Imagined Enemies

China Prepares for Uncertain War

John Wilson Lewis, Litai Xue

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9780804779463
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Internationale Beziehungen

The fourth and final volume in a pioneering series on the Chinese military, Imagined Enemies offers an unprecedented look at its history, operational structure, modernization, and strategy. Beginnning with an examination of culturee adn thought in Part I, the authors explore the transition away transition away from Mao Zedong's revolutionary doctrine, the conflict with Moscow, and Beijing's preoccupation with Taiwanese separatism and preparations for war to thwart it. Part II focuses on operational and policy decisions in the National Command Authority and, subsequently, in the People's Liberation Army. Part III provides a detailed study of the Second Artillery, China's strategic rocket forces. The book concludes with the transformation of military strategy and shows how it is being tested in military exercises, with Taiwan and the United States as "imagined enemies."

PART ONE

History, Memory, and Experience in Chinese Military Thinking

TWO

The Threat of War, the Necessity of Peace

Chinese views on war combine strong beliefs and great uncertainty. Mao Zedong, Beijing’s leader for the first twenty-seven years of the People’s Republic, considered the global struggle for dominance a constant and major war an inevitability. His successor, Deng Xiaoping, reached much the same conclusion but believed the showdown with China’s imagined foes lay sometime in the distant future.

In 1989, Jiang Zemin came next in the succession, and the coincidence of an ascendant America following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and the steady rise of independence forces on Taiwan made armed conflict both unthinkable and yet loom closer. For more than fifty years, the likelihood of war has weighed on Beijing’s leaders even as they reduced their armed forces and military budgets, stretched out weapons procurements, and dedicated themselves to national economic progress. This is a story of a nation torn between the fear of war and the leadership’s determination to protect and reunify the country even if that could mean war.

The central thesis of this book is that the priority given to domestic modernization and economic growth narrowed the scope for military development and planning and that, within that more limited scope, the changing risks and nature of the ultimate battle have shaped and reshaped Chinese military doctrines, strategies, and preparations.

By probing China’s conception of a future conflict, we seek to explain the nation’s security actions over the past several decades. How has Beijing’s high command, the national command authority, been structured, and how has it operated? What changes have been made to strengthen command and control? How have the strategic rocket forces, the Second Artillery, responded to the remote threat of nuclear war and the near-term possibility of a local conventional war that might become nuclear? Has the air force been able to keep pace with the revolution in military affairs and the ever more acute problem of air defense? Does Chinese strategy reflect military realities or just the compromises of balancing immediate priorities and the long-term specter of violent conflict?

Our goal is to understand how and why the central elements of military power in China have changed and where they appear to be headed in the coming decades. This is a study of China’s preparations for war on the path to peace.

COMPARATIVE STUDIES OF MILITARY PHILOSOPHIES

The place to begin this task is China’s military culture. What are the deeply held “Chinese” qualities—if one may say so—that hold sway in the highest level decisionmaking bodies and armed forces, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)? The modern Chinese state was born in war, barely survived its infancy because of the Korean War, engaged in a bitter contest with its erstwhile Soviet partner, waged a proxy war with the United States in Vietnam and border clashes with India and Vietnam, and then moved into an era of low-intensity struggle with Taiwan and its American protector. The enduring climate of tensions and unresolved disputes shaped the country’s industrial plans and guided its diplomacy, even as Beijing pressed forward to rebuild the society and economy and restore the nation’s great power status.

Forestalling violence and managing foreign tensions over the decades became almost second nature to the Communist leadership and triggered policies and values that the Chinese believe are special to their history and modern outlook. When they speak of the “Chinese characteristics” of their ideology, economic policies, and military doctrines, the Chinese dig deep into the reservoirs of their past, and it is those traditional reservoirs with which we begin.

The Origins of Chinese Strategic Thinking

For the past three millennia, the Chinese have looked inward, presumed and cherished their moral superiority, and disdained but feared outside marauders and invaders. Here, of course, one has to distinguish ethnic Han emperors from the Khitan, Mongol, and Manchu rulers who imposed their dominion on the Middle Kingdom for many centuries. Yet even non-Han emperors embraced the Middle Kingdom’s security assumptions and fear of collapse wrought by “inside disorder and outside calamity.” They saw no need to conquer “barbarian” territories beyond the empire but only to manage nearby neighbors as subservient vassals against more powerful, distant foes.¹ Except when directly menaced by non-Han “barbarians,” Chinese rulers regarded these neighbors as a part of the nation’s security belt. In exchange for exacting loyalty and tribute from vassal states, the emperors pledged to protect them. Over many centuries, Chinese emperors typically regarded the use of force as the last resort.²

At the strategic level, the dominant Chinese philosophy created a culture characterized by “strong secularism, weak religiousness,” “strong inclusiveness, weak exclusiveness,” and “strong conservativeness, weak aggressiveness.” ³ These features wax and wane in a twentieth-century China wracked by war, revolution, and globalization, but the Chinese now appear to believe they are in the ascendancy and in the recent past have given primacy to diplomacy in resolving disputes. In today’s China, leaders draw on the traditional code of conduct that “peace claims precedence” (he wei gui). From Mao to Deng, Jiang Zemin, and now Hu Jintao, he wei gui is invoked to justify diplomatic negotiations and the avoidance of war.⁴ In the tradition, peace and stability ensured progress and heaven’s blessing, while war could unleash decades of strife and usher in centuries of foreign rule. That tradition finds an echo in modern Beijing’s political and military councils, and we shall encounter it again at the end of our inquiry.

