ANJA A THIRD EYE

INSIDE THE CHINESE DEFENSE INDUSTRY

2010-02-07T21:23:00.001-08:00

INSIDE THE CHINESE DEFENSE INDUSTRY

2010-02-07T21:22:00.001-08:00

Is Chinese Naval Doctrine Based On The Theories Of Admiral Mahan?

2010-02-07T21:21:00.001-08:00

Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914) was one of the greatest theorists of naval power. He conducted a cost benefit analysis of imperial expansion by integrating commercial, naval and political aspects. How does a nation expand its power at the lowest possible cost? He concluded that commerce was of paramount importance. War was to be a last resort, he stressed. In other words, the goal was expansion by stealth.There are two main schools of thought about naval power. One posits that the largest and most powerful navy should be assembled and then used to defend and expand power. Battleships and aircraft carriers are of key importance. The other regards the huge expenditure and servicing of such a navy as a needless waste of national resources. The main concern should be to protect and expand trade. This involves securing strategic bases in strategic regions. Do not develop a navy which is perceived as a growing threat to one’s neighbours and competitors. In other words, do not get involved in a naval arms race.

Mahan’s most famous work is The Influence of Sea Power Upon History 1660-1783, published in 1890. In it he attempted to elucidate the reasons for the rise and fall of empires and great states. He deduced that the secret of Great Britain’s success was sea power. This was the critical factor in the defeat of Napoleonic France when Britain was able to blockade French ports and hence neutralise the French navy. His other writings could not explain the rise of Bismarckian Germany. However, he was vindicated in 1918 when a major factor in the defeat of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s Germany was the weakness of its navy.

Mahan’s writings were closely studied by the Imperial Japanese Navy, amid many others. It would now appear that the People’s Republic of China is devoting intensive study to his publications. Nineteenth century America and present day China have much in common. How should Beijing expand its navy without provoking other powers to respond?
China’s demand for hydrocarbons and raw materials has forced it to sail the seven seas in pursuit of these sinews of industry. Almost accidentally it has acquired a worldwide reach. Since its imports are strategically important it needs a navy capable of protecting the sea lanes. The last time China had a navy which sailed into such distant waters was 600 years ago. It has a lot of catching up to do to become as professional as other navies.

Chinese naval writings emphasise the link between commerce and naval power. A goal is to command strategic passages, such as the Strait of Hormuz and the Strait of Malacca, vital to Chinese trade.

Of primary importance is Taiwan. If the Middle Kingdom were to take control over it, China would have a gateway to the western Pacific. The Chinese talk of the First Island Chain which runs from Japan to Indonesia. The declared goal is to expand to the Second Island Chain which would make China potentially master of the western Pacific. Hence Beijing will do its upmost to prevent Taiwan becoming independent. Should Taipei become independent Beijing’s dream of becoming a great Pacific and world sea power would never be realised.

The Chinese agree enthusiastically with Mahan’s claim that a nation cannot be great without sea power. China is perceived to be an ‘oceanic nation’ endowed with a long coastline, many islands and a huge sea area under its control. China is building aircraft carriers, probably because it can see how the U.S. uses them to project power.

However, Mahan warned that ‘commerce thrives by peace and suffers by war’. He claimed that peace was the ‘superior interest’ of seagoing powers. Hence he did not advocate a race to build the biggest battle fleet. Some Chinese writers appear to have taken this to heart and advocate restricting China’s sea power to the First Island Chain. China’s navy should not be seen as a threat to anyone and its function is to defend the national interest. Others, of course, would like China to expand its influence several hundred miles from its shoreline.

If the Chinese leadership decide to learn from Mahan the world will be a safer place.

China Boosts Military Spendings

2010-02-07T21:20:00.001-08:00

China says it is increasing defense spending, this year, to raise the salaries of the world's largest standing army. The announcement Wednesday, came at a news conference to preview the annual legislative session, which begins Thursday.

Li Zhaoxing is the spokesman for China's parliament, the National People's Congress, not the spokesman for the Ministry of Defense.

But, in what has become a tradition in recent years, the NPC spokesman announced China's proposed military budget.

Li says the defense budget is included in the draft national budget that is submitted to the legislature for examination and approval.

Li says China's military spending in 2009 will increase nearly 15 percent, to $70 billion.

The spokesman describes the increase as "modest" and said the double-digit growth will not pose a threat to any other country. He says much of the extra money will go to salaries for China's more than two-million troops and be spent on raising capabilities in what he described as "non-warfare military operations."

Li also said the additional spending is needed to maintain China's sovereignty and territorial integrity.

China has maintained its threat to use military force against Taiwan, if Taipei declares formal independence. Beijing considers the separately-governed island a renegade province.

The spokesman says China's military expenditures are no secret. He says, since 2007, China has submitted annual military expense reports to the United Nations.

Li says there is no such thing as "hidden military expenditure" in China.

The United States, Japan and other countries have long expressed concern about China's military build-up.

In just concluded Sino-American military talks last week, U.S. Defense Department official David Sedney told reporters Washington sees nothing wrong with China modernizing its military. At the same time, he said the U.S. government just wants more clarity about the Chinese government's intentions.

China And Brazil: A Burgeoning Relationship

2009-12-16T21:20:00.000-08:00

Brazil is one of the largest developing countries in the world and China is THE largest developing country. They are members of BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) which is regarded as the future powerhouse of the world economy. Brazil and China are members of the G20 and normally participate as observers in G8 summits. The G20 has now emerged as the pacesetter for the transformation of financial relations between the developed and developing countries. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil is now on his second official visit to China.Relations between the two countries go back to the 1840s when several hundred Chinese tea growers were shipped out to Brazil. Entrepreneurs were keen to find a substitute for the emancipated slaves. In 1880 a treaty was signed which established diplomatic relations and the free flow of trade.

Brazil and China established diplomatic relations in 1974. The first visit to China by a Brazilian President took place a decade later. Deng Xiaoping, China’s paramount leader, stressed the need to reduce the gap between the developed and developing world. A strategic partnership was then agreed.

The two economies complement one another. China has a voracious appetite for natural resources and Brazil needs electronics and other consumer goods. Brazil has almost every raw material needed by industry (bauxite, gold, iron ore, manganese, nickel, phosphates, platinum, etc.). For instance, iron ore reserves in Brazil amount to 22.5 per cent of world reserves.

Brazil has embarked on an ambitious upgrading of its infrastructure and since China is doing the same Beijing is in a strong position to help. For instance new Chinese roads and highways are world class and their new railways and rolling stock are of high quality. Brazil’s population of 192 million and GDP of $1.66 trillion make it a very attractive market for Chinese goods. China’s 1.3 billion population and GDP of over $4 trillion GDP make it an even more seductive market for Brazil.
Trade turnover between the two countries in 2007 almost reached $50 billion. Brazil is now exporting more to China than to the US. The good news for Brasilia is that Beijing runs a trade deficit with it. In 2008 it reached almost $9.3 billion. In 2001 it was only $1 billion. Almost all Brazilian exports are raw materials and commodities. China exports mainly electronics and textiles.

China is investing in downstream production. For instance, it is involved in a $3 billion steel plant in southern Brazil. Chinese companies also have stakes in the production of aircraft, compressors, automobile parts and hydroelectric equipment. During Vice President Xi Jinping’s visit in February 2009 an agreement was reached whereby the China Development Bank will lend Brazil $10 billion to explore and exploit huge hydrocarbon reserves off Brazil’s south east coast. Brasilia will supply Beijing with 100,000 barrels of oil a day until the loan is repaid.

