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As its reach and capabilities extend in all directions, China has emerged as a subject of deep concern for Washington and for democratic capitals across Asia, including Canberra, New Delhi, Manila, Taipei and Tokyo.
The People’s Liberation Army, or PLA, has benefited from 30 years of budget increases, upgrades in prestige and professionalism, and a string of new bases and outposts across the South China Sea. It also has plentiful support from the country’s assertive president, Xi Jinping.
All that has left the Pentagon and critics on Capitol Hill alarmed over the communist regime’s military ambitions in the not-too-distant future.
“All indications point to the PLA meeting President Xi Jinping’s directive to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027,” Adm. John C. Aquilino, head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said in March.
In its 2023 National Intelligence Assessment, the U.S. intelligence community warned that China, “a near-peer competitor … is increasingly pushing to change global norms and potentially threatening its neighbors.”
While the U.S. has been involved in major conflicts in the Middle East and Afghanistan, the PLA has largely avoided direct warfare. It has adopted a military strategy of creeping advances, gray-zone operations and the swift de-escalation of conflicts that do flare up.
Cautious tactics, combined with apparent risk aversion in the Chinese Communist Party, economic reliance on global trade and worrying demographic trends, suggest the PLA may never offer battle.
From ‘human waves’ to ‘salami slicing’
Part of the case for a less-militant China is that it is not traditionally a warrior society.
“The phrase ‘Serving in the military is no good’ — something I learned early as a student — was very resonant from an early period in China,” Alexander Neill, a PLA watcher with Pacific Forum, said about his days studying Chinese. “It’s different to the warlike culture of Russia, with its Cossack tradition, and the West, where the military was respectable.”
Humiliated by imperialist incursions in the 19th and 20th centuries, China was dubbed “The Sick Man of Asia.” Only after Mao Zedong’s communist forces won the Chinese Civil War in 1949 did the PLA smash stereotypes that China could not fight.
In 1950, Chinese forces marched into Tibet. The PLA’s “human wave” tactics then shocked the world by ejecting U.S.-led forces from North Korea. The PLA won the Himalayan border terrain during a brief clash with India in 1962, tested an atomic weapon in 1964, and battled Soviet troops on the China-USSR border in 1969.
Beijing engaged in on-off artillery confrontations over Taiwan’s offshore islands from 1958 to 1979, stormed briefly into northern Vietnam in 1979, and won offshore territories from Vietnam in the Spratly Islands in 1988.
Embarrassing, heavy losses in the 1979 conflict with Vietnam triggered a military soul-searching for the regime. In the mid-1980s, China’s annual defense budgets took flight.
That escalation has slowed in recent years. Beijing’s defense spending has multiplied by a factor of 2.3 since 2013, but the PLA has not experienced double-digit percentage increases from a decade ago, according to Defense News.
The defense budget increase for 2024 was 7.2% over 2023, behind the country’s overall budget increase of 8.6%.
Still, the 2024 figure — 1.7 trillion yuan, or $236.1 billion — marks three decades of increases. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute calculated that real Chinese defense spending in 2022 was 27% higher than stated amounts. That falls far short of the Pentagon’s fiscal 2024 outlay of $883.7 billion, but the PLA’s capabilities are doubtlessly soaring.
Fielding the world’s largest active-duty military and its third-largest nuclear arsenal, the PLA operates “carrier killer” missiles, hypersonics and space assets. The PLA Navy commissioned its first carrier in 2012 and now deploys three, with a fourth under construction.
Despite all the buildup and unease it has caused the U.S. and its allies, China is not fighting anyone, anywhere.
Around disputed islands, reefs and fishing grounds in the South China, East China and Yellow seas, it is primarily Chinese coast guard units and “maritime militias” — centrally directed fishing fleets — that engage with water cannons and ship rammings.
In 2001, diplomats quickly resolved tensions over the death of a Chinese fighter pilot who collided with a subsequently captured U.S. spy aircraft. Lethal border fistfights between PLA and Indian troops in 2020, 2021 and 2022 did not escalate. Both sides held their fire.
Even a Chinese war to reclaim Taiwan may not be a burning threat. David Frederick, deputy director for China at the National Security Agency, suggested in March that an amphibious assault on the self-governing island may be beyond China’s capabilities.
This does not mean China’s military leaders are standing still. The PLA secured its first overseas naval base, on the Horn of Africa in Djibouti, in 2016 and secured access rights to the China-funded Ream base in Cambodia in 2023.
