SPEAKERS CONTENTS INSERTS
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66–527
2000
[H.A.S.C. No. 106–61]
MILITARY CAPABILITIES OF THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
HEARING HELD
JULY 19, 2000
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HOUSE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
One Hundred Sixth Congress
FLOYD D. SPENCE, South Carolina, Chairman
BOB STUMP, Arizona
DUNCAN HUNTER, California
JOHN R. KASICH, Ohio
HERBERT H. BATEMAN, Virginia
JAMES V. HANSEN, Utah
CURT WELDON, Pennsylvania
JOEL HEFLEY, Colorado
JIM SAXTON, New Jersey
STEVE BUYER, Indiana
TILLIE K. FOWLER, Florida
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York
JAMES TALENT, Missouri
TERRY EVERETT, Alabama
ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
HOWARD ''BUCK'' McKEON, California
J.C. WATTS, Jr., Oklahoma
MAC THORNBERRY, Texas
JOHN N. HOSTETTLER, Indiana
SAXBY CHAMBLISS, Georgia
VAN HILLEARY, Tennessee
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JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida
WALTER B. JONES, Jr., North Carolina
LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina
JIM RYUN, Kansas
BOB RILEY, Alabama
JIM GIBBONS, Nevada
MARY BONO, California
JOSEPH PITTS, Pennsylvania
ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
STEVEN KUYKENDALL, California
DONALD SHERWOOD, Pennsylvania
IKE SKELTON, Missouri
NORMAN SISISKY, Virginia
JOHN M. SPRATT, Jr., South Carolina
SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas
OWEN PICKETT, Virginia
LANE EVANS, Illinois
GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi
NEIL ABERCROMBIE, Hawaii
MARTIN T. MEEHAN, Massachusetts
ROBERT A. UNDERWOOD, Guam
PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island
ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois
SILVESTRE REYES, Texas
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TOM ALLEN, Maine
VIC SNYDER, Arkansas
JIM TURNER, Texas
ADAM SMITH, Washington
LORETTA SANCHEZ, California
JAMES H. MALONEY, Connecticut
MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina
CIRO D. RODRIGUEZ, Texas
CYNTHIA A. McKINNEY, Georgia
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California
ROBERT BRADY, Pennsylvania
ROBERT E. ANDREWS, New Jersey
BARON P. HILL, Indiana
MIKE THOMPSON, California
JOHN B. LARSON, Connecticut
Robert S. Rangel, Staff Director
Laura Truesdell, Staff Assistant
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2000
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HEARING:
Wednesday, July 19, 2000, Military Capabilities of the People's Republic of China
APPENDIX:
Wednesday, July 19, 2000
WEDNESDAY, JULY 19, 2000
MILITARY CAPABILITIES OF THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Skelton, Hon. Ike, a Representative from Missouri, Ranking Member, Committee on Armed Services
Spence, Hon. Floyd D., a Representative from South Carolina, Chairman, Committee on Armed Services
WITNESSES
Blank, Dr. Stephen J., Douglas MacArthur Professor of Research, U.S. Army War College
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Dreyer, Professor, June Teufel, Department of Political Science, University of Miami
Fisher, Richard, Senior Fellow, the Jamestown Foundation
Gill, Dr. Bates, Director, Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies, Brookings Institution
APPENDIX
PREPARED STATEMENTS:
[The Prepared Statements can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Abercrombie, Hon. Neil
Bartlett, Hon. Roscoe
Skelton, Hon. Ike
Spence, Hon. Floyd D.
DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
[There were no Documents submitted for the Record.]
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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
[The Questions and Answers are pending and can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Mr. Abercrombie
MILITARY CAPABILITIES OF THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC, Wednesday, July 19, 2000.
The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10 a.m. In room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Floyd D. Spence (Chairman of the Committee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. FLOYD D. SPENCE, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM SOUTH CAROLINA, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
The CHAIRMAN. Today, the Committee continues hearings on China's foreign policy, security strategy, military capabilities, and view of the United States. Our first hearing on June 21 focused on China's strategic intentions and goals. This morning's hearing will explore China's military capabilities and the impact of its military buildup on national security.
China maintains the largest military in the world, with nearly two and a half million active troops in the People's Liberation Army (PLA). Although most analysts believe it is qualitatively no match for the United States, China is making a significant and growing investment in its armed forces. China's military spending is increasing at a double-digit pace, its development of more modern and capable weapons platforms and its acquisition of more sophisticated hardware from countries like Russia is expanding its strategic reach. This will likely have a significant impact on America's ability to defend its vital interests in east Asia. When coupled with the bellicose rhetoric of senior Chinese military leaders, these developments should be of concern to the United States.
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The Administration's latest report to Congress on Chinese military capabilities acknowledges that China seeks to become the preeminent regional power in East Asia. However, the administration appears to take a more forgiving view of China's military potential—and the challenges it poses to U.S. security interests—than I believe is warranted. The Administration has argued that the technological level of China's defense industry is too far behind that of the West to produce weaponry that could seriously challenge the United States. However, China continues its aggressive effort to acquire sophisticated military-related technology, an effort that has been aided by the Administration's repeated loosening of export controls. Moreover, China's relative inferiority relative to the United States ignores the central issue—that Beijing's growing military potential can be used increasingly to defer our involvement in regional crises or dissuade others in the region from acting in support of U.S. interests.
As I expect we will hear from our witnesses this morning, the buildup of China's military capabilities is impressive. However, I am concerned that along with this increased military capability will come an increased willingness to use force in ways that directly threaten the United States and U.S. interests. China's military threats against Taiwan—and its buildup of ballistic missiles arrayed against Taiwan—should be taken seriously. Likewise, I believe it would be a dangerous mistake to discount as mere rhetoric China's nuclear threats against the United States should we come to Taiwan's defense in any conflict.
China's military acquisition efforts are extensive, and China has acquired military technology from the United States, U.S. friends and allies, and potential adversaries. One of the most troubling aspects of China's military modernization program is its growing strategic partnership with Russia, which Beijing views as an offset to U.S. power. China continues to acquire sophisticated military equipment and technologies from Russia, including fighter aircraft, ships, submarines, cruise missiles, surface-to-air missiles. Russia is also reportedly helping China develop laser and other exotic weapons. Among the more troubling of China's recent acquisitions from Russia are two guided missile destroyers that will likely be outfitted with anti-ship cruise missiles specifically designed to counter U.S. carrier battle groups. Reportedly, China is seeking to purchase additional destroyers from Russia.
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All of these developments carry profound implications for U.S. security and the ability of the armed forces to operate freely in east Asia in defense of U.S. interests.
To help us better understand the issues raised by China's military modernization program, we have with us today Mr. Richard Fisher, Senior Fellow at the Jamestown Institute; Dr. June Teufel Dreyer, Professor of Political Science at the University of Miami; Dr. Stephen J. Blank, Douglas MacArthur Professor of Research at the U.S. Army War College; and Dr. Bates Gill, Director of the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution.
Welcome to you all, and thank you for taking the time to appear before us today. I am looking forward to your testimony.
Before you begin, I would like to recognize the Committee's ranking Democrat, Mr. Skelton, for any remarks he may wish to make.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Spence can be found in the Appendix.]
STATEMENT OF HON. IKE SKELTON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM MISSOURI, RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. I join you in welcoming our witnesses and I look forward to their testimony.
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China is quickly emerging as a dominant economic and military force in the Asia-Pacific region. China ascendancy as a regional and global power makes it imperative that we on this Committee understand China's military capabilities. The relationship between China, the United States, and other countries is complicated, and the debate about China and Taiwan is reemerging in our Country.
The accidental bombing of the China Embassy in Belgrade has strained relations between our countries. China's weapons proliferation activities and recently revived strategic partnership with Russia are clearly causes for concern. And, at the same time, the Chinese Government seems focused on the development of its national economic power, and China's efforts to build its economy and greater participation in world trade suggests that Chinese leaders recognize that the country's interests are better served by avoiding or resolving conflicts through economic power and political maneuver rather than the employment of military force.
Unfortunately, China's recent acquisition of more modern weapons systems in alliance with Russia suggests that China has embarked on a significant modernization effort. That effort portends a shift in how China employs its military forces and its military strategy. However, modern weapons does not automatically translate into enhanced military prowess. Just because a country possesses advanced weapons do not mean that it has the infrastructure or the training or ability to support the deployment and use of those weapons in the battle space strategy and take full advantage of advanced capabilities. I look forward to learning whether China has the operational planning, logistics capabilities, training, command and control, and doctrinal shifts to make best use of the weapons that it is buying today.
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Finally, it can be said that China has placed particular emphasis on developing more sophisticated nuclear weapons capabilities. It will not be long before China's ballistic missiles are powered with a solid, not liquid fuel, and are deployed with multiple warheads. Are China's short-range and intercontinental ballistic missiles intended as a deterrent for use in retaliation against attack, or does China contemplate their first use in a first-strike scenario?
It is clear that China sees itself emerging as a major regional power and important global player in its national security calculus of a formidable and modernized military. It seems most important with respect to Taiwan, but China is developing a more regional and global-oriented force. I look forward, Mr. Chairman, to today's testimony in helping us understand this whole problem regarding China, the Far East, and their connection with the rest of the world. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Skelton can be found in the Appendix.]
TheCHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Skelton. Without objection, the entirety of your prepared remarks will be made a part of the record.
Mr. Fisher, would you proceed?
STATEMENT OF RICHARD FISHER, SENIOR FELLOW, THE JAMESTOWN FOUNDATION
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Mr. FISHER. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Skelton, distinguished members of this Committee, I would like to thank the Chairman for this invitation to join my colleagues here today as I commend the leadership of the Chairman and of this Committee for examining the issues before us today. Mr. Chairman, I have a lengthy statement that I would like to submit for the record and then proceed to summarize that statement.
The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, so ordered.
Mr. FISHER. Thank you. While scholarly assessments have disagreed in recent years, it can be concluded from numerous open sources that the People's Republic of China is in the midst of an ambitious modernization program for its People's Liberation Army. The current focus of this modernization is to acquire the space, information, missile, air and naval ground forces necessary to subdue Taiwan in the near term and to set the basis for achieving a greater level of power projection or preeminence in the greater Asian-Pacific region after Taiwan is settled in its favor, in my opinion.
It is true that the PLA faces enormous doctrinal, operational, logistical and even financial hurdles to succeed in its modernization quest. Some of my colleagues in the PLA studies field do not believe that the PLA can make it. However, based on my review of open sources, conversations with Chinese on the mainland and Taiwan over many years, I have come to the conclusion that the greater danger to the United States would be to underestimate the prospects for the success of PLA modernization.
Mr. Chairman, the PLA's modernization has the following key elements. First, there is a high-technology focus. In its domestic military research and development and its in efforts to acquire foreign technology, the PLA is stressing modern high-technology military capabilities. As the House Select Committee on military—on U.S. National Security and Military Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China (PRC) noted last year, the PRC Government, due to its centralized communist structure, is able to focus immense resources toward the building of a modern, military civil research and development sector. High-technology campaigns like the ''863 Program'' have transformed the PRC's Research and Development (R&D) sector from that of the noncreativity of a command economy towards one that begins to approach the innovation and consumer orientation of our own. It is not there yet, but the level of effort and the output where we can see it is beginning to show impressive results. The critical success of this effort requires an immense amount of foreign technology which the PRC is able to obtain by weapons purchases, commercial interaction or, increasingly, the purchase of high-technology talent and research itself.
