Will China Rule the Waves? Part One

Based upon notes for a public lecture given at the New York State Military Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY, 3 December 2005

Ladies and gentlemen, thanks very much for coming. It's an honor for me to be here to talk with you about the important and serious problem of China that America now faces, whether many people realize it or not. Those of you who've heard me speak in the past, or have read much from my articles and op-ed essays over the years, know that I like to start by establishing a broad context, to then zero in more effectively on the main issue. I'll do that in today's discussion of the intentionally thought-provoking and forward-looking question, “Will China Rule the Waves?” I firmly believe that the only way to make permanently sure that the answer to that question is no, is for the U.S. Navy to attain, maintain, and retain decisive undersea warfare superiority against the increasingly muscular People's Liberation Army Navy. The goal of this talk is to convey to you the reasoning behind why I make such a statement.

Overview of China -- Some side issues that interconnect

There are a lot of things each of us knows about the People's Republic of China, at least at the level of unconnected dots or unassembled pieces of a puzzle. To properly assess the level of danger that China can in the future present to burgeoning global freedom and America's way of life, it helps for clarity to put such factoids together in one place, gathered from wherever they sit in history books and daily newspapers.

China has an extremely bad human rights record, which isn't getting any better. Restiveness is violently repressed, often using lethal force. This has ominous implications. Beijing places a much higher premium on rigid centralized control than they do on the value of rank-and-file human lives among their own citizenry. We may thus reasonably conclude that in a military context, modern China would not be (and would not become) the least bit casualty-averse. That alone suggests a significant asymmetry between the U.S. and the PRC in any future saber-rattling or actual “hot” armed conflict.

The Chinese economy is powerful, and has been growing at a rate around 10% annually for a number of years. Some of this is the result of intentional manipulation of the yuan-versus-dollar exchange rate to China's advantage (and to America's harm). This manipulation affects many aspects of commercial competition, including the battle for access to finite global energy reserves. After lots of summit meetings and diplomatic talks, Beijing remains essentially unyielding in this crucial arena of policy. I think it should be viewed as a form of economic warfare.

China's population is many times larger than America's; a recent census report by Beijing put that country's size at 1.2 billion. Americans will be familiar with China's attempt at population control via a rule of “one child per family,” with financial penalties for having more than one kid. What most Americans may not realize, and what Beijing will not admit, is that the family is by far the most important unit of loyalty in Chinese culture. Many families went ahead and had second and third children and simply never reported the births to local municipal authorities. One knowledgeable person stated, at a Naval War College seminar that I attended recently, that the total of these unregistered births is about 300,000,000 people, many of them now adults. The entire population of the United States of America is right around 300,000,000 people. I find that a frightening comparison. In reality, we're outnumbered five to one.

And the people of the People's Republic should not be underestimated. They're ambitious, driven, proud, and very patriotic. Remember, they're used to being oppressed by warlords and emperors for thousands of years. Mao's dictatorship and the varying forms of communism practiced by his successors are nothing new -- and nothing unusual -- to the residents of mainland China. The rural/urban social schism in China is also nothing new. I don't think such strife should be viewed as the seed of budding democracy in the PRC. If anything, it's just further testimony to demographic shifts inevitable as China undergoes its own peculiar, hugely sped-up version of an industrial revolution. What does deserve attention, and worry, is the emergence of China's superb university system. The number of world-class PhDs being graduated each year is truly amazing, especially in technical areas where America has been lagging. Take our annual new-PhD figures, add one or two zeros, and you get good data for China -- another very disturbing comparison.

Lastly, before moving on to other topics, I'd like to debunk a myth that seems to have percolated through America since the conclusion of the Cold War. This myth (or wish) is that a large and growing middle class, and big international trade ties, prevent a country from starting an aggressive war. Counter-examples to this include Germany's precipitating two world wars in the 20 th century, and even -- granted, an extreme case -- America's own bitterly fought War Between the States. My point here is not to open old wounds, but to caution that economic development in China, alone, cannot be counted upon as a factor discouraging Beijing from making aggressive war in the future.

China as potential military threat: Decoupled from BRAC debate

I mention the 2005 BRAC process because earlier this year some information outlets (Internet blogs, print media) presented what to me appeared to be a very flawed train of logic. It went like this: The submarine force doesn't want to close the New London Base, so, to preserve the base they invent the need for a large number of SSNs in the future. To justify this large SSN fleet, they create an emerging enemy. For lack of anything better, that enemy is the paper tiger of China.

Obviously, there's something wrong with this picture. The BRAC Commission rendered its verdict on Groton back in mid-August. So that's been a moot point for months. Yet China is getting an increasing amount of concerned attention from the U.S. Navy -- and not merely from the Submarine Force -- under the leadership of the new CNO, Admiral Mullen. Headlines on China appear on the front pages of major newspapers on an almost daily basis, and those headlines are not reassuring.

