China's Strategic Intentions and Goals
Testimony
of Larry M. Wortzel, Ph.D.
Director, Asian Studies Center
The Heritage Foundation
Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me to address China's strategic intentions and goals. You are holding hearings today on one of the most critical questions facing the United States in its role as an Asia-Pacific power and a guarantor of security in the region. Today's hearing is one of the many ways that the United States Congress demonstrates to the American people, America's friends and allies, and China, that developments in the Asia-Pacific region are vital concerns to our nation. China wants to be the pre-eminent power in the region. Beijing seeks to ensure that decisions made by other Asia-Pacific nations always consider its reaction. Another of Beijing's strategic goals is to weaken America's alliances while placing itself at the center of a multipolar web of strategic partnerships in the region.
The issue before the Committee is one with which I have grappled for some 30 years in academic and professional government settings. From 1970 to 1999, while serving in the U.S. Army, I focused much of my time on political, military and economic analysis of issues relating to China. Some of this time was spent in intelligence, and some in policy- or strategy-related positions. For more than four years, I had the privilege of serving the United States as a military attaché at the U.S. Embassy in China. During those years, I not only visited a number of Chinese military units and traveled throughout China, but also interacted with many of China's senior military leaders, including the commanders, deputy commanders, or political commissars of all of the arms and services of the People's Liberation Army (the PLA), its most senior military institutions, and many regional leaders. Some of the mid-level PLA officers with whom I interacted have risen to senior positions.
Given this experience, I will try to provide a sense of how these senior leaders approach questions about China and its future, while drawing on published Chinese documents and my own observations of China's forces.
An Economic Power. China is an economic power of considerable strength. The World Bank, in its 1997 report titled China 2020, noted that China's gross domestic product (GDP) had increased at an annual rate of between 6.6 percent and 8 percent annually between 1978 and 1992. According to The Heritage Foundation's U.S. and Asia Statistical Handbook for 1999-2000, China's economy grew at a rate of 14.2 percent to 7.8 percent between 1992 and 1998, with the rate decreasing more recently. This year, China's economy will probably grow at a rate of about 7 percent.
China is America's fourth largest trading partner. The United States has over $6.3 billion in foreign direct investment in China, while China has over $400 million invested directly in the United States.
For China's leaders, the economy is the most important factor in determining future military power. Lieutenant General Zhang Guochu, the director of the General Political Department of the Guangzhou Military Region,[i]described national power as a combination of economic strength and the "level of defense modernization." General Zhang wrote this in the Chinese Communist Party's theoretical journal, Qiu Shi (or "Seeking Truth"), in 1998.
Zhang's words repeat statements by Jiang Zemin, China's President and the Communist Party General Secretary and Chairman of the Party's Central Military Commission. At the Communist Party's 15th Congress in September 1997, Jiang made it clear that the broad strategy for China is to focus on adjusting and restructuring the economy first. He emphasized maintaining public ownership and socialism while permitting market forces and private ownership to grow in China. Jiang did not make any direct references to specific defense programs there, but he did outline a national strategy-to focus on developing a world based on "multipolarity" and to oppose "military blocs, power politics, and hegemonism." The same basic strategy appears in China's National Defense, a white paper published in July1998 by the Information Office of the People's Republic of China's State Council.
China's strategists and leaders believe that China must adapt to the influence of new weaponry in the world and develop defense policies, diplomatic initiatives, and strategies to meet the evolving military challenges. Yet the same strategists also realize that economic security is a major part of state security. China must be able to compete in "globewide struggles centered on markets, natural resources, and economic rights and interests," according to this national strategy, and China's leaders realize that threatening military action or using force may stop foreign investment, destabilizing a regime that already lacks ideological legitimacy.
For America, this does not necessarily mean that any growth in the Chinese economy will necessarily translate into increased military power. A middle class involved in business and private ownership is also growing. However, it does mean that prudent measures must be taken in trade to place the necessary national security controls on U.S. high-technology exports.
Taking the Long View
Given China's economic problems and the fact that most of its military technology and platforms are old, Beijing's short-term strategy is to avoid direct military conflicts and thus to buy time to increase China's future military potential. While doing this, China is slowly improving its economic capacities and its capacity to be a military power. For most of their lives, the senior people in China's armed forces have been insulated from the outside world and foreign contacts. They lived in a world of secrecy, imposed not only by the rules of the Communist Party, but by a military culture that did not trust the outside world. They worked with the same groups of soldiers and officers for years at a time, basically within the same geographical area.