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I have supplied a chart in my testimony that illustrates the extent of PRC weapons purchases and suspected purchases alone. Early reporting from the summit of Chinese President Jiang Zemin and Russian President Putin indicates that my list is already out of date, as there is now discussion of the sale of the Oscar-class nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine specifically designed to go after aircraft carriers, and the nuclear-powered attack submarine designed to go after nuclear ballistic missile submarines, and the T–22 backfire bomber. Technology from Israel has been instrumental in the PRC's J–10 advanced fighter program.
The PRC's emphasis on high technology flows from a strategic culture, long rooted in history, that seeks to find secret weapons that will hurt the opponent in the most opportune place to facilitate the soonest termination of a conflict.
Call it asymmetrical warfare, but I will mention the PLA effort in the following areas outlined in my testimony. Military lasers have been an area of PLA interest and investments. As does the United States, the PLA looks to lasers to provide a future leap over its opponents. The PRC envisions the use of lasers for air defense, naval defense, antisatellite lasers may already exist today, and space lasers may be envisioned in the future.
Military and space is receiving a vast amount of resources from the PLA. The PRC will soon put its first citizens into space in a capsule modeled after the Russian Soyuz, and in the not-too-distant future, the Chinese may have a space station patterned after an earlier Russian model. The PRC looks to this investment to yield outcomes that will assist its military space power as well.
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Information warfare is another area of intense interest and investment, a key element in their quest for asymmetrical advantages as well.
Radio frequency weapons that are not much mentioned in open sources at all, but which emit powerful surges of energy that can disable electronic circuitry or be focused to shoot down missiles, is also an area of interest for the PLA. The PLA is investing in both stealth technology and in counter-stealth technology, and I would also note investments in unmanned vehicles that I have outlined in my testimony. In the last—three years ago, the PLA unveiled a new unmanned submarine, unmanned remotely-piloted submarine. The U.S. Navy looks toward this kind of technology for future advantages as well.
Second, Mr. Chairman, the PLA places a great emphasis on missiles in space, and I would like to expand on that. The PLA is assembling the space information and missile forces to create a long-range missile-based information strike complex that will enable the long-range precision targeting of critical opposing enemy civil military nodes. First, their Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) and Short-Range Ballistic Missile (SRBM) forces are being modernized. The DF–31 which was unveiled in their October military parade last year, which has benefited from American warhead and solid fuel rocket technology, is now being deployed. The longer-range DF–41 is expected to be deployed by the middle of this decade. In my opinion the PRC is going to increase its ICBM numbers regardless of what the United States does in the area of missile defense. Today, the PRC's nuclear weapons are intended for deterrence on two levels: first, to deter nuclear attack; and second, to deter American intervention in the event that we decide to defend Taiwan.
In addition, the PRC is assembling a very large force of intermediate- and short-range ballistic missiles and new classes of land-attack cruise missiles for the purposes of theater warfare. These new missiles will be made deadly accurate by new reconnaissance and navigation satellites.
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A third emphasis is focus on forces needed to subdue Taiwan. Taiwanese sources have estimated in recent reports that the PLA already has 400 short-range ballistic missiles near Taiwan. Last year the Pentagon was reported to have estimated that the number of these missiles would not reach 600 for another 5 years. I believe it is reasonable to estimate that the PLA could have 1,000 short-range ballistic missiles and land-attack cruise missiles aimed at Taiwan at least by the end of the decade.
An air force modernization is being led by the acquisition of Russian technology, the SU–27 fourth-generation fighter, and, very soon, the Suhkoi SU–30 strike fighter. In addition, the PLA Air Force is acquiring new Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft and tanker aircraft to create balanced strike packages.
The Pentagon has said in its most recent report on the PLA that Taiwan could lose its edge in the air power balance by 2005 if current trends continue. The PLA Navy is concentrating on the acquisition of new submarines and advanced anti-ship missiles like the SS–N–22 Moskit to increase its ability to impose a blockade on Taiwan.
Fourth, Mr. Chairman, the PLA's current path of modernization is building a basis for future power projection. Forces being acquired for possible conflict over Taiwan by terminally guided intermediate-range ballistic missiles, long-range cruise missiles, plus SU–30 and AWACSs and tanker packages and new submarines will lay the foundation for future PLA power projection within its region. But after the Taiwan question is settled in its favor, it is my estimation that the PLA will then devote greater funds to that which is necessary for wider power projection. The PLA Navy would dearly like to acquire aircraft carriers, and it has been studying their acquisition for many years. They have been denied, in my opinion, merely by a matter of funds.
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This effort, Mr. Chairman, will impact and stress the U.S. alliance system in Asia and present new challenges that will extend as far as India and the Persian Gulf region. While today the PLA does not seriously threaten U.S. forces in Asia, I believe it is beginning to shift the balance on the Taiwan Strait in its favor. This, plus the PLA's high-tech focus, stress on acquiring asymmetrical capabilities which exploit U.S. weaknesses, a phenomenal appetite for foreign military technology, and Beijing's growing hostility towards the U.S. strategic presence in Asia should be cause for real concern in Washington.
To continue to deter conflict on the Taiwan Strait, it remains necessary for the United States to remain true to the Taiwan Relations Act and to continue to sell Taiwan the weapons it needs to deter conflict. Inasmuch as recent Pentagon assessments make clear that Taiwan is losing its edge to the PLA, it is critical for the U.S. to sell Taiwan the submarines, missile defense, naval defense and air defense equipment that it has requested, according to numerous news reports. These requests for this year have included conventional submarines, the Aegis air defense destroyer necessary to defend against the new Moskit supersonic missile, the harm anti-radiation missile, which is needed by Taiwan to counter new S–300 modern surface-to-air missiles which have been placed near the Taiwan Strait, and the Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) to begin to address the force balance in air forces.
Mr. Chairman, in the future I believe that Taiwan will need laser defenses to counter the growing number of PLA missiles, laser defenses of the type that we don't even have available to offer for sale to Taiwan. The Clinton administration's refusal to sell many of weapons that Taiwan has requested this year, Mr. Chairman, will put an added burden on the next administration to consider these sales in order to try to keep the peace on the Taiwan Strait.
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Until the PRC evolves from communism and changes its strategic goals, I believe the United States should continue to strengthen its alliance system in Asia. For example, we should offer real military assistance to the Philippines' President Joseph Estrada when he comes to Washington next week. The breakdown in the Philippine-American military relationship is being repaired thankfully through the leadership of the Clinton administration and President Estrada. I believe we should ratify this turn by helping our long-standing ally, the Philippines, to modernize its defenses.
I believe that the United States should try to seek a new partnership with India, a nation with whom we have had a most unfortunate relationship over the last 50 years. I believe it is time for the world's largest democracy and the world's most powerful democracy to find a new basis to build a new partnership and perhaps even a strategic partnership.
Finally, the United States must continue to invest in the research and the technology necessary to ensure that our forces are never in a position to be challenged by that of China's. I believe that we must continue to invest in the space and airborne information systems that give our forces an added edge, the necessary missile defenses to protect our troops, high-power lasers, supersonic cruise missiles. If Trident nuclear ballistic missile submarines become excess because of arms control agreements, we should go ahead and modify these to carry cruise missiles. I believe we should invest in new stealth warships, the F–22 fighter is essential for our air forces, and advanced missiles that will make the F–22 an unparalleled force.
Mr. Chairman, I think that we can live in peace with the People's Republic of China, but it will require leadership. It will require an investment in our own forces. And as I began, I commend again the leadership of this Committee in examining these issues and in providing the leadership necessary to ensure that our Country remains strong and that our interests are defended in the Asian-Pacific region. Thank you very much.
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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Fisher.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Fisher can be found in the Appendix.]
The CHAIRMAN. Professor Dreyer.
STATEMENT OF PROFESSOR JUNE TEUFEL DREYER, DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI
Professor DREYER. Thank you from me as well for having the wisdom and foresight to call these hearings. I think my colleague, Dr. Fisher, has done a superb job as always of outlining the Chinese military buildup. My concern is that the administration has been overly complacent about the importance of this growing military might. Its policy seems to be based on certain assumptions, and while we would be all be very pleased if these assumptions came true, the problem is we are in big trouble if they don't. What I find dangerous is the assumption that they are necessarily true, and so I have subtitled my testimony ''Eleven Assumptions in Search of a Policy.''
Some of these assumptions are growing economic prosperity, will lead to pluralism and, in turn, pluralism will cause the erosion of the communist state and its replacement by a democracy; and democracies, the Administration says, don't fight other democracies, and therefore the best course of action is to engage China. Certainly engagement is a good idea. And then it says not to engage China is the same as isolating China. In the words of one high-ranking Administration official, if we treat China as an enemy, it most assuredly will become one. With regard to the military specifically, other members of the Administration have been very dismissive of the growth in the military capabilities of the People's Liberation Army, stating that it is no match for the United States military.
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These slogans go by fast, and what I would like to do is examine them. The first is it is not certain that the PRC, the People's Republic of China, can continue current rates of economic growth. As is often the case when you have rapid economic growth, prosperity is unevenly distributed both within the same community in China and throughout geographic areas in China. This increasingly uneven distribution of wealth, combined with an education system that stresses equality, is causing tremendous social strains. It is one of the major reasons why the Government of China is putting massive amounts of money into developing the western regions which have fallen behind.
This would be all well and good if the money were doing what it is supposed to do, but that comes against another problem which is corruption, tremendous corruption in the system. Money is not being used as it is supposed to be used, and it is not getting the results it is supposed to get. The banking system of China is in precarious health. State-owned enterprises continue to operate in the red and they deplete the resources of the treasury. There is tremendous social disruption. The Premier knows what to do to restructure the economy, but the social cost of throwing 18 million people out of work every year to do it are just too high.
A second assumption is the one that capitalism will cause the demise of the communist government. China has developed a very different system than the capitalism that we are used to. It is a variant of market Leninism. The state has co-opted the entrepreneurs. They are not able to operate autonomously. They are very much constrained by the bureaucracy rather than vice-versa. So it is the entrepreneurs who are the tools of the bureaucrats rather than vice-versa. Could this change? Absolutely. Has it done so far? No.
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Third, even the collapse of the communist government does not guarantee that democracy will be its successor. It certainly wasn't the successor in the Soviet Union and the other states of the former Soviet Union, you don't see very much successes in terms of protections of civil liberties and democratic government.
Fourth, even if China were to become a democracy, China would not necessarily become less of a threat to its neighbors. I think the demonstrations of June 4, 1998 was a real watershed that scared the Government of China. It is quite literally afraid of its own citizens. And partly to shore up its position, it stirred up nationalist passions, a kind of us-versus-them mentality which has been quite popular. When Japanese leaders come to visit China on state visits, the government has to put the anti-Japanese activists under house arrest to keep them from stirring up other people.
The current government I would characterize as a sloppy autocracy. But were it a democracy, it would not be able to bottle up these nationalist passions because it would be illegal. As one of my colleagues said, it couldn't put the toothpaste back in the tube of nationalist passions.
