It may be a bit unfair to Chinese technical competence,
but there is good reason to track the spurt of China’s current
military sophistication to the Clinton Administration’s sale of
Cray supercomputers to Beijing in the 1990s. (Paralleled, of
course, by the PRC’s accelerated program of technical secret
stealing during the same period and later.) In any event, Chinese
strategic weapon development now seeks to arrive at a point where
it can challenge American superiority. Whether China can attain its
objective in any reasonable future is the question.
Signs of growing Chinese military capability came about
again only a few months ago when the latest generation of the
Dong Feng 21 D missile was recognized as operational. U.S.
Navy estimates place this medium-range land-to-sea missile as being
accurate up to 900 miles. This has been referred to as a
carrier-killer weapon that is aimed to counter U.S. Navy domination
of East Asian waters. One development such as this doesn’t have the
ability, in itself, to alter the balance of power in this portion
of the Pacific, but it can present a new and important factor in
threatening the defense of Taiwan.
Beijing’s enhanced missile capacity is only part of a
series of weapon systems that China is in the process of developing
— most of which reflects a belief in its need to counter U.S.
influence in the Pacific regions. Beijing’s strategy is centered on
the development of a “blue water” operational strength. Just how
“blue” really depends on how the Peoples’ Liberation Army – Navy
(PLAN) sees its role. Its prime considerations are maintaining and
increasing their offensive ability to attack Taiwan and on the
defensive side to protect China’s oil pipeline from the Middle
East.
Last Spring the PLAN sent a ten-ship battle group of
destroyers, frigates, and submarines into the Pacific through the
channels between Okinawa and the Miyako Islands. This was not the
first time such a maneuver occurred, but it certainly was the
largest. Along with an accelerated program of development of
Jin class submarines, there continues to be a highly
prioritized target of aircraft carrier construction. These
ambitions clearly reflect Beijing’s desire to build a naval force
capable of projecting China’s military power beyond its oft-stated
defensive coastal role.
Japan, through its defense minister, Toshimi Kitayawa,
already has declared China’s fleet operations to be “unprecedented”
and indicated that Tokyo would have to assess whether these actions
had any belligerent intent toward Japan. That was as close to a
formal demarche the Japanese were willing to present on the subject
of PRC force projection into near Japanese waters. Of perhaps even
greater importance to China, however, is the need to build a naval
presence off its island of Hainan (a main PLAN submarine base) and
the vital sea-lanes of the South China Sea that it seeks to have
recognized as its private pond.
Perhaps the area of most critical concern for Washington,
and indeed also Moscow, is China’s commitment to stretch its
technological and strategic ambitions in space. The PRC’s second
lunar probe sent back high resolution images of the moon that the
Chinese intend to use to determine just how and where they are
going to place their unmanned landing in 2013. Seven years later,
in 2020, Beijing states it will have completed its own space
station — with no one’s help, they remind the world.
The real importance of this space plan has as much to do
with international prestige and domestic morale as it does any real
technological breakthrough. After all, the U.S. and Russia already
have built a space station. What is a strategic objective of
long-term import, however, is the notice that China is giving to
the rest of the world that it intends to press forward with its own
expeditions into deep space.
Perhaps of even higher immediate priority is the Chinese
program to focus on the creation of new generations of smaller
satellites for military purposes. These new satellites are being
planned to act both defensively and offensively. They supposedly
will have the ability to protect existing Chinese spy satellites or
interfere with the operations of adversarial nations’ own
space-borne military facilities.
Commentators in the West and Russia already have noted
their expectations of Chinese efforts to build a forward base on
the moon to aid it in deep space exploration. The Chinese,
themselves, have not been shy about such long term potential for
their programs.
In the meantime, the ever-commercially savvy trade
officials in Beijing are aggressively selling their competitively
priced communications satellites in the developing world. From a
strategic planning standpoint, space-related projects are
definitely win-win for the Chinese. China’s planners are moving at
high speed in all strategic military areas — short through long
term — pushing their country out front on the world
scene.