However, not everything in the garden is rosy. Inevitably Chinese goods compete successfully with domestically produced products. This is a common problem in the developing world. Brazil’s solution has been to accuse China of dumping and impose tariffs. Regulations are in place to restrict the import of Chinese consumer goods until 2013. Criticism of Chinese practices is strongest in São Paulo, the heartland of Brazilian industry.

China and Brazil agree on the origins of the present world crisis: unregulated financial markets. Both countries want the developing world to have a greater say in framing the new world financial architecture. This has led to more and more cooperation between the two states.
Brazil has realised that it can benefit considerably from a closer relationship with China during the present world economic downturn. The future looks bright for Sino-Brazilian relations.

China's growing thirst for African oil

2009-12-16T21:18:00.000-08:00

China has dangled a near open cheque book to Africa's major oil producers in a bid to guarantee supplies for decades to come.

It has offered 30 billion dollars to Nigeria and is negotiating for stakes in oil fields in Ghana and Angola and companies that exploit the fields throughout Africa.

China's thirst for oil is expected to be a major topic at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, when Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao meets African leaders and ministers in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh from Sunday.

Nigeria, the world's eighth largest producer, appears to be resisting China's approach to buy one sixth of its proven reserves.

Nigeria already supplies about one fifth of the United States's oil needs. President Umaru Yar'Adua recently told Peter Voser, chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell, the biggest investor in Nigeria's oil sector, that his country still wants to maintain ties with its "old" partners.

Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron and Total, which have been in Nigeria for decades, are in intensive talks with authorities who want to change oil laws, notably the tax regime.

Industry sources say the companies are looking at investing around 23 billion dollars (15.6 billion euros) in Nigeria over the next five years.

But through its state-run China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), Beijing is dangling the prospect of 30 billion dollars for a guaranteed six billion barrels of Nigerian oil.

Licences on some of the Nigerian oil blocks are close to expiring but the government has renewed them for one more year.

The weak link is the state-run Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) which the government wants to turn into a financially independent and profitable entity.

NNPC, which has been bedevilled by corruption, relies on state money to finance its operations in joint ventures with foreign oil companies. Chinese entities have made big offers.

"The Chinese have made a proposal which we are considering," junior oil minister Odein Ajumogobia recently told AFP.

"They are asking for six billion barrels of oil from our reserves, but I can tell you that we are not going to give them all of that," he added.

More recently Ajumogobia said NNPC could sell some of its blocks to the Chinese firms. "Why not, if the offer is very good? The NNPC has a right to do what it wants with its assets."

In Ghana, CNOOC is discussing with the state-owned Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) the purchase of 23.5 percent of US-based Kosmos Energy's stake in the Jubilee oil fields, one of the largest oil finds in west Africa in the past decade.

Chinese firm SINOPEC recently bought the Canadian oil firm Addax which operates in Nigeria and west Africa, for a mere five billion euros.

CNOOC and Sinopec said in July they have agreed to buy a 20 percent stake in an offshore oil block in Angola from US oil company Marathon Oil Corp.

"The strength of the Chinese is that they are ready to put lots of cash on the table," said a senior executive in Africa with one international oil firm on condition of anonymity.

"So they want to come and work here, there is no problem, there is room for everyone, but not on blocks that are not free," said the oil chief.

Shell financial director Simon Henry recently said: "One thing you probably will have seen, and can be sure of, is that both ourselves and the industry will defend our interests."

Many African leaders have welcomed China's huge investment in the continent, but some officials have also expressed fears that China is buying diplomatic power that could turn into neo-colonialism.

Nine Chinese workers were killed when rebels attacked a SINOPEC oil facility in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia in 2007. Chinese workers have also been kidnapped in Nigeria's troubled Delta oil region.

China's EU Policy Paper

2009-12-11T21:59:00.000-08:00

Foreword

The international situation has been undergoing profound changes since the advent of the new century. The trend towards world multipolarity and economic globalization is developing amid twists and turns. Peace and development remain the themes of our era. The world is hardly a tranquil place and mankind is still confronted with many serious challenges. However, preserving world peace, promoting development and strengthening cooperation, which is vital to the well-being of all nations, represents the common aspiration of all peoples and is an irreversible trend of history.

China is committed to turning herself into a well-off society in an all-round way and aspires for a favorable international climate. China will continue to pursue its independent foreign policy of peace and work closely with other countries for the establishment of a new international political and economic order that is fair and equitable, and based on the Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence. China will, as always, respect diversity in the world and promote democracy in international relations in the interest of world peace and common development.
The European Union (EU) is a major force in the world. The Chinese Government appreciates the importance the EU and its members attach to developing relations with China. The present EU Policy Paper of the Chinese Government is the first of its kind and aims to highlight the objectives of China's EU policy, and outline the areas and plans of cooperation and related measures in the next five years so as to enhance China-EU all-round cooperation and promote a long-term and stable development of China-EU relations.
Part One: Status and Role of the European Union

The creation and development of the European Union is an event of far-reaching significance following World War II. Since the launch of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952, the EU has become what it is today through the stages of the Tax and Customs Union, the Single Market and the Economic and Monetary Union. Its integration in the foreign policy, defence and social fields has made headway. The Euro has been put to circulation successfully and a single area of justice is taking shape. The EU is now a strong and the most integrated community in the world, taking up 25 and 35 percent of the world's economy and trade respectively and ranking high on the world's list of per capita income and foreign investment.

In 2004, the EU will be enlarged to a total membership of 25. The new European Union would then cover much of Eastern and Western Europe with an area of four million square kilometers, a population of 450 million and a GDP of over 10 trillion US Dollars.
Despite its difficulties and challenges ahead, the European integration process is irreversible and the EU will play an increasingly important role in both regional and international affairs.

Part Two: China's EU Policy

China attaches importance to the role and influence of the EU in regional and international affairs. History proves that the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the European Economic Community in 1975 has served the interests of both sides. Despite their twists and turns, China-EU relations as a whole have been growing stronger and more mature and are now on the track of a comprehensive and sound development. In 1998 China and the EU launched their annual summit mechanism. In 2001, the two sides established a full partnership. China and the EU have developed an ever closer consultation and fruitful cooperation in the political, economic, trade, scientific, cultural and educational fields. China-EU relations now are better than any time in history.

There is no fundamental conflict of interest between China and the EU and neither side poses a threat to the other. However, given their differences in historical background, cultural heritage, political system and economic development level, it is natural that the two sides have different views or even disagree on some issues. Nevertheless China-EU relations of mutual trust and mutual benefit cannot and will not be affected if the two sides address their disagreements in a spirit of equality and mutual respect.

The common ground between China and the EU far outweighs their disagreements. Both China and the EU stand for democracy in international relations and an enhanced role of the UN. Both are committed to combating international terrorism and promoting sustainable development through poverty elimination and environmental protection endeavors. China and the EU are highly complementary economically thanks to their respective advantages. The EU has a developed economy, advanced technologies and strong financial resources while China boasts steady economic growth, a huge market and abundant labor force. There is a broad prospect for bilateral trade and economic and technological cooperation. Both China and the EU member states have a long history and splendid culture each and stand for more cultural exchanges and mutual emulation. The political, economic and cultural common understanding and interaction between China and the EU offer a solid foundation for the continued growth of China-EU relations.

To strengthen and enhance China-EU relations is an important component of China's foreign policy. China is committed to a long-term, stable and full partnership with the EU. China's EU policy objectives are:

-- To promote a sound and steady development of China-EU political relations under the principles of mutual respect, mutual trust and seeking common ground while reserving differences, and contribute to world peace and stability;

-- To deepen China-EU economic cooperation and trade under the principles of mutual benefit, reciprocity and consultation on an equal basis, and promote common development;
-- To expand China-EU cultural and people-to-people exchanges under the principle of mutual emulation, common prosperity and complementarity, and promote cultural harmony and progress between the East and the West.

