategic cultures, an emulation of Russia's strategic doctrine is an option that is both cost-effective and complementary to Chinese strategic objectives. Naval power has always been neglected in the land-oriented strategic thinking of Mao Zedong. During the Korean war, Chinese forces were pounded by the lethality of the U.S. naval and air power. This and subsequent conflicts persuaded Mao and his successors never to allow China's enemy forces such a decisive advantage over Chinese forces in the naval and air power. Nuclear power was also an important ingredient of this thinking since the United States threatened to use nuclear weapons against China during the Korean war.3
Second, the indigenous technological capabilities of the PRC's scientific community remains too low for China to develop ambitious modernization plans affecting all three services. Thus, the PRC has to rely on a number of policy measures to pursue a modest strategy of modernizing its armed forces. These include developing weapon systems by using indigenous talents; developing various military projects; negotiating co-production agreements, off-the-shelf purchases, and contract agreements for purchase of a variety of high tech-based systems; and relying equally heavily on the development of weapon systems through reverse engineering-a process that takes about fifteen year per system, according to one study.4
Third, China's historical experience with foreign powers has made it highly suspicious and distrustful of dependence on international organizations and alliances. Its rulers are of the view that only economic wealth and power (fu qiang) will enable them to fend off foreign manipulation. Consequently, the Chinese leader continue to view a strong defense as an outgrowth of a strong economy, and assign a very high priority to the economic development of their country. 5 The implosion of the Soviet Union serves as an unhappy reminder of what a gross and systematic neglect of economic affairs at the expense of acute military buildup can do even to a military superpower. The Chinese leaders are poised to avoid the Soviet example at all costs.
Modalities of Recent Modernizing Endeavors
Given these realities, what does the PLA Navy look like toward the end of the 1990s? To start with, aircraft carriers, the main symbol of a blue water navy, are absent from the inventory of naval vessels of the PLAN. However, the PRC's fascination with owning aircraft carriers-and, indeed, with emerging as a world class naval power in the coming years-is far from absent. On the contrary, the debate within China over whether it should acquire aircraft carriers may best be described as off-again, on-again. Each carrier is a multibillion-dollar system, "pegged around a host of supporting ships-air defense escorts, anti-submarine escorts, tankers and replenishment vessels." Destroyers and cruisers, on the contrary, are "cheaper and less vulnerable ships that can be sent into troubled water unassisted." Various naval specialists are examining the option of owning surface ships armed with cruise missiles and ATBM systems. Long-range cruise missiles launched from surface ships promise to supplement or even replace conventional air attacks, "with satellite imagery providing both targeting data and most of the post-attack damage assessment."6
Toward the end of 1997, it was reported that China under the leadership of President Jiang Zemin has resolved to launch an ambitious carrier plan in the year 2000. As ambitious as the plan sounded, the PLA Navy was bound to encounter a number of highly technical problems. Realistically speaking, the PRC did not have the kind of technological sophistication that was required to build a true conventional take-off and landing (CTOL) carrier. Besides, a vital necessity for such a carrier is the availability of VTOL aircraft. And Britain was not about to sell its Harriers to Beijing. The only other country that has short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) aircraft technology, Russia, has discontinued the production of YAK-141 program. A pragmatic option for China was to develop a helicopter carrier as an interim measure. This was, indeed, reported to be what the Chinese leaders were considering, with the eventual development of true aircraft carrier being a live option over the long run.7
As shown in Table 1, under the category of strategic missile submarines, the PLAN has 1 Golf-class and 1 Xia-class submarines.8 Under the category of patrol or attack submarines, it has 5 Han (or Fleet)-class submarines (type 091), and 1 more is planned; 4 Song-class submarines (type 039), and 2 more are in reserve; 3 Kilo-class submarines (type 877 and 636, and 1 more is under order; 1 modified Romeo-class (SSG); and 36 Romeo-class (Type 033) submarines. An additional 32 of these submarines are in reserve. The PLAN also has a total of 18 destroyers, one more planned; and 35 frigates, and 2 more under construction.
