Interpreting China's Military Power

Doctrine Makes Readiness

Ka Po Ng

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781135769246
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

Although inter-state tensions have generally been easing after the Cold War, military power remains a dominant factor in Asian regional politics. As China, operating the world's largest army, grows stronger, there are ongoing debates over the implications for Asia's regional security. This book argues that it is imperative to look beyond the empirical observations and conventional materialist reading of Chinese military development to understand its dynamics and directions in doctrinal terms and put it in a readiness context for evaluation. Military doctrine has long been under-studied and is often treated as a subject separate from force development. But, as this study contends, this factor is necessary for interpreting the making and purposes of China's military power because it forms the intellectual foundation of military structural and hardware development. When loaded with political rhetoric, it also communicates to us the intended uses of the military power. The role of doctrine is reinforced in the context of military readiness, which defines what for and how the army is getting ready. Force development is evaluated in structural, operational and directional terms.The importance of this analytical framework based on military doctrine and readiness is demonstrated in a survey of the evolutionof Chinese military doctrine and force development. As the Chinese People's Liberation Army has continued to adjust its military structure and operation to follow the doctrinal lead, its switches between the doctines of local war and total war have seen corresponding changes to the emphasis between operational and structural readiness.

1 Introduction

The collapse of the communist regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe between 1989 and 1991 signified the end of the Cold War and, at the same time, the gradual emergence of a new international security order. In Asia, however, the direction of strategic change and the implications are far from clear. The region remains a hot-bed of conflicts – rife with age-old fault lines left by the Cold War and new rivalries based on economic interests and competition for greater power. A Commander-in- Chief of the US Pacific Command once described Asia as a ‘tough neighbourhood’.¹ Against such security background, few would dispute that China, given its booming economy, improving military capability and the sheer size of its territory and population, is a critical factor even though one may be wary of the fallacy of linear projection. ‘The way in which China views the use of force and, conversely, its willingness to seek peaceful resolution of other territorial and resource disputes’ is crucial to regional stability.² Heated debates have been going on in both the academic and policy circles on whether this country will contribute to or disrupt regional stability and how other countries should respond to its growing power.³

This is not surprising, since there seem to be conflicting signals. On the one hand, there has been an obvious trend of Chinese integration into the global and regional economies which was manifested in their accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 2001 and their attempts to follow the international practice of increasing transparency by publishing documents on major policies. China has also actively participated in international institutions and has been increasingly willing to work through multilateral security regimes. In 1996 it signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), and in 2001 ratified the International Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights. After the ‘September 11’ terror attack in New York, China was quick to join the international community in combating terrorism by acceding to a series of conventions. In 2002, China promulgated and revised legislation to regulate the export of chemical products and technologies and arms, and signed a code of conduct in the South China Sea. On its own initiative, China instituted the Shanghai Cooperative Organisation (formerly the ‘Shanghai Five’) to promote regional cooperation. No less prominent is its continuous effort to mend relations with former adversaries and to maintain cordial relations with neighbouring countries.⁴

On the other hand, China’s military buildup is unmistakable and its record of using force disturbing. The modernisation of military hardware, acquisition of advanced weaponry from Russia and the double-digit increase in Chinese defence spending since the late 1980s are among the most oft-cited examples in polemics warning against a restless China.⁵ Indeed, even after the confrontational Cold War years, the Chinese PLA troops were deployed in 1992 and 1995 to occupy the Johnson Patch and Mischief Reef which were claimed by Vietnam and the Philippines, respectively. Beijing has also threatened Taipei with a series of military actions ranging from ‘missile testing’ in the Taiwan Strait to large-scale offshore military exercises and continuous military buildup on its east coast.

Obviously, taken individually, these events generate only conflicting signals and reinforce both those arguing for and against the possible emergence of the so-called ‘China threat’. Unless more consistent, long-range behaviour patterns as reflected in Chinese policy are examined, any understanding of China’s future role in regional security will remain elusive.

Objectives and Arguments

Among International Relations theories, the realist school better describes post-Cold War Asian security, and identifies correctly and justifies military power as the main variable in inter-state relations. Moreover, military power is clearly an important factor in analysing China’s strategic behaviour in an anarchical international system. However, this book argues, because of the realist’s materialist bias, the concept of military power, by itself, is not self-evident nor sufficient to understand the implications of China’s growing military power for Asian regional security. A central issue is the meaning underlying that material power – military power requires an ideational interpretation and context.