Fifth, the Administration seems unwilling to internalize the security consequences of an engagement policy that is one way, rather than mutual as it should be. And this is very dangerous in that a country that is assured that another country will engage it at any cost can act with impunity, because there are minimal costs to intransigence, since the other country believes in engagement no matter what.
I believe that a sound policy for the Administration or perhaps the next administration would be to realize that the alternative to engagement is not necessarily isolation, that there are intermediate positions based on the conduct of the People's Republic of China.
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Sixth is the statement that if the United States treats the PRC like an enemy, it will surely become one. If this is true, then what about the converse? In fact, China does treat the United States not only as ''an'' enemy, but as ''the'' enemy. PLA, the People's Liberation Army journals and other military publications are full of scenarios in which the People's Liberation Army engages an unnamed enemy which is technologically superior, and really has to be us, no question about it.
China was very, very nervous about the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and it was quite comfortable with the situation where it could play the Soviet Union off against the United States; very uncomfortable with the idea of one superior power. The Gulf War indicated to the Chinese that the one superpower was going to be like a bully and try to impose its values on the world. The situation got worse with regard to Kosovo. Both of these scenarios have relevance to Taiwan, of course, but I want to get away from the idea that it is Taiwan that causes the problems. I think it is the Chinese unhappiness with one superpower that is causing the problems, and Taiwan is a manifestation of that but it is certainly—if Taiwan were to disappear tomorrow, I believe that the problem would still be there with the United States.
There is in the testimony various military scenarios that the PLA is arguing about which would be best. I do not disagree with my colleague's statement that the Chinese will engage in an arms buildup no matter what the United States does, but I should point out that there are limits to how far this can go. There is a significant strain of opinion within the Chinese leadership that says, oh-oh, the Americans forced the Soviet Union into a ruinous arms race so that it could bankrupt the Soviet Union and make it fall apart and, guess what, that is what they are trying to do with us.
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So I believe that they are wary of this and will—just because they are wary of us does not mean that it is less of a threat to us. In fact, if they go into an all-out arms race, it might be easier for us.
Finally, to say—seventh, to say that China is no match for the United States military, as the Administration does, is a misstatement of the question. It is likely if there is a global confrontation between the United States and the People's Republic of China, the fact that the United States is technologically superior and has a more resilient economy would mean that China would lose and the United States would win. This is a nonscenario. The Chinese have no intention of engaging the United States globally. They would engage the United States regionally, and not by attacking the United States but by attacking the regional neighbors with whom it has territorial disputes. These would most likely be Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines, where its chance of prevailing militarily are much better. China has by far the largest military in the region, in fact the largest military in the world. Only Japan and Taiwan are technologically superior. The Taiwan military edge is eroding rapidly, and in the case of Japan, there is a serious internal debate in the country about whether article nine of the country's constitution would allow it to fight.
The United States has close ties with many of these countries. It has a mutual security treaty with Japan and the Taiwan Relations Act with Taiwan—rather, not with Taiwan, but as the United States law—and a long-standing commitment to the Philippines as well as to stability in the region and to keeping the sea lanes open. There would be pressure on Washington to become involved. Therefore, we would be confronting China on its home turf. It is necessary to remember the United States has global interests whereas China is only engaged in its region, and the United States military is already stretched very thin.
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I know that you don't disagree with that since I read the House publications which are very kindly sent to my e-mail, and we have to contend with the possibility of somebody seeing we are involved in the South China Sea and somebody like Saddam Hussein thinking this would be a wonderful opportunity to make trouble when we are otherwise engaged.
China would also seek to control the public relations aspect of any problem. They would portray the victim as the aggressor, as they already do: Taiwan is a troublemaker; Japan is in the grip of a trend back towards a World War II type of militarism; they have said bad things about President Estrada as well; the Indian Government is composed of a bunch of fanatics, et cetera.
Its diplomats also say that the United States has agreed that there is but one China and Taiwan is a part of it, therefore conveniently glossing over the fact that the United States never defined what it meant by one China and has insisted that there be no use of force to settle the cross-Strait problem. The American public is either unwilling or unable to grasp these subtleties. This is too much for the average person whose field is not international relations to get his or her mind around. They don't understand this. China, of course, has already reminded Americans on several occasions that it possesses nuclear weapons, and asked them if they would be willing to trade Los Angeles or San Francisco for Taiwan.
China analysts have also taken note of America's aversion to casualties in any confrontation. They talk regularly about the body being dragged through the streets of Somalia, the fact that we thought that we had to fight the war in Kosovo with no casualties, and they are banking on the assumption that if they are able to inflict some casualties on us, we will fold up our aircraft carriers and go home. They are making sure that they have the ability to inflict those casualties. As Mr. Fisher told you, the Sovremenny-class destroyers are designed as aircraft killers. There is discussion in the testimony about the lethality of the Moskit, and the fact that the anti-missile system is essentially powerless against it. He has mentioned some other Chinese weapons as well that would be difficult for us to cope with.
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Eighth, because the Chinese military is no match for the American military, the Chinese military won't fight. I urge you to talk to Chinese military officers about that one. They have a very different idea, and these assertions are reinforced in PLA newspapers and journals; and hence it may be that contrary to the Administration's assertions, the Chinese will not be deterred from attack.
There is a study, being a social scientist, I have the luxury of disagreeing on coding on studies, but it looks at a number of wars and finds that well over half of them were started by the losers, including a couple where the losers knew they would probably lose. So this is an unwarranted assumption on the Administration's part.
Ninth, because starting a war would disrupt economic growth in China, its leaders will not resort to force. Chinese leaders have stated that they regard recouping these lost territories as a matter of national honor. They are willing to absorb a short-term—they are sure it is going to be a short-term—hiccup in their economic growth in order to restore the national honor.
They have already successfully enlisted American corporations on the side of its various efforts. The American corporations say you should not let trade get involved in security decisionmaking or human rights decisionmaking, and that is a good argument, but China does not buy the argument. If they have arguments with us, they buy Airbuses instead of Boeing jets. Taiwan investors have legally invested over $40 billion in the Chinese mainland, and we believe there are many billions more that are unregistered that come in through funny channels, and yet the Government of China has said that it is going to levy sanctions on Taiwan businesses in China if they don't support unification. So, again, a specious argument.
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Tenth, China can be engaged as a strategic partner. The assumption seems to be that by treating China as a friend, its behavior can be modified in ways that are more compatible with American values. We have had a strategic partnership now for nearly five years. This is the period that sees China proliferating to Pakistan and several other countries as well, stealing American secrets from various laboratories, and the administration looking the other way. Clinton at first declared the level of proof regarding the transfer of ring magnets to Pakistan as insufficient. When sufficient proof that it could not be denied was produced, he accepted the Chinese Government explanation that it knew nothing of the transfer and really didn't levy sanctions. The Administration has been similarly loath to accept the findings of the Cox Commission on military/commercial concerns with China.
The Chinese Government's encouragement of demonstrators' attacks on the American Embassy in Beijing in retaliation for our accidental bombing of its embassy in Belgrade is hardly the action of a strategic partner. I actually was in Beijing when this happened, and I watched people getting off buses and being handed things to throw at the embassy. This is not a myth.
Also, Beijing's current effort to cause a rift in the United States' relations with its European allies over the matter of national missile defense is not the action of a strategic partner. The Clinton administration has worked hard to encourage the restoration of military-to-military relationships with China. They say that it is important for us to know and understand the Chinese military. I have no gripe with that whatsoever, but it is interesting that the Clinton administration also opposes any kind of relationship with the Taiwan military to which the United States has a commitment through the Taiwan Relations Act. I find this a stunning failure of logic.
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Eleventh, and last, the Administration has a habit of treating information that contradicts its optimistic assumptions by either suppressing it or distorting it. An example of suppression: A February 2000 report by the Department of Defense indicating that Taiwan is far more vulnerable to attack than previously recognized and the isolation of its military is causing further technological shortfalls. The Administration stamped the report Secret and in essence tried to bury it. Somehow news of the study was leaked to the Washington Post, not normally a foe of Democratic administrations. Distortion, the manipulation of the Annual Report to Congress pursuant to the National Defense Authorization act, holding up the report, adding sections that change the tone of the report.
Two that really bother me that are contained in the testimony here, talking about percentages of what Taiwan's Air Force's fourth generation, vis-a-vis what percentage of the People's Liberation Army Air Force are first generation, this is fine if everybody agrees to fight with percentages of aircraft, but in fact absolute numbers are what count. It also fouled up the counting by including F–5E, which are a pretty old aircraft, in Taiwan's count and talking about the Indigenos Defense Fighter (IDF), assuming that all fourth-generation are the same, and the IDF has had huge problems because the United States insisted that Taiwan use contractors that had never built planes with after-burners. In Taiwan the plane is regarded with some great skepticism. The IDF, which stands for Indigenous Defense Fighter—and people in Taiwan are fond of joking, they know English well, saying IDF stands for ''I don't fly.''
Another statement in this odd Department of Defense report talks about the PLA acquiring stand-off weapons which could be used in a preemptive strike against Taiwan. Now, ''preemptive'' implies that Taiwan plans to attack the mainland first. It seems to me highly unlikely that Taiwan, 23 million people vis-a-vis 1.3 billion on the mainland, and has only defensive weapons, is going to attack the mainland first. Hence, I have to regard this report as suspicious because there is no explanation as to how or why Taiwan might be planning to attack the mainland.
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Finally, the Administration has sought to deny or minimize the importance of any indications that China is making steady advances in the modernization of its military and that it regards the United States as its enemy. There is no certainty that China will grow into a major power in the near future for reasons I have indicated and more. There is a tremendous environmental disaster looming on the horizon, and a lot of Chinese citizens really don't listen to their party in government in the way that they used to under Mao, et cetera. But nonetheless, Chinese leaders' threats on matters of sovereignty and intent have to be taken seriously. It is possible they are bluffing, but American policy has to take into account the possibility that they are not bluffing and that's what we are not doing.
The real threat to U.S. national security is the tendency to deny or suppress information on the growth of this military power and the hostile intent expressed by the party and government in China. Thank you.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Professor.
[The prepared statement of Professor Dreyer can be found in the Appendix.]
The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Blank.
TESTIMONY OF DR. STEPHEN J. BLANK, DOUGLAS MACARTHUR PROFESSOR OF RESEARCH, U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE
Dr. BLANK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a great honor and privilege to testify before you today on Russo-Chinese relations. It is matter of vital importance to our national security. While I am not speaking in any official capacity and am merely presenting my own views, I hope that the information and analysis presented here and in my accompanying longer statement enhances the quality of our understanding of this crucial relationship.
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The Russo-Chinese relationship is now one of long standing and it is continuing to evolve, as this morning's newspapers indicated. It is a relationship which has a profound importance for Asia and for international security as well. Russian and Chinese leaders, before President Putin's most recent visit, described this relationship as an equal strategic cooperative trusting, or trustworthy or confidential partnership that is oriented towards the 21st century. On Monday, President Jiang Zemin upgraded that to say a new stage had been reached and it was now one of mutual coordination. We can see that coordination in all areas, economics, politics, an ideological approach to international relations and military cooperation.