We should remember that China gave the world Sun Tzu's classic “The Art of War” around 500 BC. That's millennia before von Clausewitz or A. T. Mahan or J. C. F. Fuller composed their own treatises on warfare. China practices what they preach, and they mean what they say. Are their central government's aspirations nowadays suddenly peace-loving? Listeners to this talk can judge for themselves by examining a partial recent track record of China's cross-border acts of aggression:

1. Korea was the first big U.S.-China war. Our casualties were horrendous. Beijing formally warned the U.S. not to come near the Yalu River, because they saw such a move as threatening their security interests at the time concerning Taiwan. We ignored that warning, and our troops paid a heavy price.

2. China invaded and conquered Tibet in an act of blatant imperialism that to this day has gone mostly unpunished.

3. China invaded a reunited, Communist Vietnam when Vietnamese actions concerning Cambodia and Laos threatened Chinese security interests in those areas. Vietnam, a seasoned warrior nation with lots of modern imported Russian and captured American equipment, repulsed China easily. This was a wake-up call to modernize their military that China took very seriously. They realized they couldn't fight a 1980s enemy using their own 1950s weapons, tactics, and command and control. They've been modernizing, both overtly and stealthily, for the past 25 years.

4. During the Cold War, relations between China and Russia varied. At times they fought bloody border skirmishes -- China did not shy away from defending her territorial claims, even against that imposing opponent (and supposed ideological colleague), the USSR. For much of the Cold War, grand strategies revolved around which pairing would predominate in the ever-shifting triangle of China, the Soviet Union, and the United States. More recently, China and Russia have been best of pals. In 2005 they even held a major joint military exercise. Analysts in the West have described this war-game as in effect a giant arms trade show. Russia, already a substantial weapons exporter to China, got to display more of their latest hardware and electronic gadgetry in action.

5. High tensions prevail between China and Japan. This is partly because World War II-era hatreds linger and it's become more politically acceptable to express them aloud. But another reason is that China and Japan have overlapping economic and military areas of interest in the here and now. Indispensable sea lines of communications of the two countries intertwine. Recently a Chinese submarine was caught snooping where it shouldn't be in Japanese home waters, undoubtedly conducting espionage and measuring hydrography. That sub was driven off, but presumably others will be back.

6. China is not behaving the least bit conciliatory in the ongoing multi-way territorial dispute over the tiny Spratly Islands and their suspected giant petroleum reserves. In fact, units of the PLAN recently conducted naval maneuvers near the islands, a very provocative gesture given other stresses and strains in the region -- including highly volatile deliberations over North Korea's status as a nuclear power.

7. In 2001, China forced down an American state-of-the-art EP-3 spy plane in what began as a mid-air collision in free international airspace, the fault lying with a Chinese fighter pilot who cut a game of “chicken” too close and paid with his life. But once the unarmed American plane made an emergency landing on Chinese turf, it was impounded, stripped of every item of possible military, intelligence, or engineering value to Beijing, and the aircrew was held as virtual prisoners for days. Arguably, this belligerent conduct was a direct violation of international law on several counts.

8. In one non-classified Chinese military publication, which is viewed by Western analysts as reflecting central government thinking, a PLAN admiral wrote a piece which basically sent the unfriendly message: “U.S. carriers, keep out of Taiwan Strait or else.” Beijing never disavowed this warlike message.

Perhaps most significant of all in trying to assess China's status as a potential aggressor in the future, we should all beware that China's publicly declared intent is to have a world-class blue water navy in the 2020s. China's fundamental military plans along that timeframe are summarized by what the Pentagon in 2005 labeled Beijing's 24-Character Strategy. (The Communist Chinese are great ones for sloganeering, and this strategy is expressed in the original PRC document using two dozen Chinese pictograms.) One of the key elements of the 24-Character Strategy is “Never claim leadership.” To this I must say Uh oh, watch out! It reminds me too much of the old adage from politics and public relations, “Beware of unsolicited denials.” I conjecture that China would not have as one pillar of her main long-term strategy the watchword to “never claim leadership” unless eventually claiming leadership was actually a primary goal.

Anyone who's gathered, analyzed, and used intelligence knows the crucial distinction between intentions and capabilities. Intentions mean what a country plans or wants to do -- capabilities mean the things that it has the wherewithal to do. Intentions and capabilities are distinct. They do not necessarily coincide, and in the real world they may even exist, within a nation, in a state of mutual contradiction or sheer impracticality. For instance, Imperial Japan had every intention to conquer and permanently control the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, but Tokyo ended up lacking the capability. Some analysts (but by no means all) argue that it's safer to determine and weigh a potential enemy's capabilities, since they tell you the worst that might happen, rather than try to divine that opponent's intentions, which are inherently intangible -- and subject to your own misinterpretations as well as the other guy's disinformation campaigns.

