China's military has placed too much emphasis on developing information warfare capabilities that will be of little use in a conflict, a Taiwanese academic said yesterday.
"China's development of information warfare is based basically upon imagination. It is nothing more than an empty dream. China has to progress a lot further in its information technology before it can turn this dream into reality," said Wang Kung-yi (
"The Chinese military has not had any actual combat experience since the war with Vietnam in 1979. Its understanding of war has not moved beyond the Vietnam war," Wang said.
"It now draws a lot on the US military's war experience in its development of new tactics such as information warfare. This has caused it to become more of a dreamer," Wang said.
Wang made the remarks yesterday as he presented a paper at a conference on the Internet and defense policy. The conference was organized by the Ministry of National Defense.
The Chinese military has imagined, for instance, that future wars will be nothing more than a cyberwars, Wang said.
"The Chinese military therefore considers the computer networks of other countries to be the prime targets for attack," he said.
"It forgets that computer networks are the common property of all nations and that they are protected by international laws," he said.
"The Chinese military does not seem to understand that if it blindly attacks computer networks of other nations, it will become the enemy of the whole world."
Blind beliefs
The Chinese military also believes that if it has the ability to build hardware crucial to the development of computer networks, such as modems, it could hold the key to information warfare, Wang said.
With such blind faith in this policy, the Chinese military has built a great amount of information hardware that has done little to help its information-warfare capabilities, he said.
Colonel Tsai Hui-chen (
"The Chinese military has paid too much attention to imaginary information warfare while investing little in the real military," Tsai said.
"The development has resulted in the Chinese military being strong in imagination and weak in action. It is like a man who can think very fast but not move fast," she said.
"The Chinese military does not realize the fact that information warfare is not based on what sort of technology or equipment it can own, but on how much knowledge it has about the [battle] field," she said.
"They are so attracted by the advancement of information technology in the West that they care only about technical innovations in the development of information warfare," she said.
"They forget what really matters is the development of appropriate tactics for information warfare," she said.
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