Sustained efforts will be needed to detect and understand China’s military approach following the recent showcase of its military hardware during the Oct. 1 parade in Beijing, said Dean Chang, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
The People’s Republic of China celebrated its 60th national day on Thursday with a display of domestically developed weaponry in its largest-ever parade, which included nuclear-capable missiles, fighter aircraft, aerial drones and other advanced weapons.
Chang said in an article that in some respects the big guns displayed were a distraction.
Lower-profile command, control and communications systems — such as airborne early-warning and control aircraft and satellite-communication devices — more accurately reflected the comprehensive challenge of China’s growing military capabilities, he said.
These systems might not look particularly special in a parade, but they evince the increasing sophistication of China’s strategic thinking and technology, he said.
China is not aiming to match the US weapon-for-weapon, he said. Rather, it is pursuing an “asymmetric” approach. Beijing’s view of future warfare, expounded in People’s Liberation Army (PLA) analyses, focuses more on enabling the PLA to gather, transmit and exploit information, while denying an opponent that same ability, Chang said.
Less noticeable, but arguably even more important and worrisome, Chang said, is a coherent doctrine and improved training regimens. PLA training efforts include extensive exercising of command-and-control capabilities, employing forces that cross military region boundaries and “conducting training in complex electromagnetic environments,” a reference to electronic warfare and cyber warfare.
He said the US needs long-term, in-depth analyses of Chinese capabilities that go beyond the “bean counting” of new systems to look at logistical capabilities and training regimens.
This will require extensive examination of Chinese-language material such as PLA reference volumes, textbooks and other official publications, as much of this will involve doctrinal changes and adjusted metrics rather than physical systems. This, in turn, entails expanding the ranks of analysts familiar with Chinese military publications and capable of assessing their authoritativeness, he said.
Addressing changes to Chinese strategy will also require maintaining a substantial US force in the East Asian region and conventional capabilities in the area — both to reassure allies and to signal to China that the US has not abandoned its commitment to the region, he said.
The most difficult challenge for US policy-makers, however, will be interacting with members of the PLA. There is arguably no better means of learning about changes within a military than by talking with its members, observing its exercises, and going to its academies and institutions of higher military education.
He said the US clearly continued to be the dominant military power in the Asia-Pacific region, but that China was gaining fast and that Beijing’s expanding range of national interests and military capabilities suggest there will be greater likelihood of contact with the US, both in and outside Asia.
It was important to reduce the chance of misunderstandings or miscalculations, both in terms of capability and intentions, he said, but this would be impossible unless US analysts get access to more data about China’s capabilities.
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