Deciding what to think of China's 21st century destiny, and then choosing what if anything to do about it to protect American interests, come down to accurately understanding both Beijing's intentions and her capabilities. I'm already building a picture here of what I think of PRC intentions based on recent past and present behaviors. I'll come back to that, and to the question of capabilities, especially in her submarine “New Fleet.”

How China is and isn't like the old USSR as a threat to America

To further establish perspective, and dispel any false complacency, it seems useful at this point in the talk to compare and contrast the People's Republic of China of today, and the Soviet Union of yesteryear, as rivals to American superpower status. Just because we beat the one in the old Cold War does not mean that we will automatically beat the other in a new Cold War or Hot War.

Things new PRC and old USSR have/had in common.

*Communist government.
*Centralized control.
*ICBMs with H-bombs capable of hitting entire U.S.
*Superb human intelligence (HumInt) operations within U.S.
*Superpower aspirations.
*Non-theist society.
*Crucial nautical choke points likely centers of naval conflict.
*Widening network of vassal/client states worldwide.

Ways modern China differs from old Soviet Union

*Strong economy, not weak and imploding one.
*Much larger population to ramp up toward robust armed forces.
*Excellent year-round ice free harbors all along huge coastline.
*Always had a quasi-capitalist under-culture.
*China has carefully studied both USSR and U.S.

Some of these points bear elaboration. While Soviet-era “Godless Communism” was an oppressively atheist state, religion in the form of the Russian Orthodox Church played an important role in official society under the Czars (remember, Rasputin was a monk). And since the fall of Communism, Russians from all walks of life have rediscovered great interest in their religious roots. China is very different. The predominant ethnic group is the Han culture, which mostly practices Confucianism -- a philosophy, not a religion. Mainstream China is thus more non-theist than atheist. They never developed the concept of a God, a deity, or a Higher Power in the conventional Western sense. Why do I even mention this? Because I think that a truly non-theist society is more opaque to American understanding than we might realize. Differing conscious and unconscious personal attitudes toward basic issues such as:

*Where did the universe come from?
*What's the purpose and value of human existence?
*What ethical codes if any should people live by?
*What eternal consequences result from violating those codes?

These will all drastically affect how a nation approaches matters of war and peace, of free speech versus blind obedience, and of altruism on the world stage versus cynical selfishness.

Another significant point, and one which doesn't give comfort to a “dovish” take on Chinese intentions, is that China has always had a quasi-capitalist element to its economy. The emergence of more active “Big Capitalism” in China should not be misread as a drift toward populist democracy. Rather, it's a sign of the central government correcting past mistakes and harnessing new tools to increase the country's overall strength. China has for millennia had local markets where common people met to buy and sell produce and cottage-industry goods. Even during Mao's vicious Cultural Revolution, young Red Guard thugs, after a “hard day at the office” beating up school teachers and doctors and lawyers, would stop at these markets on the way home -- to purchase things at them, not disrupt them. Think about that for a minute.

When I say that China has carefully studied the U.S. and the USSR, in particular I mean that Chinese political leaders and military commanders have focused on the lessons of using or misusing naval power. In retrospect, it was the secret jousting between American and Russian submariners that played a major part in the U.S.'s Cold War victory, as did some celebrated (plus some presumably still classified) undersea espionage capers. The Kremlin's surface navy, representing a massive investment in raw materials and manpower, never got to play a decisive role, and consequently in the end was something of a waste. One can even draw a parallel here to Hitler's Kriegsmarine, in which battleships and battle cruisers like Bismarck, Tirpitz, Scharnhorst, and so on, had temporary nuisance value as a “fleet in being” until each of them in turn was sunk. Had all that steel and all those trained sailors been devoted instead to building and manning additional U-boats, the Battle of the Atlantic might have turned out very differently. And it's a point of history little known outside submariner circles that German U-boats actually sank more British merchant shipping tonnage in World War I than they did in World War II! Therefore, one may deduce from public statements and from general circumstance that Beijing and the PLAN understand full well that any foreseeable contest for supremacy at sea will depend in large part on submarine muscle. Submarines are 21st century capital ships; China's leadership grasps this as much as American submariners do(would that America's Congress so clearly comprehended the critical lessons here). China also knows the vital importance of seizing and holding the initiative in cold (and hot) undersea warfare. Her rapid development of friendships with many countries that don't like America, when plotted on a map, reminds me eerily of the 19th century race among major European countries to acquire chains of coaling stations along every ocean's shores. For “coaling stations,” now read “naval bases,” and you'll get the idea. China's ambitions are definitely global, not regional.

This article first appeared in the January 2006 issue of The Submarine Review, a quarterly publication of the Naval Submarine League. The article won First Prize in the Naval Submarine League's Annual Literary Awards.