The competing claims of weapons modernization, the people’s social requirements, and the need to channel all available resources into “productive” nonmilitary enterprises is nowhere more pressing than in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which is simultaneously the poorest of the major Powers and probably the least well placed strategically. Yet if the PRC suffers from certain chronic hardships, its present leadership seems to be evolving a grand strategy altogether more coherent and forward-looking than that which prevails in Moscow, Washington, or Tokyo, not to mention western Europe. And while the material constraints upon China are great, they are being ameliorated by an economic expansion which, if it can be kept up, promises to transform the country within a few decades.
The country’s weaknesses are so well known as to require only a brief mention here. Diplomatically and strategically, Peking has regarded itself (with some justification) as being isolated and surrounded. If this was partly due to Mao’s policies toward China’s neighbors, it was also a consequence of the rivalry and ambitions of other powers in Asia during the preceding decades. The memories of Japan’s earlier aggressions have not faded from the Chinese mind, and reinforce the caution with which the leadership in Peking regards that country’s explosive growth in recent years. Despite the 1970s thaw in relations with Washington, the United States is also viewed with some suspicion—the more particularly under a Republican regime which seems overenthusiastic about constructing an anti-Russian bloc, which appears to nourish a lingering fondness for Taiwan, and which interferes too readily against Third World countries and revolutionary movements for Peking’s liking. The future of Taiwan and the smaller offshore islands remains a thorny problem, and only half-submerged. The PRC’s relations with India have stayed cool, being complicated by their respective ties to Pakistan and Russia. Notwithstanding recent “wooing” efforts by Moscow, China feels bound to see in the USSR its chief foreign danger—and not merely because of the masses of Russian divisions and aircraft deployed along the frontier, but also in consequence of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and, more worryingly, in the military expansionism of the Soviet-supported Vietnamese state to the south. Somewhat like the Germans earlier in this century, therefore, the Chinese think deeply about “encirclement” even as they simultaneously strive to enhance their place in the global system of power.21
Moreover, this awkward, multilateral set of diplomatic tasks has to be managed by a country which is not very strong militarily or economically, when measured against its chief rivals. For all the size of the Chinese Army in numerical terms, it remains woefully un-derequipped in modern instruments of warfare. Most of its tanks, guns, aircraft, and warships are indigenous versions of Russian or western models which China acquired years ago, and are certainly not on a par with later, much more sophisticated types; a lack of hard currency and an unwillingness to become too dependent upon other nations have kept purchases of foreign arms to a minimum. Perhaps even more worrying to Peking’s leaders are the weaknesses in China’s combat effectiveness, due to the Maoist attacks upon professionalism in the army and the preference for peasant militias—such Utopian solutions being of little assistance in the 1979 border war with Vietnam, whose battle-hardened and well-trained troops killed some 26,000 Chinese and wounded 37,000 others.22 Economically, China appears still further behind; even when amending its official per capita GNP figures in a way which better accords with western concepts and economic measurements,23 the figure can hardly be more than a mere $500, compared with well over $13,000 for many of the advanced capitalist states and a respectable $5,000+ for the USSR. With its population likely to rise from a billion people today to 1.2 or 1.3 billion by the year 2000, the prospects of a major increase in personal income may not be large; even in the next century the average Chinese will be poor, relative to the inhabitants of the established Powers. Furthermore, it hardly needs saying that the difficulties of governing such a populous state, of reconciling the various factions (party, army, bureaucrats, farmers), and of achieving growth without social and ideological turbulence will test even the most flexible and intelligent leadership. China’s internal history for the past century does not offer encouraging precedents for long-term strategies of development.
Nevertheless, the indications of reform and self-improvement in China which have occurred over the past six to eight years are very remarkable, and suggest that this period of Deng Xiaoping’s leadership may one day be seen in the way that historians view Colbert’s France, or the early stages of Frederick the Great’s reign, or Japan in the post-Meiji Restoration decades: that is, as a country straining to develop its power (in all senses of that word) by every pragmatic means, balancing the desire to encourage enterprise and initiative and change with an étatiste determination to direct events so that the national goals are achieved as swiftly and smoothly as possible. Such a strategy involves the ability to see how the separate aspects of government policy relate to each other. It therefore involves a sophisticated balancing act, requiring careful judgments as to the speed at which these transformations can safely occur, the amount of resources to be allocated to long-term as opposed to short-term needs, the coordination of the state’s internal and external requirements, and—last but not least in a country which still has a “modified” Marxist system—the ways by which ideology and practice can be reconciled. Although difficulties have occurred and new ones are likely to emerge in the future, the record so far is an impressive one.