The description given by Moscow and Beijing differ from that given by Beijing to the relationship with the United States which it describes as a relationship which is building towards a strategic partnership. In other words, China does not say the United States is a strategic partner, and the United States as far as China is concerned has not reached that status. For us to say that China is our strategic partner is an example of the kind of one-sided analysis that my colleague, Professor Dreyer, has just stated. Furthermore, the Russo-Chinese relationship is one that is not oriented against third parties or an alliance. This is fundamentally false. It is quite clear and has been quite clear since at least 1996 that this is a fundamentally anti-American relationship.
Furthermore, although it has not been formally described as an alliance yet by either side, and we don't see the kinds of alliance mechanisms that we see, for example, between the United States, South Korea and Japan, or Australia and New Zealand, the fact of the matter is that the cooperation between both sides is growing and that the term ''alliance'' has been used on a number of occasions not only by the media but certainly by Russian officials and even by many Chinese officers, particularly after Kosovo.
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As a matter of fact, in 1998, Defense Minister Grachev approached Beijing requesting an alliance. In 1998, American intelligence officials believed that the Russian Government approached Beijing asking for an alliance. In 1999, Prime Minister Putin spoke of expanding cooperation in all fields, further suggesting there is an alliance, and this was duly reported from the Hong Kong press.
Furthermore, last week, two or three sources from Taiwan stated—I suspect this is not altogether true—that President Putin had told his officers and promised China in the event of hostilities breaking out between Taiwan and China, that if the U.S. 7th Fleet sailed to Taiwan's rescue, he would order Russia's Pacific Fleet to block our forces, thus solemnizing a military alliance. I am not sure that these reports are true, but they indicate the curve of the relationship.
Russo-Chinese military aid was about $1 billion a year from 1991 and 1992 to 1996. After the Taiwan crisis of 1996, it doubled to $2 billion a year, and last year they started negotiating an agreement which would lead to $5 billion a year of military and technological transfer through the year 2004 which would indicate $4 billion for the next 4 years.
In today's Washington Post, Deputy Defense Minister Klebanov said that arms sales would double; he didn't say that they would double to $2 billion, that is what the Washington Post spin was. But if you take the totality of all of the Russian transfers—air, naval, ground forces, air defense, nuclear, space, and information warfare (IW), plus high-tech of dual-use nature, biotechnology which has become an area of joint research—it is clear that we are much more than $1 billion a year.
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Furthermore, the Clinton administration officials have admitted that Moscow is helping China build short-term capabilities for conflict in the Taiwan Straits and these capabilities will be used to deter or confront us and our forces in this conflict.
Second, there are regular ongoing discussions between strategic think tanks and academies in which they exchange with each other both scenarios concerning the Taiwan Straits and of course strategic ideas, assessments, technologies and so forth.
Mobile missile technology has been transferred to China. There has been a transfer of miniaturization techniques to China for nuclear missiles as well. The People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) has of course received a Suhkoi-27 and now is getting the Suhkoi-30 which gives the Suhkoi-27 over-the-horizon targeting capabilities. They are going to get sales and co-production capability for the Suhkoi-27 and are negotiating for the same thing for the Suhkoi-30. China is also trying to get further advanced Russian airplanes like the Suhkoi-37.
Richard Fisher has discussed the sovereignty amendment, and he has talked about the discussions about the Oscar submarine and the Sunburn or Moskit anti-ship missile. What is going on further is that the Chinese are now trying to buy the new version of that anti-ship missile which is an improved version. It is called the SS–N–35 by NATO, Yakhont, in Russian, and it will be even more lethal and deadly. China is also getting the technology to develop the AMRAAM-like system. Our State Department efforts to prevent this kind of sale have failed, and as a result Russia is selling to China precisely those capabilities which China needs to deter the United States or to confront the United States in the Taiwan Straits.
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Furthermore, if you look at the pattern of Chinese procurement, it follows a Soviet Union pattern of attempting to build a joint and combined arms anti- or sea-denial strategy. That is to deny the United States control of the theater in the western Pacific and the waters around Taiwan. The idea that China is somehow seeking to start a global war with the United States, as is regularly intoned by the Administration officials, is fundamentally a misrepresentation of the situation.
And, in fact, one of the most distressing things about this Russo-Chinese relationship is the fact that the United States has been oblivious and complacent concerning this. Administration officials actually supported the Russo-Chinese relationship right up through 1997-1998. They haven't said anything about the discussions in the previous year which have intensified. There has been no reporting in the American press of these reports out of Hong Kong about an alliance, whether to deny them or criticize them in any meaningful way.
At the same time, the Pentagon was constrained to admit in the most recent report that the attempt by the Chinese to obtain these weapons relates to the fact that a confrontation with the United States in and around or over Taiwan is the dominant scenario today in Chinese war planning and training.
Therefore, China does not see the United States as a strategic partner. Furthermore, it is seeing the United States as enemy number one in all practical senses of the term. Unfortunately, this is equally true of Russia. If you read the fundamental statements by the Russian Government of the past year, the draft defense doctrine in the National Security Council and the new foreign policy concert that just came out last week, it is very clear that the United States, even if it is not named as such, is enemy number one and this alliance or partnership or quasi-alliance between Russia and China is clearly directed overtly against American interests and American allies. It is impeding the reconciliation of Japan and Russia, which is something that Russia desperately needs and we would benefit from as well in Asia.
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It is also furthermore manifested in nine different areas. First of all, beyond the comprehensive military systems that I have discussed, this alliance or partnership or whatever one wants to call it, is an attempt by both governments to ''illiberalize''—and I stand by that with regard to Russia—revisionist governments which seek to overthrow the status quo and change the territorial status quo that currently exists to secure themselves and the Chinese hegemony of nondemocratic elements in their government.
Putin is using the Russian Secret Police and the Army, and China is cooperating with him to create a kind of unification of police and military apparat through the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) that would give Russia the integration that it has long sought and reunified military and police apparat in the CIS. We see that here the domestic and security aspects of this relationship go hand in hand. So we have an attempt to secure undemocratic governments from threats perceived within their own regimes and states.
Second, they are attempting to deny the United States access to central Asia and the enormous energy sources there. There is the belief which has been hyped by both governments that they confront the kind of international Muslim conspiracy, to quote Putin, ''from the Philippines to the Balkans,'' which is an attempt to overthrow the governments in both states. Without denying the seriousness of the threat posed by Chechnya, in many respects these are threats brought about by the heavy-handedness by Moscow and Beijing.
And second, the idea that there is some sort of international Muslim conspiracy to which all states in response have to unify around Russia and Beijing is transparently an attempt to perpetuate the oppressive regimes that will be both anti-American and integrated around Russia and have support from Beijing.
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Thus, at the recent maneuvers in April in central Asia, Chinese observers watched as the Russians tried to coordinate the militaries of central Asia.
A third place where there is cooperation is south Asia. Since 1998, if not earlier, Russian diplomats have talked about a strategic triangle involving India. They have attempted to bring India and China together, and, indeed, to some degree they have succeeded. There has been a noticeable warming of relations between Beijing and New Delhi in the last two years since the India nuclear tests, even though those were supposed to be directed against China as enemy number one.
This attempt to bring India together is an attempt to create a united front against Islamic insurgency in places like Xinjiang and Kashmir and central Asia, but it is also an attempt to create an anti-American block in Asia and in the United States.
Now, I am not saying that this has succeeded. There are substantial difficulties, but any coalescence of Beijing and New Delhi together benefits China, because it moves the agenda from those issues that define a difference between China and India to a common agenda of anti-Americanism and denial of the area to United States influence and suppression of central Asian movements and south Asian movements.
A fourth area of cooperation—and, of course, Indian cooperation is vital here—is the United Nations (UN). Both China and Russia have veto power. Given the nature of today's international relations in which many foreign interests of the United States cannot be realized except through the coalitions based on UN Sanctions, their determined opposition to whatever we seek to do creates the possibility of obstruction of vital U.S. interests in the future, or even in the present; for example, in the Balkans, or with regard to areas like Iraq where we have clearly stated a vital interest in denying Saddam Hussein the capability of threatening his neighbors once again.
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China and Russia's cooperation in the UN is clearly intended to undermine the sanctions regime against Iraq and to throw a monkey wrench into American operations abroad that would necessitate the obtaining of UN sanctions.
A fifth area in which there is cooperation against us is proliferation. We have seen many reports in the last week or two in the newspapers. They only reflect long-term continuing policies on the part of both Beijing and Moscow to sell technologies that can be used for nuclear missiles and perhaps for other weapons of mass destruction to either rogue states, states of concern, or, for that matter as Russia has done, sell them to China to upgrade China's capabilities against the United States.
These examples of proliferation are many. They include Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Pakistan, perhaps Syria in regard to chemical weapons. There is discussion of sales to Libya and Russian nuclear assistance to India as well. They have enabled North Korea to become secondary salesmen in their own right. Thus, North Korea transferred technologies to Pakistan and Iran.
The upshot of this is that Iran has now tested its Shahab-3 missile. General Zinni, before he left U.S. Central Command (CENTCON), testified that he expected Iran to have an ICBM usable by the year 2003 or 2005. That missile can challenge our allies in Israel in the Gulf. There are reports that Iran is not going to stop there and is going to build an intermediate-range ballistic and then an intercontinental ballistic missile so it can challenge us directly and our allies in Europe.
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It is not accidental that these policies are taking place. Although the corruption in both governments is of a legendary nature, nuclear materials are generally held under very close supervision and control, and it strikes me as it strikes some of my other colleagues, that the transfer of these technologies represents a deliberate act of high policy on the part of China and Russia in order to tie down the United States, to retain American military power and forward presence in areas that are vital to us and which are of increasing importance to both of those governments.
A sixth area in which we find cooperation is the anti-Taiwan scenario. But the technologies and weapons that are being given to China also have resonance for the south China Sea and Southeast Asia. China, for a long time, has been making moves to enlarge its territorial acquisitions in the Spratly Islands, claiming that these islands belong to them, and the technologies it is receiving from Russia and which it is developing on its own and the weapons systems which it is receiving from Russia are precisely those that analysts have said that China needs in order to accomplish this feat.
Seventh, we find not only political cooperation against theater missile defense—and Russia just said that it would oppose theater missile defense as well for Taiwan—we find it against national missile defense, attempts to undermine our alliances in Europe and in Asia, and the transfer of technologies and discussions of ways how to beat American missiles and American anti-missile systems through space information warfare and missile systems.
An eighth area of cooperation appears to be South Korea. In the last ten days, both Russia and China have publicly stated that once South Korea and North Korea are unified, and the prospects for that look much better thanks to the summit, American troops ought to leave South Korea. That would make China the strongest military power in Asia and undermine Korea's ability to stand up to China as well.
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Finally, we find that Russia has virtually abdicated any independent Russian policy towards Southeast Asia. It has been unable to make any meaningful cooperation with some Southeast Asian states other than to sell limited amounts of arms, and it is trying to expand that. But there have been numerous occasions where Russia has clearly supported Chinese position papers on Southeast Asian security issues.
