THE FOUR FUTURES

By Charles F. Hawkins

Chinese military analysts and defense researchers are coming to grips with new concepts of future warfare. For some years now members of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) think tanks have been studying “high tech warfare” and what it means to China. Some date the advent of new thinking to the Falklands War and the Becca Valley incursion in the early 1980s, while others point to Operation Desert Storm in 1991. NATO’s war against Serbia last year has triggered the latest round of debate. Three schools of reformist thought have emerged that are arrayed against the traditional-minded thinkers in the PLA.

Traditionalists believe in the time-proven concept of Mao Zedong’s People’s War, which incorporates a doctrine of active defense. Neo-traditionalists are oriented on a strategy of power projection, at least in a regional sense. Military revolutionists see dramatic changes coming in the future, around 2030 or so, and argue that China needs to prepare now to take full advantage of the technological advances of the on-going revolution in military affairs (RMA). Unrestricted warfare advocates constitute a recently emerged fourth group. They argue that the scope of war should be expanded by any means available, including hacker attacks against financial institutions, and using information operations to corrupt or disable the cognitive ability of an opponent. In unrestricted war “there are no rules, with nothing forbidden.”<2>

Debate among the top Chinese leaders has not been publicly developed over these four areas of thought.<3> Such debates are initially conducted secretly in the PLA, behind the security apparatus of the Communist Party. Resolution of the debate will become a major influence on Chinese defense acquisition strategy, and how the PLA organizes and develops doctrine for the future.

As China expert Michael Pillsbury points out in work he has done for the Office of Net Assessment in the Pentagon, different threat scenarios favor different thinking inside the PLA.<4> Continued stability and continued economic development favor the forward-thinking agenda of RMA enthusiasts because this scenario provides the time and resources they need to close the technology gap with the West, or perhaps leap past it in certain stovepipe technologies. Their threat forecasts might include internal or local conflict, but overall they foresee regional stability and manageable balance of power conditions. War with an advanced military power is not envisioned, at least in the near term.

The power projection advocates take a more pragmatic view. Minor conflicts are likely to occur along the peripheral areas of China and also with Taiwan, they say. A power projection strategy coupled with prudent defense acquisition, greater professionalism and modernization is the best course of action to support China’s national security strategy.

The People’s War traditionalists would prefer to cast future threats in terms of major confrontations with major powers, such as India, Japan or the United States, which would aggressively impact China’s territory. To them, a large standing force and the ability to sustain protracted conflict is a necessary condition to support their views.

The newly emerged unrestricted war concept has philosophical merit on several counts. Advertised as a means to let the “inferior defeat the superior” power, it borrows from each of the other schools of thought and adds its own dimension of greatly expanding the scope of war. Unrestricted warfare advocates borrow from the advanced technology agenda of the RMA enthusiasts, and at the same time propose to project power by any and all means available. For example, if missiles can not intimidate Taiwan, perhaps cyber attacks on critical infrastructure will; or perhaps both should be used in concert. Unrestricted war concepts are also rooted in traditional thinking. It is People’s War and active defense by other or additional means. By expanding the scope of conflict and by using advanced technology there is room in the concept for greater involvement of larger segments of society. It remains to be seen, however, if philosophical merit can translate into practical developments.

Recent history of Chinese military developments shows clear patterns. These, combined with analysis of current conditions, provide a lens through which to view future possibilities. Although no one can predict the future, it is certainly possible to winnow what is plausible.

In the past 15 or so years we have seen significant changes in the way the PLA operates, or is capable of operating, in the field. Before rapprochement with the Soviets in the late 1980s, PLA forces on the northern frontier changed their defensive posture from forward deployed forces to forces that were arrayed in depth, and thus better able to absorb and defeat a Soviet offensive before it reached the industrial areas around Beijing. The ability to make this doctrinal shift came not from advanced technology, but from the doubling of ground transportation assets in front line divisions. Increased battlefield mobility was the key factor. This change clearly fit the model of People’s War and active defense.

