Dragon growling - China - Defense & Technology

National Review, July 31, 1995 by Arthur Waldron

``THE uneasiness with China goes deep,'' is how Goh Chok Tong put it in May. The Singapore prime minister, not a man to speak lightly, was referring to a conspicuous change in the way the rest of Asia views China. Goodwill almost everywhere greeted Peking's emergence from self-imposed isolation when it began twenty years ago. But recent arms purchases and an increasingly confrontational foreign policy have led to its replacement today by worries, which Asian leaders are increasingly willing to articulate. The shift should not be overstated: China's military is still largely obsolete and far from posing an offensive threat to its neighbors.

(The real risk, arguably, and one not easy to manage, is not that China will triumph militarily, but rather that it will overreach, lose a battle, and be humiliated.) Its foreign policy is by no means firmly set on confrontation. Above all, what ultimately will determine the future of China is not the armaments it buys today but rather the internal political course it adopts tomorrow: whether toward liberalization, or toward authoritarian retrenchment. The present story begins after the crushing of the democracy movement in 1989, when a growing military budget was the government's payback to the People's Liberation Army for remaining loyal. An intense interest in high technology was added two years later, after the Gulf War. Since then China's announced military budget has been increasing steadily, at least in nominal terms.

Thomas McNaugher of the Rand Corporation estimates real expenditure today at between $10 and $20 billion (others put the figure higher). Much of this is going to advanced offensive weapons. The most worrying changes have not been in China's nuclear forces so much as in its conventional forces. Nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them have been a high priority since the 1950s: China today possesses the ability to hit the continental United States with a limited number of nuclear bombs, and development and testing pushes forward, regardless of international opinion. But nuclear weapons are basically useful only for deterrence. So it has been possible to rationalize China's nuclear program as fundamentally defensive.

On the other hand, China's patterns of conventional acquisition clearly suggest a desire to project force. Russia has already delivered to China's air force 26 Sukhoi-27 aircraft, among the finest in the ex-Soviet arsenal. One reason the Chinese chose the Su-27 is that it can fly from the Woody Island base in the Paracel Islands off Vietnam, and patrol for at least an hour over the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. Indeed, supported by an aircraft carrier or in-flight refueling, the Su-27 could put all Asia within striking distance. In addition, Israel is developing for China a genuinely advanced aircraft, the F-10, reportedly based in part on American technology from the abandoned Lavi program.

There are also reports that China has obtained in-flight refueling technology from Israel and Iran, and has expressed interest in co-production of advanced ex-Soviet aircraft, including nuclear bombers. Sea power too has been given a new stress. Rumors have long abounded that China intends either to buy or to build an aircraft carrier, and although nothing has come of them yet, the idea is becoming accepted. China is ``a large nation and a growing military and world power,'' said Admiral Richard C. Macke, commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific command recently. ``So to tell them you can't have aircraft carriers when we have aircraft carriers, I'm not sure makes a lot of logical sense.'' But while aircraft carriers remain just talk, quiet diesel submarines of the Russian Kilo class have already been delivered to the Chinese navy -- four so far, it is thought, with some sources saying that the total will eventually be more than twenty. But what has brought concern about China to center stage is not so much force modernization -- after all, every country does that -- but rather unmistakable signs of aggressive intent. A turning point came in February when the Philippine navy discovered four apparently permanent military structures, just completed by China, on Mischief Reef in the Spratlys, which lies well within Philippine territorial waters. China claims all the Spratlys, but initially tried to deny any military purpose: ``China's local fishing authorities,'' a statement said, ``have set up facilities at [Mischief Reef] to provide shelter for their fishing vessels.'' But why frigates should be deployed near the shelters was not explained. In mid May, two Chinese warships blocked a Philippine Navy landing ship carrying a senior general and a group of journalists, though the Chinese did not prevent Philippine helicopters, carrying journalists, from flying over the reef and installations. These actions have galvanized China's Asian neighbors, and not just the Philippines. For if the ``fishermen's shelter'' explanation for Mischief Reef is unconvincing -- and it is -- then how is China's action to be understood? The installations -- concrete buildings on stilts, with antennas, satellite dishes, and anti-aircraft artillery -- did not simply grow. They had to be planned, designed, and approved -- and by whom, and in service of what? Unwelcome as it may be, the most plausible explanation is that China has decided it means what it says when it draws lines on maps claiming territory, and intends to use force if necessary to support these claims. The result is that for the first time since the end of the Vietnam War (and this time without any outside prompting) the states of Asia are beginning to talk about a danger from China and to draw together defensively. Thus, backed by its ASEAN neighbors, the Philippines have rejected Chinese proposals for bilateral talks about Mischief Reef. It is understood, in the words of Jusuf Wanandi, chairman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta, that unless the rest of Asia speaks with one voice, the Chinese ``will divide us and clobber us one by one.''