The Golf-class submarine was refitted in 1995 with JL-2, two-staged solid fuel missile, with inertial guidance up to 8,000 km or 4,320 n-miles. It also contains three or four 90 kt nuclear MIRV or a single nuclear 250 MIRV kt. The Xia-class SSBN is fitted with 12-JL-2 two-stage solid fuel missiles, with inertial guidance up to 8,000 km. Its refitting process, started in 1995, is expected to be completed in 1998. The Han-class attack submarines are armed with C-801 cruise missiles, with a range of 42 km or 22 n-miles. Their original basic Russian electronic support measures (ESM or intercept) was replaced by a modern French design, possibly for long-range targeting. The Song-class submarines, "the first Chinese submarine equipped with a submerged-launched anti-ship cruise missile,"9 are still undergoing a trial period. These submarines contain an integrated bow sonar, are armed with C-801 SSMs, and their diesel engines are reported to be reverse engineered.
Table 1 - Strength of the Fleet of the PRC
Type Active (Reserve) Building (Planned)
Aircraft Carrier 0 1
SSBN 1 (1)
SSB 1 -
Fleet Submarines (SSN) 5 1
Cruise Missile Submarine (SSG) 1 -
Patrol Submarines 54 (32) 3 (2)
Destroyers 18 (1)
Frigates 35 2
Fast Attack Craft (Missile) 129 (56) 3
Fast Attack Craft (Gun) 105 (182) 65 (30)
Fast Attack Craft (Torpedo) 65 (30) -
Fast Attack Craft (Patrol) 113 6
Patrol Craft 14 2
Minesweepers (Ocean) 27 (7) -
Minesweepers (Coastal) 1 (50) -
Mine Warfare Drones 4 (42) -
Minelayer 1 -
Hovercraft 1 -
LSTs 21 (2) 2
LSMs 41 (3) 3
LCMs(LCUs 44 (230) -
Troop Transports (AP/AH) 6 -
Submarine Support Ships 5 1
Salvage and Repair Ships 3 2
Supply Ships 23+ 3
Tankers 88 -
Icebreakers 4 -
Degaussing Ships 3 -
Source: Jane's Fighting Ships 1996-1997
The Kilo-class submarines are type 877 EKM and 636 SSKs (diesel electric), with most advanced torpedoes, both originally built for the Russian Navy. The 636 is the latest design "with quieter propulsion and an automated combat information system capable of providing simultaneous fire control on two targets."10 This last mentioned capability is just one of the many new evolving features in submarine warfare that the United States Navy is likely to be keenly observing in the coming years. As one U.S. Naval publication notes:
Modern submarine combat systems combine sensors, fire control, and data management functions to reduce operator workload. This trend has been driven by the need to keep pace with the reduced manning complements on newer submarines. These systems feature multi-function consoles, standardized data buses, and modular architecture. The integrated combat system provides automated assistance to the operator in every phase of a combat mission: mission planning, contact detection, target classification, target tracking, and weapons launch.11
The Ming class submarines are armed with YU-4 (SAET60) torpedoes, with hull-mounted sonars that have active as well passive search and attack capabilities. The Modified Romeo class submarine is armed with 6 YJ-1 (Eagle Strike) and C-801 SSMs. Regarding 36 Romeo class submarines, Jane's Fighting Ships 1996-1997 notes that it is difficult to assess the exact number of operational vessels since these submarines spend "more than a few days at sea each year because there are insufficient trained men."12
Among the destroyers owned by the PLAN, the two most advanced are Russian-built Sovremenny-class guided missile destroyers. This surface strike combatant is comparable to the U.S. Navy's Arleigh Burke-class and Japan's Kongo-class guided missile destroyers. The Sovremenny was described by U.S. defense specialists in 1987 as "one of the most technologically advanced naval warships ever produced by the [Former] Soviet Union." It is armed with "eight supersonic active homing, medium-ranged SS-N-22 sunburn anti-ship missiles (mach 2.5 range 90km-120 km)," and has performance characteristics that "will increase China's ability to threaten U.S. carriers . . . "13 The PLAN's Luda-class destroyers are armed with a ballistic trajectory ASW weapon CY-1, and 8 YJ-1 missiles. The Luhu-class destroyers are also armed with 8 YJ-1 missiles. The production of these destroyers was delayed "because of problems obtaining more gas turbines and the reallocation of funds to the Sovremennys."14
The PLAN has three categories of frigates-Jiangwei-class, Jianghu III- and IV-class, and Jianghu I-class. All of these are armed either with surface-to-surface missiles (SSMs) YJ-1 (Eagle Strike) or Hy-2 (C-201-also a SSM). All these frigates are expected to undergo extensive upgrading and modifications in the coming years. The PLA Navy also owns a very large number of fast attack crafts, and quite a few minesweepers, both of which are defensive in nature. It also has a large number of drone minesweepers, which are unmanned remote control vessels used for sweeping acoustic and magnetic mines. Because they can be controlled from a distance of 5 kilometers, they can be used only for sweeping home waters.15
Reinvention of One's Great Power Status or a New Hegemonism?