It can be seen, for example, in the many ways in which the Chinese armed services are transforming themselves after the convulsions of the 1960s. The planned reduction of the People’s Liberation Army (which includes the navy and air force) from 4.2 to 3 million personnel is, in fact, an enhancement of real strength, since far too many of them were merely support troops, used for railway-building and civic duties. Those remaining within the armed forces are likely to be of higher overall quality: new uniforms and the restoration of military ranks (abolished by Mao as being “bourgeois”) are the outward sign of this; but they will be reinforced by replacing a largely volunteer army with conscription (to give the state access to high-quality personnel), by reorganizing the military regions and streamlining the staffs, and by improving officer training at the academies, which have also emerged from their period of Maoist disgrace.24 Along with this will go a large-scale modernization of China’s weaponry, which, although numerically substantial, suffers from considerable obsolescence. Its navy is being given an array of new vessels, from destroyers and escorts to fast-attack craft and even hovercraft; and it has built up a very substantial fleet of conventional submarines (107 in 1985), making it the third-largest such force in the world. Its tanks are now displaying laser rangefinders; its aircraft are becoming all-weather types, with modern radar. All this is attended by a willingness to experiment with large-scale maneuvers under modern battlefield conditions (one such 1981 maneuver involved six or seven Chinese armies backed by aircraft—which had been missing in the 1979 clash with Vietnam),25 and to rethink the strategy of a “forward defense” along the frontiers with Russia in favor of counterattacks some way behind the long, exposed borders. The navy, too, is experimenting on a much larger scale: in 1980 an eighteen-vessel task force undertook an eight-thousand-nautical-mile mission in the South Pacific, in conjunction with China’s latest intercontinental ballistic missile experiments. (Was this, one wonders, the first significant demonstration of Chinese sea power since Cheng Ho’s cruises of the early fifteenth century? See pp. 6–7 above.)
More impressive still, for China’s emergence as a Great Power militarily, has been the extraordinarily rapid development of its nuclear technology. Although the first Chinese tests occurred in Mao’s time, he had publicly scorned nuclear weapons when preferring the merits of a “people’s war”; the Deng leadership, by contrast, is intent upon taking China into the ranks of the modern military states as swiftly as possible. As early as 1980, China was testing ICBMs with a range of seven thousand nautical miles (which would encompass not only all of the USSR but also parts of the United States).26 A year later, one of its rockets launched three space satellites, which is an indication of a multiple-warhead rocket technology. Most of China’s nuclear forces are land-based, and medium-range rather than long-distance; but they are being joined by new ICBMs and, perhaps the most significant step of all (in terms of nuclear deterrence), by a fleet of missile-carrying submarines. Since 1982, China has been testing submarine-launched ballistic missiles and working on improvements of both range and accuracy. There are also reports of Chinese experimentation with tactical nuclear weapons. All this is backed up by large-scale atomic research, and by a refusal to have its nuclear weapons development “frozen” by international limitations agreements, since that would merely aid the existing Great Powers.
As against this evidence of military-technological prowess, it is also easy to point to continuing signs of weakness. There is always a significant time lag between producing an early prototype of a weapon and having large numbers of them, tried and tested, in the possession of the armed forces themselves; and this is particularly so with a country which is not rich in capital or scientific resources. Severe setbacks—including the possible explosion of a Chinese submarine while attempting to launch a missile; the cancellation or slowdown of weapons programs; the lack of expertise in metallic technology, advanced jet engines, and radar, navigation, and communications equipment—continue to hamper China’s drive toward real military equality with the USSR and the United States. Its navy, despite the Pacific Ocean exercises, is far from being a “blue water” fleet, and its force of missile-bearing submarines will long remain behind those of the “Big Two,” which are pouring funds into the development of gigantic types (Ohioclass, Alfa class) that can dive deeper and run faster than any previous submarine.27 Finally, the mention of finance is a reminder that as long as China is spending only one-eighth or thereabouts of the amount upon defense as the superpowers, there is no way it can achieve full parity; it cannot, therefore, plan to acquire every sort of weapon or to prepare for every conceivable threat.