Thus we find that comprehensive relationship that is challenging the United States globally and in the Asian theaters. This is a relationship that cannot by any stretch of the imagination be compatible with a strategic partnership of the United States. The Administration has remained in denial about this relationship. It has not imposed any cost upon Moscow or Beijing from selling China these weapons or proliferating these weapons abroad. The sanctions imposed have been short term, most of them have been taken off after a period of time, and we see the difficulties we have dealing with China in terms of sanctions.
Every time we want to impose proliferation sanctions on China for violating international agreements, we find a chorus of complaints that this is going to deny Americans business. This was not the case under the Reagan administration, where Secretary Shultz made it clear that the Government's first responsibility was the national security, not the benefit of computer salesmen.
I would suggest to this Committee that it recommend and that it recommend to the entire Congress that we take much more robust and stronger activities to impose costs on Moscow and Beijing for engaging in these kinds of policies and to repair our alliances and strengthen the capabilities of our allies in Taiwan to defend themselves against China and to deter China. Our policy has been that the Taiwan issue must be solved peacefully; and I read that to be peacefully, not by threats, intimidation, or actual war.
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Even the Pentagon now admits that between now and 5 to 15 years, China will have the capability to probably intimidate Taiwan unless something is done. Not enough has been done in the past several years. The appropriation to Taiwan was cut 62 percent in fiscal year 1999, and I would suggest that this is not the best way to defend American interests abroad.
Therefore, in conclusion, I would like to suggest that this relationship is one that poses growing and enormous danger to the United States both in Asia and in the United Nations and around the world, and it is time for someone to raise the alarm. Thank you.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Dr. Blank.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Blank can be found in the Appendix.]
The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Gill.
STATEMENT OF DR. BATES GILL, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR NORTHEAST ASIAN POLICY STUDIES, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION
Dr. GILL. Thank you very much. Allow me to thank you, Mr. Chairman and the members of this distinguished Committee, for this series of hearings on China and its military power.
My formal remarks will consist of three parts. First, I am going to raise some methodological points. Second, I will place my colleagues' remarks in some context about China's military power, and then I will focus more narrowly on China's conventional and nuclear missile programs of concern.
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I want to begin by flagging four general methodological concerns that I think will help us all guide and refine our efforts to understand Chinese military power.
First, our Country has thus far devoted far too little in the way of resources and intellectual energies towards appropriately understanding and responding to the many challenges and opportunities which the Chinese military places before us.
It is true that China is a hard target and that it closely guards all manner of information, especially regarding military affairs. But there is more open-source information available today from China and a greater degree of potential intelligence access than we have ever known. The problem lies in our ability to access, analyze, and report on the information that is out there. In a word or two, I believe far more resources are necessary in the area of intelligence, research, and analysis on Chinese security motivations, its perceptions, doctrinal developments, and operational capabilities. There will certainly be many unanswered and difficult issues after that, but more needs to be done to make this black box as small as we can.
Second, the politicization of views regarding the Chinese military and the United States unnecessarily strengthens the Chinese hand. It is unfortunate that without better information, our debate on Chinese military power has become overly polarized and simplistic, and this proves beneficial to Beijing. Exaggerations of Chinese military modernization merely grant to China the kind of psychological deterrent they could never hope to achieve on the basis of their actual capabilities. The happiest persons to hear our analysts overly tout the China threat are the Chinese General Staff, students of Sun Zi, who are grateful for every psychological advantage they can take. Likewise, to dismiss Chinese capabilities within certain well-defined scenarios is also only playing into Chinese hands, and we do not owe China any favors in this regard.
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Third, Mr. Chairman, we wrongly focus too much attention on Chinese hardware. Weapons systems. Our focus should be on software, if we can call it that, which determines military effectiveness. Hardware is sexy and tangible; but noting its existence, while important, does very little to inform us how, when, and under what conditions that weapon will be operated and how well it will be operated.
I was thinking this morning, if my dear wife for my birthday bought me a $5,000 set of golf clubs, it would do little to allow me to compete with the likes of Tiger Woods.
Analysts too often equate simple acquisition with capability. At best, acquisition translates to potential capability, and it should be our job to carefully analyze what potentiates Chinese military modernization. Things like doctrinal shifts, logistical capabilities, training regimens, technology absorption, assimilation and diffusion, these are the true scenarios which determine military effectiveness.
This becomes all the more important when we talk about an RMA, Revolution in Military Affairs. As we know, they are not simply based on hardware. Rather, RMAs challenge militaries to go beyond the basic applications of hardware, to place more emphasis on what might be termed software, behind-the-scenes knitting together of technologies, concepts and organizational frameworks which make militaries more effective.
So my point is here, knowing what weapons the Chinese have is the easy part. Knowing when, where, how, and why they will be used is far more important, although difficult to answer, and this is where emphasis should be placed.
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Fourth, our efforts should focus on two areas of concern. One is China's conventional missile capabilities in the Taiwan Strait and China's ongoing strategic nuclear modernization program. These are two concerns I will raise later in my remarks. So those are some methodological points.
Let me turn to some context to understand Chinese military power. It is only through the understanding of these bigger behind-the-scene pictures that we can grasp and appropriately respond to Chinese military capabilities. Let me address this in three sets of questions. First, Chinese military capability for what purpose? What are the roles which we see the Chinese having to put their military capability to work?
For most of the history of the People's Republic of China, the purpose of China's military power has been largely devoted to the security of inland borders, and this is a goal that they have more or less achieved. Now the Chinese military is at the earliest stages of focusing on a more ambitious goal, and that is full unification of national territory, meaning extension of its sovereignty over Taiwan.
But to put it in a few words, not only with regard to Taiwan but more broadly, the purpose of Chinese military power is turning slowly away from inland concerns to its north, south, and west, to mission requirements to its east and southeast.
Now, to achieve these ends, what internal challenges and opportunities will China face? I would name at least three.
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First, China will need to entirely rethink its approach to warfare by going from a land-based, heavily mechanized infantry power to one capable of projecting power over, under, and on water. Now, in the past two or three millennia of Chinese history, it has rarely been a serious naval power, and it has certainly not been one for the past 400 to 500 years.
The concern with inland borders has dominated Chinese thinking during the 50 years of the People's Republic of China. The name of the Chinese navy, which is called the People's Liberation Army Navy, aptly illustrates the subordinate place which men in blue continue to have in the Chinese military. Unlike the United States or Great Britain or Japan, which geostrategists would term ''island powers,'' unlike these powers which have extraordinary naval, naval-air-marine warfare traditions and very hard-won experience, China is a traditional land power. It has a lot of work to do before it can become a green water, let alone a blue water, force.
A shift in doctrine is another challenge. China needs to significantly revise the way that it conceptualizes warfare, meaning a shift in doctrine. Chinese strategists see the new environment for warfare to be limited in time and space and likely to be fought against high tech and even superior adversaries. This is what the Chinese call a doctrine of limited local war under high-tech conditions.
Some analysts have shown that Chinese strategists based at the military academies now theorize about something more, something akin to a revolution in military affairs. But as Michael Pillsbury has shown, RMA advocates remain outliers in a Chinese military system where the vast majority of both force structure and doctrinal thinking remain wedded to people's-war-based approaches. But no matter how one looks at the debates in China and how they unfold, we have to recognize that they represent a significant and challenging shift for Chinese military power.
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Third, let me talk about shifts in technologies. At a minimum, these shifts in battle space and in doctrine are going to require the Chinese to come up with improvements in precision, lethality, rapid mobility, stealth and joint operations. This raises a number of procurement problems for China, as its own defense industry has largely failed to provide many of the kinds of advanced weapons and technologies which would be required. This explains very well why China has so actively gone abroad over the past decade for its weapons. Going abroad certainly has its advantages, but also raises questions about dependency, reliability, maintenance, spares and costs.
Just as a simple anecdote, I would point out that since the 1995 agreement between Russia and China was reached to coproduce the Suhkoi 27 aircraft, China has managed to produce a total of three of these, none of which have been particularly effective, owing to a number of technical problems. We should be concerned about this deal, but I am simply trying to place it in context.
New technologies and tools also demand improved training and dissemination methods in China. This will not be easy in a military which has no noncommissioned officer corps, has short two-year enlistment periods and teaching raw recruits from the Chinese military how to drive a truck is a major training accomplishment.
Third, what overarching opportunities and motivations will drive China to confront these many challenges it faces? One of the most important factors in China's favor is the likelihood of continued economic and technological development, although as Professor Dreyer has suggested, this is far from a given. But I think this overall will allow for an increased access to dual-use technologies.
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Another powerful motivator will be a singularly strong political will under the current regime to reunify with Taiwan. That will—combined with increased economic, technological and professional capacities, over time will steadily improve Chinese military capabilities, but that progress will be painful and at times difficult.
Let me conclude by talking about the problem, China's problem then. They—there is no one more painfully aware of the gap between Chinese mission requirements on the one hand and its desired capabilities on the other than the Chinese themselves. To deal with this problem, China has undertaken an increasingly focused approach to improving its military capabilities, especially with regard to missiles. Improved missile capabilities answer a number of questions for Chinese forces, both with regard to a Taiwan scenario and with regard to improving its nuclear weapons capabilities.
First, on the Taiwan scenario, recognizing its weaknesses, China appears to be devoting increased resources not to an invasion scenario, but to an intimidation or perhaps it could be called an ''area denial strategy.''
In contemplating the Taiwan Strait, China has never seriously invested in certain capacities to deal with the persistent tactical conundrum which the strait poses, namely 90 miles of open water. China has not developed significant air- and sealift, amphibious air capabilities, let alone the creation of a viable Marine Corps. It is clear to me that China does not wish to go toe to toe with the United States Navy or even attempt an all-out invasion of the island.
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Both of these would be politically and militarily disastrous. Under these conditions, however, we see that the procurement of standoff and coercive weapons makes good sense for the Chinese military. This explains China's rapid buildup of these systems as opposed to invasion-related systems, both indigenously from their own R&D and defense capacities, but also from abroad.
We know, though, that history tells us that missiles alone usually cannot prove decisive in conflicts and need to be backed up by comprehensive and conventional forces to complete the job. But given China's intent to develop its missile forces opposite Taiwan, we should focus on this aspect of Chinese threat in particular and provide lower-tier, land-based missile defenses to Taiwan, which is entirely consistent with our commitments under the Taiwan Relations Act. We should also more seriously urge Taiwan to develop its passive defenses, hardening of its defense facilities and command and control modes to better withstand possible Chinese missile attack.
Finally, let me turn to the problem of missile development with regard to China's nuclear weapons modernization program. After more than 35 years as an acknowledged nuclear weapons power, China is now in the early stages of developing a second generation nuclear force which, over the next 10 to 15 years, will present the United States with an entirely new strategic situation. Having sensed the vulnerability of its strategic forces for a decade or more, especially with regard to its intercontinental ballistic missiles aimed at the United States, China's ongoing nuclear weapons modernization program will build towards a more capable deterrent. They will deploy an all-mobile, solid fuel missile force. They will build larger numbers of strategic missiles, and these systems could be armed with multiple warheads.
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This more modern arsenal will likely aim for a credible minimal deterrent vis-a-vis the United States and a more forward-leaning warfighting posture of limited deterrence for its theater systems aimed at U.S. and allied bases in the region.