Part Three: Strengthen China-EU Cooperation in All Fields
I. The Political Aspect

1. Strengthen the exchange of high-level visits and political dialogue

-- Maintain close contacts and timely communication between the two sides at high levels through various means.

-- Give full play to the functions of the China-EU annual summit by substantiating its content, stressing its practical results and strengthening bilateral coordination.

-- Implement in real earnest China-EU agreement on political dialogue and constantly improve and strengthen mechanisms of regular and irregular consultations at all levels.

-- Deepen relations with all EU members, including its new ones so as to maintain stability and continuity in the overall relationship between China and EU.

2. Strictly abide by the one-China principle

The one-China principle is an important political cornerstone underpinning China-EU relations. The proper handling of the Taiwan question is essential for a steady growth of China-EU relations. China appreciates EU and its members' commitment to the one-China principle and hopes that the EU will continue to respect China's major concerns over the Taiwan question, guard against Taiwan authorities' attempt to create "two Chinas" or "one China, one Taiwan" and prudently handle Taiwan-related issues. In this connection, it is important that the EU

-- Prohibit any visit by any Taiwan political figures to the EU or its member countries under whatever name or pretext; not to engage in any contact or exchange of an official or governmental nature with Taiwan authorities.

-- Not to support Taiwan's accession to or participation in any international organization whose membership requires statehood. Taiwan's entry into the WTO in the name of "separate customs territory of Taiwan, 'Penghu, Jinmen, Mazu" (or Chinese Taipei for short) does not mean any change in Taiwan's status as part of China. EU exchanges with Taiwan must be strictly unofficial and non-governmental.

-- Not to sell to Taiwan any weapon, equipment, goods, materials or technology that can be used for military purposes.

3. Encourage Hong Kong and Macao's cooperation with EU

The Central Government of China supports and encourages the Hong Kong and Macao Special Administrative Regions in developing friendly relations and cooperation with the EU in accordance with the principle of "one country, two systems" and the provisions of the two Basic Laws and on the basis of equality and mutual benefit.

4. Promote the EU's understanding of Tibet

China encourages personages of various circles in the EU to visit Tibet and welcomes the support of the EU and its members to Tibet's economic, cultural, educational and social development and their cooperation with the autonomous region subject to full respect of China's laws and regulations. The Chinese side requests the EU side not to have any contact with the "Tibetan government in exile" or provide facilities to the separatist activities of the Dalai clique.

5. Continue the human rights dialogue

There are both consensus and disagreements between China and the EU on the question of human rights. The Chinese side appreciates the EU's persistent position for dialogue and against confrontation and stands ready to continue dialogue, exchange and cooperation on human rights with the EU on the basis of equality and mutual respect so as to share information, enhance mutual understanding and deepen cooperation in protecting, inter alia, citizens' social and cultural rights and the rights of the disadvantaged.

6. Strengthen international cooperation

-- Enhance China-EU consultation and coordination on major international and regional hotspot issues.

-- Strengthen China-EU cooperation at the UN and work together to uphold the UN's authority, promote its leading role in safeguarding world peace and facilitating economic and social development, particularly in helping developing countries eliminate poverty, improving global environment and drug control, and support UN's reform.

-- Advance the process of Asia-Europe cooperation. China and the EU should work together to make ASEM a role model for inter-continental cooperation on the basis of equality, a channel for exchange between the oriental and occidental civilizations and a driving force behind the establishment of a new international political and economic order.

-- Jointly combat terrorism. Both China and the EU are victims of terrorism and are strongly opposed to all forms of terrorism. Both sides are also opposed to any linkage between terrorism and any particular country, nation, ethnic group or religion. China and the EU should keep in close touch and cooperation on counter-terrorism.

-- Jointly safeguard the international arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation regimes and step up consultation and coordination on the basis of mutual respect; strengthen exchange and cooperation on non-proliferation and export control and the prevention of weaponization of and arms race in outer space; jointly contribute to the resolution of the issue of anti-personnel landmines and explosive remnants of war; and enhance cooperation in implementing the international arms control treaties.

7. Enhance mutual understanding between Chinese and European legislative organs

The relations between the National People's Congress of China and the parliaments of EU member countries and the European Parliament are an important link in China-EU ties. The Chinese Government welcomes and supports the enhancement of exchange and dialogue between Chinese and European legislatures on the basis of mutual respect, deeper understanding, seeking common ground while shelving differences and developing cooperation.

8. Increase exchanges between political parties in China and the EU
The Chinese Government wishes to see an increase of exchange and cooperation between the Communist Party of China and all major EU political parties, parliamentary party groups and regional organizations of political parties on the basis of independence, complete equality, mutual respect and non-interference in each other's internal affairs.

Part Three: Strengthen China-EU Cooperation in All Fields
II. The Economic Aspect

1. Economic Cooperation and Trade

China is committed to developing dynamic, long-term and stable economic cooperation and trade with the EU and expects the latter to become China's largest trading and investment partner.

To this end, it is important to:

-- Give play to the mechanism of the economic and trade joint committee and step up economic and trade regulatory policy dialogue; give attention to updating the Trade and Economic Cooperation Agreement Between China and the European Union at an appropriate time; properly address irrational restrictions and technical barriers, ease restrictions on high-tech exports and tap the enormous potential of technological cooperation and trade in line with the WTO rules; grant China a full market economy status at an early date, reduce and abolish anti-dumping and other discriminatory policies and practices against China, and apply the Transitional Product-Specific Safeguard Mechanism (TPSSM) prudently; and compensate the Chinese side for its economic and trade losses which may arise due to the EU enlargement.

-- Boost China-EU coordination and cooperation in the new round of WTO negotiations and work together for the success of the negotiations.

-- Strengthen dialogue on investment, promote the establishment of bilateral investment-promotion institutions, energetically encourage and guide mutual investments between enterprises of the two sides, and expand cooperation between their small- and medium-sized enterprises; develop processing trade, contractual projects and labor cooperation of various kinds and encourage transnational business operation and internationalized production.

-- China welcomes more EU development aid, especially in such fields as the environmental protection, poverty-alleviation, public health and hygiene and education. China also welcomes a stronger and more active role of the EU in human resources development, in particular, personnel training for China's central and western regions and build-up of China's capacity of participating in multilateral trading regime.

-- Step up cooperation in the area of quality supervision, inspection and quarantine, establish appropriate consultation mechanisms and, subject to the principle of ensuring safety, security, hygiene, health and environmental protection, promptly address and resolve issues which may adversely affect market access of each other's products.

-- Boost the customs cooperation and conclude a China-EU Customs Agreement in due course.

2. Financial Cooperation

China and the EU should launch a high-level financial dialogue mechanism, expand exchanges between their central banks on policies and deepen cooperation in preventing and managing financial crises and combating the financing of terrorism and money laundering. The Chinese side welcomes an expansion of China-related business by banks of the EU countries and hopes to see an appropriate settlement of the issue of Chinese financial institutions' access to the EU market.

The Chinese side will positively examine and consider applications of EU insurance institutions for business operation in China and improve its supervisory and regulatory regime in line with the Chinese insurance laws, regulations and statutes and China's WTO commitments.

Cooperation in securities legislation, market supervision and regulation, and investment operation will be strengthened and more EU securities institutions, fund management institutions and other institutional investors will be encouraged to enter into China's market. Chinese securities institutions will be encouraged to enter into the EU's securities market when conditions are ripe. In the meantime, Chinese enterprises will be strongly supported to raise funds in the EU's securities market.