Since the early 1980s the PLA Navy has been busy reinventing itself. Of all the navies in Asia, China’s has the most manpower and has an afloat tonnage and number of combatant ships rivaled only by Japan with India and Taiwan a distant third and fourth. In 10 years to 1993, China increased the number of its surface combatant ships by a factor of two, its mine warfare ships by a factor of six, and achieved a six-fold increase in the number of support vessels, for the highest afloat support ratio of any Asian navy. During the same period amphibious lift capacity stagnated and the number of submarines fell off by 50 percent.<5>

The significance is the afloat support ratio. At 0.63 front line support ships to every principal combatant ship, China’s afloat support ratio is three times greater than its nearest competitor, Australia (the U.S. Navy excepted). A high afloat support ratio is an indicator of a navy’s ability to conduct long-term, long-range naval operations. A figure of 0.20 or better indicates good sustainability; 0.10 or less is poor. Since the mid-1990s, the PLA Navy has been able to redirect its emphasis, and concentrate on improving its amphibious lift capability.

The organizational changes in the PLA Navy, while benefiting from technology, were not predicated on it. They would have happened anyway, and the changes have enabled the PLA Navy to alter its maritime strategy from coastal defense to limited power projection and sustainability for a long conflict.

It is of some interest that the PLA Navy has eschewed acquisition or development of an aircraft carrier capability. Although being able to boast an aircraft carrier would be a source of national pride, such an expensive platform is one of the areas China chose to defer. A single aircraft carrier is relatively useless without two more to back it up, one to provide mutual support and the other refitting and performing maintenance and training in port. In any event, the U.S. Navy would hopelessly outclass the PLA Navy in the foreseeable future. With the advent of increasingly sophisticated unmanned aerial vehicles, future aircraft carriers may be quite different from today. Further, China’s immediate areas of interest are its littorals and the East and South China Seas—areas where military operations can be facilitated by land-based aircraft and missiles, and missile cruisers.

Naval developments in China have favored both the power projection advocates as well as the People’s War traditionalists.

There have also been changes in China’s air and airborne forces, notably the capability to transport fighting troops rapidly anywhere within China’s borders. In addition to establishing a division-sized rapid reaction force, other PLA Army units have conducted brigade-sized experiments in high-tech warfare operations. These developments, combined with greater focus on professionalism and recent personnel reductions in the PLA, show the influence of power projection concepts plus RMA concepts.

The historical patterns in the PLA over the past 15 years or so indicate a gradual and deliberate shift to incorporate power projection and advanced technology into traditional concepts of People’s War. The evolution will probably continue to some form of high tech warfare. The official doctrine is still called People’s War, however, and traditionalists still have the most power in determining Chinese defense outlays. Based on what they have written RMA enthusiasts “have not been very successful,” according to Pillsbury. But success is relative. Other Senior PLA officials have pointedly remarked that “unrestricted war is not an official policy.”<6>

While history informs our thinking, it can not predict the future. The four futures debate continues.

No one in the PLA would say that modernization is bad or undesirable. The question of modernization really boils down to these issues:

• The things that need to be modernized (equipment, doctrine, organization) to achieve desired operational output.
• The pace of modernization.
• The things that should receive special emphasis while other things are left alone, at least for the time being.
• The emphasis on self-reliance instead of acquisition of defense items from other states.
• The question of simply improving the existing suite of equipment, or replacing it with wholly new, advanced equipment.

Modernization is a challenging task for a military as large as China’s, and even though the PLA has downsized somewhat in recent years, modernization can’t happen everywhere at once. To paraphrase Frederick the Great, he who would modernize everything, modernizes nothing.<7> The PLA must pick its developmental challenges carefully and concentrate its efforts prudently if it is to succeed anywhere.

Military revolution enthusiasts in China, and there are many, have not lacked for resources to conduct research and especially investigations into Western technology. If the performance of Chinese defense technology systems and weapons (acquired or self-developed) has been disappointing, it has not dampened the PLA’s quest to learn more and develop new concepts about high tech warfare.