This study aims to make sense of China’s military modernisation by applying two concepts to examine the purposes and development of its military power; namely, military doctrine and military readiness. Military doctrine is particularly useful when one considers that China has not fought any major wars since 1979 and thus offers few cases for study. Besides, the centralised nature of the Chinese regime suggests that an official military doctrine affords glimpses of China’s military plans.⁶ Being the intellectual foundation of defence policies, doctrine provides guidance to the development of Chinese military structure and operations in such ways as to determine the forms which military power may be used as well as the efficiency and effectiveness of that power. While there are ample studies on the content of Chinese military doctrine both from theoretical and comparative perspectives,⁷ the question of how it affects the making and use of military power has received insufficient attention. Military doctrine, as this book will demonstrate later, is constitutive of military power and guides its making. At the same time, it is informative. Military doctrine communicates to others the purposes of the buildup and what this military power is ready for. Here, we have to bring in the concept of military readiness to contextualise this power.

When Dennis Blasko reviews literature on PLA force structure, he cautions that analysis must be put in context and must take into consideration doctrine and tactics.⁸ Substantively, the concept of military readiness deals with the force structure (mainly organisation and military hardware) and operations (mainly military training and command and control) of the Chinese army. Conceptually, this restores the relational aspect of the concept of power; that is, an actor exercises power in relation to an object. This analysis is particularly important as China continues to modernise its army and assert its political interests and objectives. This study aims to address these questions: How does this country plan to use its increasing power? What is China’s military power getting ready for? Is it targeted at any specific states or groups of states or non-state forces? Is it ready?

Based on this conceptual framework, this study finds that Chinese force development has oscillated between emphases on structural readiness and operational readiness as the army moves between total war and local war doctrines. The current doctrine of local war under high-technology conditions dictates that operational readiness dominates in People’s Liberation Army (PLA) planning and development.

Finally, I add a caveat on this book’s argument. By accentuating the critical role of military doctrine, this book has no intention of getting itself embroiled in the debate of technology-push or doctrine-push military modernisation, nor does it intend to deny separate sets of dynamics of technological progress. It advocates that doctrine is an integral and leading component of China’s military power and is key to making sense of its force development and military training programmes. Doctrine is not a dependent variable of technology. Rather, for any technologies to produce something ‘meaningful’ and ‘usable’ on the battlefield, their development must be guided by military concepts.

Sources, Methods and Approaches

Any attempts to understand China’s military power must confront the problem of the lack of transparency of its military policy. Despite more than two decades of economic reform and opening up, the same attitude is slow to spread to military affairs. Interviews with active PLA officers and researchers without official escorts are virtually impossible unless personal networks have been diligently cultivated. Their increasing exchanges with foreign specialists and scholars at conferences and other programmes mainly benefit US-based analysts. This study acknowledges the weakness of limited opportunities of interviewing these Chinese sources. After all, it is important to bear in mind the issue of the quality of interviews. Thus verifying and cross-checking with other sources are necessary.

Interviewing scholars and analysts outside China certainly helps build up a bigger and more objective picture. But perhaps a no less rewarding exercise is traditional documentary research. As the Chinese army becomes more ‘intellectual’ and allows more lively debates, its views are disseminated by a thriving publishing industry, including army publishers. A wealth of books, including those for ‘domestic distribution’ (neibu faxing) and ‘army distribution’ (junnei faxing), is readily available, as are army newspapers and periodicals. But their supply to readers outside China depends very much on the flexibility of individual booksellers and is thus unstable.

Due to possibilities of error and disinformation, it is imperative to compare the documentary sources. Matching books and essays on doctrinal debates and ideas with developments covered in the news is particularly useful. This requires continuous reading. Of course, military doctrine must be distinguished from official rhetoric and propaganda. Such statements as those put in the Chinese national defence policy White Papers need to be scrutinised.