As we move forward with our National Missile Defense plans, we need to more fully integrate this new reality into our thinking. The current debate which is either a form of National Missile Defense (NMD) or stable relations with China strikes me as wrong-headed. Our goals should be to achieve both.
In any event, we have not taken into adequate account the range of negative steps that China may take in response to our NMD plans, from accelerated strategic modernization to driving a wedge into our alliance relationships or proliferation of countermeasures. We need to be better prepared to avert or shape such negative responses in ways that favor U.S. interests.
Thank you very much.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Dr. Gill.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Gill can be found in the Appendix.]
The CHAIRMAN. In Korea, we were trying to assess what was going to happen, and the Intelligence Agency warned us about North Korea invading the South. Neither did we consider China's involvement later on in Korea and that big, mechanized army they had. They did a good job, learning to drive trucks, of coming down and just about retaking all of South Korea too before we finally managed to get them up to where we now have that alliance.
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Basically getting down to the point, if they are not taking the wrong view and they are instrumental in getting North Korea to come to the table with South Korea in an effort to reunite that country and thereby get us out of the way, what do you think about that? Do you think that they might have some bearing on what North Korea does in that respect?
Dr. GILL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I agree with your analysis. I believe that China's long-term aim would be to bring peace to the Korean peninsula. I am not sure that they have a preference whether it be on North Korean or South Korean terms. I would suspect that they would almost prefer South Korean terms because of its advanced economy.
But over the longer term, to return to what we—to what the Chinese might consider a more natural geostrategic division of interest in East Asia, where China as the predominant land power would want to have its sphere of influence extend over the Asian land mass to include Korea, while the United States and Japan as the predominant sea powers of the western Pacific would have its influence extend over the water area, if you will, instead of the Asian land mass, I would agree that would be their best-case scenario.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.
Mr. FISHER. It is my opinion that Beijing is already trying to start this process of dividing the South Korean government from its American ally. I point to the matter of Theater Missile Defense (TMD) as being the fulcrum that Beijing has chosen.
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Last year, the South Korean Government came out and publicly stated that they did not want to participate or cooperate with the United States TMD, in the broader Theater Missile Defense program. This was loudly applauded by Beijing, and I have not noticed any follow-up on the part of the Clinton administration to go back to Seoul and explain to our ally the fundamental necessity for our cooperation in theater missile defenses, what that means to the future of stability in northeast Asia.
And so it seems that we are sort of leaving the field and only the Chinese are playing in it.
The CHAIRMAN. A bigger threat to South Korea —affirm those missiles, that we don't have a defense against them.
Professor DREYER. I certainly would agree that China would like the United States to leave the area, but there is also the fear that they have of a unified Korea. Clearly, they cannot come out against reunification because it has implications for Taiwan; but nonetheless, they are worried about what a unified Korea—reunified Korea would be like.
This gets to every nation's paranoia because the Koreans are fond of saying, we are the nut in the nut cracker between Japan and China. If you talk to the Chinese, they often refer to Koreans as very fierce people. They see Korea as a thorn in the side of China. So they would want unification—as Dr. Gill said, unification under the Chinese sphere of influence, but they are not naive enough to think that that is easy; and you will note that Kim Dae-jung was recently in Japan burying the hatchet over World War II, not an easy thing to do, but that concerns them as well.
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Mr. FISHER. The Japanese are also concerned about whether a unified Korea would dispense with any possible nuclear weapons that the North Koreans may possess today. For that reason alone, it serves the greater interest of stability in the region to work with our allies today to promote an interest in nonnuclear missile defense to trump the possible nuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
Dr. BLANK. In that connection, today President Putin is visiting North Korea, the first Russian President or head of state ever to do that. He is going to try to get North Korea to say on the one hand it is not going to build missiles or threaten the United States, therefore eliminate the necessity for TMD or NMD. He is also going to negotiate a military technical agreement to sell North Korea technologies or weapons, provided there is some mechanism for payment.
It strikes me as somewhat bizarre that South Korea is getting authorization to build longer-range missiles of a conventional nature that could be targeted against the North at the same time that it does not want defenses that would reduce its vulnerability. If it does get those missiles, first of all, that gives North Korea a perfect excuse to build its own version of Theater Missile Defense. And second, it ratchets up the missile confrontation on the Korean peninsula.
Furthermore, since we see signs that Russia and China are coordinating their positions with regard to Korea, we could be in for some very dangerous twists from those two states and perhaps from North Korea in the future.
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Last, even the Clinton administration's statements, although you have to read them carefully, indicate that they still think North Korea is building missiles. So we are by no means out of the woods in Korea despite the big progress that took place last month.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.
Mr. Skelton.
Mr. SKELTON. I am not quite sure how to phrase my question. If you open the history books, you will see that Japan went into Manchuria in 1931 and the rape of Nanking occurred in 1937?
Professor DREYER. 1937, yes.
Mr. SKELTON. Those were overt acts that the rest of the world could see that Japan was embarking on adventurism and the rest of the world was hoping that it would stop, and then it turned into World War II in the Pacific.
Is there any parallel that causes you to think that China would enter into adventurism a la the scenarios with Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines and their military orientation?
Anybody?
Mr. FISHER. ''Adventurism'' would not be the word that I would use. I would say that what we are seeing, as others on the panel have pointed out, is an extension of what the leadership of China today believes to be their rightful place—their territorial destiny, if you will—to reunify with lost territories, territories which today, especially in the case of Taiwan, happen to be occupied by a democratically elected government; and then in the South China Sea, where you have a very complex set of conflicting claims, that China is not showing much interest in resolving peacefully but is biding its time and taking opportunities to enforce claims by military force.
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Mr. SKELTON. Such as?
Mr. FISHER. The most recent example was the occupation of Mischief Reef, which is about 150 miles off the Philippine Island of Palawan, but 800 miles away from the mainland coast of China. This was undertaken stealthily, without anybody paying much attention. It was discovered by Philippine fishermen in January 1995. This is within the economic exclusion zone of the Philippines, but the Chinese saw fit to build structures in 1995, and then, in late 1998, to expand those structures from temporary structures on stilts to concrete structures, structures that could be easily expanded to accommodate helicopters, which are getting much more modern and capable within the PLA Navy and Army.
What we see here is a progression. China is reaching—.
Mr. SKELTON. That is one example. Do you have others?
Mr. FISHER. I would also point to an expansion of—attempt to expand its influence in South Asia.
The arming of Pakistan with nuclear technology, nuclear weapons technology and the missile and missiles technology to deliver those weapons has contributed to an arms race in South Asia today, a nuclear missile arms race. That doesn't serve anybody's interests except a country that is looking to try to find advantage in that area. This is what the PRC is doing today.
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Professor DREYER. I would add just one more example, and that is Vietnam. The leasing of an energy contract on a disputed part of the Spratly Islands to Crestone Energy of the United States; and then, of course, Vietnam retaliates with Blue Dragon, a lease to another company. But it was very cleverly done because if it is a U.S. company that gets the lease, the betting in Beijing is that the United States is not going to do anything, and of course we didn't.
This shows a strategy in the South China Sea of not spectacular adventurism in the sense that you used the word, but a kind of creeping aggression and to keep things just below or a level below the threshold where another power wants to come in and get involved.
Mr. Fisher mentioned the putting up of boundary markers, which was just off the coast of Palawan in the Philippines to indicate China's exclusive economic zone which is well inside what the Philippines regards as its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ); and Fidel Ramos, the previous President of the Philippines, who is a West Point graduate and a very sharp guy, ordered them blown up. And he also took the media on a tour—because the Chinese said, These are structures for our fishermen, Fidel Ramos took the media journalists there and he said, Look, radar, concrete bunkers. This is the only time you have seen this done for fishermen. The Chinese accused him of bulling the People's Republic of China, and they threatened him with armed aggression if he did anything like that again.
Mr. SKELTON. We all remember the successful efforts to create and pass into law what we now call the Goldwater-Nichols Act, which established a lot of good things for our Country, but allowed us to have and plan integrated warfighting doctrine a la General Schwartzkopf against the Iraqis in 1991.
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Does China have anything comparable to Goldwater-Nichols that would cause them to have an integrated doctrine of warfighting?
Dr. GILL. At a theoretical level, being kicked around in academies and among lieutenant colonels perhaps. There is, of course, very limited open-source information for us to make a precise determination beyond what we can get from these sort of theoretical discussions in the academies.
What intelligence or near intelligence I have been able to see and learn about about Chinese joint operations and the like suggests to me that they are at the very, very earliest stages. We have been able to see, for example, when they have staged mock invasion-like scenarios or training exercises, that there is a kind of combination of some air force assets, some naval assets, and some army assets, but I don't think that it amounts to much more than a mock demonstration of it.
I guess what we can say is that it demonstrates their interest in it. It would demonstrate efforts to move in that direction because they recognize, especially in the wake of Desert Storm, the need for them to be more effective in this regard; but I think the evidence is very shaky and minimal that they have the kind of approach that you are suggesting they would have.
Mr. SKELTON. Thank you.
Mr. FISHER. Mr. Skelton, I would like to add, if I can, that I make a little more of an optimistic assessment of the PLA's interest in combined joint arms warfare, the interest that they have expressed in the American debate in this direction; and I would also offer the thought that the PLA does not require a completely top-to-bottom, networked, computerized, jointly managed, set force in order to succeed in even near-term scenarios such as possible conflict over the Taiwan Strait. It is merely enough that it happened sequentially that 600 or 1,000 missiles all go and find their target and wipe out the Taiwan navy and the Taiwan air force. Then with maybe half a Taiwan air force to defend them, then you bring in a couple of hundred Suhkoi 27s and Suhkoi 30s, armed with precision-guided munitions, and they do their thing. Then the navy can come out and impose the blockade with even more impunity.
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So what I am suggesting is that they don't need a computer-controlled system such as we are putting in place today. They are gathering enough of the blocks to do the job that is before them quite nicely, in my opinion.
Mr. SKELTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. BATEMAN. [presiding.] Dr. Blank, I was reading as I tried to listen—and I am not sure that you do either very well when you do that—but when I was reading your statement, there were passages that spoke of our driving the Russians and the Chinese toward a much more intense and cooperative relationship by certain things that we have done, things like our involvement in Bosnia; our expansion of NATO; particularly our involvement in the bombing of Kosovo, which they took as an aggressive act against a sovereign state having jurisdiction over its own territory.
Is it your view that these were mistakes and that we should not have done these things because they would not be perceived well, or accepted well, by the Russians or the Chinese?
Dr. BLANK. No. Quite the contrary. I am on record of having supported the expansion of NATO, and I did support the Kosovo operation.
My problem with those policies is that the Administration regularly denied that the Russians or the Chinese were sufficiently angry about those policies to do something that really threatened American interests. I think, quite frankly, that the enlargement of NATO—if you want to call it ''expansion,'' which is what the Russians call it—was justified, as was the Kosovo operation. If you look at it from their point of view—and as an analyst, I have to do that—then you understand why they felt aggrieved.
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The problem is that we have been in denial about the reaction of these states to our policies. If we go around the world saying that our policies are inherently self-explanatorily virtuous and refuse to accept or understand why they are opposed and tell our people that there is a cost to be paid for this, then we are going to end up with policies that cause problems down the road.
