Chinese Military Strategy

Summary: Concurrent and commensurate with China's emergence as a leading world economic power in the twenty-first century, the ruling Chinese Communist Party is adjusting the nation's military strategy. In 2010, the Chinese government published a paper laying out the nation's evolving policy, including its strategic goals and the means to implement them. The paper insisted that Chinese policy is essentially defensive while laying out an expanded concept of defense to include issues farther away from Chinese territory, such as protecting sea lanes through the Indian Ocean leading to China. The US Department of Defence also publishes yearly reports on China's military power.

In-Depth. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, China has been at a military disadvantage vis a vis other powers, notably Britain, Japan, and the United States. In the 1990s, the Chinese Communist Party leadership engaged in an extended debate over the role of China's military and how to ensure that its armed forces adequately keep pace with the nation's emergence as an economic power. The debate was resolved after 1997 with the creation of the General Armaments Department and the Commission for Science, Technology, and Industry for National Defense. These institutions reflected China's determination to build an indigenous weapons manufacturing industry and to emphasize technological development related to defense. The government subsequently explicitly linked greater military power to economic growth.

In a speech to the 2009 National People's Congress, President Hu Jintao called on the military to play a larger role in securing strategic economic interests, such as the flow of oil carried in tankers from the Gulf to China. Hu also called on the military to enhance its ability to conduct "military operations other than war." These included counter-terrorism, maintaining social stability, building national infrastructure, disaster relief and rescue, participating in international peacekeeping operations, cyber warfare, security of space-based assets, and conducting military diplomacy (exchanges with the military leadership of other nations).

A Beijing newspaper listed China's defense goals as:

• "Safeguarding national sovereignty." This heading includes defending borders and territory and resisting separatist forces seeking independence for Taiwan, Tibet, and "East Turkestan." It also includes challenging the military supremacy of the United States in the far-western Pacific in the waters off the Chinese coast, such as the South China Sea. China also indicated an interest in cooperating with Asian regional groups such as the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN).
• "Maintaining [internal] social harmony and stability." This includes a military role in building civilian infrastructure and conserving/protecting the environment, and adopting a civilian-military development mode.
• "Accelerating the modernization of national defense and the armed forces." The 2010 defense paper emphasized "informationization" (which it defined as "information-centered operations") as the "driving force" of mechanization.
• "Maintaining world peace and stability." This includes, for example, participating in international military peace-keeping missions, once almost the exclusive preserve of Europe and the United States.

Through the 2010s, China's military strategy focused on the growing importance of Asia in the world's economy and the relatively important role of China among Asian nations. Among the practical implications for the United States of China's strategy is Beijing's steady increase in its numbers of ships and in modernizing its fleets with newer ships. The latter includes developing an indigenous ship-building capacity that will include aircraft carriers, a key element in expanding the area of influence of a "blue water navy." China's policy divides Navy policy into two fronts. One is the Indian Ocean front, where the expanded Chinese navy will guard commercial sea lanes tankers used to bring Gulf oil, judged a strategic resource, to China. The other front is the far-western Pacific waters off China's coast, including the Strait of Taiwan and the South China Sea. In the latter, China claims an "exclusive economic zone," under terms of the international Law of the Sea, over areas of the South China Sea that may contain strategic resources, especially oil. Those claims overlap those of Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, and Taiwan and have already led to clashes over the Spratly Islands. In case of conflict, China's strategy for this area is "denial of access," making it difficult or impossible for other powers, notably the US Navy, to navigate these waters. Since 2000, the United States Navy has had several confrontations with the Chinese military challenging its right to sail in this area.

Building an indigenous weapons manufacturing capability is another part of China's military plan, meant to lessen its traditional dependence on foreign suppliers, especially the Soviet Union/Russia. China also plans to establish a military judicial system and an integrated command system to improve the coordination of armed services. China's economic development is critical to its defense initiatives because it supports the country's military development, the modernization of weapons and equipment, and the ability of the country to engage in multi-country initiatives and training exercises. Because of this, the country engages in a military-civil fusion development strategy, fusing economic and social development to support a strong military.

In 2002, China began conducting exercises with other nations, and by 2018, the focus of these exercises shifted from war training to antiterrorism and antipiracy. Additionally, China's military began conducting humanitarian and peacekeeping missions, such as providing aid to those nations fighting the Ebola virus.

The country's defense strategy maintained a posture of "active defense" in the early 2020s and focused on "sovereignty, security, and developmental interests." Its long-term goals include becoming a "world-class military." Though they do not explicitly define what this entails, most speculate this means equal to or better than the US military.

Level of spending. As a percentage of Chinese government spending, defense spending fell steadily from 1998-2008, from 8.6 percent to 6.7 percent. In 2023, China announced its defense budget totaled 1.55 trillion yuan (about $224 billion), a 7 percent increase from 2022. From the early 2010s to the early 2020s, the Chinese military budget increased annually by 6 to 8 percent.

Bibliography

Jisi, Wang. search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tsh&AN=58473345&site=ehost-live. Foreign Affairs, vol. 90, no. 2, 2011, p. 12.

"2020 Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China." Department of Defense, 2021, media.defense.gov/2020/Sep/01/2002488689/-1/-1/1/2020-DOD-CHINA-MILITARY-POWER-REPORT-FINAL.PDF. Accessed 10 Oct. 2023.

"2022 Report on Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China." US Department of Defense, 29 Nov. 2022, www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3230516/2022-report-on-military-and-security-developments-involving-the-peoples-republi. Accessed 10 Oct. 2023.

"2022 Pentagon Report on Chinese Military Development." USNI News, 29 Nov. 2022, news.usni.org/2022/11/29/2022-pentagon-report-on-chinese-military-development. Accessed 10 Oct. 2023.