For one, while electronic warfare (EW) has been utilized in various conflicts since the 1930s, it has rarely been decisive. In the Gulf War, a conflict that many PLA writers cite as a prime example of IW, EW was used as a relatively minor part of a complex air campaign to suppress Iraqi defenses. Moreover, the decisive blow was struck primarily on the ground. PLA writers have wrongly taken Desert Storm to be the defeat of an industrial-era military by a high-tech military. Rather, the story is more complicated.

Strategic information warfare (cyberwarfare, command and control warfare) is also an unproven commodity. Computer viruses have not been employed decisively in any recent conflict. What is often called “cyberwarfare” is in fact run of the mill denial of service attacks against websites and hackings. This is not to deny that computer network operations, especially when directed against military computer systems, are potentially dangerous. But as some PLA writers recognize, they are useful only in the context of a general integrated operation. Additionally, the capabilities for carrying out decisive operations in a high-tech environment are uncertain in a military force that still consists in large part of older equipment. The PLA is still evolving the necessary capabilities and training to realize the futuristic concepts laid out in doctrine.

Perhaps the greatest problem, however, is strategic. The PLA is taking a huge gamble that it can use IW as part of a larger pre-emptive “key point strike” to deter great powers like the US from intervening in territorial disputes. However, even assuming a “key point strike” is successful, it is unlikely to necessarily cripple opposing forces in a decisive manner. In fact, the opponent may, like an animal stung by a wasp, lash out and subject China’s economic and political infrastructure to great harm–especially if combat deaths arising from the strike are great or the strike challenges national honor.  These costs are certainly great to bear for a power engaging in a minor conflict. IW, perhaps, is being seen by some military intellectuals as a kind of magic weapon that can create a decisive strike that can serve as a military solution to a political question.

• China signs up to international treaties but neither complies nor defies them, instead trying to gain advantage from them
• China avoids conflict yet slowly asserts its power
• China pursues trade yet aims to exercise maximum advantage for its own industries.
• China likes to trade technology yet seeks to aim to grab technologies for itself.

There are many other such examples. Swaine and Tellis make the argument that many China analysts make the (unwise) assumption that China will continue to support the US-backed order indefinitely out of affection for it. This is mistaken, Swaine and Tellis note. China will only stay within the confines US-backed order (as a free rider) long enough for it to amass the power to assert its own influence. This strategy does carry substantial risks, however. China’s dependence on external materials, institutional frameworks, and economic networks poses risks to its freedom of action. Political crises (such as Taiwan) could force it into moves that it would ordinarily consider unwise.

Perhaps one of the thorniest problems, however, is inherent in the clash between the “end” state (eventual creation of a new security order with China as a independent power able to defy the American-backed regional order), the “ways” China will achieve it (rising without threatening US and regional rivals), and the “means” available (military expansion). It would seem that the role of China’s armed forces are to both defend the state and ensure its freedom of action. A strong military capable of projecting power and seizing Chinese national interests in high-tech limited war allows China maximum flexibility in the face of a 19th century power infrastructure in Asia. This process of ensuring Chinese freedom of action, however, mounts an implicit challenge to the American-backed regional order.

In order to create military flexibility, China must challenge US dominance in the Pacific. This poses a danger to China’s “calculated” strategy of slow rise, as American military responses to such challenges might put China in a ruinous arms race comparable to the “battleship buildup” of the early 20th century between Germany, a rising land power (like China), and Britain (a dominant naval power) Nevertheless, the vulnerability of Chinese shipping in the Indian ocean requires a covering force. China cannot be a great power without guaranteeing the safety of its own commerce. Some might say that this is a problem of military objectives interfering with political ones. However, it is more of a case of a contradiction in political objectives. In order to avoid antagonizing Americans, China must use diplomacy to assuage American anxieties (as well as those of regional rivals) about its military buildup.

Ng makes a strong case that PLA doctrine provides good means of judging the country’s security policies. He also masterfully integrates it with a realist analysis of East Asian politics, despite the fact that he fails to consider either constructivism or rational choice theory, which may have added something to his explanation of Chinese strategy. He also makes the case that Chinese doctrine is far from monolithic–despite the generally offensive spirit that prevails in the current climate of “high-tech local wars,” there are still many elements within the PLA that have echoes of “People’s War” thinking. The harnessing of cyberwarfare with hacker militias is in many ways a vestige of People’s War. Moreover, Ng makes the case that despite the emphasis on “informatization,” China’s forces lag behind their goals when it comes to modernization in crucial factors such as defense technology and logistics. Perhaps the most unintentionally humorous revelation he reveals is that the vaunted amphibious landing fleet for a Taiwan invasion consists of boats that even PLA officers admit would not survive attacks from shore forces.

