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MILITARY & DEFENSE
China's military is a paper tiger
DAVID AXE,THE FISCAL TIMES
JUN. 24, 2015, 10:50 PM79,673131
AP Images
Both of these statements are true:
1. China possesses a rapidly improving military that, in certain local or
regional engagements, could match — and even defeat — U.S. forces in
battle.
2. In military terms, China is a paper dragon that, despite its apparent
strength, is powerless to intervene in world events far from its shores.
Seeing the distinction between these two ideas is the key to understanding
China’s strategic aims, its military means and the threat, if any, that the
country poses to its neighbors, the United States and the existing world
order.
Beijing’s goals include “securing China’s status as a great power and,
ultimately, reacquiring regional preeminence,” according to the 2015
edition of the U.S. Defense Department’s annual report on Chinese military
power.
China isnota global military power. In fact, right now it doesn’t
even want to be one.
But that doesn’t mean the world’s most populouscountry doesn’t pose a
threat to the planet’s wealthiest and most powerful one. Yes, the United
States and China are at odds, mostly as a result of China’s expanding
definition of what comprises its territory in the western Pacific, and how
that expansion threatens U.S. allies and the postwar economic order
Washington was instrumental in creating.
China, however, still could not meet and match the U.S. military on a global
battlefront. Beijing lacks the expertise, military doctrine and equipment
to do so. The Chinese military has no recent combat experience and, as a
consequence, its training regimens are unrealistic.
ReutersA recruit (C) from the People's Liberation Army (PLA) raises his
hand to align the formation during a training session at a military base in
Yinchuan, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region March 3, 2011.
Beijing’s army, navy and air force may be flush with new equipment, but
much of it is based on designs that Chinese government hackers and agents
stole from the United States and other countries. Most of it has never been
exposed to the rigors of actual combat, so it’s unclear how well it would
actually work.
But that might not matter. China has no interest in deploying and fighting
across the globe, as the United States does. Beijing is preparing to fight
along its own borders and especially in the China seas, a far easier task
for its inexperienced troops.
Because, with all its military handicaps, in its own region China could be
capable of beating U.S. forces in battle.
The critical question is just how much the Pentagon shouldcare.
Active defense
REUTERS/China DailyA frontier soldier from the People's Liberation Army
jumps through a ring of fire as part of training in Heihe, Heilongjiang
province, March 5, 2014.
The brutal Japanese invasion and occupation of China during the 1930s and
1940s had a profound effect on modern China’s development. Prior to the mid
-1980s, China’s military strategy was focused on one great fear — another
invasion, in this case an overland attack by the Soviet Union.
Commensurate with the threat, Beijing’s military organization emphasized
short-range, defensive ground forces. In essence, a Great Wall of men and
metal.
The danger from the Soviet Union ebbed and, in 1985, the Chinese Communist
Party revised its war strategy. The “active defense” doctrine sought to
move the fighting away from the Chinese heartland. It shifted attention from
China’s western land border to its eastern sea frontier — including
Taiwan, which in the eyes of Beijing’s ruling Communist Party is a
breakaway province.
But the new strategy was still largely defensive. “We attack only after
being attacked,” the Chinese navy asserted in its contribution to the
official active-defense doctrine. It’s worth noting that, in the party’s
view, a formal announcement of full independence by Taiwan would be an “
attack” on China’s integrity, justifying a retaliatory attack on the
island nation.
Thirty years later, Beijing is still pursuing its offshore defense, if at a
greater distance. It now encompasses island territory that China dared not
actively claim until recently. Still, the strategy remains the same.
Jerry Lampe/ReutersChina's national flag is raised during the opening
ceremony of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games at the National Stadium, August 8
, 2008. The stadium is also known as the Bird's Nest.
Which is why, for all the hundreds of billions of dollars Beijing has spent
on its armed forces since the Chinese economy really took off in the late
1990s and 2000s — and even taking into account equipment optimized for an
amphibious assault on Taiwan — Beijing still acquires mostly short-range,
defensive weaponry.
Which is how China can possess the world’s second-biggest fleet of jet
fighters after the United States — 1,500 jets versus Washington’s 2,800 —
but only a mere handful of the aerial tankers that refuel fighters in mid-
air, allowing them to fight battles far from their bases.