In fact, China has had some notable successes in developing advanced weapon systems, particularly in missiles and artillery. But in other areas the PLA remains technologically a generation or two behind the West.

Ironically, Chinese missile development and technology owe a great deal to one man, Tsien Hsue-shen, a Chinese-born scientist. Tsien came to the United States in 1935, studied at CalTech and MIT, helped found the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and worked on classified government projects during World War II. On the eve of becoming a U.S. citizen, Tsien was caught up in the Cold War hysteria of McCarthyism. Rejected by the nation he sought to adopt as his own, he returned to China and became the undisputed father of the Chinese missile program.<8>

Analysts in Beijing and elsewhere make a distinction between revolution in military affairs and military revolution. RMA is a process, they contend, that can be managed to produce a true military revolution at some future point.

Huang Haiyuang, a senior fellow from a PLA think tank has summarized China’s seven technology priorities.

• Information warfare or information operations. The distinction being less a matter of scale and scope and more a matter of policy. Information operations can be conducted in peacetime, while information warfare can not.
• Air and missile defense technology. A major issue for the Chinese, since they posit that our development of space-based lasers, designed for missile defense, are also powerful enough for offensive use.
• Precision guided munitions technology.
• Defensive weapon technology.
• Unmanned aerial vehicle technology.
• Military space technology.
• Naval carrier (air-to-ship integration) technology.

According to Huang, the PLA has embarked on a two-phase plan. First, to build down the PLA into a smaller, higher quality force while it explores new concepts. Then, the PLA will focus on high technology applications. The first of these phases is well along. A concluding caution was provided. “The individual,” he said, “is still the key in fast-paced warfare.”

  Other Chinese colleagues have written about high tech warfare concepts and doctrine, without regard to a particular type of weapon or combat platform. They stress the importance of information technology, and emphasize areas that come under the U.S. term C4RISTA (command, control, communications, computers, reconnaissance, intelligence, surveillance, and target acquisition). Careful not to appear to espouse new doctrine for the PLA, these analysts show that technology will affect the way People’s War doctrine is applied in an operational setting. A major conclusion is that “attack as the main resort has an extraordinary importance on the high tech battlefield.”<9>

This conclusion is neither new, nor should it be surprising. The offensive has long been a principle of war, even at times when tactical defenders were more often successful than the attacker. After the American Civil War, the chief of staff of the Prussian Army, Gen. Helmuth C. B. von Moltke (the elder) recognized that new technology had made fighting much more lethal for the attacker. Yet instead of adopting a defensive strategy, von Moltke devised a concept of strategic offensive combined with tactical defensive. Applied against enemy lines of supply and communication, von Moltke’s concept was to advance along a broad front to position as many units as possible in positions where the enemy would have to attack them. The concept was applied successfully in the Seven Weeks War against Austria in 1866, and against the French in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.

What is interesting, if not surprising, about these PLA theoreticians and their approach to future warfare is that their analysis skillfully confronts and rejects the dogma of Chinese military traditionalists. Is debate over the four futures becoming public after all? Perhaps it is.

By carefully defining what high tech warfare is and is not, Sr. Col. Chen Bojiang of the Academy of Military Science in Beijing tackles some of the favorite positions of active defense and People’s War advocates.<10> He characterizes the essential features of high tech warfare as shown in Table 1.

With this frame of reference Chen discusses the “impact of high tech warfare on traditional operational theory,” shown in Table 2. He writes, “Challenged in the face of the new war, one should free oneself from old ideas, seek truth from facts, boldly accept and promote revolution and development of operational theory.” With the end of the Cold War, he says, “changes have been brought to China’s security environment. The threat of an overall war has been further reduced, and preparing to win a local war under high tech conditions has become a base point in preparing military battles in the new era.”

