A US military intelligence officer, asked some years ago how far the Chinese could project their military power, only half-jokingly answered : "About as far as their army can walk."
That is changing rapidly today as Beijing fuels the budgets of the People's Liberation Army (PLA).
China, says a new report by the Council on Foreign Relations, is driven both by "a clear operational objective," which is to take Taiwan and "a clear strategic objective," which is to be a modern power.
China's military priorities are four-fold: the navy, in which submarines take first place; the air force, with jet fighters and long-range bombers; space, including not only threatening US and other satellites but putting up their own; and what the Chinese call the Second Artillery, their land-based nuclear weapons, including 1,000 non-nuclear-tipped missiles aimed at Taiwan.
"Submarines currently dominate China's naval development," analysts Andrew Erickson and Andrew Wilson said in Naval War College Review, a US publication. China has long been rumored to be eager to build aircraft carriers but for now, these analysts said, discussion of submarines "is much more advanced and grounded in reality than that of carriers."
At first, the Chinese obtained submarines and submarine technology from the Soviet Union and, to a lesser extent, from France and Israel. Now they are building their own. Moreover, they are retiring older ships and replacing them with fewer but more advanced ones, both diesel-electric and nuclear-powered.
Over the next eight years, Beijing plans to have in operation five Han and six Shang-class nuclear-powered submarines whose mission will be to attack aircraft carriers and other surface warships. In addition, they will have 15 Song and 17 Ming diesel-electric boats with a similar task but one that is closer to home, wrote Global Security, a private research organization.
China also plans to deploy the Jin-class nuclear-powered submarine, armed with ballistic missiles tipped with nuclear warheads and to retire the older Xia-class. An analyst in Taiwan, Cheng Dai-cheng, wrote: "The communists are probably not going to use their submarine-launched missiles against us, but against the United States, who may come to our aid in future conflicts."
The Chinese have vigorously denied that their navy is a threat to other countries. An article in Huanqiu Shibao, a government newspaper, asserted last month that the US was "talking nonsense about details of China having expanded its submarine fleet."
Some US analysts agree, at least in part, saying it will be many years before Chinese submarines are able to challenge the US Navy.
Even so, Chinese military planners have revised their operational thinking on attack submarines.
In the past, they patrolled close to China's coast to repel an invasion. Now, said a fresh study from the US Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), they are deployed further out to resist invasion, protect territorial sovereignty and safeguard the country's maritime rights.
Chinese submarines have been detected well past what the Chinese call the first island chain that runs from Japan through Taiwan and the Philippines to Indonesia.
"Offshore defense" evidently calls for Chinese submarines to venture "as far as the PLA Navy's capabilities will allow it to operate," ONI said.
Some Chinese officers said that a future objective will be to patrol as far east as Hawaii.
A critical question is Chinese seamanship. A US naval officer has 500 years of seagoing experience behind him, with 250 years of British navy and 250 years since the ships of Salem plied the seven seas and John Paul Jones founded the US Navy.
US submariners, for their part, have 100 years of experience, since the early 20th century, to draw on.
In contrast, in 5,000 years of history, China has produced only one great sailor, Admiral Zheng He (
Chinese submariners, hampered by the Sino-Soviet split and the chaos of the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, are just beginning to learn their craft with highly complicated vessels.
US military leaders, including Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, have for many months contended that the Chinese should be more open about their military intentions, including why they are expanding their submarine fleet.
Pointing to the surging Chinese economy that pays for the ships, a US submariner said: "I suppose they do it because they can."
Richard Halloran is a writer based in Hawaii.
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