3. Agricultural Cooperation

Exchanges between China and the EU in such fields as agricultural production, processing technology of agricultural produce and sustainable development will be intensified. The mechanism of the agricultural working group should be given a role to play. Bilateral cooperation between agricultural research institutes, universities and colleges as well as enterprises should be pushed forward. EU Enterprises are encouraged to take an active part in agricultural development in China's central and western regions and invest in such fields as agricultural high and new technologies, intensive processing of agricultural produce and development of agricultural infrastructure.

4. Environmental Cooperation

China-EU communication and cooperation in environmental protection should be stimulated and a mechanism of dialogue between the Chinese and EU environmental ministers launched. Framework documents on environmental cooperation should be formulated, and discussions held on the establishment of information network on environmental cooperation. Bilateral cooperation should be strengthened on such issues as environmental legislation and management, climate change, bio-diversity protection, bio-safety management, and trade and environment. Efforts should be made to jointly promote the implementation of the follow-up actions of the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. Non-governmental environmental protection organizations are encouraged to develop mutual exchanges. EU enterprises are encouraged to gain more access to Chinese environmental protection market through fair competition.

5. IT Cooperation

The Chinese side would like to see the EU participation in China's IT promotion. The mechanism of the EU-China working group on information society will be strengthened. Exchanges and dialogue will be conducted on strategies, policies, rules and regulations of information society. Trade in IT products and industrial and technological cooperation will be actively boosted. Greater exchanges in intellectual property rights and technical standards will be encouraged. Cooperation in the field of "Digital Olympics" will be promoted.

6. Energy Cooperation

China-EU cooperation will be expanded in such fields as energy structure, clean energy, renewable energy, and energy efficiency and saving. Exchanges on energy development policies will be promoted. Efforts will be made to ensure a successful EU-China Energy Conference. The energy working group mechanism will be strengthened. Training on energy technology and cooperation in demonstration projects will be boosted to promote application and transfer of technology.

7. Transport Cooperation

A mechanism of China-EU regular meeting will be set up within the framework of the China-EU Agreement on Maritime Transport. Cooperation in maritime transport and other maritime fields will be developed and coordination and cooperation in international organizations such as the International Maritime Organization (IMO) will be strengthened. Bilateral exchanges will be deepened and broadened in respect of policies of inland river transport, navigation safety and shipping standardization. Cooperation and exchanges in highway technology and management will be expanded. Dialogue and exchanges on highway transport legislation will be strengthened.
China-EU exchanges in civil aviation will be deepened. Chinese and EU enterprises are encouraged to strengthen their cooperation on production, technology, management and training.

Part Three: Strengthen China-EU Cooperation in All Fields
V. The Military Aspect

China and the EU will maintain high-level military-to-military exchanges, develop and improve, step by step, a strategic security consultation mechanism, exchange more missions of military experts, and expand exchanges in respect of military officers' training and defense studies.
The EU should lift its ban on arms sales to China at an early date so as to remove barriers to greater bilateral cooperation on defense industry and technologies.

China: New defense posture

2009-12-11T21:56:00.001-08:00

China: New defense posture

A new white paper on China's military places sharp focus on the country's international role, signaling a growing confidence in its clout in the world community, writes Adam Wolfe for ISN Security Watch.On the day that Barack Obama was sworn in as US president, China's defense department issued a white paper on the current status and plans of the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) - an English-language report aimed primarily at an international audience concerned about China's growing military presence.

It is the sixth such white paper since 1998, and the sixth demonstration that the country's attempts at transparency can be maddeningly unclear to western observers.

The paper reflects China's growing confidence in its increasingly important role on the world stage, while at the same time downplaying issues that have strained ties with the international community.

As with previous reports, is short on specifics about equipment and technology. Also, the US intelligence community remains convinced that China has understated its military budget by about 50 percent and is deliberately hiding its intentions. What is notable about the new paper is that it directly addresses the budget.
In one of its longest sections, the paper states that China's military budget has grown by about 20 percent annually in recent years for three reasons: rising salaries and benefits for servicemen; compensation for the rise in food and fuel prices; and modernizing the PLA's equipment. The paper further argues that as a percentage of GDP, China's defense spending remains much lower than that of the US, the UK, France, Germany or Japan. Even if the CIA's higher estimates of China's defense budget were accepted, this would remain true.

Another shift in tone came in remarks on Taiwan. Previous papers used the threat of Taiwanese independence as one of the main reasons for China's naval build-up. The new white paper all but declares victory on this front: "The attempts of the separatist forces to seek 'de jure Taiwan independence' have been thwarted, and the situation across the Taiwan Straits has taken a significantly positive turn."

Still, US weapon sales to Taiwan and increased military presence in the Asia-Pacific region are cited as security concerns for China.

Whereas previous papers downplayed China's global ambitions, the white paper signals a fresh confidence in China's position in the world. "The Chinese economy has become an important part of the world economy, China has become an important member of the international system, and the future and destiny of China have been increasingly closely connected with the international community," the paper argues. From this perspective, the paper highlights China's growing presence in global "military operations other than war," (MOOTW, in military jargon).

The white paper notes that China had close to 1,950 military peacekeepers serving in nine UN missions last year. The PLA recently held joint training missions with 14 countries, including the US, India, Australia and the UK. In this regard, the decision to send the Chinese navy to participate in the anti-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia is probably more of a sign of things to come than a one-off publicity stunt.

Strengthening US ties

While the old concerns remain for both sides (Beijing's lack of budgetary transparency, Washington's weapon sales to Taiwan), the overall trend is toward closer ties between the Pentagon and the PLA.

The US-China relations probably hit their lowest point since the establishment of diplomatic relations early in the Bush administration when a Chinese F-8 fighter and a US Navy EP-3 reconnaissance aircraft collided near Hainan, China in April 2001. At the time, the Pentagon had put military-to-military communications on hold pending a review. After the incident was resolved, both sides began to take steps to ensure that a dialogue would remain open between their militaries, even if both continued to see each other as potential competitors.

Chinese and US forces staged their first joint search-and-rescue maneuvers in the Pacific and South China Sea in 2006, and Washington downplayed an unexpected surfacing of a Chinese submarine near a US aircraft carrier later that year. There were some hiccups along the road - such as Beijing's refusal to grant a US aircraft carrier a port call in November 2007 - but the both sides continued to pursue a deeper dialogue.

In April 2008, a military-to-military hotline was established to prevent any misunderstandings as Beijing begins to project its power beyond its littoral waters. Obama's decision to retain Defense Secretary Robert Gates seems to indicate that the trend will continue, though there are likely to be further problems along the way.

The new white paper also highlights some of the steps that the PLA has taken to improve its transparency on the international stage - one of the main sticking points for the Pentagon.

Last year, Beijing launched the Information Office of the Ministry of National Defense, which regularly releases military information and holds press conferences. Also in late 2007, Beijing rejoined the UN Standardized Instrument for Reporting Military Expenditures.

Still, the new white paper does not mention China's aircraft carrier program or its missiles aimed at Taiwan - and these are both major concerns for Washington.

The PLA's regional ties

The PLA has - established strong ties with its Central Asian neighbors through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which has held large-scale joint training exercises in recent years. But the new white paper also stresses improving ties with India and Japan as well.

Previous papers emphasized concerns about Japanese attempts to modify its constitution to allow a military build-up. The new paper only mentions mutual visits by the Japanese and Chinese navies, and says the bilateral relationship has improved. The paper also downplays Indian concerns about the Chinese naval build-up and an ongoing border dispute. Instead, the report cites the joint counterterrorism training exercises held in China and India in 2007 and 2008.

