Summary
This monograph reviews recent books on the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to help the generalist or student become familiar with existing evaluations and identify best practices for assessing Chinese military affairs. The structure is deliberately designed to help readers build a solid foundation for understanding the PLA and develop a progressively more sophisticated perspective. Ten appendixes provide additional resources including an extensive bibliography on PLA and Chinese security affairs as well as short guides on where to find regular PLA-related analysis, what Chinese-language sources to acquire, and whose analysis to follow.
Country or Region: China
Marketos, Thrassy N
Summary
China’s need for energy has become a driving factor in contemporary world politics and a precondition for sustaining China’s continuing high economic growth. Accordingly, Chinese energy policy has been a political and strategic rather than market-driven policy. This book focuses on the need of a stable and secure investment environment which is necessary for the energy provision of China from the Central Asian states.
The author argues that the institutionalization of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (S.C.O.), the Friendship and Cooperation Treaty between Russia and China and Chinese bilateral agreements with individual Central Asian states present an avenue and a framework of stability in which pipeline construction can commence. With the backing of the US in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Chinese involvement in the region has now been expanding. However, in order to stabilize the region for Chinese investment in energy resources, the author states that the US needs to be present in the region and that a strategic framework of cooperation between Russia, China and the US has to be developed.
The book will be of interest to academics working in the field of International Security, International Relations and Central Asian and Chinese politics.
Lynch, Daniel
Summary
China’s Futures cuts through the sometimes confounding and unfounded speculation of international pundits and commentators to provide readers with an important yet overlooked set of complex views concerning China’s future: views originating within China itself. Daniel Lynch seeks to answer the simple but rarely asked question: how do China’s own leaders and other elite figures assess their country’s future?
Many Western social scientists, business leaders, journalists, technocrats, analysts, and policymakers convey confident predictions about the future of China’s rise. Every day, the business, political, and even entertainment news is filled with stories and commentary not only on what is happening in China now, but also what Western experts confidently think will happen in the future. Typically missing from these accounts is how people of power and influence in China itself imagine their country’s developmental course. Yet the assessments of elites in a still super-authoritarian country like China should make a critical difference in what the national trajectory eventually becomes.
In China’s Futures, Lynch traces the varying possible national trajectories based on how China’s own specialists are evaluating their country’s current course, and his book is the first to assess the strengths and weaknesses of “predictioneering” in Western social science as applied to China. It does so by examining Chinese debates in five critical issue-areas concerning China’s trajectory: the economy, domestic political processes and institutions, communication and the Internet (arrival of the “network society”), foreign policy strategy, and international soft-power (cultural) competition.
Lüthi, Lorenz M
Summary
A decade after the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China established their formidable alliance in 1950, escalating public disagreements between them broke the international communist movement apart. In The Sino-Soviet Split, Lorenz Lüthi tells the story of this rupture, which became one of the defining events of the Cold War. Identifying the primary role of disputes over Marxist-Leninist ideology, Lüthi traces their devastating impact in sowing conflict between the two nations in the areas of economic development, party relations, and foreign policy. The source of this estrangement was Mao Zedong’s ideological radicalization at a time when Soviet leaders, mainly Nikita Khrushchev, became committed to more pragmatic domestic and foreign policies.
Using a wide array of archival and documentary sources from three continents, Lüthi presents a richly detailed account of Sino-Soviet political relations in the 1950s and 1960s. He explores how Sino-Soviet relations were linked to Chinese domestic politics and to Mao’s struggles with internal political rivals. Furthermore, Lüthi argues, the Sino-Soviet split had far-reaching consequences for the socialist camp and its connections to the nonaligned movement, the global Cold War, and the Vietnam War.
The Sino-Soviet Split provides a meticulous and cogent analysis of a major political fallout between two global powers, opening new areas of research for anyone interested in the history of international relations in the socialist world.
Lu, Xiaoping, Quan Ma, Xiaosong Li, and Shan Chai
Summary
The Chinese Military Library volume The PLA Air Force tells the complete history of China’s air force. In addition, the book provides detailed information on the PLAAF’s composition, equipment, and peacetime missions. A separate section relates the history of the PLAAF’s women pilots.
The PLAAF was founded in 1949, shortly after the declaration of the People’s Republic of China. But air combat in China has a much longer history, reaching back to the pre-revolutionary era. The Communist Party of China (CPC) first started training pilots with Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) forces, and with the Soviets, in the 1920s. During World War II, with the Nationalists and the CPC cooperating to fight the Japanese, Communist troops again trained with and flew alongside KMT fliers. When the time came to found the PLAAF in 1949, the Communists had a reservoir of knowledge to draw on.