Nonetheless, even China’s existing military capability gives it an influence which is far more substantial than that existing some years ago. The improvements in training, organization, and equipment ought to place the PLA in a better position to meet regional rivals like Vietnam, Taiwan, and India than in the past two decades. Even the military balance vis-à-vis the Soviet Union may no longer be so disproportionately tilted in Moscow’s favor. Should future disputes in Asia lead to a Sino-Russian war, the leadership in Moscow may find it politically difficult to consent to launching heavy nuclear strikes at China, both because of world reaction and because of the unpredictability of the American response; but if it did “go nuclear,” there is less and less prospect of the Soviet armed forces being able to guarantee the destruction of China’s growing land-based and (especially) sea-based missile systems before they can retaliate. On the other hand, if there is only conventional fighting, the Soviet dilemma remains acute. The fact that Moscow takes the possibility of war seriously can be gleamed from its deployment of around fifty divisions (including six or seven tank divisions) of Russian troops in its two military districts east of the Urals. And while it may be assumed that such forces can handle the seventy or more PLA divisions similarly stationed in the frontier area, their superiority may hardly be enough to ensure a striking victory—especially if the Chinese trade space for time in order to weaken the effects of a Soviet Blitzkrieg. To many observers, there now exists a “rough equivalence,” a “balance of forces,” in Central Asia28— and, if true, the strategical repercussions of that extend far beyond the immediate region of Mongolia.
But the most significant aspect of China’s longer-term war-fighting power lies elsewhere: in the remarkably swift growth of its economy which has occurred during the past few decades and which seems likely to continue into the future. As was mentioned in the preceding chapter (see pp. 418–20), even before the Communists had firmly established their rule, China was a considerable manufacturing power—although that was disguised by the sheer size of the country, the fact that the vast majority of the population consisted of peasant farmers, and the disruptions of war and civil wars. The creation of a Marxist regime and the coming of domestic peace allowed production to shoot ahead, with the state actively encouraging both agricultural and industrial growth—although sometimes doing so (i.e., under Mao) by bizarre and counterproductive means. Writing in 1983–1984, one observer noted that “China has achieved annual growth rates in industry and agriculture since 1952 of around 10 percent and 3 percent respectively, and an overall growth of GNP of 5–6 percent per year.”29 If those figures do not match the achievements of such export-oriented Asian “trading states” as Singapore or Taiwan, they are impressive for a country as large and populous as China, and readily translate into an economic power of some size. By the late 1970s, according to one calculation, the Chinese industrial economy was as large as (if not larger than) those of the USSR and Japan in 1961.30 Moreover, it is worth remarking once again that these averagegrowth rates include the period of the so-called Great Leap Forward of 1958–1959; the break with Russia, and the withdrawal of Soviet funds, scientists, and blueprints in the early 1960s; and the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, which not only distorted industrial planning but also undermined the entire educational and scientific system for nearly one generation. Had those events not occurred, Chinese growth would have been even faster overall—as may be gathered from the fact that over the past five years of Deng-led reforms, agriculture has averaged an 8 percent growth, and industry a spectacular 12 percent.31
To a very large degree, the agricultural sector remains both China’s opportunity and its weak point. The East Asian methods of wet-rice cultivation are inordinately productive in yields per hectare, but are also extremely labor-intensive—which makes it difficult to effect a switch to, say, the large-scale, mechanized forms of agriculture used on the American prairies. Yet since agriculture forms over 30 percent of China’s GDP and employs 70 percent of the population, decay (or merely a slowdown) in that sector will act as a drag upon the entire economy—as has clearly happened in the Soviet Union. This challenge is compounded by the population time bomb. Already China is attempting to feed a billion people on only 250 million acres of arable land (compared with the United States’ 400 million acres of crops for its 230 million population);32 can it possibly manage to feed another 200 million Chinese by the year 2000, without an increasing dependence upon imported food, which has both balance-of-payments and strategic costs? It is difficult to get a clear answer to that crucial question, in part because the experts point to different pieces of evidence. China’s traditional export of foodstuffs slowly declined over the past three decades, and in 1980 it became, very briefly, a netimporter.33 On the other hand, the Chinese government is devoting massive scientific resources into achieving a “green revolution” on the Indian model, and Deng’s encouragement of market-oriented reforms, together with large increases in agricultural purchase prices (without passing the cost on to the cities), have led to tremendous rises in food production over the past half-decade. Between 1979 and 1983—when much of the rest of the globe was suffering from economic depression—the 800 million Chinese in rural areas increased their incomes by about 70 percent, and their calorific intake was nearly as high as that of Brazilians or Malaysians. “In 1985, the Chinese produced 100 million more tons of grain than they did a decade earlier, one of the most productive surges ever recorded.”34 With the population increasing, and turning more and more to meat consumption (which requires yet more grain), the pressure to keep up this expansion in agricultural consumption will become more intense—and yet the acreage available remains restricted, and the growth in yields caused by the applications of fertilizer is bound to slow down. Nonetheless, the evidence suggests that China is managing to maintain this part of its elaborate balancing act with a considerable degree of success.