Thus, for example, we are now in Kosovo and the Russians and the Chinese will not support much of what we want to do further in the Balkans. The Russians are trying to undermine the possibility of a second round of enlargement of NATO, and we have not explained to anybody why that should be the case. We have just said that Russians should not feel upset about this. We are extending democracy, but we are also foreclosing the return of the Russian Empire, which is the geopolitical rationale behind it.
As Professor Dreyer explained, we have not communicated to the public what the issues are with regard to Taiwan. When you have a situation like that, you actually have bad policy and bad policy leads to unforeseen and negative consequences.
Mr. BATEMAN. Well, with or without the appropriate public relations being conducted, is it wise, discreet, necessary, that the United States be actively promoting further enlargement of NATO to include the Baltic States, given the sensitivity of this notion of this is a part of the geopolitical Russian Empire?
Dr. BLANK. I just came back from the Baltic States, and one of the things that is not reported is that Russian diplomats have the habit of going around the Baltic States saying that we are coming back, which is naturally rather off-putting to those governments, and to Poland as well, yet you don't see this in the press. And they have attempted to make all kinds of charges against the Baltic States.
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Now the Administration claims that it supports enlargement of NATO to the Baltic States in principle, but that it does not commit to any specific enlargement in that direction at any given time, and there is not going to be any enlargement under this Administration because it ends in sic months. Our allies believe that it provokes the Russians.
I believe that enlargement could be done in a way that would be nonprovocative, much like Norway or Greenland's membership in NATO. Norway's situation, they were very careful to maintain membership in NATO, but do so in ways that did not provoke Russia because the Soviet Union and Russia share a border with Norway.
I think that could be negotiated. I don't think that it is an irrevocable barrier to the Baltic States' enlarging.
But quite frankly, I see the Russian States and the examples quoted in the paper and the examples that emerge from the Russian press on a regular basis as a revisionist state, and until the imperialist types in Moscow understand that day is over, we are not going to have a democratic Russia, let alone a partner over there.
Mr. BATEMAN. Let me make more of an observation than a question. I guess it was probably last year President Chirac was visiting Beijing, and the press reports him as having made the statement in a news release at the end of their discussions that he was seeking a strategic relationship with the Chinese to avoid American hegemony. How helpful do you think that is?
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Dr. BLANK. I don't think that is very helpful. And of course the French, as today's paper points out, have a reputation and a habit of doing this. There is an analyst who once wrote that the French relationship with the United States is like that of a customer who buys insurance but refuses to pay the premium.
You know, that sounds very well for Beijing and of course it creates problems, but I think if France were ever to be menaced by a serious crisis, they would know very well who their allies are.
Professor DREYER. Could I just add, that does not prevent the French from trying very hard to sell weapons to Taiwan. The Mirage fighter is a case in point. And they are currently trying to peddle a satellite, which the Chinese get very angry about, and saying that it is really for peaceful purposes and doesn't have military applications.
Mr. FISHER. In the 1980s, France was trying to sell its weapons to the PRC, and it is my opinion that they would like to do so as soon as possible again, to get beyond the European Union embargoes and sell to the PRC technology and weapons systems. The weapons systems which have already been sold are already in the PLA inventory and they have been absorbed; some are being modified and improved upon. And I think the French would like to start this relationship again. They see that the Russians are making too much money selling weapons to the PRC and they would like to do the same.
Dr. BLANK. Great Britain is in a similar situation. The Government of Israel decided not to sell the AWACS system that was supposed to be mounted on the Illusion 76 to China. We also know that Great Britain is interested in selling China a version of that system, and it would be harder for us to twist their arm.
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Mr. BATEMAN. The Chairman has returned and I must exit, but I wonder how much the cancellation of that sale is going to cost us.
Mr. FISHER. Congressman, I would just add that for American airmen who may someday have to fly over the Taiwan Strait, the Administration's effort to convince our ally, Israel, to forego that sale will be greatly appreciated.
Professor DREYER. Regarding Mr. Skelton's comment about adventurism, the Chinese will never define their actions other than the recouping of lost territories, and they have a very artful way of construing these lost territories. Someone used the term ''reunification.'' This generally strikes me like fingernails on a blackboard for most people.
Taiwan was only a province of China for less than 10 years, between 1885 and 1895, and China at that time was ruled not by Chinese but by the Manchus, so I find reunification sort of a bizarre term to refer to this by. But in any case, you will find that many of the other irridentist territories were part of China under the Mongols, again not a Chinese dynasty. So they have a creative way of defining these things.
Mr. SKELTON. That is very similar to what Adolf Hitler did prior to the Second World War.
Mr. SISISKY. Everybody was looking for a reason why Russia was getting involved with China. It is simple; it is money. They need to keep their industry going too, and I don't think that we need to look for deep reasons.
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I agree with you A lot, I think we need to keep the technical edges, but there is one thing that we always forget. People in China are not stupid. The leaders are not stupid people. The greatest leverage that we have on China is trade. I don't know the figure, whether it is 40, 50, or 60 percent of their exports go to the United States. I don't know what would happen in China if those exports were cut out.
Do you have any idea or do you think that leverage means anything?
Professor DREYER. I don't think we are ever going to find out, because the initial impetus behind the 1979 normalization came from American corporations who wanted guarantee of their investment under Organization of Petrolium Exporting Countries (OPEC). The rationale was that trade would liberalize China, et cetera, and it would be a lever for us.
In fact, the equation has gone exactly the other way, and that is that China has enlisted U.S. corporations as a lever against the United States Government. And for all of the arguments—okay, the trade imbalance is huge, what would China do if all of a sudden we stopped trading with them? We are never going to find out because there are enough corporations who are interested in trading—.
Mr. SISISKY. I disagree with you 100 percent. You shoot a missile at a U.S. Naval ship and you will see that tide change. The global corporations, in my opinion—you bring body bags back home and you will see a change like you have never seen, in my opinion, and that is a risk that I don't believe China would even anticipate taking. I do agree with you we lose our leverage with American corporations just by the threat of doing it. In other words, if you attack Taiwan, we will cut off trade.
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Professor DREYER. I don't think that we disagree.
Mr. FISHER. Congressman, I think it would be extremely helpful for American corporations to acknowledge that in the event of a war over Taiwan, that a cutoff of trade would be in the national interest of the United States, so as to send a deterrent message to the leadership in Beijing that this could happen and that this could be a reality and that they need to take that into account. I for one support trade with PRC, but I am also very concerned that this not be a free ride in that the leadership of the People's Republic of China—that they do understand that we will not tolerate business as usual in the event of a threat to the people of Taiwan.
Dr. BLANK. Unfortunately, there are many people writing on these issues in China who believe it is precisely because we want to trade with China that we will not defend Taiwan, and if they can intimidate Taiwan or capture it in a quick war, we will look the other way, precisely because we depend on that trade.
Second, with regard to Russia, it is true that there is a very strong motive on the part of the Russian defense industry to get money from anybody, given the terrible economic conditions there; but there has been a geostrategic component to Sino-Russian relations. We ignore that at our peril. In 1992, China feared that the break-up of the Soviet Union could lead to the same kind of thing happening there—particularly alarmed about Chin Chon which has been in unrest for 20 years now—and therefore it hastened to make relations with the central Asian governments and with Russia, and was gratified when Boris Yeltsin overruled his Foreign Minister and said we will not put human rights into this agenda.
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So while there is a very substantial economic interest group in the defense industry that in many cases would not survive, that is very dangerous thinking to think it is only economics.
Furthermore, as this military technological relationship grows, you are now getting, because of the co-production agreements and the technological transfer, the integration of Russian and Chinese defense industries, so that the Russian defense industry only survives by producing for China, not for Russia, and that becomes a strategic element in the equation. There is more than economics. It is a strategically driven relationship.
Dr. GILL. The percentage of our GNP that is dependent on our trade with exports to China is very, very small. There is no—if there are indeed Chinese analysts who are suggesting that we would be too concerned about our trade in order to defend Taiwan, they are very, very sadly mistaken. We just do not depend on our trade with China to that degree. Certain companies have an enormous investment.
I would like to turn your remarks—because it is not simply what China trades to us which is valuable to us; I think for people inside China, their ability to see a more pluralistic society, to see the continued enfeeblement of one-party domination, to see the continued socioeconomic improvement of their lives, the people of China require very much to have a more open trading relationship with us. And that, I think, is the ultimate value of our trade with China, not our ability to cut it off at its knees, but our ability to use it in ways that will shape Chinese policies favorable to us.
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Mr. SISISKY. Just one more comment as concerns American corporations. I just call your attention to the fact that three weeks or four weeks ago on the vote on the WTO, that vote was very close, and I can tell you that the pressure from American corporations was all over this place. So the problem in trade is that the Congress will react, maybe not American corporations, but the Congress will react to that.
Professor DREYER. I feel better.
The CHAIRMAN. [presiding.] Mr. Bartlett.
Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, very much. I want to take this opportunity to make a statement for the record on the nuclear dimension of Chinese military power. The hearing today is on Chinese military power, and I have listened with great interest to our panel of expert witnesses who have provided substantial and valuable testimony. Virtually all discussions of Chinese military power focus on China's conventional military capabilities—the air force, the navy, the army, and especially their present and future capability to project power over the China seas, particularly against Taiwan.
When I hear officials from the Administration and Pentagon reassure us that the United States would surely prevail over China in a contest over Taiwan, and therefore, by implication, China assuredly would be deterred from attacking Taiwan, the discussion is always in the context of United States and Chinese conventional military capabilities, as if China were a large version of Iraq or the former Yugoslavia. The White House and the Pentagon always seem to forget that China is a nuclear weapons state, armed with intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the American homeland.
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Despite the Quadrennial Defense Review's sensible warning that hostile states are likely to meet American superiority in conventional weapons by resorting to weapons of mass destruction, the Pentagon seems to assume that Beijing will be deterred from resorting to nuclear weapons by the United States' vast numerical preponderance in nuclear weapons. But is this assumption necessarily true?
Let us consider what China can do with its small force of intercontinental nuclear missiles and what the implications of the threat and use of that nuclear capability against an undefended America will be for the U.S. resolve in a future crisis.
I submit that the United States is more likely to be deterred than China in a future crisis, and I submit that the Chinese nuclear threat constitutes a clear and present danger that is another compelling reason for the deployment of a national missile defense as soon as possible. China has 18 intercontinental nuclear missiles capable of targeting the United States. These are silo-based CCS–4s, each armed with a single 5-megaton warhead, which is over 250 times more powerful than the A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Press reports, allegedly citing classified intelligence studies, claim that most of these missiles are aimed at the most populous U.S. cities.
This is indeed consistent with Chinese military doctrinal writings which call for holding ten percent of the U.S. population at risk. A national targeting plan for China's ICBM force against the United States would probably allocate 15 CSS–4s against the 15 most populous U.S. cities to attack the 26 million Americans residing there, almost ten percent of the U.S. national population as required by their doctrine. I repeat, with merely 15 of their ICBMs, China can kill 26 million Americans. This is not a future threat, it is the capability they possess right now today.
