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China's Military Strategy: Challenging America's Role in Asia?

The Center for National Policy (CNP) hosted an important discussion to explore a central question for Asian security in the 21st century:  To what extent will China's rise diminish America's influence in Asia?  This question was posed by CNP Vice President Scott Bates to Roger Cliff, a political scientist with RAND and author of several reports on Sino-American relations, and Toy Reid, Senior Research Associate with the Congressional-Executive Commission on China.

Roger Cliff began by outlining how Chinese economic growth in the last few decades has allowed it to first expand and now transform its military.   In the next five to ten years, Cliff predicts that China's military will be as modern as America's European allies, potentially making the People's Liberation Army (PLA) the second most powerful military in the world.

Cliff believes that China's investment in military capabilities might result in a security challenge for the United States if the Chinese are able to: 1) acquire the capability to "force Taiwan to accept unification with the Chinese mainland, even if the U.S. intervenes militarily," 2) acquire the capability to "defend Chinese interests elsewhere in the region," and 3) over the long term is able to displace the United States as the "preeminent military power in the region."

Cliff pointed out that the Chinese have been procuring ever more advance military hardware including ballistic missiles, fighter aircraft, precision guided munitions, surface to air missiles, submarines, anti-ship ballistic missiles, intelligence and surveillance assets, and cyber. Additionally, the Chinese are also improving training, the development of military doctrine, and improving the quality of enlisted personnel and officers.  When this process is complete, the Chinese will have a military that could present a "daunting challenge to both the United States and Taiwanese militaries."

Cliff made clear that "not all of China's new military capabilities are being acquired for the purposes of winning a conflict with the U.S. or Taiwan. It is also acquiring capabilities for responding to other regional security challenges and these should not all be seen as necessarily nefarious." He concluded with a final point that although the Chinese military is on a trajectory to challenge the United States in East Asia, it does not appear to be on a course to challenge the United States militarily worldwide.

Toy Reid continued the discussion by maintaining that one needs to carefully assess how China intends to use its new military capabilities in order to determine whether the Chinese military will indeed challenge America's role in Asia.  As the primary political actor to influence and shape China's military decisions, Reid finds official statements by the Chinese Communist Party to be worrisome.  Reid maintains that "United States is unfortunately a common object of the party's anxiety, as Chinese leaders worry that the world's only hegemonic power, in their view, remains intent on curbing China's economic and military rise. This perception persists despite Washington's frequent assurances to contrary and the two countries' growing economic interdependence."

For Reid, there may be a silver lining of sorts arising from the fact that in authoritarian countries where domestic support is relatively fragile, international threat perceptions can actually "mitigate against international conflict" because the leaders are necessarily preoccupied with managing domestic problems. In the case of China, the Chinese Communist Party's primary goal is to sustain a monopoly on political power. So while it is true that Chinese leaders are very publicly committed to "restoring the greatness of the Chinese nation," this goal may be tempered by the exigencies of maintaining that monopoly on power, thereby reducing the risk of China encroaching on broader American interests in Asia.

Both speakers agreed that if China succeeds at becoming the dominant military power in East Asia, the effects on the United States would be profound. Cliff pointed out that China could achieve this status "even if we'd never actually fight a war with China.  If China becomes the militarily dominant power in East Asia, the long term strategic consequences for the U.S. would be largely the same as if we had actually fought and lost a war." Cliff believes that the way China could achieve dominant status is by "the U.S. reducing its security commitments in the region, either by backing away from its security guarantees to certain countries, or by withdrawing its military forces from the region. Or it could simply come as a result of complacency on our part and China's continued military rise with the result that it eventually becomes obvious to everyone in the region that China has now surpassed the U.S. as the dominant military power in that area."

In order for the United States to remain the dominant military power in the region, Cliff argued that U.S. military capabilities that have begun to atrophy since the collapse of the Soviet Union must be revived. Specifically he recommended that the United States focus more on "naval, anti-surface and anti-submarine warfare, and our ability to defend our air bases against attack, (and to defend against) electronic warfare."