The rationale underlying the growth of military power of any country may be analyzed by studying its declared strategic objectives. In the context of this essay, these objectives may best be studied by asking the following question: what is the mission assigned to a navy by its political masters? Even if one were to refuse to categorize the escalating pace of Chinese activism in the South China Sea as a manifestation of hegemonic tendencies, the following examples will leave little doubt that China, to say the least, is in the process of reinventing itself as a great power. The PRC has reiterated its intentions to reunify Taiwan even with the use of force. It has announced a tenfold increase in the area of its strategic maritime interests from 200 km off its coast (first chain islands or diyi daolian-the Japanese home islands, the Rikuyi Islands, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Borneo) to 2000 km off its coast (second chain island or dier daolian-which includes the Marianas, Guam, and the Carolines). This change from a coastal defense to an off-shore defense (which could be described as brown water defense, as a starting point, then development of blue water defense) strategy, according to Lewis and Xue, "reflects the resolution of a long-standing debate on whether greater importance should be attached to fighting the enemy at sea or repulsing his landing operations."16
As one author notes, "Within Southeast Asia there is the belief that China regards the region as an area of influence with which relations should be structured hierarchically." The religious and cultural heterogeneity of the Southeast Asian nations and their relatively weaker military and economic status vis-Ã -vis the PRC means that the former must "negotiate the terms and conditions of an acceptable relationship with China over the many issues that concern the region."17 China has contested the ownership of Spratly Islands by five other countries-Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines, and Taiwan. The Paracel Islands-known in China as Xish Islands-are claimed by both the PRC and Vietnam. In addition, there remains a historical dispute with Japan over the ownership of the Senkakus Islands.
In 1992, the Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress passed a law that asserted China's sovereignty over water around the Paracels and Spratlys. The PRC made clear its intentions "to prevent the harmful passage of vessels through its territorial waters" (Article 8), stated that its navy "can order the eviction of foreign naval vessels" (Article 10), and gave its navy "the right to chase foreign vessels violating its regulations to the high seas." Foreign naval vessels, under this law, "must obtain China's permission before proceeding through the South China Sea and foreign submarines must surface and fly their country's flag."18
China's growing ties with Burma are a source of concern to India, for the latter envisions these ties as precursor to a Chinese presence in the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea-areas India considers falling within its own sphere of influence. The Chinese military presence in the Mergui Island, near the Strait of Malacca, caused consternation among the Japanese. It is through these strait that Middle Eastern oil shipments pass to Japan. In summary, as one author writes, "A common regional view is that China has visions of being Number 1 in East and Southeast Asia and its growing navy is an overt manifestation of this power."19
The PRC must be able to back the preceding foreign policy assertiveness with a highly proficient naval force. At the present time, the technological preparedness of the PLAN only identifies a few pockets of excellence, however. Its acquisition of Sovremenny-class destroyer and Kilo-class submarines certainly falls in this category. For instance, it has recreated its Marine Corps and deployed it on Hainan Island, closer to the Spratlys. It has acquired the Ilyushin 76 heavy transport aircraft and enhanced its airborne forces from brigades to divisions.20 Its strategic submarines, once fully developed, promise to enhance the defensive as well as the offensive capabilities of the PLAN. But for now it is "largely a defensive fleet," and is likely to be effective "only against an amphibious attack." 21 However, since the capabilities of even the brown water navies are so dependent on their air power, the PLAN is, indeed, faced with the challenging task of building a highly capable air force supporting the naval missions. The absence of aircraft carriers will appear more of a strategic gap in the next decade or so than it does toward the end of the 1990s. The absence of a degree of indigenous technological know-how, the acute underdevelopment of technological infrastructures within China, and a bare presence of integrated systems-that are the life-blood of even a moderately sophisticated navy-are likely to be some of the main obstacles in the way of the PLAN's attempts to develop as a brown water navy.
