Yellow Peril’s Annual Comeback

Did you miss it? Im a lit­tle out of the loop on the far side of the Pacific, so I did. But yes­ter­day was the annual CHINA IS COMING TO GET US!! day. Im always stumped on an appro­pri­ate gift for the spe­cial occa­sion… Flowers? A card? The most expen­sive weapons sys­tem ever?
Thats right folks, it’s time for the Pentagon’s yearly report on Chinas mil­i­tary power. Get ready for the big head­lines and what are sure to be some choice quotes from the SecDef and your talking-​​head of choice.
In the com­ing weeks and months, the usual China-​​hawks are sure to mine the report for every quote that might make China look like the next evil empire. From the oppo­site extreme, habit­ual crit­ics of the Pentagon will likely dig up the same excerpts to paint a depart­ment full of Sino-​​phobes. This AFP piece makes a good start at find­ing the choic­est of these quotes, although with the good form (or inde­ci­sion) of allow­ing you, the reader, to decide whether youre anti-​​Pentagon or anti-​​China. But the full study itself is actu­ally much more bal­anced than these quotes would imply.

The report accu­rately recounts the unde­ni­able fact that Chinas mil­i­tary is going through tremen­dous amounts of mod­ern­iza­tion and improve­ment. It will undoubt­edly become a global force that solid­i­fies the greater influ­ence that China has in world affairs. The study also notes, how­ever, that polit­i­cally and strate­gi­cally, China has not been mak­ing moves that indi­cate a nation look­ing to throw its weight around mil­i­tar­ily: show­ing con­tin­u­ally increas­ing inter­est in effec­tive inter­na­tional orga­ni­za­tions; con­tribut­ing to UN peace­keep­ing mis­sions in Africa and the Caribbean; mak­ing efforts to resolve bor­der ten­sions with India and be a mod­er­at­ing force in Indo-​​Pakistani ten­sions; play­ing a piv­otal role in seek­ing a diplo­matic solu­tion to the North Korea nuclear issue. All seem to illus­trate a China inter­ested in becom­ing a respon­si­ble inter­na­tional stake­holder by tak­ing on a greater share of respon­si­bil­ity for the health and suc­cess of the global sys­tem.
Taiwan is, of course, the fun­da­men­tal excep­tion to China not throw­ing its weight around. The report dis­cusses in detail Chinas con­tin­u­ing efforts to gain the upper-​​hand in a poten­tial mil­i­tary con­flict in the Taiwan Strait, with a par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on deter­ring or coun­ter­act­ing for­eign inter­ven­tion (includ­ing Chinas likely long-​​term goal of acquir­ing or devel­op­ing a carrier-​​force in sup­port of broader efforts towards sea-​​denial). There is lit­tle room for doubt or ques­tion as to how seri­ously China con­sid­ers the Taiwan issue it is the excep­tion to Chinas oth­er­wise very prag­matic for­eign and secu­rity pol­icy. Even here, though, the DOD study points out that in recent years and in the likely future, China has been inter­ested in pur­su­ing all means that may resolve the Taiwan issue: polit­i­cal, eco­nomic, cul­tural, legal, diplo­matic, and mil­i­tary. For exam­ple, it draws par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to Beijings pos­ture of restraint fol­low­ing President Chen [Shui-bian]s deci­sion to sus­pend the National Unification Council and National Unification Guidelines.
The best dooms­day sce­nario, of course, is of a China-​​US con­fronta­tion Taiwan is just a pos­si­ble flash­point. In this vein, much can be made of the reports repeated men­tion of Chinas efforts to observe US mil­i­tary forces in action and apply lessons learned. (A recent RAND report made the same obser­va­tions.) The big thing to notice, though, is that almost every exam­ple of this watch­ful­ness has as much to do with China want­ing to emu­late US mil­i­tary tac­tics and equip­ment, as want­ing to counter them. A par­tic­u­larly ironic exam­ple of these lessons learned can be found in the Pentagons analy­sis of why China will be deterred from mil­i­tary action against Taiwan in any but the most extreme sit­u­a­tions: high mon­e­tary costs of war at home, an expen­sive recon­struc­tion pro­gram in Taiwan, polit­i­cal con­dem­na­tion and reper­cus­sions within the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity and the pos­si­bil­ity that an insur­gency against the occu­pa­tion could tie up sub­stan­tial forces for years.
Hmm Its been a long time since I took a psy­chol­ogy classes, but thats called pro­ject­ing, right?
The report isnt with­out a few odd­i­ties, though. My par­tic­u­lar favorite is when it notes a resur­gence in the study of ancient Chinese state­craft within the PLA, appar­ently catch­ing the cru­cial devel­op­ment of a new edi­tion of Sun Zis Art of War on the PLA’s read­ing list.
The bot­tom line of the report is that Chinas mil­i­tary mod­ern­iza­tion has more do with seek­ing the trap­pings of a world-​​class power than pur­su­ing a par­tic­u­lar, military-​​minded agenda. Ultimately, the pri­mary moti­va­tion for these rapid expen­di­tures can be found in the fact that the PLA is trans­form­ing from a mass infantry army designed to fight a pro­tracted war of attri­tion within its ter­ri­tory to a mod­ern, pro­fes­sional force.
The Pentagon actu­ally men­tions lit­tle, if any­thing, thats new from last years report. Nonetheless, if the last few years are any indi­ca­tion, were now in for a few months of rec­i­p­ro­cal crit­i­cisms and no, youre the long-​​term threat to inter­na­tional peace and secu­rity. There had been rea­sons for hope of improved mil­i­tary rela­tions between China and the US, with recent China vis­its from National Defense University and the Combat Commander for the Pacific that cul­mi­nated in an invi­ta­tion to China to view US exer­cises near Guam. Now, well have to see what, if any­thing, comes of these over­tures.
If, rather than requir­ing annual reports on Chinas mil­i­tary, Congress had required reports when­ever there were sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ments or changes, it seems unlikely there would have been a report at all this year. This require­ment has largely become today what the annual review of Chinas Most Favored Nation sta­tus was in the 90s: a yearly exer­cise in bilat­eral nipple-​​twisters that does lit­tle but restate trends that havent changed much from the last year and arent likely to change much in the next.
– Matthew Tompkins

May 24th, 2006 | Eye on China | 18939 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2006/05/24/yellow-perils-annual-comeback/Yellow+Peril%27s+Annual+Comeback2006-05-24+17%3A05%3A56jason You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.