For example, when I first met the commander of the 15th Airborne Army, part of the PLA Air Force, the general had already spent over 30 years in that division. In 1989, when U.S. military relations with China were good, he was a division commander in the PLA's airborne division with which I made a parachute jump. Almost ten years later, when I met him again, he was still the commander of the 15th Airborne Army. He had never been to a Western country. He spoke no foreign language, and he was only beginning to go through the PLA's formal senior education process that exposes its officers to the outside world and travel. He was over 50 before that had happened. Major General Ma Diansheng is but one example of the type of officer that leads the PLA. He was nationalistic and did not trust the West, especially the United States.
The People's Liberation Army has a lot of problems, including corruption, aging weapons, and a weak defense industrial base. The defense industry does some things very well, like cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, but is weak in other areas. The PLA, however, has well-disciplined soldiers and tough leaders who are thoroughly devoted to their nation. Individual soldier skills in the PLA are excellent, and that includes in the strategic rocket forces, the Navy and the Air Force. Even if soldiers cannot operate well in the complex and changing environment of a joint force, in which a great deal of initiative is required, they have been drilled on their specific tasks until they can accomplish them blindfolded. The PLA soldiers will follow orders, and that is perhaps what makes it a dangerous force.
Staking Out Positions on Sovereignty and Principles
China has a history of staking out certain positions based purely on principle, and then taking what some would argue are militarily dangerous actions, despite the economic and social costs.
In this regard, it is worth remembering that this is the 50th anniversary of the Korean War. Despite having just come out of a war against Japan and the civil war against the Nationalist Government of the Republic of China, the PRC sent over 300,000 men to fight in Korea. They committed this number because the most sensitive strategic issues for China are sovereignty, territorial integrity, and what one might call the "buffer areas" of the "near-abroad." These PLA soldiers were sent even though the Chinese Communist Party knew that developing the economy was probably the most critical task facing China.
In 1962, corps or armies totaling some 80,000 Chinese were moved into the Sino-Indian border area to fight against India, again over sovereignty and principle, at a time when China was undergoing serious famine.
In 1969, as a means to show its displeasure over ideological differences with the Soviet Union and over what Beijing saw as incursions into its territory over a disputed river boundary, China fought limited engagements against Soviet armed forces. Beijing did this even though it was seriously outgunned in the strategic sense by the Soviet nuclear forces.
In 1979, when Beijing's support for communist forces in Cambodia was threatened by Vietnam's attack into Cambodia, it quickly and secretly assembled as many as half a billion local and national combat forces and sent them into combat in Vietnam. It did this because war in the "near-abroad," threatened close Chinese relations with Thailand. Hanoi was poised for a military thrust into Thailand and it was unlikely that the United States would get involved in another land conflict in Asia. Thus Bsijing saw a chance to increase its own regional influence and role as a protector of its surrounding states. China lost perhaps 50,000 soldiers in this action.
Thus, when Chinese leaders make threats over matters of principle and sovereignty, they must be taken seriously. A second strategic lesson that we must learn from China's behavior is that it takes its "near-abroad" seriously. Beijing prefers that weaker powers that once were historically tributary states of its empire would not meddle in its back yard. Finally, a third lesson to remember is that, despite the fact that China's armed forces were armed with old equipment, they still managed to assemble quickly and act decisively despite great economic pain and the cost in lives.
In a domestic sense, some of these lessons apply to the way that the People's Liberation Army was used during the Tiananmen Massacre in Beijing in June 1989. Few military leaders that I knew in China wanted the Army to get involved in solving the Tiananmen crisis, and few of the soldiers had any idea of the issues involved. But when the Communist Party ordered the military to act, based on the principle of party supremacy over the military and strong discipline, the Army moved. When pressed to do so, the PLA assembled massive numbers of soldiers from multiple divisions quickly and quietly. And the Communist Party used these forces brutally.
Undermining Alliances
Beijing's preference for a "multipolar" world is a way to compensate for its own economic and strategic weaknesses without having to the United States-in strength.
Historically, Beijing's leaders are used to China being the regional suzerain, a strong power that no nation would defy and to which nations pay respect and tribute. In my view, Beijing seeks to shape a world in which America's position is much weaker than it is today and where U.S. leadership is weakened to accommodate the desires of other competing poles of power. Beijing seeks to tie the nations that lie on its periphery into a web to create a "strategic partnerships" with "the Middle Kingdom" at the center.