In order to enhance its power projection capabilities, China has to take a number of measures. First, it has to increase its logistic supply ships. Second, it has to modernize and increase the number of its current nuclear submarines and equip them with modern offensive platforms. Its attack submarines, destroyers, and frigates have to be similarly modernized. Third, it has to acquire state-of-the art command and control systems. However, on this issue, as on the issue of modernization at large, it is not sufficient to purchase state-of-the-art weapons; developing indigenous capabilities to maintain these imported platforms, and, more important, nurturing a corps of highly competent technicians to build these platforms are the sine qua non of a great power. Fourth, China may have to reexamine its nuclear deterrent option in order to redirect its capital investments to other military programs. The strategic realities of its neighborhood are starkly different in the 1990s than they were in the previous decades. The potential of nuclear attack has substantially subsided since the implosion of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Japan has constitutional limits regarding its development of an offensive force. India, another fledgling naval power of the region, appears to be limiting itself in the Indian Ocean. That leaves only U.S. naval forces as a potential challenge to a mounting Chinese naval presence in East Asia. However, all indicators are pointing toward a continued force drawdown of the U.S. armed forces. This means that the U.S. Navy will continue to reduce its footprints in East Asia. Thus, the Chinese military establishment is under no pressure to maintain a high level of nuclear deterrence, and will be free to focus on enhancing the conventional side of the PLAN's power projection capabilities in the coming years. Fifth, the two areas the PLAN is seriously deficient-logistics and naval air power-are likely to take several years, if not decades, to develop indigenously. The Chinese authorities are not running against any urgent deadlines to acquire these capabilities, their only challenge being the present low level of technological knowledge that prevails in the PRC.
Despite the fact that the PLAN has not yet acquired impressive technological capabilities, one should not underestimate the status of the PRC. China is an emerging great power of the 1990s, whose political and military status in the coming decades appears promising, especially if it continues its impressive economic growth without a political implosion a la the former Soviet Union. The mere acquisition of technological sophistication and conversion of this type of knowledge into military prowess is not sufficient for a country to be considered a great power, however. As Edward Luttwak notes, there are a number of equally important "tacit" preconditions to be a great power. These include a readiness to use force whenever it is advantageous to do so, and an acceptance of the resulting combat casualties with equanimity, as long as the number was not disproportionate.22 China has, indeed, fulfilled these preconditions through its willingness to get involved in military conflicts in the past decades: the Korean War of the 1950s, military action against India in 1962, military action against Vietnam in 1979, and the PRC's refusal to be intimidated by the nuclear armed former Soviet Union. That might have been one reason why the United States took seriously China's missile firing into commercial shipping and transportation lanes near Taiwan in March 1996-an action that was clearly aimed at intimidating the Taiwanese government-and sent its Second Carrier Battle Group into the waters off Taiwan.
If one follows Luttwak's argument, given the reputation of the PRC for getting involved in military conflicts even when the military odds are against it and in view of the very low level of tolerance of the American public to get involved in distant conflicts that are likely to produce high American casualties, the United States should not have risked a conflict with the PRC. However, given the reputation of U.S. military power in the aftermath of the Gulf War of 1991, it is prudent to argue that Washington made a rational calculation that the PRC would not risk a military confrontation with the United States when its ships showed up in the vicinity of the Taiwan Strait.
But by not responding in kind to the United States' show of naval power, China has not necessarily backed away from a military conflict. Quite the contrary, one can argue that given the past record of China's lack of timidity about getting embroiled in a military conflict, Beijing demonstrated its willingness to take military action, if necessary, to solve this issue. And China fired missiles toward Taiwan. Similarly, the United States went to the brink of manifesting its resolve to use military power to keep China from seeking a military solution. Both sides also demonstrated how far they can go to register their resolve and when to stop after they have registered it. Taking military action was not worth the cost at this time. The economic stakes for both sides are much too high in the 1990s to be jeopardized by impetuous military actions. Besides, while the Gulf War of 1991 has clearly demonstrated the high-tech capabilities of the U.S. armed forces, it did not prove anything about the political will of the United States to absorb human losses and continue fighting. The Chinese know that this issue continues to be the Achilles heel of the United States.