In this Ng unintentionally contradicts himself. If capabilities lag behind doctrine, then perhaps doctrine may not be the best means of judging Chinese security policy. This becomes increasingly evident when Ng describes the PLA’s training woes in combined arms and digitized warfare. Training is the means by which doctrine is instilled into soldiers. If the PLA cannot devote enough time and resources to make their ambitious doctrine reality, then is it worth spending so much time on the study of doctrine? Additionally, the different threads within PLA doctrine and the lack of a standardized military canon that can be easily accessed raises doubts about Ng’s thesis.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Ng’s work is how Chinese study of informatization parallels a similar period in American military theory and doctrine that most regard as an utter failure. Just like the PLA in the early 1990s, Americans took the lightning quick victory of the first Gulf War as a sign that a revolution in warfare was occuring. Many believed that technology would either minimize or totally eliminate traditional military problems, and there was a rush to automize and digitize everything. Doctrine was drawn up that assumed that surveillance technology could uncover the enemy and rapidly enable fires to quickly eliminate them. Many ideas about warfare seemed drawn from science fiction novels rather than sound military practice.

If Ng is right, the Chinese are on the cusp of repeating the American mistake by throwing their lot in with “informatized war.” This is intriguing, as the Chinese tend to be astute followers of American military theory and practice. Despite the failure of high-tech war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Chinese still push ahead with the idea of informatized war. Perhaps the most recent American doctrinal debates have not necessarily filtered into Chinese military circles. Or the Chinese, who do not see themselves committing to counterinsurgency operations outside their own borders, chalk the American problems to fighting the wrong kind of war.

Ng is at his best at contextualizing the often-repeated maxim that China favors “anti-access” warfare. He shows that the idea of asymmetric warfare is twofold–China seeks an asymmetric advantage over weaker foes, totally crushing them. When it comes to stronger foes, China is willing to use whatever means necessary to triumph, even if it means returning somewhat to old concepts of People’s Warfare. One doctrinal flaw that Ng is particularly concerned about is the Chinese concept of limited war. Unlike Americans, who distinguish between limited war that is limited by choice and limited war that is limited by circumstance, many modern PLA theoreticians seem to have unrealistic expectations over how much political control can be exerted over limited war. Ng analogizes this unrealistic view of lightning war to 19th century military theoreticians who envisioned short, quick wars without political or social context.

As a whole, his monograph is a valuable addition to the literature concerning China’s military forces and intentions.

Total War and Maoist Guerrilla Romanticism

In the early days of the revolution, conflicts were fought on a massive scale with maximalist objectives. The formative conflict of modern Chinese history, the Chinese Civil War, ended with the total destruction of the Nationalists and the expulsion of the Japanese invaders. Chinese military thinkers under the influence of Mao thought in primarily existential terms, with mass mobilization of the populace into militia units. This makes sense in the context of the Maoist “conveyer-belt” political doctrine of forcing popular participation in mass political-social campaigns.

In purely military terms, China’s conflict was conceived as primarily defensive in nature, with national survival as the sole objective. The enemy would be lured into China’s vast depth, harried by a combination of regular forces and guerrillas, and completely annihilated. Such a strategy would unavoidably involve devastation of civilian resources and initial loss of territory to the invaders, but in a Maoist state facing two nuclear-armed and qualitatively superior superpowers (the United States and Russia) such fatalism was unavoidable.

The military consequences of such an attitude were a lack of attention to air and sea campaigns, a neglect of the operational level of war, deficits in training, readiness, and organization, and severe difficulties fighting limited wars against more nimble opponents. China’s performance in the border conflict with Vietnam, for example, revealed severe weaknesses in its organization, doctrine, and readiness.

“Local Wars” and Active Defense

As China’s international position changed and Deng embarked on a wide-ranging rollback of Maoist ideology and policies, China’s military doctrine slowly changed. Military forces were streamlined, operational level doctrine was written, military ranks were reinstated (Mao previously abolished them)  technological advances were rapidly integrated into the PLA, and air and naval doctrine expanded. However, the biggest shift was in the overall framework within which the Party thought about war and Chinese national objectives. Maoist ideology and “total war” saw the survival of the state and the preservation of the revolution as the pre-eminent concern of the Chinese armed forces, meshing with traditional Chinese concerns about the territorial integrity of the state.

The idea of “national interests,” by definition foreign states, natural resources, or geographic locations outside of China’s immediate territorial depth and borders that must be secured by force if necessary was foreign to the Party. These conflicts would not be large total wars involving the total mobilization of the populace and a protracted war of attrition that would culminate in the annihilation of the enemy. Like the Falklands conflict, they would be short, violent, and decisive, requiring rapidly deployable forces staffed by professional soldiers.

