As counterpoint to what some commentators see as burgeoning freedom in an increasingly benign China, a troubling drumbeat continues to rumble and echo in U.S. defense circles. What does the People's Republic want with so many modern submarines? Recent arrests for espionage in California and Florida force an adjunct to this key question, upping the volume of that thunder coming from over the distant horizon, further raising the ante for American national security. Why have PRC intelligence efforts become so interested in our electromagnetic rail gun technology for next-generation carrier flight deck catapults?

“The East is Red” is an old anthem celebrating the triumphs of China's Communist Revolution; its third stanza exhorts the struggle to spread communism everywhere. These sentiments remain consistent with Beijing's de facto, undeniable buildup of state-of-the-art power projection military platforms, with highly trained and technically savvy personnel to crew them. Anyone who thinks the East is not still Red doesn't properly grasp the flexibility and dynamism of Chinese socialist doctrine ever since the 1976 death of Mao Zedong.

An example of such misapprehension can be found in news that broke just before the Labor Day weekend, about the revision of history textbooks in Shanghai approved by the central government. China's era of domination by overseas imperialists (the “century of humiliation”), plus traditional Marxist class-struggle concepts, and even Mao himself have been downplayed in favor of a non-Sino centric take on both domestic PRC and global history -- that much is fact. But some in the U.S. dangerously mistake this refocusing of education toward the future, and toward globalization, as a major sea change in China -- wrongly interpreting it as a generation of post-Mao rigidity suddenly yielding to an abandonment of longstanding Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ideology.

Coincidentally, an interview with China's Ambassador to the United Nations, Wang Guangya, was published in that same holiday weekend's Sunday magazine section of The New York Times. The interview, a first of its kind, by contributing writer James Traub, is commendable for its thoroughness and objectivity. Mr. Traub has a book coming out soon about the United Nations, so it makes sense that he stuck to the topic of diplomacy in isolation, and didn't explore in great detail the contradictions between what Ambassador Wang told him and what China actually does on the military side of things. For instance -- and I don't mean to nitpick -- Mr. Traub states (apparently his own point of view) that “China has little wish to use the power at its disposal, save to establish a harmonious environment for its ‘peaceful rise.'” He later quotes Mr. Wang uncritically, “China has no muscle and no intention of exercising this muscle. . . . We don't want to make anyone feel uncomfortable.” But if China's goal of eventually deploying three to five times as many submarines as the U.S. Navy owns (including good nuclear subs) isn't muscle that's meant to be used, I personally don't know what is. Wang's reference to not making other countries uncomfortable is ominously consonant with one pillar of China's current “Twenty-Four Character Strategy,” namely the worrisome unsolicited denial contained in “Never claim leadership.”

So, what about the misapprehension that rigid CCP thinking has been suddenly abandoned?

The truth is that China's one-party ideology has evolved impressively ever since Deng Xiaoping took over after Mao, while retaining real continuity by consistently hewing to “the development of socialism with Chinese characteristics.” (Such guiding slogans are vitally significant in the People's Republic.) Many different theories and revised or modernized interpretations of Marx, Lenin, Mao and even Deng and Jiang Zemin have been thoroughly explored and debated, some adopted and some rejected, at periodic CCP Congresses and among domestic think tanks funded and encouraged by Beijing. Within broad constraints, dictated by the in-power clique at the time, these updates and adaptations have been permitted very wide latitude. (The next such party congress is slated for 2007, indicatively well timed as a preamble to that coveted milestone, the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.)

The latest head of state, President Hu Jintao -- who was given control of the Politburo at the unusually spry age of sixty -- discarded the slogan of “peaceful rise” in favor of the somewhat more aggressive notion of “the peaceful development road.” Continued class struggle within China is seen now as archaic and counterproductive. Engineers, scientists, and entrepreneurs, once relegated by Mao to the “stinking ninth” level of society, have been re-ranked equally with peasants, workers, and soldiers at the top in the PRC “people's war” drive to eventually achieve a perfect communist dominion -- but it's still the people's war, deftly morphed for the 21 st century. Privatization of big corporations is not inconsistent with Marx, either, since Chinese citizens can supposedly buy shares of stock; this form of public ownership is pronounced as just a natural extension of control by “all the people together,” i.e., the state.

Socioeconomic disparities, rather than Mao's purported egalitarianism, are also acknowledged and validated as essential steps toward “marshaling China's comprehensive national power.” Rural areas suffering poverty and a lack of adequate social services are defined as a necessary but temporary evil -- a bump on the development road in which some individuals and regions must, as always in China, make sacrifices for the good of the people and the country as a whole. The same thing applies to unrest and alienation in urban centers that are going through unsettling times as China continues her remarkably rapid and successful industrial-technological revolution: Suffer now, the populace is told, and enjoy the fruits of your suffering later. Meanwhile, those who complain too much are punished rather harshly, as shown by the recent conviction and imprisonment –- on blatantly trumped-up charges -- of folk-hero rural activist Chen Guangchen, and respected journalist-researcher Zhao Yan.

The linchpin in understanding China's true agenda to become a communist superpower can be found in Deng's ideologically innovative concept known as “shelving.” Shelving means that some main goals will simply have to wait, while their prerequisites and precursors are first accomplished and consolidated. The achievement of pure communism -- the PRC's unchanging raison d'etre -- has been explicitly shelved for about the next half-century, but certainly not abandoned. Socialism is an intermediate waypoint along this journey, as always in Marxist-Leninist thought.

According to Deng and his successors, socialism must first endure several disinct and challenging phases. One of these, the current “peaceful development road,” is to maximize the economic strength of the country by any method that proves effective, no matter how Western-like the veneer. This is acceptable because economic strength is a means, not an end. The desired end-state is for the economic powerhouse to finance (over about 30 years) a world-class blue water navy, a big and survivable ICBM arsenal, and other armed forces –- while amassing a sphere of influence that gradually girdles the Earth. This will in turn enable the penultimate phase of “building socialism with Chinese characteristics”: a contest for supremacy, inevitable due to mortally irreconcilable differences, against that seat of capitalism, imperialism, and “cultural pollution” -- the USA. (The PRC's Special Economic Zones are surrounded by miles-long barbed wire fences, with armed guards at every gate, not so much to keep unwanted native job-seekers out, as to keep loathed foreign influences in.)

China's leaders are acutely...