Abstract
If people’s war is to be fought under ‘modern conditions’, the PRC must decide on whose terms the conditions of modernity are to be defined. Does China seek technological equality with the industrially developed world, and therefore military forces to match that level of development? Or will it seek to modernise along comparatively modest lines, in accordance with its own capabilities and strategic culture? In the previous chapter it was observed that a prime charac-teristic of people’s war is refusal to fight on the enemy’s terms: the planned achievement of psychological ascendancy which denies the opponent the choice of concepts of how a war is to be waged. This requirement would suggest that practitioners of a modern people’s war should become cognisant with advanced military technology and methods of warfare — in order to ‘know the enemy’ and even to ‘capture’, on a selective basis, some its ideas and technologies. But ultimately they should aim for a form of military modernisation which follows the direction of China’s strengths (a large territorial, human and weapons base) rather than aping its opponents, a policy which would draw attention to its weaknesses (economic under-development and paucity of technical expertise). A modified people’s war strategy is unlikely to make excessive demands on China’s level of technical proficiency.
Growth is not modernization: technology acquisition is not technology assimilation.
Jeffrey Schultz, 19801
Framing military requirements for weapons systems that make the maximum contribution to defence policy aims within limited resources is not easily achieved ... It is important not to lose sight of the needs of those who will operate the new systems and to ensure that performance is not obtained at the expense of re-liability and maintainability.
Donald Hall, 19872
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Notes and References
Jeffrey Schultz, ‘The Four Modernizations Reconsidered’ in Richard Baum (ed.), China’s Four Modernizations: The New Technology Revolution, Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 1980, p. 278.
Donald Hall, ‘Defence Procurement: Military Requirements’, RUSI Brassey’s Defence Yearbook 1987, Brassey’s Defence Publishers, London, 1987, p. 137.
Prof. H. Gelber, University of Tasmania, personal communication, October 1988.
Su Wenning (ed.), Modernization — the Chinese Way, Beijing Review Special Features Series, PRC, 1983.
Thomas Fingar and the Stanford Journal of International Studies (eds), China’s Quest for Independence: Policy Evolution in the 1970s, Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 1980, p. 6.
The former is proposed by Arthur J. Deikman, ‘Bimodal Consciousness’, in Robert E. Ornstein (ed.), The Nature of Human Consciousness - A Book of Readings, Viking Press, New York, 1974;
and the latter by Louis Dumont, On Value (Radcliffe-Brown Lecture 1980), The British Academy, London, 1982.
This is strongly associated with the rate of social change. As Alvin Toffler postulates: ‘in a changing society and culture ... the past becomes a less sure guide to present decisions and future possibilities. In this circum-stance, thinking clearly about future possibilities and creating new ideas to cope with them becomes essential to survival. The time-bias of the culture must shift toward increased future-consciousness.’ (Alvin Toffler, Previews and Premises, Pan Books, London, 1984, p. 181.) Chinese interest in futurist thinking is evident in their translation and publication of The Third Wave, an earlier work by Toffler; Sleepers, Wake, by Australia’s Minister of Science, Barry Jones, in 1986; as well as the incorporation of Edward De Bono’s ideas on education through the use of ‘lateral thinking’, and - as Toffler states (loc. cit., p. 179) - the establishment of ‘think-tank’ style futurist studies. For background on the latter, see Decision-Making: Rise of the Think-Tanks’, Asiaweek, 5 October 1986, pp. 75, 77.
According to annual 1980s issues of The Military Balance, IISS, London, estimated percentages of growth in the years 1980–86 are: 4%-7.1% (1980), 3% (1981), 9% (1982), 11.7% (1983), 12% (1984), 10% (1985), 9.1% (1986). Economic growth was reflected in increased inflation rates - officially from 2.7% in 1984 to 5.5% in 1986, but in fact running much higher bv the second half of the 1980s.
CIA, Chinese Defense Spending, 1965–79 (SR 80–10091), National Foreign Assessment Center, Washington DC, July 1980, p. 3.
Yang Dezhi, Chief of PLA Staff, quoted in China Daily, 2 June 1984.
Zhang Menjun, ‘The Neutron Bomb’, Kexue Shijian (Scientific Exper-imentation), December 1977, and a technical report in Hejishu (Nuclear Techniques), August 1979, cited by Bradley Hahn, ‘Beijing’s Growing Global Missile Reach’, Pacific Defence Reporter, February 1987, p. 12. On the advocacy of battlefield nuclear weapons,
refer to Xu Baoshan, ‘We Must be Prepared to Fight Nuclear War in First Stages of Any Future War’, Jiefangjun Bao, 16 September 1979, in JPRS, China Report, 4 June 1980, p. 97.
