Government officials and scholars warned about the possible consequences of China’s rapid military buildup at a Congressional hearing on Wednesday.
The House Armed Services Committee held a hearing on Chinese Grand Strategy and Military Modernization. This hearing came just over a week after the Pentagon briefed Congress on its “2005 Annual Report on the Military Power of the People’s Republic of China.”
At the start of the hearing, Duncan Hunter, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said, “China’s military spending has grown faster than its economy. It is using those resources to acquire capabilities from Russia that were designed during the Cold War specifically for combat against the United States military… just recently and for the second time in a decade, a Chinese General threatened to attack our cities with nuclear weapons if we intervened to stop aggression against Taiwan.”
According to John J. Tkacik, Jr., Senior Research Fellow in Asian Studies from The Heritage Foundation, Taiwan is just China’s “short-term” military objective, and we must focus on China’s “long-term” military goals. He quoted Condoleezza Rice from an article written in February of 2000, where she described China as a “strategic competitor”, not a “strategic partner”, and said that, “Add to this China’s record of cooperation with Iran and Pakistan in the proliferation of ballistic-missile technology, and the security problem is obvious…” On June 28, 2005, Condoleezza Rice acknowledged for the first time that China is on its way to becoming a “military superpower.”
According to Mr. Tkacik, “… our Asia-Pacific allies and friends… must press Washington to tear its mental concentration away from Iraq and Afghanistan and the War on Terror for a while and wake up to a ‘rising China’ in Asia.”
Modernization and Buildup of the Economy and Military
According to Franklin Kramer, former Assistant Secretary of Defense, who spoke at the hearing, “China’s economy has grown dramatically… The Chinese leadership seems genuinely to have continued economic modernization as their highest priority.”
This dramatic economic growth is enabling China to rapidly modernize and buildup its military on land, sea, air, and space. According to Mr. Tkacik, “… China has procured advanced technology weapons systems from abroad in an effort to make up for deficiencies in its domestic military sector… China has an active policy of acquiring foreign industrial and manufacturing production lines. China’s most significant successes are in acquisition of U.S. semiconductor manufacturing production lines…”
Richard D. Fisher, Jr., Vice President of International Assessment and Strategy Center, one of the three witnesses at the hearing, said that China is building up its nuclear missiles “… in ways that will enable it to defeat current and future U.S. National Missile Defenses.”
According to Mr. Fisher, China has been building high-tech military capabilities in space: China “… will soon have new surveillance, communication and navigation satellites to serve its warfighters and new capabilities to combat enemy space assets… China is developing its own system of modern navigation satellites, and is now a full partner in Europe’s ‘Galileo’ navsat system…”
Mr. Tkacik said, “Among the most worrisome of China’s foreign acquisitions are the Russian Kilo submarines… The Pentagon Report has catalogued a list of China’s foreign weapons and military systems acquisitions, but in my mind none is as worrisome as the expansion of the PLA Navy’s submarine fleet. China has identified America’s strategic center as its maritime predominance, and its sub fleet is clearly designed to overcome U.S. supremacy at sea.”
Why the Rapid Buildup of the Military?
Mr. Fisher said, “China does not now face a direct threat from another nation. Yet, it continues to invest heavily in its military… this contradiction lies in the nature of the China’s still Communist regime. Despite its quick rise to global economic powerhouse status, the regime in Beijing lacks political legitimacy and is thus unstable… it suppresses all potential opposition and requires ever greater military political support and military power.”
Mr. Tkacik said, “A ‘Rising China’ is the slogan for China’s new ideology of nationalism… In 2005, military power, as an emblem of China’s new national strength, has become the focus of regime legitimacy for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)… And military might is a key, even the key, component of ‘national strength’.”
During the question and answer part of the hearing, Mr. Tkacik explained that, “…you have a rapidly modernizing, economically dynamic state that is run by a totalitarian government. It seems that the two can coexist quite well indefinitely… Chinese leadership basically hopes to undermine the idea that it is an illegitimate leadership by supporting regimes around the world that are also dictatorships. Otherwise, I don’t understand why the Chinese supports so insistently regimes like Sudan, Zimbabwe, Iran, and North Korea.”