The dangers of war and the opportunities wrought by enduring tranquility required skilled statesmen and prudent policies, and the Chinese held that the writings of ancient, revered sages were must-read texts for all aspiring leaders and youthful cadets in training. Those steeped in the wisdom of treasured ancestors would be best equipped to guide the ship of state away from impending disasters and toward a common ideal.⁵ Whether one speaks of the Mandate of Heaven or the authority of Party cadres, the subject always begins with learning from the past and heeding its supposed lessons.

For those charged with guarding the nation against foreign incursions and internal strife, the place to begin was Sun Tzu, the Middle Kingdom’s renowned military strategist. His Art of War, written about 500 B.C., during the Spring and Autumn years of the Zhou dynasty, summarizes the classical notion that the best prepared for war either will win without fighting or will fight and win. War must be studied. Its basic rules and principles are universal and, taken together, are an art that can and must be learned. Sun Tzu urges leaders to think boldly but to act with extreme caution because war is “a matter of life and death, a road to safety or ruin.”⁶ As Confucius later declared, “The cautious seldom err.”⁷

In essence, the art of war is a battle of wits, and those who master the art have the best hope of winning without fighting. That mind-against-mind struggle is characterized by brilliant stratagems, active diplomacy and deception, and judicious intimidation. Yet, armed struggle sometimes cannot be prevented, and Sun Tzu’s guidance for generations of generals stipulated the priorities for achieving victory or avoiding defeat when war occurs: “What is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy’s strategy. Next best is to disrupt his alliances by diplomacy. The next best is to attack his army. And the worst policy is to attack cities. . . . Those skilled in war subdue the enemy’s army without battle. . . . Therefore, I say: Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles, you will never be defeated.”⁸

The art of war blends the skills of statesmanship and generalship, though Sun Tzu warned, “He whose generals are able and not interfered with by the sovereign will be victorious.”⁹ Historians also record stories of the ruthless side of Sun Tzu that transcend this warning. One story illustrates his fierce insistence on submission to command. When challenged by the king of the state of Wu to demonstrate his skills by drilling the palace concubines, Sun Tzu divided the women into two groups and explained his demand for absolute obedience and the penalties for failure. When his new recruits merely giggled and ignored him, Sun Tzu selected the king’s two favorites and had them beheaded.¹⁰ The giggling ended. “In the tumult and uproar, the battle seems chaotic, but there must be no disorder in one’s own troops,” Sun Tzu wrote.¹¹ From empire to revolution to the Korean War, Chinese soldiers have fought in the certain knowledge that iron obedience is their only option.

Sun Tzu’s dictums are echoed in the texts of Confucius. Wise leaders, Confucius held, must constantly reflect on war and prepare for it. The most consequential national security decision comes when selecting a military commander. A nation’s leader must pick as his generals or members of his national security team, as Washington would put it, those who understand the right mix of political and military preparations for war, approach the coming battles prudently, and act with caution. Overconfident generals or ineffectual security advisors can bring ruin to the strongest state. For Confucius, a qualified commander “must be afraid of the assignment he is going to undertake” and must be able to win by prudently planned strategies that outmaneuver and outthink an adversary.¹²

Chinese traditionally deemed the symbols of force—swords, guns, trophies, and war medals—inauspicious.¹³ A Chinese maxim says, “Those good at war do not speak about war” (shan zhan zhe bu yan zhan). For generations, the best generals shunned boasting about their military skills and did their utmost to avoid an armed struggle. Should war break out, they would pursue and bring victory because they had so diligently made ready for it politically, psychologically, and militarily.¹⁴ In modern times, they typically denigrated the West’s “stress on military force” (shangwu) and adopted a “force avoidance” (rouwu or “soft military”) or low-posture stance. Veiled threats and brief-strike military “lessons” reflect this classical legacy in modern-day China. The culture disparaged the race to war and lauded its avoidance as marks of wisdom and moral strength.¹⁵

The Contrast of American and Chinese Military Philosophies

Chinese strategists draw on these classical perspectives to study and assess potential adversaries, extrapolating military philosophies from their conduct on the battlefield. The didactic process of comparison and assessment of perceived differences has helped chart the equation of liabilities and assets underlying each side’s doctrines and set the stage for pitting strategy against strategy. This constitutes an exercise in the great tradition of Sun Tzu and a prelude to directing the complex process from national command decision to battlefield tactics.¹⁶

Lodged in military academies and command-and-staff colleges, these comparative studies start with the basics, sometimes exhibiting considerable insight and often simplistic and biased distillations. They begin with assertions about concepts of basic human nature, and though they speak somewhat grandly of the “West,” they most often mean the United States or their characterization of its beliefs and biases. For the West, so these uniformed academics say, human nature is deemed to be evil, causing its citizens to exaggerate the importance of the law and to rely on courts for punishments and redress of wrongs to individuals. Chinese in the mainstream Confucian tradition, by contrast, hold that human nature is good or perhaps just neutral and can profit from education and the collective wisdom of the past. For Chinese, court-imposed enforcement, except to protect the state, is a last resort or a foreign artifact to be scorned. Translated to the level of strategic culture, Western strategists rely on power politics, stress individual as opposed to social misbehavior, and threaten forceful retaliation to back up negotiating demands. Chinese, generally speaking, prefer recurring rounds of diplomacy, insist on consensus building especially on matters of general principle, and consider harmony reached through negotiations and compromise to be the epitome of diplomatic skill.¹⁷

This presumed or alleged contrast in worldviews applies to the exercise of military power as a means to accomplish political and economic aims. Compared to leaders in the West, the Chinese profess to place a higher strategic, even moral value on tranquility and peace, a condition long absent in their own modern history.¹⁸ This difference, however, could help explain why the Chinese often yield to pressures from the outside world, especially in the early stages of a crisis, and only suddenly and unexpectedly resort to force as a crisis unfolds and...