The U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps together operate more than 500
tankers. Because America fights all over the world.
Similarly, China’s navy is huge. With some 300 warships, it is second in
strength only to the 500 vessels in service with the U.S. Navy and Military
Sealift Command, which operates America’s transport and spy ships. But the
Chinese navy, like its air force, is a short-range force. Beijing’s fleet
includes just six logistics ships capable of refueling and resupplying other
ships at sea, extending their sailing range.
REUTERS/StringerSoldiers of the Chinese People's Liberation Army stand
on the deck before a fleet sets out for Aden, Yemen, from Zhoushan, Zhejiang
province, April 3, 2015. China has said it helped 10 countries evacuate 225
of their citizens from Yemen, where Iran-allied rebels have seized the two
main cities, the first Beijing has assisted in the evacuation of foreign
nationals during an international crisis.
America’s fleet includes more than 30 such vessels.
The upshot of Beijing’s emphasis on short-range forces is that the farther
its troops fight from the Chinese mainland, the less effective they will be.
It doesn’t help that Beijing has few close allies, which means virtually
no overseas bases it can count on during conflicts. The Pentagon, by
contrast, maintains many hundreds of overseas facilities.
Chinese forces simply cannot cross the ocean to confront the U.S. military
in America’s own backyard. Nor does Beijing even want to do so. Meanwhile,
U.S. forces routinely patrol within miles of China’s airspace and national
waters, and Washington has taken it on itself to be the decisive if not
dominant military power on every continent.
In the western Pacific, however, China does threaten U.S. military standing.
The flipside of possessing a defensive, short-range navy and air force is
that Beijing can quickly concentrate numerous forces across a relatively
small geographic area. The large numbers help China compensate for the
overall poor quality of its forces.
By contrast, the United States — because it must project forces over great
distances and usually is in the process of doing so all around the world —
can usually deploy only a small number of ships and planes to any particular
place at any given time. Because they would be badly outnumbered, it might
not matter that U.S. ships and planes are generally superior to their
Chinese counterparts in a one-on-one fight.
In a landmark analysis in 2008, the RAND Corporation, a California think
tank, concluded that China would have a huge numerical advantage over the
United States in any aerial battle near Taiwan. The size of the advantage
would depend on whether U.S. forces staged from Kadena Air Base in Japan or
Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. “China could enjoy a 3:1 edge in fighters
if we can fly from Kadena,” the analysis warned, “about 10:1 if forced to
operate from Andersen.” The report goes on to note that while American
warplanes are generally technologically superior to their Chinese
counterparts, they’re not10 timessuperior.
Second island chain
But if China’s strategy is defensive, this argument goes, then the United
States would only risk defeat in battle with the Chinese if Washington
attacked first. And America wouldn’t ever attack China, right?
The depends on the definition of “attack.” Assault the Chinese mainland?
Most certainly not. But the United States and most other countries equate an
attack on theirinterestswith an attack on their soil. And
increasingly, China is expanding the definition of its interestsand
the extent of its soil.
For one, if Taiwan ever formally announced its independence — and make no
mistake, Taiwan is already fully independent — China vows it would invade.
Because the integrity of historical China, including the island of Formosa
that became Taiwan in 1949, is firmly within China’s current definition of
its core interests.
Reuters
China also claims islands in the East and South China seas that Taiwan,
Vietnam, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines and Brunei are claiming. The
islands themselves are essentially beside the point; it’s the waters around
them, and the oil and natural gas below that the countries are so eager to
secure for themselves.
Though those disputes are not new, as China’s economy and military have
developed, its claims have grown more assertive. In late 2014, China greatly
escalated these territorial disputes when it began dredging isolated reefs
in contested waters, piling sand into artificial islands, atop which it
built piers, airstrips and other military facilities, transforming the
islands into outposts.
The outposts make it increasingly unlikely the claimant countries will find
easy, peaceful solutions to their conflicts.
The United States maintains military alliances with Japan, the Philippines,
Taiwan and, to a lesser extent, Vietnam. Washington is also committed to
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