By Yang Yi
Responding to remarks made by Canada-based Kanwa Defence Review
analyst Andrei Pinkov that Chinese military strength, now
witnessing rapid expansion, will overtake that of the United States
in 20 years, this author said: "I, as a soldier, now would like to
thank you for your good wishes for the development of Chinese
military forces. But your remarks, if meant to be a serious
prediction of the balance of Chinese and US military might, are a
miscalculation because China will not be able to catch up with the
United States in 100 years, let alone 20 years. Moreover, this race
will never happen. US military forces will not remain at a
standstill and China will never embark on the road of becoming a
military superpower."
The recently convened Seventh Forum on Sun Tze's Art of War, in
Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, provided the occasion for
these exchanges.
Taking the road of peaceful development is China's basic policy,
which is being implemented in all seriousness.
In military terms, this basic policy finds expression in the
active-defence strategy adopted by the Chinese military. But, in
more specific terms, what kind of military forces should be
developed and how should the country's military might be used? This
seems to go beyond the scope of purely Chinese affairs, taking into
account that the behavior of other major powers on the world's
political and military stage should never be overlooked.
China is a big country, and a responsible one. Therefore, it
needs a military strength matching its status as a big country.
This is dictated by the need to safeguard China's own security and
protect the country's national interests.
But, in the context of the profound transformations taking place
in the world's military arena, China lags far behind developed
nations militarily.
Despite the fact that China's rapid economic growth offers the
nation's military enough financial support, China's military
strength is far outstripped by the need to protect its ever
expanding national interests.
The country's deterrent and real-combat capability to respond to
traditional threats to its security, for example, is deficient. The
same can be said about China's capability in terms of dealing with
terrorist attacks, carrying out international rescue and
humanitarian aid operations and implementing UN peacekeeping
missions. Its long-distance delivery and response capability, which
is required in case of evacuating Chinese nationals when any
emergency arises overseas, is also weak. All these capabilities
pale into insignificance beside those possessed by the United
States and other developed nations.
True, China has the largest conventional army in the world. But
its level of modernization is fairly low, trailing 15 to 25 years
behind developed countries.
And when China starts taking steps to modernize its military
forces, alarm bells start ringing overseas.
The "China military threat" theory is the loudest, above all the
hubbub of different versions of the "China threat."
China is, therefore, caught in a very subtle and complex
situation.
"Peaceful development" is the country's solemn strategic option,
which helps redress the bigotry and extremist feelings harbored by
a few Chinese people as well as counter the "China threat"
theory.
Starting from the Opium War in 1840, China was repeatedly
bullied by Western powers. The negative influence lingers on today.
Some Chinese, for instance, still consider themselves to be
"victims," while others wish to exact revenge. Given free rein,
these mentalities would poison the environment vitally needed for
our development and fuel the "China threat" theory.
China's military forces, in the opinion of this author, should
be of the active-defence type. Our military forces should be
committed to staging counter-attacks in case the country's vital
interests are encroached upon, instead of carrying out wars of
aggression against other countries and bullying neighbors. This
also constitutes a deterrent to potential military blackmail and
aggression.
The country's 2004 Defence White Paper states that the People's
Liberation Army (PLA) should develop military co-operation that is
not targeted at a third party and that the PLA is non-aligned and
non-confrontational by nature. The PLA participates in United
Nations peacekeeping missions and anti-terror co-operation, carries
out various forms of military exchanges and is committed to setting
up military-security dialogue mechanisms. The PLA also participates
in bilateral or multilateral joint military exercises in
non-traditional security areas.
The document states that the PLA is trying to learn from useful
experiences of its foreign counterparts and selectively imports
advanced military hardware and managerial methods.
All this shows that China is combining "hard power" and "soft
power" to help bring about a harmonious world.
In the late 1970s, Deng Xiaoping, the chief architect of China's
reform and opening up, emphasized that the economy, instead of
class struggle, should be the focus of government work and that all
sectors should concentrate on this.
He asked that the military exercise self-restraint, meaning that
it should not claim a larger share of State finances.
As a result, a great deal of investment went into the economic,
cultural, education and research sectors, while the military got
just enough to maintain its routine functions.
This wise decision largely helped bring about China's rapid
economic growth over the past three decades.
Of course, long-standing insufficient investment in the defence
sector has slowed the pace of military modernization. This is
particularly reflected in the fact that core military technology
with independent Chinese patents falls far behind that of developed
countries and that the Chinese army's hardware is inferior to that
of its Western counterparts. To make matters worse, importing
sophisticated weaponry from overseas is riddled with
difficulties.
As China's economy has gained in strength, the State has
increased its defence spending. But this increased investment
chiefly goes to improving the structure of the defence sector and
to "paying off historical debts," which refers to the long-time
insufficient investment in the sector.
Despite enjoying military supremacy over all other countries on
the planet, the United States is constantly on the watch against
any other nation that could pose a military challenge. Now Uncle
Sam is concentrating on China.
The Pentagon says in its Quadrennial Defence Review issued on
February 3 this year that China has the biggest potential, among
the rising big countries, to rival the United States militarily.
The United States' traditional military advantages would disappear
within a certain period of time if no action is taken. The document
suggests that the United States continue to invest heavily in key
strategic and tactical fields, enhancing the capabilities of
constant monitoring, long-range strikes, combat mobility and the
air, naval and land forces fighting at a strategic range.
No single country is a match for the United States in terms of
investing enormous sums of money in the development of
sophisticated military technologies. China, having its hands full
with many other challenges and now already on the path of peaceful
development, will never take part in an arms race with any other
countries, particularly the United States.
The author is a rear admiral of the Chinese navy, and
director of the Institute for Strategic Studies of the National
Defence University of China.
(China Daily July 5, 2006)