The attacks on hegemonism in China's white paper on national defense released in July 1998 are code terms used in Communist Party parlance to criticize America's leadership in Asia and the world. In an article commemorating the 71st anniversary of the People's Liberation Army in the theoretical journal Qiu Shi, minister of defense General Chi Haotian emphasized that "hegemonism and power politics are still the main roots to the threat to world peace and stability...including the reliance of other countries on military alliances." The statement uses code phrases that are intended to weaken the credibility of NATO and U.S. alliances with Japan, the Republic of Korea, Australia, the Philippines, and Thailand. In its own "near-abroad" Beijing sees itself surrounded by countries with shared values, democratic systems, and market economies-the very things on which alliances should be based.
Beijing's Strategic Successes
Beijing has turned one of the maxims of Sunzi (or Sun-tsu, author of The Art of War), into a 21st century security strategy. China is "attacking the enemy's strategy" (gu shang bing fa mou) by portraying the U.S. policy of engagement with China as a new form of "containment," putting Washington and the U.S. Department of Defense on the defensive in policy discussions.[ii] Then Beijing is "attacking the enemy's alliances" (qi ci fa jiao) by seeking to undermine the system of alliances and long-standing friendships nurtured in Asia by the United States and replace them with its web of strategic partnerships.[iii]
Beijing argues that these alliances are "relics of the cold war" that are not appropriate for the 21st century. At the same time, China is also preparing to respond to U.S. forces, if necessary, by developing the capacity to control sea lines of communication near China, project regional force, and deter the United States and other potential adversaries in creative ways without matching forces (qi ci fa bing). Recognizing its own weaknesses, however, the PLA wants to avoid a direct confrontation. The United States and China may have achieved a minimum level in mutual transparency in defense policies, but both have laid out reasonably clearly their strategic plans and goals. Even in the formal policy utterances, however, we see the basis for confrontation and conflict.
Another example of Beijing's strategic success is the Clinton Administration's characterization of Washington's relationship with China as a "strategic partnership." This unfortunate characterization has confused America's allies in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly Japan and Korea, and raised concerns that the United States had turned to some form of real-politick that ignores the shared values of democracy, a free press, freedom to assemble and speak, and market economies that are the basis of the alliances.
China has taken a two-pronged approach to security relations: On the diplomatic front with the United States, Beijing does the very minimum it must to avoid being perceived as an adversary and to gain access to U.S. doctrine, technology and manuals. Meanwhile, China is engaged in a diplomatic effort designed to de-couple the United States from its alliances and a military effort to build up a force of ballistic missiles that it can use in the region. Through its own military purchases-including some from traditional U.S. allies and partners like Israel and Great Britain-China is developing an over-the-horizon capability for its cruise missiles that could strike U.S. naval forces and the air-to-air refueling capability needed to extend the range of its aircraft.
China has concluded that it cannot match U.S. military capabilities. Every PLA leader tells us this. But the U.S. armed forces do not have a clear picture of what the Chinese can do. The PLA central leadership works very hard to conceal its own capabilities. The Air Defense Command Center that was shown to the U.S. Secretary of Defense in 1997 was a hollow shell of a local headquarters; it was not the equivalent of America's National Command Center that was shown to Chinese leaders.
For example, when the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John Shalikashvili, was given a demonstration of the "capabilities" of the PLA's 15th Airborne Army, it was in reality a highly scripted "exercise" more like a Jackie Chan (or Bruce Lee) movie in Hong Kong. It was polite to let the U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff fly a 30-year-old fighter jet, but what does that tell the United States about how China intends to employ the Su-27s it has purchased, along with the aerial refueling system it is developing and the airborne early warning radar it is putting together?
Simply stated, U.S. military leaders have never been asked to observe a real Chinese military exercise. The Department of Defense knows that the PLA carries out real exercises, much like those conducted at the U.S. National Training Center. At most, those of us who saw the real PLA in action as it mobilized around Tiananmen Square and attacked in Beijing saw how the PLA could apply violence in "complex terrain." But the PLA is slowly developing itself into a force that can project itself internally and regionally.