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If standard targeting procedures are followed, two CSS–4s would be withheld as a reserve to compensate for any launch failures. That is 17 of China's 18 ICBMs used so far. What would they do with the last ICBM? One CSS–4 might be used in an electromagnetic pulse, EMP, attack against the entire North American military and civilian electronic infrastructure which would arguably shut down our power grid and communication network for a prolonged time. Its high-yield warhead would be ideal for an EMP attack. Or, the missile could be used to destroy the 16th most populous U.S. city, Baltimore, and kill an additional 0.2 percent of the U.S. population.
Would the United States be deterred by a Chinese threat to kill 26 million Americans and to destroy the entire North American electronic infrastructure upon which our modern national existence depends? I leave it to you to decide.
To those opposed to U.S. deployment of national missile defense, please consider for a moment the enormous risk that we are taking and the unacceptable price we may pay because of our inability to defend ourselves from merely 18 Chinese ICBMs. Imagine your family and friends and the 26 million people like them that are living in the 15 great cities that are probably targeted by Chinese missiles.
I will read the target list slowly, ask you to imagine these cities and the great human achievement in life, culture, technology, and wealth that could all be lost to us because we cannot defend ourselves.
New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, San Diego, Phoenix, San Antonio, Dallas, Detroit, San Jose, San Francisco, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, and Columbus.
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Twenty-six million Americans. I think it unlikely that Western civilization as we know it would continue if these great centers of technology, culture, wealth and humanity were destroyed, especially if there were a nationwide EMP laydown. It would be like trying to imagine history of Athens, Rome, Alexandria and other great cities of antiquity if they were destroyed at the height of their golden age. I believe that the profound experiment in freedom is that America has the potential to transform the world, providing America remains engaged in the world and is not destroyed in the process of promoting freedom, all of this at risk because of our failure to defend ourselves.
And, finally, for those who are unpersuaded by this argument for national missile defense, for those who think only in terms of money and are fixated on the possibility that a national missile defense might cost $20 billion or even $60 billion over a decade, consider this: The estimated value of the real estate in Philadelphia, just one of the 15 cities targeted by China, is worth over $1.7 trillion.
This concludes my remarks, thank you for hearing me out.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Bartlett can be found in the Appendix.]
The CHAIRMAN. Are you soliciting comments on your statement there, Mr. Bartlett?
Mr. BARTLETT. I would be pleased.
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Dr. BLANK. Sir, we already know from 1962 and the Cuban missile crisis that the United States and the Soviet Union were both deterred from using nuclear missiles because of the capability of each other.
The problem here is not necessarily that China would use its nuclear weapons against the targets you eloquently described, but that they would believe that this would deter us from striking back at them in a conventional conflict over Taiwan.
The question of deterrence, or as Thomas Schelling said, the threat to leave something to chance, is one that resides as much in the perception and the minds of policymakers as it does on closed paper. And what we know of Chinese military history since 1949 is that China operates with a different set, or different calculus if you like, of deterrence than we do. That does not mean they are more or less rational; it is just a different way of thinking about these things and they show no hesitation, as Professor Dreyer indicated in her testimony, in teaching other states a lesson or initiating a war even against a superior power in order to achieve what they may consider to be desirable objectives.
So, we need to make sure that China is deterred not just in terms of nuclear weapons, but also conventionally as well.
Mr. BARTLETT. Yes, sir?
Mr. FISHER. I would simply add to this that in 1995, the PLA in its attempt to intimidate the government of former President Lee Teng-hui, the President of Taiwan, launched six of its DF–15 missiles to a target location about 90 miles north of Taipei. If you make certain assumptions about where those missiles were launched from, that location would be on a target ring that would include Taipei. Or, if you also take into consideration some recently revealed Chinese military writings about nuclear policy, nuclear doctrine, you could also take the use of missiles in that form in 1995 to be one of intimidation and warning in which they would possibly contemplate the use of a nuclear device, simply throw it out there in front of the Seventh Fleet on its way to come to Taiwan's assistance, thereby causing the President of the United States to question whether the Seventh Fleet should continue.
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But beyond that, Congressman, what worries me even more is that like the United States, the PLA is researching a new class of weapons, of warheads if you will, that use certain principles or, if you will, a spectrum of the power that is released by a nuclear explosion and take that power and focus it in new and unique ways, and this would be the class of weapons called radio frequency weapons and high powered microwave weapons. These accomplish, if you will, the goal of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) without using a nuclear blast behind it. And as a consequence, if you take these weapons and put them on your DF–15s or your DF–21 intermediate range missiles, what you have is a weapon that will accomplish some of the effects of a nuclear weapon without killing a lot of people, but definitely wiping out electronic circuitry, radar communication grids, that part of our deterrent force in East Asia. And you will accomplish military missions without recourse to nuclear weapons, which are on the PLA side held in reserve to deter the American use of those same weapons.
Mr. BARTLETT. I might note that if an enemy were to use an ICBM to—and a nuclear detonation to produce an EMP laydown, that if they were going to do that in an effective way, there would be no loss of life and there would be no buildings damaged. For instance, a single large weapon detonated 300 miles high over Nebraska would blanket our whole country and at the margins there would be at least 10- to 20,000 kilovolts per meter of energy. That is enough to arguably disrupt or destroy all microelectronics in our Country. That means we have no power grid and no communications.
As a matter of fact, last summer during the Kosovo conflict, I and ten other Congressmen sat in a hotel room in Vienna with members of the Russian Duma and a personal representative of Slobodan Milosevic. We developed a framework agreement for ending the Kosovo conflict which five days later was adopted. One of the members of the Russian Duma, Vladimir Lukin, who was ambassador here at the beginning of this Administration and is now Chairman of their Foreign Affairs Committee, he said if we really wanted to hurt you with no fear of retaliation—because we would not know who did it—we would launch a Sea-Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM) from the sea, detonate a nuclear weapon high over your country. It would hurt nobody and damage no building, but it would shut down your power grid and your communications for six months or so.
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There were ten other Congressmen sitting in that room who heard Vladimir Lukin say that. So the potential for using a nuclear weapon—and a five-megaton weapon is plenty large, by the way—and detonate it at the most effective altitude, it is high enough that it kills no person, and injures—damages no building.
Is this not the ultimate in asymmetric warfare? A single weapon destroying our whole power grid and our whole communications network is, in effect, a giant continental time machine that would move us back a century in time?
Professor DREYER. Would that not affect the air traffic control communications?
Mr. BARTLETT. It would be gone.
Professor DREYER. In that case we would have casualties.
Mr. BARTLETT. Yes, it is an indirect effect of the bomb. We would have lots of casualties because there would be no transportation, our cars would not run, it has computers in it. Several years ago there was a mini series on television called ''Amerika'' spelled with a K? You remember it? Two of the players in that were a young couple who were romancing, and the young fellow was in his pickup truck. You remember when the bombs fell in the Midwest and his truck would not run? Tom Clancy has in his books a scenario on EMP effects. It has been in The New York Times. This is known by Hollywood. It is known generally. It is ignored by the Administration and by the Pentagon.
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Dr. GILL. If I may, Mr. Bartlett, respond to your remarks. As I noted in my formal comments, I do support the development of a national missile defense. But my concern is that if we go simply in the sort of single-factor approach to maintaining our security, we may be making some mistakes.
I think a national missile defense has to be integrated with other perhaps more important ways that we can achieve American national security.
For example, as you pointed out, the Chinese have for 20 years been able to target American cities and destroy them. It has only been in the last 10 years that they have gotten up to 18, but nevertheless millions have been under the threat of Chinese missiles for 20 years.
Why have they not launched and deterred us or threatened us or brought pain to us in those 20 years? Or similarly, why was it that when the Soviet Union had enormous ability to bring damage to the United States it did not?
I think a part of the answer is that mutually assured deterrence works. When General Xiong Guangkai told us that we would not trade Los Angeles for Taiwan, I wish I had been in the room, because my answer would have been, and you will not trade Los Angeles for 600 or 700 of your major industrial and civilian locations, which would certainly be a proper response.
So I think mutually assured destruction works. That is point number one. I think a simple establishment of relatively stable and nonhostile relationships is another way of trying to maintain our security vis-a-vis China. Those—call them diplomatic, strategic, as well as national missile defense efforts—in combination, I think, are probably going to provide us with the best answer.
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I am not sure yet whether we can, vis-a-vis China, especially given its economic and technological advances, race them to a point with our national missile defense that we can fully assure ourselves that not a single Chinese missile could threaten an American city. We certainly shouldn't lead Americans to believe otherwise.
Mr. BARTLETT. Because we cannot do everything does not mean that we shouldn't do anything.
Dr. GILL. That is correct.
Mr. BARTLETT. I remember a Chinese official just a few years ago looking to the future and the potential for nuclear war between our two countries noting that China could lose 250 million people in a nuclear war and survive it very well, with now a billion, 200 million people. So I am not sure that the mad philosophy of deterrence that worked so well with the Soviet Union is going to work with China.
Professor DREYER. Maybe we haven't thought creatively enough about where to put those bombs. Over 60 percent, sometimes as much as 87 percent of China's food is raised in three relatively compact river valleys. Three nukes and you would have mass starvation involving more than 250 million people, and there is not enough food in the rest of the world to feed them.
Mr. FISHER. I think, Congressman, your higher goal is to avoid all of that and ensure that our Nation has the defenses necessary so that no aggressor thinks that they can contemplate nuclear war with the United States and thus be deterred broadly.
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And I for one, sir, have great faith in our engineers, in our scientists, and I don't think that we have really begun to tap their talents and to task them with the goal of providing for a proper theater in national missile defense.
I certainly—I truly believe that if we set our minds to the task that we can help Taiwan come up with a missile defense that will deal with the most of the thousand missiles that I believe the PLA will have pointed at them by the end of this decade. We have not yet begun to invest in laser systems, for example, that can be powerful and mobile and quick enough to enable Taiwan to defend itself from these missiles in an economical way.
We have begun work in this direction in cooperation with Israel to help Israel defend the Golan Heights. But I believe that as a matter of national policy, we should take this technology and commit to making these systems powerful enough to deal with Chinese short-range ballistic missiles and cruise missiles well before this decade is over. I think we can do that. I think we have to invest in it, and I would hope that this Committee would consider such initiatives for the defense of Taiwan, for the deterrence of conflict that will involve American forces.
Mr. BARTLETT. What you cite for the moment is true. We have enormous superiority, but if you go to any of our universities and go to the technical departments, you will note that frequently half the people there are Asian. Enormous numbers of Chinese are coming to this Country. They have a work ethic which we are losing in this Country. They are frequently the best students in these schools. China will not forever be a sleeping giant, and we now need to move, I think as quickly as we can, to ballistic missile defense. All we can do is all we can do, but because we cannot do everything does not mean we shouldn't do anything, which appears to be the philosophy of some.
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Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for indulging me.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you Mr. Bartlett, and ladies and gentlemen, I appreciate your involvement here today. We have had other hearings, and we will have others too, I guess, trying to assess this overall situation. We have people who agree on things and disagree on things. It reminds me of that great philosopher who said it is amazing how our minds are structured such a way that we can look at the same set of facts and arrive at conclusions 180 degrees apart. That still mystifies me. It happens all the time.
But we appreciate your involvement and your thoughts on this matter. It means a great deal to us, and you have helped us tremendously in our work. Thank you very much. The meeting is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:30 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
July 9, 2000
[This information is pending.]