These empirical data serve little purpose if they are not organised and put into perspective. This research finds the realist school of International Relations theory useful in establishing the working environment and identifying the subject of Chinese military power as a key factor in Asian regional security. Realists see states engaged in constant struggle for power because only power is effective to check power.⁹ According to Kenneth Waltz, a main proponent of neo-realism, ‘among states, the state of nature is a state of war’.¹⁰ In addition, the first sentence on page 1 of a book by two prominent realists reads as follows: ‘Military power plays a crucial role in international politics because states coexist in a condition of anarchy’.¹¹ For realists, the threat of violence is inherent in the anarchical international system. Even though there are international laws and norms, the lack of a supra-national government and enforcing agencies leaves states little option but to help themselves by pursuing power.¹² It is this power relationship that locks states in a power–security dilemma: ‘In seeking power and security for themselves, states can easily threaten the power and security aspirations of other states’.¹³

This theoretical perspective describes the Asian regional security environment. While Asia is currently preoccupied with trade and robust economic activities, institutional building, especially on security affairs, still seems remote in this region and the effect of interdependence is uncertain. First, concomitant with increasing economic contacts are additional dimensions of conflicts, such as trade disputes and border control.

These are particularly serious for China as its development of commercial legislation lags behind the pace of its economic growth, and its new partnership still fails to dispel inherent suspicion. Second, interdependence can be simply a facade for ‘unevenly balanced mutual dependence’. States may use economic resources as a substitute for military power to impose their will on others by depriving and threatening to deprive others of economic goods. Third, interdependence is supposed to preclude aggressive behaviour because it raises the cost of such actions and any measures to change the existing rules of the game; but, by placing states in a web of interlocking interests, interdependence also expands their security concerns and thus precipitates a wider range of military capabilities and responses.¹⁴

The forces underwriting institutionalism and multilateralism that have worked for decades in Europe thus hardly apply to Asia. There, bilateral alliances and their antithesis – non-alignment – have been the dominant mode of security arrangements. The optimism in Europe may not be reflected as reality in Asia.¹⁵ Regional multilateral security dialogues began recently in Asia with such arrangements as the ASEAN post-ministerial conference and the ASEAN Regional Forum. But the ASEAN member states have diverse interests and harbour mutual suspicion towards each other. They do not have a shared identity nor do they have a common threat perception; as towards China, their divergent approaches bring them only to a loose consensus: to avoid provoking the region’s great powers. These factors have imposed severe limitations on achieving any effective and cohesive multilateral initiatives. It is unlikely that a NATO-style alliance may appear in post-Cold War Asia.¹⁶

ASEAN states recognise that institutionalism can only complement traditional bilateralism, which remains dominant in Asia. They also realise that the support and participation of the major powers, even outside the ASEAN network,¹⁷ is essential for multilateral institutions to work and function properly, and that any such framework must be underwritten by a balance of power.¹⁸ Fundamentally, regional security regimes simply reflect the distribution of power and remain a product of national interests.

Power

Having reiterated the importance of the balance of power in understanding Asian security, it is now appropriate to discuss the concept of power itself as employed in this research. First, it is power relative to various units of analysis, not absolute power, that constitutes the main concern of this study. Power is understood here in relational terms. Second, power is also discussed in terms of attributes; for example, military power, economic power and so on. Since the concept of power is used here to analyse China’s strategic behaviour and its relations with other countries, power is discussed as a relationship.

While power as a relationship is generally abstract, it becomes less so when it is conceptualised with reference to its attributes.¹⁹ In Politics Among Nations, Hans Morgenthau lists geography, natural resources, industrial capacity, military preparedness, population, national character, national morale, the quality of diplomacy and the quality of government as attributes of national power.²⁰ Beyond doubt, as national interests become diverse in the contemporary world, states wield more instruments of power and build up a wide array of national attributes. However, since war remains a deadly threat to the survival of states, the military element, among other resources of power, is ‘not only the ultima ratio, but indeed the first and constant one’ in international politics.²¹ A major interest of this study is about how China applies its military power relative to other states as international politics undergoes radical structural changes.

Military Power

Despite recognition of the special significance of military power in a conflict-prone international system, military ‘power’ is often confused with military ‘force’. Military power is not tantamount to the number of soldiers or the size of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface and acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Military doctrine, military readiness and military power
• 3. The genesis of the Chinese local war doctrine
• 4. Towards a local war doctrine
• 5. The advent of local war
• 6. ‘High-technology local wars’ and beyond
• 7. Conclusion
• Appendix 1. The military readiness conceptual framework
• Appendix 2. The Chinese structure of military science
• Appendix 3. Chinese military actions, 1949–2002
• Appendix 4. Major events in PLA doctrinal development
• Notes
• Select bibliography
• Index