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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