Last week China took a small but critical step to end American global dominance. Until now the US and Russia were the only two nations thought capable of making military use of space. But Beijing dramatically crashed this select club by using a ground-based ballistic missile to destroy an old weather satellite. Although America will remain the globe’s military number one for decades, it must begin to contemplate a world in which it no longer stands alone.
China once was the dominant power in Asia, an advanced civilization to which surrounding states paid obeisance. Then internal decay weakened the Chinese empire, which was battered by European colonial powers and a modernizing Japan. In 1949 Communist revolutionaries created a new state, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which suffered through famine, hardship, and repression. Two decades ago, however, the PRC embarked on a reform course.
Rapid economic growth, global trading ties, and expanding diplomatic cooperation have pushed China to the first rank of nations. There are other potential contenders for future international influence – Brazil and India, for instance – but Beijing is likely the next peer competitor to the US. No one knows when, but some day the PRC and America are likely to meet as equals.
What happens then obviously depends on China’s capabilities and intentions. Beijing has emphasized its commitment to peace and prosperity, and it has a substantial interest in both. However, that has not stopped it from developing a military better reflecting its economic potential, “lethal, high-tech capabilities,” in the words of Lin Chong-Pin, a Taiwanese analyst.
The anti-satellite test was not the first jolt felt in Washington. Last October China used a ground-based laser to “blind” an American spy satellite. Although that strike did not impair US capabilities, it presumably was not intended to do so – at this time.
The PRC continues to modernize its nuclear force. Beijing has tested long-range submarine-launched missiles, capable of hitting the continental US from China’s littoral waters. Although Beijing remains far behind Washington in the nuclear race, last fall the Chinese media quoted a military officer stating that the PRC had “already completely ensured that it has second-strike capability,” in part because of its ability to destroy American satellites.
In late December President Hu Jintao called for construction of a strong Chinese navy, one with “blue-water” capabilities. He told a Communist Party meeting that “We should strive to build a powerful navy that adapts to the needs of our military’s historical mission in this new century and at this new stage.” Ni Lexiong at the Shanghai Institute of Political Science and Law contends: “Though this does not mean immediate budget increases, it is a strong signal that lays out our future direction.” Indeed, China has been acquiring Russian weaponry, including submarines and anti-ship missiles.
Also in December Beijing issued a military white paper, affirming the PRC’s defensive intent while announcing planned enhancements of early-warning systems, anti-missile defenses, and airstrike capabilities. The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) figures that PRC military outlays have trebled over the last decade, and there is no sign that China intends to slow down. Military outlays continue to increase at double digit rates, by 15 percent last year, according to China’s official (and significantly understated) figures. Observes Allan Behm, formerly with Australia’s Ministry of Defense: “China is becoming more assertive in just about every military field.”
Washington policymakers are getting nervous as a result. A number of hawkish analysts believe Beijing will be America’s next enemy. Even the Bush administration has been issuing warnings about China.
For instance, two years ago the Defense Department pointed with some concern at the PRC’s desire to project power beyond its own region. Last year the Pentagon declared: “Of the major emerging powers, China has the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States and field disruptive military technologies that over time offset traditional US military advantages absent US counter strategies.”
The Financial Times reports: “In recent years, the Pentagon has become increasingly alarmed as Beijing has allocated far more on weapons than US military experts had expected. Washington is particularly concerned about the rapid growth in the size of the Chinese navy and also the increased spending on its nuclear forces.” Last November the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission charged: “China is pursuing measures to try to control the seas in the Western Pacific and developing space warfare weapons that would impede US command and control.”
The Chinese anti-satellite test reinforces these attitudes. National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe sniffed: “The United States believes China’s development and testing of such weapons is inconsistent with the spirit of cooperation that both countries aspire to in the civil space area.” Indeed, Jonathan Pollack at the Naval War College worries that “many people in Washington will find that this validates the view of a China threat.”
The PRC is on the move, yet in an odd sense official Washington’s fears should prove reassuring. Today America dominates every region, including East Asia. The US controls the seas next to China and the skies above China. American forces are on station in South Korea and Japan, along the PRC’s borders. The US Pacific fleet employs aircraft carriers, a form of mobile power projection that Beijing cannot match, to patrol what is effectively an American lake. China seeks what Washington takes for granted.
For the PRC, then, matching, let alone overtaking, the US will be a daunting task. Beijing’s most notable past military asset has been manpower quantity. Much of its outlays have been devoted to replacing outmoded weapons and professionalizing its oversize army. The latest white paper calls the spending increase “compensatory in nature, and is designed to enhance the originally weak defense foundation.” The more effective the soldiers and sophisticated their equipment, the more money and effort that is required. Were it not for the war in Iraq, which is draining away funding from the Pentagon’s current operations and future research, America would be rushing even further ahead.