According to PLA officers, the PLA is also experimenting specifically to respond to U.S. forces should they see a future need to do so. The improvements in force projection capability, command and control, battlefield awareness, and simultaneity of operations shown at the exhibition in the Military Museum in Beijing to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the founding of the PLA gave foreign observers a glimpse of these improvements. Interestingly, when the exhibition was formally opened to foreign observers and military attaches, the display had been changed significantly from what I saw on its opening day with a colleague.
China's Future Strategic Goals
The United States cannot be assured that China will seek to resolve territorial disputes peacefully. Despite Beijing's claims that it has only peaceful, defensive intentions, it refuses to renounce the use of force to settle territorial disputes; it continues to threaten the use of force against Taiwan; and it has used force in the international arena on a number occasions in the recent past.
Beijing has clearly stated its right to use force inside whatever area it defines as its own territory, even if that territory is in dispute. This threat bears directly on China's maritime claims as well as on its disputed river boundaries. As China begins to try to control the headwaters of the Mekong, Irrawaddy, Brahmaputra, and Red Rivers, it could find itself at odds with Vietnam, Thailand, Burma, Laos, Bangladesh, and India.[iv] Since China reserves the right to act independently within the territory it claims, Beijing may well ignore the concerns of these other countries when it tries to control the water and divert it within China.[v]
As for maritime disputes, the 1988 naval engagements against Vietnam in the Spratly Islands come to mind, as do the 1974 seizure of the Paracel Islands and the 1979 attack on Vietnam. Of course, Beijing has always been careful to couch its actions in terms of a "defensive counterattack" or an action to regain territory it claims. More recently, China seized and occupied Mischief Reef, claimed by the Philippines, and demonstrated massive force against Taiwan as a way to express its dissatisfaction with what Chinese Communist Party leaders believed was a trend toward independence on that island.
China is mercurial and given to what one Harvard Professor, Alistair Iain Johnston has described as "parabellum" behavior, choosing to escalate rapidly to high levels of force early in any conflict or disagreement to dissuade an adversary early and avoid a deeper confrontation.[vi] In short, while President Clinton and President Jiang Zemin proclaimed that a new "strategic partnership" exists between the two countries, China is not an ally of the United States. China is a fellow power with a seat on the Permanent Five of the United Nations Security Council. That said, China might someday be an enemy, not because of U.S. intentions, but because of Beijing's actions.
U.S. Responses
The United States should encourage China to seek its place in the region as a responsible major power. At the same time, instead of doing anything that weakens traditional U..S. alliances, Washington should take steps to strengthen them. Our alliances with Japan, Korea, Australia, Thailand, and the Philippines are important bilateral agreements among nations that share values of democracy, a market economy, free elections, and freedom of speech, of the press, and of religion. These alliances should be nurtured. All of the nations in the region, including America's allies, hope that China does become a major power peacefully.[vii]
But America should be wary. The United States would not like to see any of the advanced systems it has transferred to friends or allied countries in Asia fall into Beijing's hands, as did the transferred aircraft carrier Minsk, which went from Russia, to South Korea, to China. Washington should not sell arms or advanced military technologies to the China. China has a very poor record on the retransfer of defense systems and it has exported items it reverse-engineered to countries with which the United States could come into serious conflict. Among these are the C-802 system, reverse-engineered from the French Exocet cruise missile to Iran. Beijing has worked with Iran to adapt the C-802 to for use on strike aircraft that could pose a serious threat to U.S. naval forces in the Persian Gulf. If China develops airborne early-warning aircraft with Russian, British, and Israeli assistance, it probably would transfer that system to Iran as well.
Addressing Missile and Nuclear Proliferation
When President Clinton and President Jiang met in Beijing in June 1998, they agreed to a series of confidence-building measures designed to "increase and deepen cooperation" between the two countries.[viii] Principal among these was the confirmation of what is termed a common goal to halt the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Since 1989, when Deng Xiaoping told President George Bush that China was not exporting anything called an M-11 missile to Pakistan and, if such a missile existed it would not violate the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), the U.S. government ignored the evidence that China had armed Pakistan with these missiles. Of course, this was done for reasons of expedience and geopolitics that supported a broader trade policy and other objectives. Later, despite evidence that China was assisting Pakistan in developing a nuclear program, the U.S. government worked hard to minimize any sanctions against China, again to keep open avenues for expanding trade and commerce.