While Japan and India are sure to appreciate the new tone, concerns remain about China's regional intentions. Japan and China claim overlapping ownership of a section of the East China Sea. Though diplomatic progress has been made on the issue, it remains unresolved and both sides have adjusted their defensive postures in recent years as a result.

Negotiations over the disputed border with India have gone nowhere in recent years. Also, China's "string of pearls" strategy, which seeks to establish new naval bases and military ties along the sea lanes from the Middle East to the South China Sea, continues to be watched with a wary eye from New Delhi. Just as India is seeking "blue-water status" for its navy, or the ability to project power further away from its coastal region, China appears to be moving into the region with its navy.

International spotlight

Whereas previous white papers stressed the continued need for training within the PLA, the most recent report's emphasis is clearly on China's new place in the world. It describes the country as an indispensable nation: "China cannot develop in isolation from the rest of the world, nor can the world enjoy prosperity and stability without China."

While this emphasis is likely to cause concern in capitals around the world, it also opens the door for greater cooperation with China's neighbors and the US. The Chinese ships heading to Somalia will be the first test case for what Beijing clearly believes will be a new role for its military.

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APMT and the Asian Financial Crisis

The APMT program is one of the few commercial communications satellite programs that has remained strong despite the Asian financial crisis. Projections of an oversupply problem for Asia, and an accompanying plunge in transponder lease rates, appeared before the 1998 recession began. Asian currencies fell, as did demand for new satellite capacity. This oversupply was compounded when India did not pass legislation as expected to open their nation to the direct-to-home satellite market. That failure left some Asian satellites with empty beams aimed at India. Additional questions arose during this time about whether there are sufficient customers for these satellites to earn revenue. The Asian market is flooded with transponder capacity, creating a buyers' market.109

At least ten Asia-Pacific region communications satellite programs have been deferred due to the economic crisis.110 These include the Measat 3, Agila 3, AsiaSat 4, Thaicom 4, LSTAR 1, LSTAR 2, and the M2A communications satellites.111

Yet another concern with Hughes' proposed APMT sale is that it could help the PRC learn about the deployment of large antenna structures. This could assist the PRC in the development of future reconnaissance satellites. Mechanisms used to deploy large antenna systems have been protected from PRC scrutiny in the past. Visual access to the satellite, as well as the risk of unauthorized discussion with engineers such as has occurred in the past, could give the PRC access to this sensitive technology for the first time.

The Role of PLA General Shen Rongjun and His Son in APMT

The complex relationship between the Shen family and the Asia-Pacific Mobile Telecommunications (APMT) satellite has raised concerns about the possible use of the satellite for military intelligence purposes, and the possibility that technology discussed in the technical interchange meetings would be transferred to the People's Liberation Army (PLA).112

In May 1994, PLA Lieutenant General Shen Rongjun, the Deputy Director of the People's Republic of China Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (COSTIND), traveled to the United States and attended several business meetings with Hughes. Gen. Shen's responsibilities at COSTIND included the acquisition of satellite systems for the PRC. During this visit to the United States, General Shen's son, Shen Jun, who was living in Canada at the time, attended a business lunch with his father where he was introduced to Frank Taormina of Hughes. Taormina would later assist Shen Jun in obtaining a job at Hughes.113

Shen Jun is the older of two sons born to Gen. Shen. He spent 10 of his early years living at the Taiyun Satellite Launch Center in Shanxi province. Shen Jun received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in computer science from the Changsha Institute of Technology.114 The Changsha Institute of Technology is also known as the National Defense University of Science and Technology and is run by the PLA. For two years, Shen Jun received training and worked in the field of missiles and satellites under PLA supervision.

Shen Jun began working in North America in 1989 as a research assistant at the University of Waterloo, where he would later receive his Ph.D. in computer science in 1993.115

During his lunch meeting with Taormina in 1994, Shen Jun remarked that he was applying for a job with Hughes Canada. Taormina suggested to Shen Jun that he submit his resume to Taormina at Hughes in Los Angeles, where he could probably get a better job. While Shen Jun says he was not certain whether Taormina had a relationship with his father, he assumes that this was so, since Taormina was a Hughes vice president in charge of marketing and commercial business.116

Shen Jun was hired at Hughes in August 1994 after interviewing with Steve Hagers, who would become his boss.117 At the time, a division of Space Systems/Loral was also considering hiring Shen for a position that would have allowed him access to classified information.

Originally, Shen Jun was hired at Hughes as a scientist in the information technology division. His primary duty was to investigate new software systems that were available in the commercial market for potential use by Hughes.118 However, by June 1995, Shen Jun was transferred into Hughes' business development unit, where Hughes used him to conduct market research, general marketing of satellites in Asia, and, specifically, marketing of the APMT program.119

Another of Shen Jun's roles was to act as an interpreter for Hughes. While Hughes acquired a license from the U.S. State Department for Shen Jun to work as an interpreter in late 1996, Shen says he did not attend any of the preliminary design review meetings for APMT.120 Shen Jun states that he did translate for Hughes during at least one or two meetings in the proposal stage. During this period, Shen Jun had a foreign national badge and did not have access to certain Hughes facilities.121

Shen Jun also claims that he did not talk with his father, Gen. Shen Rongjun, on a regular basis and had only discussed the APMT satellite with him on a couple of occasions, and even then only at a very general level. Shen Jun claims he talks infrequently with his father, and that he usually talks with his mother when he talks with his family because his father is busy. Furthermore, Shen Jun claims not to know his father's current occupation since the reorganization of COSTIND. Shen Jun, acknowledges, however, that he has had "very high level" discussions with his father on APMT such as "how is the thing ... nothing deep, because it's a sensitive issue."122

Gen. Shen Rongjun's interactions with the APMT program are more obviously extensive. General Shen has been an advocate at COSTIND for purchasing Western satellites for the PLA, especially since the PRC's domestic satellites began failing in the early 1990s. Based on his position and responsibilities, Gen. Shen was directly involved in the decision to choose Hughes to work on the APMT program.

Similarities Between the PRC's Ballistic Missile and Rocket Technology

Background

The technologies used in rockets and ballistic missiles are essentially the same, except in the areas of payload and flight profile.123 The common elements of rockets and ballistic missiles include:

* Propulsion
* Structure
* Staging
* Guidance and control
* Ground support and launch equipment
* Systems integration124

These commonalities have led to considerable interaction between rocket and ballistic missile programs. Nations that possess space launch capabilities are considered to have all the essential elements to develop a ballistic missile, and vice versa.

Historically, most rockets have been derived from ballistic missiles. In the United States, for example, the current Titan, Atlas, and Delta rockets were derived from ballistic missiles developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Russia's Start rocket is essentially an SS-25 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that has been modified with an additional upper stage and a payload fairing in place of its reentry vehicle.125 Some rockets were even launched from silos, such as the Soviet-era SL-7 and SL-8. These Soviet rockets made use of the SS-4 and SS-5 intermediate-range ballistic missiles, respectively, as first stages.126

Since their origin, the PRC missile and space programs have been tied together. Like the space programs in the United States and the Soviet Union, the PRC space program got its early start by modifying ballistic missiles into rockets. These early attempts set a pattern of cooperation that continues today. The interaction can be seen in the overall design of the ballistic missiles and the rockets and in certain subsystems, such as propulsion.

In some areas, however, there are divergences. These divergences will increase in the future as the PRC's rockets and ballistic missiles employ different technologies, such as solid-propellant motors for ICBMs and cryogenic liquid-propellant engines for rockets.

The PRC's first rocket, known as the Long March 1, was a derivative of its limited range CSS-3 ICBM. The PRC launched two satellites aboard the Long March 1: one in 1970, and the second in 1971.