Estimates of actual Chinese military spending vary widely, but the IISS pegs it at $62.5 billion in 2004, up $6.6 billion over the previous year. The comparable IISS figures for the US are $455 billion and $51 billion, respectively. That is, in 2004 the annual increase of American military expenditures almost matched total Chinese military outlays. Peering uncertainly into the future, Dwight Perkins of Harvard details estimates of Chinese military spending ranging between $140 billion and $280 billion in 2015; even the higher estimate is just 60 percent of what America will spend this year on military programs.
Further, the PRC today is concentrating on interests close to home. The IISS reports: “enhancements in the ground forces are concentrated on amphibious, special forces and airborne formations,” which are primarily directed against Taiwan. Beijing desires to add carriers to its navy, but analysts think such a step – highly complicated and expensive – is unlikely before 2015 or 2020.
The PRC possesses barely 20 liquid-fueled, land-based missiles capable of reaching the US. China is developing solid-fueled replacements, but Washington’s strategic nuclear “triad” long will have far more, and more sophisticated, missiles. Despite its anti-satellite test, Beijing remains well behind the US in space warfare. America’s vulnerability to anti-satellite warfare grows out of its extraordinary dominance: the US accounts for more than half of the 845 active satellites orbiting the earth.
China is looking at asymmetrical warfare, such as electromagnetic pulse attacks, to help overcome American advantages. However, such strategies, while preventing Washington from taking its superiority for granted, cannot defeat the US. To do so would require more traditional means. Concludes Gen. Zhu Chenghu: his country has “no capability to fight a conventional war against the United States.”
For Beijing to close its multiple military gaps with America would cost hundreds of billions and perhaps trillions of dollars. Although China is racing ahead economically, enhancing its ability to spend on the military, it remains a poor country. Shanghai is an impressive city even by Western standards, but the municipal per capita GDP in 2005 was estimated to be only $17,000. Overall, China’s per capita GDP was just $1700. America’s was $42,000. Even after the PRC’s economy exceeds that of the US, which seems inevitable in the coming years or decades, the Chinese people will have less “surplus” than Americans to devote to defense.
Beijing is on the rise and already has begun to insist on being treated like a significant power. But when asked by a Chinese government official whether the US felt threatened by the PRC, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld rightly responded: “The answer is no, we don’t feel threatened by the emergence of China.” Washington’s response to China’s rise will help determine whether China’s charge onto the global stage is smooth and peaceful, or confrontational and violent.
Perhaps most important, US policymakers shouldn’t whine. Beijing is entitled to build a larger military. And it has far more geopolitical cause to do so than does America.
In 2005 Secretary Rumsfeld asked: “Since no nation threatens China, one wonders: Why this growing [military] investment?” But the same question could be put to Washington.
The chief threat to America today comes from transnational terrorist groups, which are best addressed by more accurate intelligence, enhanced multilateral cooperation, and increased special forces, not new carrier groups. Similarly, the problem of nuclear proliferation is not readily solvable by large military forces. Rather, creative, multilateral diplomacy, including enlistment of non-allies, such as China, is more likely to be effective (if anything can be). More traditional dangers, such as conventional and nuclear attacks on the US, are largely absent.
China faces a different security environment. While the US last fought a war along its border 160 years ago, against Mexico, over the same period China has been invaded by a consortium of European powers and Japan; battled the US in Korea; fought border skirmishes against India and Russia; initiated a limited war against Vietnam; and endured a bitter civil war and occasional clashes with the ousted nationalists after the latter fled to Taiwan.
From China’s point of view, peace in the future looks no more certain: a potential bid for independence by Taiwan, a more nationalist Japan allied with America; a potential unified Korea with uncertain ambitions; the emergence of a rapidly growing and arming India; continued ties to volatile Pakistan; a mix of cooperation and competition with Russia. No wonder China’s defense white paper points to “growing complexities in the Asia-Pacific security environment.” While the US might prefer that the PRC not expand its military, America should understand why Beijing might be doing so.
Moreover, Washington shouldn’t panic. America will far outrange China economically and militarily for decades. In its white paper, the PRC sets “the strategic goal of building informationized armed forces and being capable of winning informationized wars by the mid-21st century.” That leaves much time to decide how to accommodate and/or counter China.
Precisely how to do so requires Washington policymakers to distinguish between US interests which are vital and which are not. There may come a time when China threatens the US homeland or seeks hegemonic influence over Eurasia, but it is far in the future. The real issue today is relative influence in Asia, something that matters far more to Beijing than to Washington.