In his analysis, Chen shows that warfighting capabilities can evolve or can leap forward in quality. We are now in a period of great qualitative improvements in military systems, and the “change of subduing factors from quantity-based to quality-based is an obvious feature of high tech warfare.” He concludes with this advice:

It is true, as many analysts in the West and in the East have pointed out, that military developments are at the beginning of a period of rapid, if not revolutionary change. Those militaries that do not transform their forces to be capable of high tech warfare will be left irrevocably behind those that do. Yet the challenge of changing old systems and procedures may be the most daunting of all.

The debate over the four futures in the PLA and the Communist Party of China is being addressed, and it will be resolved at some point. In the near term the resolution will be a compromise between the different schools of thought and evolutionary modernization of special interest weapons and systems will be its principal feature. In the meantime, there will be increasing investment made to discover or develop advanced technology capabilities in selected areas for use in the future.

At this point, in China’s case, future warfare concepts and thinking supercede practical application and fielded systems. The PLA expects to reverse this situation in the next three decades.

<1> Fighting for the Future: Will America Triumph? by Ralph Peters, Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg, PA, 1999. In sum, Ralph says the United States will continue exporting its culture because demand for U.S. images and icons will continue to increase, even though some believe it undesirable. He sees the decline of the nation state, and doesn’t forecast many major wars, but rather a lot of smaller, nasty conflicts of the type seen from East Timor to Bosnia. His main concern are those individuals he calls “warriors,” the disenfranchised, ideological or monetarily inspired renegades of society for whom there is no reason not to fight, and every thing to gain. He says America has and will continue to have the military technology to win wars, but only if we have the guts to fight.

<2> Unrestricted War, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, PLA Literature Arts and Publishing House, Beijing, February 1999. Although the book does not represent an official viewpoint, an official office of the PLA published it. Inspired by the frustrations they felt during the 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis, the authors began collaborating on a series of “what if” questions leading to their manuscript.

<3> Debate over the four futures has emerged publicly among senior PLA officers and analysts, as discussed later in the paper.

<4> China Debates the Future Security Environment, Michael Pillsbury, National Defense University Press, Washington, 2000. This is a comprehensive work that deserves wide attention.

<5> International Institute for Strategic Studies, chart depicting the rise in military power in Asia from 1984-1993, London, 1993.

<6> At the September 1999 Sino-U.S. Military Developments Workshop, Beijing, the third in a series of workshops co-hosted by the author and the China Defense Science & Technology Information Center.

<7> Petty geniuses attempt to hold everything; wise men hold fast to the key points. They parry great blows and scorn little accidents. There is an ancient apothegm: he who would preserve everything, preserves nothing. Therefore, always sacrifice the bagatelle and pursue the essential.—Frederick the Great: Instructions for His Generals, vii, 1747

<8> Thread of the Silkworm, Iris Chang, Basic Books, New York, 1995. This and especially Chang’s Rape of Nanking are worth a look. Tsien Hsue-shen is also known as Qian Xuesen.

<9> For example, “High Tech Warfare Research in China,” a research paper by Sr. Col. Chen Bojiang, at Georgetown University, School of Diplomacy, November 1997.

<10> Ibid. War should be considered high tech, Chen writes, under these conditions: (1) if one side has high tech weapons as a major operational means, regardless of whether the other side is equally endowed; (2) only if high tech weapons are widely used can it be considered high tech; and (3) high tech war is limited to conventional war, not nuclear war.

Mr. Hawkins is a defense and operations analyst and is director of the Historical Evaluation & Research Organization (HERO) Library. He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1968, taking a commission as an infantry officer. He served with distinction in Vietnam with the 101^st Airborne Division, and has 24 years military service in all components of the U.S. Army. He retired a major in the Army Reserve in 1992. His civilian work has been in the computer industry and later, since 1987, in the defense analytical community. He has performed policy support research and operational analysis for a number of defense firms and federally funded research organizations. Mr. Hawkins is widely traveled and has written and presented papers on a variety of military- and defense-related topics.