Ka-Po Ng argues that Chinese strategy and doctrine shifted to the idea of national interest and local wars in the 1980s, with the transformation complete by the first Gulf War. The shift was not necessarily all offensive in nature. The Chinese defense strategy shifted from one of strategic depth to an active defense designed to decisively halt the enemy before he could penetrate deeply within Chinese territory, expel him totally from the border regions, and then mount a limited cross-border offensive into the enemy’s territory to compel him to sue for peace.

Evaluation

Ng’s model is persuasive, especially because he connects the shift in military doctrine with both domestic and international shifts in China’s politics. However, as he notes, the idea of “total war” still has some pull within the PLA. While most states are willing to go to severe lengths to maintain their territorial integrity, China’s willingness to risk war and possible financial ruin by challenging the world’s sole remaining superpower over Taiwan is definitely a retread to the “traditional” inward strategy of territorial integrity. The major question, which encompasses both defense and international relations, is how far China would go to recover the island.

If Ng is correct, China’s strategy would tend towards a “limited” attack on the immediate area of Taiwan, aiming to rapidly and decisively take the island before the US could intervene. Ballistic missiles, torpedoes, and anti-ship missiles would be used on the immediate American forces in the area (as well as American air bases in Japan) but the attack would end there. Diplomatic-political means would be used to try to make the Americans accept the seizure of the island. A larger war might be averted, as it is unlikely that the US public and political elites would support a protracted (and maybe nuclear) conflict to take back the island. However, if Chinese doctrine still retains vestiges of the “total war” strategy, Chinese leaders may feel that their possession would only be safeguarded by challenging US forces for the rest of the Southeast Pacific. Such a step would necessarily lead to a larger war, as did Japan’s strike on Pearl Harbor.

My reading of Chinese politics suggests that the “limited war” model is more valid—and an attack on Taiwan in the near future is extremely unlikely. But should an attack occur it would be the ultimate test of Ng’s theoretical model.

• Capabilities-based analysis judges China entirely according to the technical capabilities of its armed forces. Many analysts who predict a future war with China do some almost entirely on the basis of growing Chinese capability. This ignores the fact that armed forces and weapons grow organically out of the political and social context of the people and their hopes and desires. Nonetheless, as Henry Eccles notes in Logistics in the National Defense logistical and military capabilities often define the limits of strategy and are powerful conceptual tools for the making of a given country’s strategic plan.
• Culturalist analysis seeks to explain Chinese security policy and military strategy through an essentialist definition of “Chinese strategy” that supposedly represents an unbroken continuum starting from Sun Tzu. Chinese culture, however, is not monolithic. It also changes with time. What use, for example, would a Chinese policymaker have for an analyst who uses the writings of Alexander Hamilton to predict American grand strategy? That being said, Chinese strategic culture and political culture, when understood through a sufficiently complex lens, can be a guide to thinking about Chinese military doctrine and grand strategy.
• Intentionalist analysis seeks to analyze Chinese security policy in light of what Chinese intentions are. However, this is difficult due to the opacity of the regime, especially in military matters. Moreover, as Robert Jervis noted in his famous work Perception and Misperception in International Politics, even states with relatively open systems can still be misunderstood due to the friction of international politics and general lack of granular knowledge about a country’s political system. Still, no analysis about Chinese strategy should ignore overall the intentions of Chinese policymakers.
• Interests are often reliable guides of strategic behavior. Ka-Po Ng, for example, argues that Asia best corresponds to a classical realist analysis because of the lack of strong regional institutions. The problem with interests is that, as Arnold Wolfers noted in his classic article, the notion of “national interest” is often uncertain and amorphous. Few can successfully define the term and it is subject to constant interpretation. Many Americans, for example, are often surprised at how vehemently even the most pro-Western Chinese desire the return of Taiwan, by force if necessary.
• Doctrine, consisting broadly of both military and strategic ideas about the deployment of forces and the strategic usage of force, is Ka-Po Ng’s favored method of interpreting Chinese military power. Doctrine is not only a guide to how military force is used but a clear conceptualization of underlying intellectual ideas behind it.

I agree with Ka-Po Ng that doctrine may perhaps be the strongest of the options listed. However, there are important limits to doctrine. For one, there is a danger in extrapolation of doctrine beyond its immediate military context. For example, in America the military’s doctrine for counterinsurgency is mistaken by many to be a proxy for larger beliefs held by American policymakers. This may not be as much of an issue in China, a state where the military is effectively an arm of the party. But larger intellectual currents and strategic ideas must be carefully parsed out from doctrine, as they are not necessarily clear in what are predominately narrow frameworks concerning the immediate usage of force.

My goal for this course is to test Ka-Po Ng’s belief in the explanatory power of doctrine and develop a stronger individual framework for strategic analysis of Chinese military-political power. While I suffer from not speaking Chinese nor having a strong area studies background, I believe that the strength of Ng’s framework provides a road plan for examining the military concepts that I will read over the next few months.