Undoubtedly, despite the considerable high-tech superiority enjoyed by the U.S. armed forces, neither side loses sight of the fact that both these countries also possess nuclear arms. Even when one stays within the range of a potential conventional military conflict between the United States and PRC, the Western military establishments need to keep in mind that the Chinese military leaders are likely to make the best of the PRC's current technological inferiority-a condition they clearly envision as transitory. Thus, they are cognizant of the fact that they must develop strategies to minimize the high-tech edge of the enemy-presumably the United States, since it epitomizes the high-tech warfare, as was clearly demonstrated in the Gulf War of 1991.
In a thoughtful essay, Su Zian, writing in Xianai Bingoi (Modern Weaponry) makes numerous observations that the Western armed forces, especially the U.S. Navy, must keep in mind for future reference. Before summarizing his observations, I should note that the focus of Su Zian's writing is on a country that is most likely to fight a largely high tech-based war. The other noteworthy characteristics of such a war are that there will be a heavy use of weapons that have an over-the-horizon potency and high precision; there is likely to be a large distance between two (or more) belligerents; and one of the belligerents' armed forces are likely to rely heavily on low-tech weapons. The following are some of Su Zian's suggestions for the benefit of a low-tech country that are relevant to this essay.
First, he suggests that the low-tech country should develop long-range precision interception weapons (e.g., the conventional cruise missiles and super guns) that should target the transport ships of the high tech enemy. He specifically mentions cruise missiles and super guns. Second, Su recommends the use of saturation tactical ballistic missile strikes on an enemy's fleet of aircraft carriers and its high-priced air defense missile systems and other large-scale equipment. "For a [low-tech] country on the defense," he writes, "surface-to-surface tactical ballistic missiles are a fine offensive weapon in that they present a major threat to the enemy and could pin it down."23
Interestingly enough, the PRC has accumulated an impressive array of cruise missiles. These include SY-1/HY-1, HY-2, HY-3/C-301, HY-4/C-201, FL-1, FL-2/SY-2, C-101, C-601, andYJ-2/C-802. All of these are anti-ship cruise missiles; the C-802 is both a land attack and an anti-ship cruise missile. The PRC has also made noteworthy advances in ballistic missile production. Its inventory of these missiles includes CSS-2 and CSS-3 (intermediate-range ballistic missiles-IRBMs); CSS-4, DF-31 and DF-41 (all short-range ballistic missiles-SRBMs); CSS-N3 and JL-2 (submarine-launched ballistic missiles-SLBMs). Of these, China has exported CSS-2 to Saudi Arabia, CSS-8 to Iran, and DF-11, also known as M-11, to Pakistan. Despite an impressive array of anti-ship missiles, the PLA Navy has "fallen short in protecting its ships from anti-ship cruise missiles . . ." and it " has no missile defense."24
Closing Observations
In summary, the best advantage the PRC enjoys in the 1990s is that its economy is performing well. Despite the recent turbulence experienced by its neighbors-Malaysia, Thailand, Korea, and even Japan-the Chinese economy has not yet suffered from the deleterious spillover effects from these economies. What China should remember is that it can go only so far in being assertive before its neighbors will construe its behavior as a manifestation of hegemonic tendencies. East Asia is already regarded as an area with the second highest military expenditures after the Persian Gulf region. The presence of China and the past dark example of Japanese militarism, along with economies that have been booming until they suffered the aforementioned turbulences, have made more than their fair share of contributions to the high military expenditures of that area.
China is also reaping the benefits of a threat-free environment of the post-Cold War years. Now Russia, aside from not being a threat, has emerged as a major supplier of sophisticated military weapons to the PRC. The United States is also eager to sell its weapons-related technologies to China, Beijing's record on human rights and its intimidation of Taiwan notwithstanding.
