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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