The PRC's CSS-4 ICBM has been the model for all PRC rockets since 1973. The first, the Long March 2A, has evolved into a family of rockets, including the Long March 2C, 2E, and 3; the Long March 3A family; and the Long March 4. The Long March 2C rocket is the most closely related to the CSS-4 ICBM. Indeed, it was derived directly from it. The two vehicles share the same first stage engines, structure, and dimensions.127

The PRC has also modified the CSS-3 into a small satellite launch vehicle known as the Long March 1D. The modifications include improvements to the YF-2 engines, a new second stage engine utilizing the YF-40 engines from the Long March 4, and a solid-propellant third stage similar to the apogee kick motor used on the Long March 3. The PRC has yet to use this new rocket for commercial space launches. The Long March 1D has, however, been used for military purposes.

Propulsion Systems

The propulsion system requirements for rockets and ballistic missiles are the same. Liquid-propellant engines or solid-propellant motors can be used on either. Both first and second stage engines are interchangeable between ballistic missiles and rockets. The flight environments that ballistic missiles and rockets pass through are the same, thus allowing their engines to be designed similarly. Traditionally, however, rockets use either additional stages or kick motors to place their payloads into orbit. Strap-on boosters can also be used for both rockets and ballistic missiles.

For its next generation ballistic missiles, the PRC is moving towards solid propellants. This will offer faster reaction times compared to liquid-propellant missiles. Moreover, solid-propellant missiles tend to be lighter weight. Solid propellants are less commonly used for rocket applications, since they provide less boosting power to place large payloads into orbit. Furthermore, the challenge of restarting solid-propellant motors once stopped makes them unattractive for upper stage use. The light weight of solid propellants, however, does make them useful for placing satellites into geosynchronous orbits, because they may be employed as kick motors and also as strap-on boosters on rockets.

The PRC's space program is reported to be moving away from storable liquid-propellant engines to cryogenic liquid-propellant engines. The PRC is reported to be working on a rocket that would use cryogenic liquid-propellant engines for its first and second stages. These engines provide greater boosting power over storable liquid propellants and solid propellants.128

Airframes

The airframe structure that forms the aerodynamic shell within which all elements of the rocket and ballistic missile are integrated is the same for both rockets and ballistic missiles.129

Ballistic missile and rocket structures must use materials that are lightweight and strong.130 Lightweight materials are preferred because the smaller the structural fraction of the weight of the missile or rocket, the more weight can be dedicated to payload or range.131

The structure must also be strong enough to withstand the aerodynamic loads that affect the missile or rocket during boost and ground handling operations.132 Because these loads are similar during the boost phase of flight, the structural requirements for ballistic missiles and rockets are the same, placing the same premium on materials, design, and fabrication.133

'The Fairing is part of the Launch Vehicle'

A rocket's nosecone, which protects the satellite inside, is known as a fairing. The same nosecone, if used on a ballistic missile to protect the nuclear warhead payload, is called a shroud.

Whether the launch vehicle is a rocket or a ballistic missile, the function of the nosecone is specialized to protect the payload ? satellite or nuclear warhead ? from external aerodynamic loads, vibration, noise, temperature extremes, and other environments that may be encountered as the vehicle is launched and accelerates through the atmosphere.

In the case of rockets, the fairing protects the satellite. In the case of ballistic missiles, the shroud would most likely be used to protect multiple independently-targeted reentry vehicles (MIRVs). (See the Technical Afterword to the chapter entitled Satellite Launches in the PRC: Hughes for a description of the similarities between the design and construction of the fairing for a rocket and a shroud for a ballistic missile.)

In 1995, Hughes argued to the Commerce Department that the fairing was part of the satellite and, therefore, Hughes' advice to the PRC regarding the fairing did not require a State Department license. A Commerce Department official, without asking any other U.S. Government agency, agreed. The Select Committee requested that the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the Department of Commerce, CIA, and NASA provide responses to the question: "Is the fairing part of the launch vehicle, or part of the satellite?" Their answers are summarized below.

Defense: "The fairing is part of the launch vehicle. It is designed and manufactured by the launch provider to encapsulate payloads (including, but not limited to, satellites). The fairing must be designed as an integral part of the launch vehicle system as its structure, in many respects, determines the success of the launch." 134

State: "The Department considers the fairing to be an integral part of the space launch vehicle. The forward end of a space launch vehicle typically has a payload fairing, which protects both the satellite and the space launch vehicle from aerodynamic loading and heating during the launch vehicle's ascent through the densest part of the atmosphere." 135

Commerce: "Fairings are regarded as part of the launch vehicle. Under U.S. implementation of multilateral controls, fairings are under the export jurisdiction of the Department of State." 136

CIA: "The CIA considers the payload fairing to be part of the space launch vehicle because the fairing is needed to fly the vehicle and satellite through the atmosphere. Furthermore, the fairings are typically designed and built by the launch vehicle provider, not the satellite manufacturer." 137

NASA: "The fairing is routinely acquired as a component of the launch vehicle service." 138

Ballistic Missile and Rocket Stages

The staging mechanisms on ballistic missiles and rockets are the same. In both cases, the purpose of using stages is to carry aloft the smallest amount of weight necessary to accelerate the payload to its target.

By discarding parts of the rocket or missiles that are no longer necessary, including unused propellant, stage separation makes space flight more efficient. For ballistic missiles with low accuracy (for example, "city buster" nuclear weapons as opposed to those designed to hit ICBM silos), the mechanisms for payload separation can be similar to those used on rockets.

Guidance Systems

The guidance and control subsystem of a rocket and of a ballistic missile monitors the flight path and adjusts for the effects of high altitude winds or gravitational attractions. The purpose, in both cases, is to deliver a payload to preselected points, either in orbit or on the earth, at preselected velocities.

The accuracy capabilities of a ballistic missile's guidance system may exceed those required for placing satellites into orbit, but the guidance system for a ballistic missile can be used on a rocket. A rocket guidance system, on the other hand, is not usually designed for the same degree of accuracy as is required for ballistic missiles, and therefore may not be suitable for use in some ballistic missile missions where a high degree of accuracy is required. In most cases, however, a rocket guidance system would be sufficiently accurate for delivering nuclear weapons to large targets such as cities.139

Many of the PRC's ballistic missiles and rockets share the same guidance systems.

The Select Committee has learned from Western scientists participating in the failure review following the 1996 Long March 3B crash that the guidance system used on the Long March 2C, Long March 2E and Long March 3 rockets is also used on the CSS-4 intercontinental ballistic missile.140

The strap-down guidance system that is used on the PLA's M-series of ballistic missiles, such as the CSS-6 (also known as the M-9) and CSS-X-7 (also known as the M-11), is also used on the PRC "Smart Dispenser."141 The PRC has used the Smart Dispenser to dispense two Iridium communications satellites on six different occasions.

The PRC had proposed to Loral to use this same guidance system on the PRC's "Top Stage" dispenser to dispense twelve Globalstar communications satellites from atop a Long March 2E rocket.142 The PRC marketed the Top Stage to Loral as having a mature guidance system, since its inertial measurement unit had been tested on more than 50 flights of the M-series missiles.143 After the crash of the Long March 3B carrying Loral's Intelsat 708 payload, however, Loral withdrew from its Globalstar contract with the PRC, and the 12-satellite dispenser was never used.

The Long March 3A, 3B, and 3C rockets use a different inertial measurement unit than do the Long March 2 family of rockets, the Long March 3, and the CSS-4 ICBM. The new guidance system for the Long March 3A, 3B, and 3C was developed in 1985, and is cheaper and lighter than the Long March 2 and Long March 3 guidance system.