The future of China’s drive toward industrialization is of even greater importance—but is a yet more delicate trick internally. It has been hampered not only by the lack of consumer purchasing power, but also by years of rather heavy-handed planning on the Russian and eastern European model. The “liberalization” measures of the past few years—getting state industries to respond to the commercial realities of quality, price, and market demand, encouraging the creation of privately run, small-scale enterprises, and allowing a great expansion in foreign trade35—have led to impressive rises in manufacturing output, but also to many problems. The creation of tens of thousands of private businesses has alarmed party ideologists, and the rise in prices (probably caused as much by the necessary adjustment to market costs as by the frequently denounced “racketeering” and “profiteering”) has caused mutterings among urban workers, whose incomes have not risen as fast as either the farmers’ or the entrepreneurs’. In addition, the foreign-trade boom quickly led to a sucking in of imported manufactures, and thus to a trade deficit. The statements made in 1986 by Prime Minister Zhao Ziyang that matters may have slipped somewhat “out of control” and that “consolidation” was needed for a while—together with the announced decrease in the hectic growth targets—are indications that internal and ideological problems remain.36
It is nevertheless remarkable that even the reduced growth rates are planned to be a very respectable 7.5 percent annually in future years (as opposed to the 10 percent rate since 1981). That itself would double China’s GNP in less than ten years (a 10 percent rate would do the same in a mere seven years), yet for a number of reasons economic experts seem to feel that such a target can be achieved. In the first place, China’s rate of savings and investment has been consistently in excess of 30 percent of GNP since 1970, and while that in turn brings problems (it reduces the proportion available for consumption, which is compensated for by price stability and income equality, which in turn get in the way of entrepreneur ship), it also means that there are large funds available for productive investment. Secondly, there are huge opportunities for cost savings: China has been among the most profligate and extravagant countries in its consumption of energy (which caused declines in its quite considerable oil stocks), but its post-1978 energy reforms have substantially reduced the costs of one of industry’s main “inputs” and thus freed money for investments elsewhere—or consumption.37 Moreover, only now is China beginning to shake off the consequences of the Cultural Revolution. After more than a decade during which Chinese universities and research institutes were closed (or compelled to operate in a totally counterproductive way), it was predictable that it would take some time to catch up on the scientific and technological progress made elsewhere. “It is only against this background,” it was remarked a few years ago,
that one can understand the importance of the thousands of scientists who went to the United States and elsewhere in the West in the late 1970s for stays of one or two years and occasionally longer periods.… as early as 1985—and certainly by 1990—China will have a cadre of many thousands of scientists and technicians familiar with the frontiers of their various fields. Tens of thousands more trained at home as well as abroad will staff the institutes and enterprises that will implement the programs required to bring Chinese industrial technology up to the best international standards, at least in strategic areas of activity.38
In the same way, it could only be in the post-1978 period of encouraging (albeit selectively) foreign trade and investment in China that its managers and entrepreneurs had the proper opportunity to pick and choose from among the technological devices, patents, and production facilities enthusiastically offered by western governments and companies which quite exaggerated the size of the Chinese market for such items. Despite—or, rather, because of—the Peking government’s desire to control the level and contents of overseas trade, it is likely that imports will be deliberately selected to boost economic growth.