Analysts predict that the PRC will reach regional parity with the US by early mid-century. Observes Chung Min Lee of National University of Singapore: “The People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) emphasis on key force modernizations, including more robust submarine forces, a new generation of fighter aircraft and an array of asymmetrical capabilities, means that over the next two to three decades it will come close to becoming a so-called ‘theater peer’ of the United States.” This worries some American analysts. Harvard University’s Robert Ross writes: “For the rise of China to pose a direct threat to US security, China must possess sufficient military capabilities to challenge the United States in the western Pacific, including sufficient capability to risk war.”
China has begun to challenge the US in small ways. After a Chinese submarine stalked an American carrier group last October, Richard Fisher, with the International Assessment and Strategy Center, argued: “This is a harbinger of a stronger Chinese reaction to America’s military presence in East Asia.” Still, an eventual superpower China might be, but today it can only stalk, not match, US naval power. It will be decades before China is able to deploy sufficient forces along its own shores to counter the units America can employ far distant from its homeland.
Yet there is little in East Asia that warrants Washington risking confrontation and war. Sealane domination is convenient for the US, but far more so for America’s allies, particularly Japan, Australia, and South Korea. They should be taking on responsibility for protecting their own interests. If Beijing begins to pose a serious regional threat, America’s allies and friends, from the wealthy and efficient Japan to the decrepit and incompetent Philippines, have an incentive to arm and organize themselves. Indeed, notes Robert Ross, “China must contend with a daunting geopolitical environment in which it has 13 land neighbors, including Russia, which Chinese leaders cannot and have not dismissed as a future rival, and India, as well as smaller but nonetheless potentially capable states.”
The US should be watchful and wary, but act as an offshore balancer rather than an onsite meddler. Maintaining its unnatural predominance in a region with several important states (China, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea) is not necessary for American security. What is vital to the US is preventing a hostile power from dominating Eurasia. But no nation, including China, is capable of doing so in the foreseeable future.
Americans should encourage China’s continued integration into the larger global community. That doesn’t mean ignoring the lack of democracy, violations of human rights, and rising nationalism. But despite a campaign to turn China into an enemy – internet columnist Don Feder recently charged that the PRC had “a totalitarian regime” – that nation has moved a world beyond where it was even two decades ago. Chinese citizens enjoy greater personal autonomy and much greater prosperity. Capitalism and trade don’t guarantee development of a liberal society, but engagement is more likely than isolation to yield that result.
Washington should work systematically to foreclose or moderate bilateral misunderstandings and conflicts. Greater transparency, particularly regarding Chinese military expenditures and maneuvers, would be of value. Increased security discussions and military exchanges also deserve attention: for instance, the Bush administration has invited Gen. Jing Zhiyuan, head of China’s nuclear forces, to visit America’s Strategic Command in Omaha, Nebraska.
Formal agreements are another possibility. China and Russia have proposed banning space weapons, for instance. Some analysts speculate that the Chinese anti-satellite test was intended to encourage the US to join them. Of course, verification and enforcement remain important concerns. Nevertheless, negotiation is worth pursuing where feasible.
Even more important, Washington should avoid treating the PRC as an enemy. Ostentatiously attempting to organize other countries, centered around Japan, in an anti-Chinese coalition would likely fail. Although Tokyo seems increasingly ready to adopt an aggressive foreign policy, most other nations in the region, including longtime US allies Australia and South Korea, are far more interested in accommodation with Beijing. Demanding that nations essentially choose between the US and China might yield answers unwanted by Washington. Moreover, aggressively confronting the PRC would spur the Chinese to attempt to develop a countervailing coalition and more quickly enhance their military forces.
By itself, China’s anti-satellite test is primarily of symbolic importance. Beijing is gaining influence, but remains decades away from matching America. Indeed, China faces substantial economic, ethnic, and social challenges, ones that must be overcome before it can become a superpower. However, the PRC is soon likely to “enjoy the status of a semi-superpower between the United States and the other major powers,” argues Yan Xuetong of Beijing’s Qinghua University. China’s influence will continue expanding from there.
Irrespective of what America desires, a more powerful PRC seems inevitable. Notes Allan Behm: Beijing “is not going to concede that the US can be the hegemon in space forever.” Or anywhere else. Indeed, Kenneth Lieberthal of the University of Michigan argues that “The Chinese wouldn’t put it this way themselves. But in their hearts I think they believe that the 21st century is China’s century.”
Maybe. The 21st century is more likely to be peaceful and prosperous, however, if America and China cooperate to make the 21st century their joint century. There is little harm which the two could not cause if they come to blows. There is little good which the two could not achieve by working together. Much depends – for them, Asia, and the world – upon the future relationship between the US and China.