The Long March 2 and 3 inertial measurement unit, for example, is so heavy that a crane is required to place it into position in the rocket. The Long March 3A, 3B, and 3C inertial measurement system is sufficiently smaller that it can be manually installed in the rocket.

Additionally, the Long March 2 guidance system and the guidance system for the Long March 3A, 3B, and 3C share almost none of the same components. The Long March 2 guidance system uses a double solder for connectors, whereas the Long March 3B uses a single solder. The Long March 2 guidance system is also a three-axis stabilized platform, whereas the Long March 3B is a four-axis stabilized platform.144

A relatively small and lightweight inertial measurement unit would be required for the PRC's next generation of ICBMs. While the Long March 3B inertial measurement unit is capable of being used for that purpose, it is considered an unlikely choice. Nonetheless, the experience that the PRC has gained with the Long March 3B in designing a small and lightweight inertial measurement unit that works will almost certainly benefit its designs of ICBM guidance systems in the future.

Ground Support

Ground support and launch procedures can be the same for rockets and ballistic missiles. The crews that launch ballistic missiles and rockets can be the same (and, indeed, PLA personnel are involved in both rocket and ICBM launches in the PRC).

The ground support equipment, such as the launch tower, the missile stand, the propellant handling equipment, and the transportation trains, can all be the same for rockets and ballistic missiles.

Payload preparation and handling is an area where procedures do differ, since satellites often require a complex checkout sequence before launch which ballistic missile warheads do not.145

The various institutes and academies in the PRC involved in the design and production of ballistic missiles also share design and production responsibilities for rockets. The China Academy of Launch Technology (CALT) is responsible for research and development of ballistic missiles and rockets. The Beijing Institute of Control Devices is responsible for both ballistic missile and rocket design. Moreover, all of these academies and institutes are managed within the same organizational hierarchy. These common responsibilities will allow the PRC to gain experience for both their ballistic missile and rocket programs through the launching of Western communications satellites.

The PRC's launch sites are also used for both military and commercial purposes. The Taiyun Satellite Launch Center was originally designed for launches of the CSS-4 ICBM. Today it launches the Long March 2C/SD rocket carrying Iridium satellites and the Long March 4 into polar orbits.146

Systems Integration

The system for integrating the propulsion, guidance and control, payload, and structure is the same for rockets and ballistic missiles.147 Analytical and diagnostic tools, such as structural analysis software, are the same for both and are widely available.148

Payload

The payload is the area of most significant potential difference between rockets and ballistic missiles.

Satellites are usually complex, fragile systems that are designed to remain in orbit for fixed periods of time. Satellite payloads usually are not required to withstand the aerodynamic stresses of reentry. Single warheads, on the other hand ? including nuclear, chemical, and biological warheads, as well as conventional bombs ? are designed to survive the intense stresses of atmospheric reentry.

Rockets normally use a fairing to protect the satellite payload from the aerodynamics stresses of launch (although a satellite can be designed, in some instances, to withstand the aerodynamic stresses of launch and therefore would not require a fairing). But in many cases, such as in the deployment of multiple warheads, or submarine launched missiles, ballistic missiles can include a shroud that is similar to a fairing. Both fairings and shrouds are aerodynamic shells that are placed over the payload ? satellite or warhead ? to reduce drag and aerodynamic stresses during launch.

To place the desired payloads into orbit, rockets generally operate at higher velocities than ballistic missiles. These higher velocities are often attained by high performance third stages, or by kick motors. An ICBM payload, on the other hand, is not intended to achieve orbit around the earth. Rather, the nuclear warhead reentry vehicle is considered to be a rocket whose orbit intersects the earth at the target.

Conclusion

Because of the many commonalities between rockets and ballistic missiles, the PRC can apply the same system refinements and modifications to both its rockets and ICBMs. It is likely that the failure rates of CSS-4 ICBM test flights, and the remedies the PRC adopts to address technical problems with the CSS-4 ICBM, may be the same as or similar to those of the Long March series of rockets

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These failures have left the PRC dependent on Western-manufactured satellites, which it purchases through multinational consortia in which the PRC maintains a controlling interest. These include the Asia Pacific Satellite Telecommunications Co., and China Orient Telecomm Satellite Co, Ltd. Satellites acquired by the PRC in this way include the Apstar-1, Apstar-1A, Apstar-2R, and ChinaStar-1.

It is likely that these failures have made the PLA dependent on Western communications satellites as well.

PRC Use of Very Small Aperture Terminals (VSATs)

The PRC has acquired Western-manufactured very small aperture terminals (VSATs) that could be used for military satellite communications.

VSATs are small satellite communications antennas used to transmit voice, data, video, fax, and computer-to-computer communications between multiple users. One VSAT terminal can be used to transmit communications from multiple users to different recipients via communications satellites.

The small size of VSAT terminals allows easy transportation between different locations and assembly in remote areas. These VSAT networks could improve the PLA's military command and control capabilities, by allowing mobile, reliable communications virtually anywhere.

The majority of VSAT terminals in use today in the PRC are U.S. manufactured. Hughes is by far the largest provider of VSAT networks to the PRC. The other significant U.S. supplier is Scientific Atlantic. Other providers include NEC of Japan and Spar of Canada.85

The PLA's Reconnaissance Satellite Program

The PLA has developed a photo reconnaissance satellite, known as the FSW (for the Fanhui Shi Weixing, or Recoverable Test Satellite). The current version of the Recoverable Test Satellite uses a recoverable capsule similar in concept to those used in the early U.S. Corona program. This PLA reconnaissance satellite provides the PRC with the ability to photograph U.S. military installations.

The first version of the satellite was successfully launched on November 26, 1975, using a Long March 2C rocket. After three days in orbit, the satellite capsule reentered and was successfully recovered by the PRC. Subsequent redesigns of the FSW-1 satellites allowed the PRC to increase its on-orbit life to five days before reentry. The PRC launched fifteen FSW-1 satellites, the last occurring in October 1993.86

The PRC's current, enhanced version of this satellite is known as the FSW-2. The FSW-2 is larger than the FSW-1 and has a longer on-orbit life. The FSW-2 military reconnaissance satellite has been launched three times since 1992.87 The most recent launch occurred in October 1996.

The PRC has also offered the FSW satellites as microgravity research platforms ? that is, scientific experiments are mounted on the military reconnaissance satellite itself. The commercial proceeds from such "piggy back" launches may in turn be used to subsidize the efforts of PRC entities. Starting in 1987, several FSW satellites have carried microgravity experiments for commercial customers including France and Germany.88

The PRC has also announced that it is going to deploy a new, more capable military reconnaissance satellite.

CBERS: A Prototype of the PRC's Acquisition of Western Technology

The CBERS-1 satellite program is an open program that has received considerable publicity. The Select Committee judges that the PRC is interested in promoting Western interest in this presumably civil satellite because it offers a means of acquiring technology that could be useful for future military reconnaissance satellites.

CBERS stands for the China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellite. The CBERS-1 satellite is a joint venture with Brazil for the development of a remote imaging satellite that will include a variety of Western technologies.

The CBERS remote imagery satellite is designed to include wide field imagery, a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera from the United States manufactured by Fairchild, and an infrared multispectral camera. The satellite is designed to provide global coverage at a variety of spatial resolutions and spectral bands to meet a range of commercial needs.

The CBERS-1 satellite, if successfully completed and deployed, will be able to image any location on the Earth within three days in the visible region, and 26 days in the infrared region.

The PRC's Other Military Satellite Programs

The PRC has developed and deployed a variety of other satellites for military purposes since its first launches in the 1970s.

It has been reported that the PRC may have developed a series of electronic intelligence (ELINT) satellites in the early 1970s.89 These satellites would have been useful for collecting data on Soviet defense, among other purposes.