Weaponized PLA air-sea bases, many built up from artificial islands and reefs, dwarf anything China’s neighbors can boast, underwriting Beijing’s determination to dominate the South China Sea.
Around Taiwan, the PLA is extending its operational reach by continually testing Taipei’s air defenses, contesting the Taiwan Strait’s median line and previously agreed boundaries around offshore islands.
Persistent air patrols force Japanese and Taiwanese pilots to scramble endlessly, and U.S. pilots accuse Chinese pilots of repeated acts of recklessness. Weather balloons — possibly reconnaissance probes — have been widely released, including over Taiwan and the U.S.
Reinforced by cyberwarfare and cognitive tactics, this incremental strategy is dubbed “salami-slicing” by Western analysts.
Changing of the guard
Mao’s death in 1976 and the opening of U.S. relations in 1979 dramatically toned down China’s military adventurism.
“The beginning of reform and opening in 1978 under Deng Xiaoping meant an end of the driving force behind the party’s ID class struggle,” said Drew Thompson, a researcher at the Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy at Singapore’s National University.
Chinese leaders were seen as pragmatists focusing on the growing economy and trade, not on military adventures abroad.
Mr. Xi, who has been in power since 2013, is different. He is serving an unprecedented third five-year term as president and head of the Chinese Communist Party.
“He came to power with the perception that the party was at risk of dissolution,” said Mr. Thompson, a former Pentagon official. “It was admitting members for non-ideological reasons, gaining advantages for businesses. That’s the fundamental dynamic Xi changed.”
Mr. Xi purged party ranks, upgraded censorship and stoked nationalism with references to past humiliations in speeches, TV and film.
“Xi is very fixated on history to justify contemporary policy decisions,” Mr. Thompson said. “He is fixated on ensuring the continued rule of his dynasty — the party — and that requires asserting and defending interests at borders.”
Fond of addressing troops and wearing uniforms, Mr. Xi, who was never a soldier, professionalized the party’s armed wing, the PLA.
“China puts out some impressive-looking recruiting videos, and they’re all about warfighting — not self-improvement and inclusiveness,” said Grant Newsham, a retired U.S. Marine colonel. “I’ve seen a few, and even I find them motivating.”
Lack of combat experience, which the PLA acknowledges, may not be a handicap, said Mr. Newsham, recalling the successes of U.S. troops in Operation Desert Storm against Iraq’s inferior forces: “Good training will get you quite a ways.”
‘Winning without fighting’
PLA’s physical power has been balanced with operational prudence under Mr. Xi. One reason concerns political demographics.
“I think the PLA is risk-averse. Among other things, it is a military of one-child-policy children, and parents have weighed in quite vigorously that they don’t want to see the military expose their only children to risk,” said David Keegan, a China expert at John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
Given China’s exposure to the global economy, its reliance on exports, and the storm of sanctions likely to follow any assault on Taiwan, Mr. Xi is constrained.
“He is averse to chaos and acutely aware of risk,” said Mr. Thompson. “I don’t see with that mentality how he would see any benefit from a global conflict.”
The Biden administration says China has continued to trade with Russia’s defense industry but has drawn a line at providing weapons for its war in Ukraine. In February, China called for all nuclear-armed states to embrace a “no-first-use” policy. In April, it resumed direct military-to-military talks with U.S. commanders halted during a tense period in 2023.
Recent events suggest Mr. Xi and his aides have personnel problems in senior party and PLA ranks, including a shake-up of the top leadership of China’s growing nuclear forces.
“Xi has purged the Rocket Force, the crown jewel of the PLA,” said Mr. Neill. “And he has had to sack his defense minister.”
The bottom line: China’s military is modernizing and beefing up, but its future deployment and mission remain in question.
“Xi is adroit at the operational space below the threshold of war,” said Mr. Neill. “The South China Sea reclamation operations were a masterstroke, as was the Djibouti base, and building a wide-ranging, global military.”
Battle evasion as a strategy has deep roots in China’s military thinking. Classical Chinese war strategist Sun Tzu advised: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
“That’s how the Chinese fight: So-called political warfare, subversion, gray-zone warfare and the non-kinetic parts of ‘unrestricted warfare’ — think economic, financial, biological, chemical/drug warfare and the granddaddy of them all, proxy warfare,” said Mr. Newsham, author of “When China Attacks.” The ultimate aim: “Getting your enemy’s elites to do your bidding.”
“China’s tactics short of war are intended to soften up an enemy, so … kinetic warfare isn’t even necessary — or else it’s somewhat easier because the enemy has been ground down,” Mr. Newsham said.
• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.
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