The final and perhaps the most remarkable aspect of China’s “dash for growth” has been the very firm control upon defense spending, so that the armed forces do not consume resources needed elsewhere. In Deng’s view, defense has to remain the fourth of China’s much-vaunted “four modernizations”—behind agriculture, industry, and science; and although it is difficult to gain exact figures on Chinese defense spending (chiefly because of different methods of calculation),39 it seems clear that the proportion of GNP allocated to the armed forces has been tumbling for the past fifteen years—from perhaps 17.4 percent in 1971 (according to one source) to 7.5 percent in 1985.40 This in its turn may cause grumbling among the military and thus increase the internal debate over economic priorities and policies; and it would clearly have to be reversed if serious border clashes recurred in the north or the south. Nonetheless, the fact that defense spending must take an inferior place is probably the most significant indication to date of China’s all-out commitment to economic growth, and stands in stark contrast to both the Soviet obsession with “military security” and the Reagan administration’s commitment to pouring funds into the armed services. As many experts have pointed out,41 given China’s existing GNP and amount of national savings and investment within it, there would be no real problem in spending much more than its current c. $30 billion on defense. That it chooses not to do so reflects Peking’s belief that long-term security will be assured only when its present output and wealth have been multiplied many times.
In sum: “The only events likely to stop this growth in its tracks would be the outbreak of war with the Soviet Union or prolonged political upheaval on the pattern of the Cultural Revolution. China’s management, energy, and agricultural problems are serious, but they are the kinds of problems faced and overcome by all developing nations during the growth process.”42 If that seems a remarkably rosy statement, it pales compared with The Economist’s recent calculation that if China maintains an average 8 percent annual growth—which it calls “feasible”—it would soar past the British and Italian GNP totals well before 2000 and be vastly in excess of any European power by 2020.43
Chart 2. GDP Projections of China, India, and Certain Western European States, 1980–2020
The greatest mistake of all would be to assume that this sort of projection, with all the changeable factors that it rests upon, could ever work out with such exactitude. But the general point remains: China will have a very large GNP within a relatively short space of time, barring some major catastrophe; and while it will still be relatively poor in per capita terms, it will be decidedly richer than it is today.
Three further points are worth making about China’s future impact upon the international scene. The first, and least important for our purposes, is that while the country’s economic growth will boost its foreign trade, it is impossible to transform it into another West Germany or Japan. The sheer size of the domestic market of a continent-wide Power such as China, and of its population and raw-materials base, makes it highly unlikely that it would become as dependent upon overseas commerce as one of the smaller, maritime “trading states.”44 The extent of its labor-intensive agricultural sector and the regime’s determination not to become too reliant upon imported foodstuffs will also be a drag upon foreign trade. What is likely is that China will become an increasingly important producer of low-cost goods, like textiles, which will help to pay for western—or even Russian—technology; but Peking is clearly determined not to become dependent upon foreign capital, manufactures, or markets, or upon any one country or supplier in particular. Acquiring foreign technology, tools, and production methods will all be subject to the larger requirements of China’s balancing act. This is not contradicted by China’s recent membership in the World Bank and the IMF (and its possible future membership in GATT and the Asian Development Bank)—which are not so much indications of Peking’s joining the “free world” as they are of its hard-nosed calculation that it may be better to gain access to foreign markets, and to long-term loans, via international bodies than through unilateral “deals” with a Great Power or private banks. In other words, such moves protect China’s status and independence. The second point is separate from, but interrelates with, the first. It is that whereas in the 1960s Mao’s regime seemed almost to relish the frequent border clashes, Peking now prefers to maintain peaceful relations with its neighbors, even those it regards with suspicion. As noted above, peace is central to Deng’s economic strategy; war, even of a regional sort, would divert resources into the armed services and alter the order of priority among China’s “four modernizations.” It may also be the case, as has been argued recently,45 that China feels more relaxed about relations with Moscow simply because its own military improvements have created a rough equilibrium in central Asia. Having achieved a “correlation of forces,” or at least a decent defensive capacity, China can concentrate more upon economic development.