The PLA Air Force recounts the story of China’s air force from its founding: the early difficulties of training new pilots, the stunning successes against the US Air Force while flying substandard and captured equipment, and the training of the first women pilots in Chinese history. The story continues with the eventual, steady modernization of China’s Air Force, culminating with the introduction of the J-10, the first world class fighter aircraft produced in China. The authors add sections devoted to PLAAF equipment, technology, peacetime missions, and more. The authors of The PLA Air Force, themselves military experts, enjoyed the cooperation of PLAAF pilots and personnel in producing this book. Including 116 black and white photographs, The PLA Air Force provides a complete, authoritative inside story of the PLAAF’s history, equipment and operations.
Lin, Justin Yifu
Summary
China was the largest and one of most advanced economies in the world before the eighteenth century, yet declined precipitately thereafter and degenerated into one of the world’s poorest economies by the late nineteenth century. Despite generations’ efforts for national rejuvenation, China did not reverse its fate until it introduced market-oriented reforms in 1979. Since then it has been the most dynamic economy in the world and is likely to regain its position as the world’s largest economy before 2030. Based on economic analysis and personal reflection on policy debates, Justin Yifu Lin provides insightful answers to why China was so advanced in pre-modern times, what caused it to become so poor for almost two centuries, how it grew into a market economy, where its potential is for continuing dynamic growth and what further reforms are needed to complete the transition to a well-functioning, advanced market economy.
Lewis, Jeffrey G
Summary
China’s nuclear arsenal has long been an enigma. The arsenal has historically been small, based almost exclusively on land-based ballistic missiles, maintained at a low level of alert, and married to a no-first-use doctrine – all choices that would seem to invite attack in a crisis. Chinese leaders, when they have spoken about nuclear weapons, have articulated ideas that sound odd to the Western ear. Mao Zedong’s oft-quoted remark that ‘nuclear weapons are a paper tiger’ seems to be bluster or madness.
China’s nuclear forces are now too important to remain a mystery. Yet Westerners continue to disagree about basic factual information concerning one of the world’s most important nuclear-weapons states. This Adelphi book documents and explains the evolution of China’s nuclear forces in terms of historical, bureaucratic and ideological factors. There is a strategic logic at work, but that logic is mediated through politics, bureaucracy and ideology. The simplest explanation is that Chinese leaders, taken as a whole, have tended to place relatively little emphasis on the sort of technical details that dominated US discussions regarding deterrence. Such profound differences in thinking about nuclear weapons could lead to catastrophic misunderstanding in the event of a military crisis between Beijing and Washington.
Kroenig, Matthew
Summary
In a vitally important book for anyone interested in nuclear proliferation, defense strategy, or international security, Matthew Kroenig points out that nearly every country with a nuclear weapons arsenal received substantial help at some point from a more advanced nuclear state. Why do some countries help others to develop nuclear weapons? Many analysts assume that nuclear transfers are driven by economic considerations. States in dire economic need, they suggest, export sensitive nuclear materials and technology―and ignore the security risk―in a desperate search for hard currency.
Kroenig challenges this conventional wisdom. He finds that state decisions to provide sensitive nuclear assistance are the result of a coherent, strategic logic. The spread of nuclear weapons threatens powerful states more than it threatens weak states, and these differential effects of nuclear proliferation encourage countries to provide sensitive nuclear assistance under certain strategic conditions. Countries are more likely to export sensitive nuclear materials and technology when it would have the effect of constraining an enemy and less likely to do so when it would threaten themselves.
In Exporting the Bomb, Kroenig examines the most important historical cases, including France’s nuclear assistance to Israel in the 1950s and 1960s; the Soviet Union’s sensitive transfers to China from 1958 to 1960; China’s nuclear aid to Pakistan in the 1980s; and Pakistan’s recent technology transfers, with the help of “rogue” scientist A. Q. Khan, from 1987 to 2002. Understanding why states provide sensitive nuclear assistance not only adds to our knowledge of international politics but also aids in international efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons.
Ikenberry, G. John
Summary
Are there recurring historical dynamics and patterns that can help us understand today’s power transitions and struggles over international order? What can we learn from the past? Are the cycles of rise and decline of power and international order set to continue? Robert Gilpin’s classic work, War and Change in World Politics offers a sweeping and influential account of the rise and decline of leading states and the international orders they create. Now, some thirty years on, this volume brings together an outstanding collection of scholars to reflect on Gilpin’s grand themes of power and change in world politics. The chapters engage with theoretical ideas that shape the way we think about great powers, with the latest literature on the changing US position in the global system, and with the challenges to the existing order that are being generated by China and other rising non-Western states.
Ikenberry, G. John, and Chung-in Moon.