Trade with China is good policy. I support granting China permanent normal trade relations and entry into the World Trade Organization. Trade has had the very positive effects of helping to improve the livelihood of a large number of Chinese people and helping to develop a middle class and open China to Western ideas and commerce. Ignoring weapons transfers, however, has undermined the centerpiece of the U.S. national strategy, the non-proliferation policy.
China's own strategic writings seem to support, not condemn the proliferation of nuclear weapons and missiles. One of the best military strategists in China, Lieutenant General Li Jijun, writes in his book, Thinking About Military Strategy, that getting nuclear weapons and delivery means are means for weaker developing nations to break the "monopoly" of the developed countries over nuclear weapons. His forays into military theory seem to advocate possessing some form of nuclear weapon as a way to address the imbalance of power enjoyed by the superpowers.
If this is the case, one wonders whether Beijing can be believed today when it says that it will cease to export the technology and systems that are needed to develop and employ weapons of mass destruction. The PLA and the Chinese defense industry establishment have not lived up to the promises of China's leaders in the past. This represents one of the most serious matters that will affect military-to-military relations in the coming century.
Can China be believed when it says it will no longer export technologies, chemical precursors, and MTCR-controlled materials? The record of the past says that Beijing will work secretly to circumvent its promises and U.S. surveillance, especially when the reasons that the U.S. chose to ignore previous transfers are still valid-trade and cooperation on the Korean Peninsula. China's leaders say that they cannot keep track of all of the companies and business deals in China. In summer 1998 while I was in China with two U.S. generals, a historian and a strategist, we had 14 Chinese security people following us in one city. Beijing can track down and arrest a single literate person who writes a letter to the editor of a newspaper. I frequently had dozens of security people following me around Beijing when I lived there. Perhaps if some of these security officers had been used to track illegal exports, Beijing could have lived up to its promises.
The same doubts hold true of Beijing's promise not to target nuclear weapons against the United States. Is there a bilateral surveillance regime to verify this promise? Beijing might choose to secretly circumvent its agreements to undermine U.S. leadership. When India and Pakistan exploded nuclear weapons in 1998, the moral authority of the United States was weakened, as was that of the U.S. leadership. After all, the centerpiece of U.S. security policy-non-proliferation-had failed. Indeed, the world became more multipolar, which reinforced Beijing's own goals. India was probably reasonably certain that the United States would react meekly, which it did, because the United States had selectively ignored China's exports to Pakistan and weakened its sanctions.
Military relations with China will continue to be problematic because of China's propensity to ignore its own agreements. This will affect America's technology transfer policies, building the reluctance of the U.S. defense and intelligence establishments to approve the transfer of militarily critical technologies to China.
A Roadmap for Future Strategic Interaction
I will state again that China is pursuing economic growth to become a more powerful and important nation. At the same time, it is building increased military capabilities to limit America's freedom of action and weaken U.S. military superiority. But China's leaders also recognize that economic security is part of state security and that they must avoid rash actions that would destabilize the economy and limit foreign investment. The PLA will follow orders and may take military action based on pure principle. It seeks to hide its own capabilities while weakening America's alliances.
How, then should the United States respond?
By strengthening traditional alliances based on shared values and systems, the United States will provide strong leadership and direction in the Asia-Pacific region. As a hedging strategy, seeking to change China's strategic culture and engaging in trade may avoid immediate conflict and draw China into the world of laws, rule-based behavior, and marker systems. This can also change China's strategic culture. Contacts with the PLA can help orient more of China's leaders to the outside world. Nothing that increases China's military capabilities or the effectiveness of its military in using force should be allowed. But there should be military contacts with China aimed at ensuring that no miscalculation on the part of leaders of either side occurs. That said, it is naïve to assume that contact alone will change the attitudes of the PLA or make them allies. China is now a competitor with the United States for influence in the world and in the Asia-Pacific region. Until or unless there are shared values, democratic, and economic systems, China will be a competitor with the United States, and at times may be in conflict with the U.S. on certain issues. All the while, China and the United States will share some common interests, for instance, on the Korean Peninsula.
It is prudent that the United States keep its military forces strong and forward deployed in Asia. The United States should nurture and strengthen its traditional alliances. And the United States should exercise prudent national security controls on exports to China. Military contacts with China should aim at preventing conflict and at changing the strategic culture in China. Intelligence gathering on China's intentions and capabilities is critical, but should not be confused with traditional military-to-military contact activities.