According to informa-tion provided by Jencks, these SRBMs are based on the Soviet FROG and SCUD-A. The former is unguided, solid-fuelled, has a launch weight of 3000 kg and a range of 25–65 km; the latter is guided by radio command, relies on liquid fuel, has a launch weight of 4500 kg and a range of over 100 km. (Harlan W. Jencks, From Muskets to Missiles: Politics and Professionalism in the Chinese Army, 1945–1981, Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 1982, p. 295.)
Changchun Jilin provincial service, 28 December 1979, in FBIS, Daily Report: People’s Republic of China, 3 January 1980, p. L10, cited by Alastair I. Johnston, ‘Chinese Nuclear Force Modernisation: Implications for Arms Control’, Journal of Northeast Asian Studies, vol. 2, 1983, pp. 21, 27.
Christopher Chant and Ian Hogg, The Nuclear War File, Ebury Press, London, 1983, p. 76. The differences between a neutron and standard fission warhead are such that the latter would have to be 10 times more powerful than the former to produce the same effects.
See ABC Jencks, ‘Ground Forces’, in Gerald Segal and William T. Tow (eds), Chinese Defence Policy, Macmillan, London, 1984, p. 65; FBIS, Daily Report: People’s Republic of China, 19 January 1982, p. 6; and Jane’s Defence Weekly, 31 August 1985, p. 384. 61. See ‘Military Medical Review: People’s Republic of China Exhibits NBC Products’, Asian Defence Journal, August 1986, p. 109. 62. Jencks, loc. cit.
Samuel B. Griffith II, The Chinese People’s Liberation Army: From the Long March to the Hydrogen Bomb, 2nd edn, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1968, p. 288.
Brian Beckett, Weapons of Tomorrow, Orbis Publishing, London, 1982, pp. 139–40.
J.P. Robinson, ‘Recent Developments in the Field of Chemical Warfare’, RUSI/Brassey’s Defence Yearbook1983, Brassey’s Defence Publishers, London, 1983, p. 177.
The point is made by A.C. Hallett, ‘Chemical Warfare: Developments and Implications’, RUSI/Brassey’s Defence Yearbook1987, Brassey’s Defence Publishers, London, 1987, p. 118.
Otto Heilbrunn, Warfare in the Enemy’s Rear, Allen & Unwin, London 1963, ch. 5.
Paddy Griffith, Forward into Battle: Fighting Tactics from Waterloo to Vietnam, Antony Bird Publications, London, 1981, p. 76.
June Teufel Dreyer, ‘The Chinese Militia: Citizen Soldiers and Civil-Military Relations in the People’s Republic of China’, Armed Forces and Society, Fall 1982, p. 74.
Andrew J. Nathan, Book Reviews, Political Science Quarterly, Spring 1988, vol. 103, no. 1, p. 177.
Rosita Dellios, ‘Clandestine Radio Broadcasts to China in Relation to PLA Dissatisfaction with the Chinese Leadership’, in Proceedings of the 27th Annual Conference of the Australasian Political Studies Association, Adelaide, 28–30 August 1985, vol. 3, p. 362.
Yu Qiuli cited in ‘Shake-Up Urged in Chinese Army’, News from Xinhua News Agency Weekly, no. 754, 28 July 1983, p. 4.
Quoted in John Coon, ‘The PLA and Chinese Power Abroad’, in William W. Whitson (ed.), The Military and Political Power in China in the 1970s, Praeger, New York, 1972, p. 341; and in Johnston, op. cit., p. 26, note 21. In people’s war to ‘destroy the enemy’ means ‘to disarm him or “deprive him of the power to resist”’. (Selected Military Writings of Mao Tse-tung, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1966, p. 230.)
As Samuel Griffith states: ‘Peking [Beijing] demonstrated during the border fighting with India that she could very effectively deploy and support limited but still significant conventional land power beyond her borders under particular conditions. This she had previously demonstrated, on a much larger scale, in Korea.’ (Samuel B. Griffith, ‘The Military Potential of China’, in Alastair Buchan (ed.), China and the Peace of Asia, Chatto & Windus for the Institute of Strategic Studies, London, 1965, p. 67.) In his analysis of Chinese risk taking, Whiting also notes that ‘the PLA has repeatedly projected its power across China’s borders’ and that it has adopted ‘a belligerent forward posture as op-posed to a passive role remaining behind the PRC border or withdrawing from positions of potential conflict’ (Allen S. Whiting, The Chinese Calculus of Deterrence, The University of Michigan, USA, 1975, p. 236.)
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Dellios, R. (1990). Defence Development: The Mid-Tech Path to Modernisation. In: Modern Chinese Defence Strategy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-11049-0_3
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