However, these positive developments, which have a potential of tremendously facilitating the PLAN's modernization endeavors, might come to an abrupt end if the rulers of China were to find no end to their foreign policy assertiveness. They must realize that the mere size of their country is intimidating enough for their smaller and militarily weaker neighbors. In addition, the absence of transparency in their military expenditures creates ample fears in East Asia. China can reinvent itself as a great power by continuing its march on the road to economic development. Naval modernization, indeed, the modernization of the entire PLA, is not likely to create a paranoia about its intentions among its neighbors if the PRC tones down its sustained foreign policy assertiveness, and, instead of issuing unilateral declarations of sovereignty over its territorial claims, if Beijing demonstrates its willingness to seek political solutions to these issues. Otherwise, coupled with its heightened military modernization, its foreign policy assertiveness is likely to escalate the spirals of military preparedness, whose implications are likely to be deleterious for all of East Asia.
End Notes
1 Worldwide Submarine Challenges (Office of Naval Intelligence, 1996), p. 22.
2 Ibid.
3 For a detailed discussion of this point see, John Wilson Lewis and Xue Litai, China's Strategic Seapower The Politics of Force Modernization in the Nuclear Age (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), especially chapter Nine. For a discussion of the nuclear issue, see Lewis and Xue, China Builds the Bomb (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988).
4 Christopher D. Yung, People's War at Sea (Alexandria, VA: Center for Naval Analyses, March 1996).
5 David Shambaugh, "China's Military: Real or Paper Tiger?," The Washington Quarterly, 1996, pp. 19-36. Also Shambaugh, "Growing Strong: China's Challenge to Asian Security," Survival, Summer 1994, pp. 43-59.
6 Steven Ryan, "Asia's 21st Century Navies: Time for the Renaissance of the Surface Ship," Asian Defense Journal, October 1995, pp. 24-26.
7 John Downing, "China's Aircraft Carrier Program," Asia Pacific Defense Reporter, November 1997, pp. 6-7.
8 This discussion is based on Jane's Fighting Ships 1996-1997 (Jane's Information Group, 1997), pp. 113-125.
9 "Worldwide Submarine Challenges, 1997, Statement of Rear Admiral Michael W. Cramer, Director of Naval Intelligence, Before the Subcommittee on Seapower of the Senate Armed Services Committee, 8 April 1997.
10 Ibid., p. 558.
11 Worldwide Submarine Challenges (Office of Naval Intelligence, 1996), p. 558.
12 Jane's Fighting Ships 1996-1997, op. Cit., p. 116.
13 Gary Klintworth, "The Chinese Navy to get some big guns, at last," Asia Pacific Defense Reporter, April-May 1997, p. 6-7.
14 Jane's Fighting Ships 1996-1997, op. Cit., p. 118.
15 Joseph R. Morgan, Porpoises Among Whales: Small Navies in Asia and the Pacific (Hawaii: East West Center, March 1994), p. 34.
16 Lewis and Xue, China's Strategic Sea Power , op. Cit., p. 323.
17 Lesez Bszynski, "Southeast Asia in the Post-Cold War Era: Regionalism and Security," Asian Survey, September 1992, pp. 830-847.
18.Ibid., p. 836.
19 David Winterford, "Chinese Naval Planning and Maritime Interests in South China Sea: Implication for U.S. and Regional Security Policies," The Journal of American-East Asian Relations, Vol. 2, Winter 1993, pp. 369-398.
20 Yung, op. Cit., p. 15.
21 Morgan, op. Cit., p. 34.
22 Edward N. Luttwak, "Where are the Great Powers?" Foreign Affairs, July/August 1994, pp. 23-28.
23 Su Zian, "Strategies to Minimize High-tech Edge of Enemy," originally published in Chinese on August 8, 1995, translation from Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS)-CHI96-036, pp. 1-4.
24 Eric McVadon, "PRC's Exercises: Doctrine and Tactics Toward Taiwan: The Naval Dimension," in James R. Lilley and Chuck Downs (Editors), Crisis in the Taiwan Strait (Washington, D.C.: NDU Press, 1997), pp. 249-276.
M. Ehsan Ahrari is a Professor of National Security & Strategy at the Joint & Combined Warfighting School of Armed Forces Staff College
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Citation: M. Ehsan Ahrari. "Strategic Implications of China's Naval Modernization," Global Beat, October 1998.
Original URL: http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/asia/ahrari1098.html
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