Summary
Since World War II, the United States has played a crucial role in shaping Northeast Asian politics and economics. However, as this authoritative book shows, the Cold War’s demise, September 11, and America’s major strategic realignments have unleashed seismic changes in the region. China’s rise, Japan’s quest for a normal state, and the North Korean nuclear quagmire are also potential flashpoints. Collective memories of past aggression as well as resurgent nationalism further complicate regional dynamics. But hopeful signs abound, as deepening economic interdependence, expanding social and cultural exchanges, and the proliferation of informal economic, social, and cultural networks have improved the chances for a peaceful evolution to a liberal and stable region.
Hallion, Richard P., Roger Cliff, and Phillip C. Saunders
Summary
The ever-accelerating transformation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the years since the era of Mao Zedong, particularly in its economic and military growth, has been nothing short of remarkable. Developments over the last quarter-century-effectively since the tragedy of Tiananmen Square and the collapse of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact alliance-have been more so still. The relationship of this increasingly robust and growing power to the established global community is a complex one, and no thornier aspect of that relationship can be found than the uneasy interplay among the PRC, Taiwan, and the countries that deal with both. For years, professional “China watchers” scoured publications, broadcasts, and other bits of evidence for clues to what was happening within the PRC, its leadership ranks, its stance toward neighbors and the world around it, and its intentions, particularly toward Taiwan.
Gormley, Dennis M
Summary
The Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs, part of National Defense University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies, is pleased to announce the publication of the definitive open source study–the very first of its kind–on Chinese cruise missiles. A Low-Visibility Force Multiplier: Assessing China’s Cruise Missile Ambitions is co-authored by cruise missile expert Dennis Gormley (University of Pittsburgh), China security analyst Dr. Andrew Erickson (U.S. Naval War College), and nonproliferation specialist Dr. Jingdong Yuan (University of Sydney). The authors make extensive use of over 600 Chinese language sources, including military and technical writings.
Gordon, Yefim
Summary
This is the definitive reference source examining all aspects of one of the most powerful air forces in the world, the Chinese. Although China has been a significant air power for more than fifty years, very little has been published or even known about its capabilities. Along with the recent emergence of China as a world economic and military superpower, China has recently invested huge sums of money in modernizing its air force, developing its own aircraft and technology as well as buying from overseas. This remarkable new book unveils for the very first time, the full details of the organization, capabilities, and aircraft of all Chinese air forces – the third largest in the world today. It details the Chinese air force’s order of battle, from the top command down to the operational regiments and squadrons. It also includes descriptions and specifications of the Air Force and the Navy main fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft.
Gompert, David C
Abstract
China sees American sea power in East Asian waters as threatening to itself, its regional aspirations, and possibly its global access. So it is mounting a challenge with anti-ship missiles, submarines, and a growing fleet of its own. However, the United States will not relinquish its sea power, which it sees as needed to maintain its influence and stability, despite China’s growing might, in this vital region. History shows that rivalries between established and rising sea powers tend to end badly, to wit: Britain versus Germany before World War I and the United States versus Japan before World War II. In this case, technology that enables the targeting of surface ships, especially aircraft carriers, favors the challenger, China. The United States can exploit technology more boldly than it has previously to make its sea power less vulnerable by relying more on submarines, drones, and smaller, elusive, widely distributed strike platforms. Yet, such a U.S. strategy could take decades and even then be vulnerable to Chinese cyber-war. Therefore, in parallel with making its sea power more survivable, the United States should propose an alternative to confrontation at sea: East Asian multilateral maritime-security cooperation, with China invited to join. While China might be wary that such a regional arrangement would be designed to contain and constrain it, the alternative of exclusion and isolation could induce China to join.
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Gompert, David C, Hans Binnendijk, and Bonny Lin
Abstract
The history of wars caused by misjudgments, from Napoleon’s invasion of Russia to America’s invasion of Iraq, reveals that leaders relied on cognitive models, or simplified representations of their worlds, that were seriously at odds with objective reality. Blinders, Blunders, and Wars analyzes eight historical examples of strategic blunders regarding war and peace and four examples of decisions that turned out well, and then applies those lessons to the current Sino-American case. Leaders’ egos, intuitions, unwarranted self-confidence, and aversion to information that contradicted their views prevented them from correcting their models. Yet advisors and bureaucracies can be inadequate safeguards and can, out of fawning or fear, reinforce leaders’ flawed thinking.
War between China and the United States is more likely to occur by blunder than from rational premeditation. Yet flawed Chinese and American cognitive models of one another are creating strategic distrust, which could increase the danger of misjudgment by either or both, the likelihood of crises, and the possibility of war. Although these American and Chinese leaders have unprecedented access to information, there is no guarantee they will use it well when faced with choices concerning war and peace. They can learn from Blinders, Blunders, and Wars.
As a general remedy, the authors recommend the establishment of a government body providing independent analysis and advice on war-and-peace decisions by critiquing information use, assumptions, assessments, reasoning, options, and plans. For the Sino-U.S. case, they offer a set of measures to bring the models each has of the other into line with objective reality.
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