Yet if its intentions are peaceable, China also emphasizes how determined it is to preserve its own complete independence, and how much it disapproves of the two superpowers’ military interventions abroad. Even toward Japan the Chinese have kept a wary eye, restricting its share of the import/export trade and yet also warning Tokyo not to get too heavily involved in developing Siberia.46 Toward Washington and Moscow, China has been much more studied—and critical. All of the Soviet suggestions for improving relations and even the return of Soviet engineers and scientists to China in early 1986 have not altered Peking’s fundamental position: that a real improvement cannot take place until Moscow makes concessions in some, if not all, of the three outstanding issues—the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, the Russian support of Vietnam, and the long-standing question of central Asian boundaries and security.47 On the other hand, U.S. policies in Latin America and the Middle East have come in for repeated attack from Peking (as, to be sure, have similar Russian adventures in the tropics). Being economically one of the “less-developed countries” and inherently suspicious of the white races’ domination of the globe makes China a natural critic of superpower intervention, even if it is not a formal member of the Third World movement and even if those criticisms are nowadays fairly mild compared to Mao’s fulminations of the 1960s. And despite its earlier (and still powerful) hostility to Russian pretensions in Asia, the Chinese remain suspicious of the earnest American discussion of how and when to play the “China card.”48 In Peking’s view, it may be necessary to incline toward Russia or (more frequently, since the Sino-Soviet quarrels) toward the United States, by measures including the joint monitoring of Russian nuclear testing and exchanging information over Afghanistan and Vietnam; but the ideal position is to be equidistant between the two, and to have them both wooing the Middle Kingdom.
To this extent, China’s importance as a truly independent actor in the present (and future) international system is enhanced by what, for want of a better word, one might term its “style” of relating to the other Powers. This has been put so nicely by Jonathan Pollack that it is worth repeatingin extenso:
[W]eapons, economic strength, and power potential alone cannot explain the imputed significance of China in a global power equation. If its strategic significance is judged modest and its economic performance has been at best mixed, this cannot account for the considerable importance of China in the calculations of both Washington and Moscow, and the careful attention paid to it in other key world capitals. The answer lies in the fact that, notwithstanding its self-characterization as a threatened and aggrieved state, China has very shrewdly and even brazenly used its available political, economic, and military resources. Towards the superpowers, Peking’s overall strategy has at various times comprised confrontation and armed conflict, partial accommodation, informal alignment, and a detachment bordering on disengagement, sometimes interposed with strident, angry rhetoric. As a result, China becomes all things to all nations, with many left uncertain and even anxious about its long-term intentions and directions.
To be sure, such an indeterminate strategy has at times entailed substantial political and military risks. Yet the same strategy has lent considerable credibility to China’s position as an emergent major power. China has often acted in defiance of the preferences or demands of both superpowers; at other times it has behaved far differently from what others expect. Despite its seeming vulnerability, China has not proven pliant and yielding toward either Moscow or Washington.… For all these reasons, China has assumed a singular international position, both as a participant in many of the central political and military conflicts in the post war era and as a State that resists easy political or ideological categorization.… Indeed, in a certain sense China must be judged as a candidate superpower in its own right—not in imitation or emulation of either the Soviet Union or the United States, but as a reflection of Peking’s unique position in global politics. In a long-term sense, China represents a political and strategic force too significant to be regarded as an adjunct to either Moscow or Washington or simply as an intermediate power.49
As a final point, it needs to be stressed again that although China is keeping a tight hold upon military expenditures at the moment, it has no intention of remaining a strategical “lightweight” in the future. On the contrary, the more that China pushes forward with its economic expansion in a Colbertian, étatiste fashion, the more that development will have power-political implications. This is the more likely when one recalls the attention China is giving to expanding its scientific/technological base, and the impressive achievements already made in rocketry and nuclear weapons when that base was so much smaller. Such a concern for enhancing the country’s economic substructure at the expense of an immediate investment in weapons will hardly satisfy China’s generals (who, like military groups everywhere, prefer short-term to long-term means of security). Yet asThe Economist has nicely remarked:
For [China’s] military men with the patience to see the [economic] reforms through, there is a payoff. If Mr. Deng’s plans for the economy as a whole are allowed to run their course, and the value of China’s output quadruples, as planned, between 1980 and 2000 (admittedly big ifs), then 10 to 15 years down the line the civilian economy should have picked up enough steam to haul the military sector along more rapidly. That is when China’s army, its neighbors and the big powers will really have something to think about.50
It is only a matter of time.