A panel of scholars agreed this week that China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) has modernized greatly, but still is incapable of matching the U.S. military in a number of areas.
At the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the scholars said that the PLA had made important reforms in a number of areas. Dennis J. Blasco, a former military intelligence officer, said that the PLA is modernizing in a number of areas. It has cut down the number of active duty troops to 2.3 million (down 200,000 from 2003), and now uses non-active contract workers, much like the U.S. uses the Army Reserve. It is moving more towards mechanized units, and much of its new equipment is being produced by Chinese defense industry factories.
Yet the panelists agreed that in many areas, the PLA still lags far behind the U.S. military.
"In terms of fighting a high-tech local war, the PLA is no match for the U.S.," said Litai Xue, author of the well-known China Builds the Bomb and research associate at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation. He said that among other weaknesses, PLA officers lack the training and skills to wage a successful war. Over 70 percent of PLA troops are in its army (as opposed to less than 40 percent for the U.S.), and its naval and airborne capabilities are far inferior to those of the U.S.
Despite these and other weaknesses, said Bernard Cole, professor of international history at the National War College, China certainly has the capabilities to attack and defeat Taiwan. Dr. Cole mentioned that should it commence an assault on Taiwan, the PLA navy is strong enough to significantly slow the American navy's entry into the theater of operations, giving the Chinese navy enough time to bring considerable pressure to bear on Taiwan.
The key issue, said Dr. Cole, is Taiwan's will to fight the PLA and whether or not the island's politicians would bow to opposition to war with China.
Should they be successful in capturing Taiwan, Cole continued, the PLA navy would then mainly focus on protecting the waterways it uses in the South Pacific to obtain oil and other resources from Indonesia and other nations.
The most well known, publicly available strategy for the invasion of Taiwan is called the "Joint Island Landing Campaign," mentioned in the annual report DOD provides the Congress on the military power of China. This plan is "to breakthrough or circumvent shore defenses, establish a beachhead, and then launch an attack to split, seize and occupy [the island]."
Involved in this campaign would be several sub-campaigns, such as electronic warfare, naval and air campaigns. Amphibious invasion operations "are logistics-intensive, and rely upon air and sea superiority in the vicinity of the operation, the rapid build-up of supplies and sustainment on shore," etc., according to the DOD report.
However, such an attack would greatly strain China's military and, obviously, its air and sea superiority might not go unchallenged by the U.S. The DOD document concludes that an amphibious invasion of Taiwan would be a significant political and military risk for China's leaders.
On a happier note, Xue told a story on how the soldiers view their Communist bosses. While returning to China to conduct interviews with PLA officials, he met one official, who said that the army was quite happy with how the current leader, Hu Jintao, raised their salaries, in stark contrast to former Communist leader, Jiang Zemin, who froze their salaries for his entire 12-year reign.
The official gushed, "If Hu doubles our salaries, we can attack Taiwan! If he triples our salaries, we can attack Japan! And if he quadruples our salaries, we can attack America!"
"We'd better wrap up before we get into trouble," joked moderator Mark Mohr in return, as he closed the session.
Gary Feuerberg, Washington, D.C. staff, contributed to this report.