The PRC has also developed two different types of meteorological satellites for military and civil purposes, known as Feng Yun (Wind and Cloud).

* The FY-1 series of satellites, first launched in 1988, are polar-orbiting. The FY-1 satellites have suffered a series of on-orbit failures. The first satellite operated for only 39 days of its one-year planned design life; the second satellite lost attitude control five months into its on-orbit life, was recovered 50 days later, and was again lost due to radiation damage.
* The FY-2 satellites were designed to provide meteorological information from geosynchronous orbit. The first satellite of this class, however, was lost due to an explosion during ground processing.90 The second of this class was launched on June 10, 1997 and was successfully placed into orbit.91

While the PLA has, to date, relied on the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS) and the Russian Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) navigation satellites, the PRC has announced plans for its own navigation satellite system, known as the Twin Star. The GPS system of satellites, which provides three-dimensional positioning and timing data throughout the globe, consists of 24 satellites with several on-orbit spares. The Russian GLONASS system is intended to use 21 satellites with three on-orbit spares, but the financial crisis in Russia has reduced the number of operational satellites currently on orbit.

In comparison, the PRC's proposed Twin Star positioning system program, as planned, would utilize two satellites in geosynchronous orbit for positioning, messaging, and timing services.92 The Twin Star system represents the PRC's attempt to become independent of the United States' GPS and the Russian GLONASS navigation satellites.

The Asia-Pacific Mobile Telecommunications (APMT) Satellite

Hughes is currently designing a geosynchronous communications satellite for a PRC-controlled consortium, Asia-Pacific Mobile Telecommunications, Ltd. (APMT). The stated purpose is to provide regional mobile communications throughout Asia.93

Unlike previous communications satellites, however, this satellite uses a very large antenna array, which has raised concerns that the satellite could be used not simply for telecommunications, but also for space-based signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection.

This would give the PRC the capability to eavesdrop electronically on conversations not only in the PRC, but also in neighboring countries. Since the APMT satellite's antenna array is significantly larger than any that has been provided to the PRC by any Western nation, it is likely that the PRC would seek to exploit the APMT design for a future PRC SIGINT satellite.

Other concerns have been raised about the participation of the son of a PLA general in the program's technical interchange meetings, as described in greater detail below.

When Hughes was awarded this contract, PRC entities had at least a 51 percent share in the international consortium that made up APMT. PRC entities involved included China Aerospace Corporation, China Launch and Tracking Control General, Chinasat, a subsidiary of the PRC Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, and UNICOM, the PRC's second telephone network. Originally, two Singaporean companies, Singapore Telecommunications, Ltd. and Singapore Technologies Telemedia, owned twenty-five percent of APMT.94 In 1998, however, Singapore Telecommunications pulled out of the APMT project, stating that the project no longer met its business requirements.95 Thailand is also listed by Hughes as an "other" shareholder in APMT.96 In 1998, Hughes reported that the shareholders for APMT included:

* China Aerospace Corporation
* China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology
* China Satellite Launch & Tracking Control General
* China Communications Systems Co. Limited
* China Resources Holdings Co. Ltd (PRC)
* Communications Authority of Thailand
* Telephone Organization of Thailand
* China Telecommunications Broadcast Satellite Corporation
* China Asia-Pacific Mobile Telecommunications Satellite Co. Ltd.
* Asia-Pacific Mobile Telecommunications (Singapore) Pte. Ltd.
* Sunburst Technologies Investments Pte. Ltd. of Singapore
* Mitsubishi Corporation of Japan
* NTT Mobilecommunications Network Inc. of Japan
* Future Hi-Tech Co., Ltd. of Thailand97

In the early 1990s, APMT held a competition among satellite manufacturers for a regional mobile communications satellite system that would use 50,000 small, portable handsets similar to cellular telephones. The system called for a communications satellite in geosynchronous orbit, which would transmit communications between handsets or rout them through "gateways" into the local telephone network.98 Among the competitors were Hughes and Loral.99

Hughes won the APMT contract. In 1996, Hughes requested an export license from the Commerce Department for the APMT satellite.100 If approved for export, the APMT satellite was to be launched on a Long March 3B rocket from the PRC.101 Hughes' design proposal, as originally submitted to the Commerce Department, included two HS 601 satellite buses with a 12-year design life. The satellites were to be equipped with a 40 foot L-band antenna.102 The license was originally approved by the Commerce Department in 1996.103

In April 1998, Hughes submitted a second license request to the Commerce Department due to changes in the satellite bus design.104 Hughes wanted to use the more powerful HS-GEM bus, in place of the HS 601, which would have permitted them to achieve design commonalities and hence production efficiencies with another satellite sale to the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The design change for the UAE satellite was the result of a requirement by Hughes' Thuraya satellite customer, who wanted to reduce the power used by the handsets when transmitting. This required an increase in the sensitivity and power of the satellites and their antenna.105 The original contract also called for two on-orbit satellites. This was modified to one on-orbit satellite and one spare satellite.106

The 40-foot antenna, which uses a truss-like outer ring and mesh reflector surface, is the unique aspect of the APMT satellite design. It has led to concerns that the PRC could use the APMT satellite for signals intelligence collection against a wide spectrum of communications.107

The satellite, however, is designed to collect and process only communications in the same bandwidth as is allocated to the handsets.108 Communications satellite antennas are designed to receive their own frequency and reject all others. To do otherwise would add unnecessary expense and complexity to the satellite.

In an attempt to reduce interference from other satellites using the same frequency bands, the APMT satellite antenna will use "left-hand circular polarization" which gives its signals a unique signature. The satellite will not collect other signals that use right, vertical, horizontal, or no polarization. These factors thus limit the satellite's ability to engage in signals intelligence to the collection of information transmitted by APMT system users. That volume of information, however, would be substantial.

When the handsets in the proposed APMT system are used, even for handset-to-handset conversations that are not bounced off the satellite, copies of the transmissions are downloaded to a central ground station. This capability is typically required of most satellite communications systems. Only Iridium, which uses inter-satellite cross-links, does not downlink its communications to a ground station. This downlink would allow the PRC to monitor the communications of APMT's users across the Asian region.

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Recently, the PRC has made an effort to sell low-earth orbit satellite launches:

* The PRC has entered into contracts with Motorola for the launch of Iridium satellites, including a contract to launch replacement satellites. Iridium satellites have been successfully launched six times on the Long March 2C/SD (that is, the Long March 2C with a "Smart Dispenser" (SD) stage added). The "Smart Dispenser" allows the PRC to launch two Iridium satellites into orbit at a time.
* The PRC has pursued a contract with Loral for the launch of Globalstar satellites. The PRC offered a version of its Long March 2E equipped with a "Top Stage" (TS) that would dispense twelve Globalstar satellites. While Loral had originally contracted for a launch on the Long March 2E/TS, it cancelled that contract following the crash of the Long March 3B in February 1996.

The PRC's Future Space Launch Capabilities

The PRC also recognizes the importance of space in future conflicts, for purposes that include both command and control, and military reconnaissance. The PRC is believed to be developing a new, larger rocket that will be able to carry larger payloads into orbit.

PRC papers have discussed the use of cryogenic liquid propellant engines for this future rocket. One of the engines the PRC could use is the RD-120. The PRC is known to have acquired at least one of these engines from Russian during the 1990s.69 The RD-120 is a liquid oxygen/kerosene engine that is used on the second stage of the Zenit rocket, which is used on the multinational Sea Launch program.

Difficulties with the development of the new engines for this rocket may have prompted the PRC to focus, in the nearer term, on the proposed Long March 2E(A) and Long March 3B(A) versions of the Long March rocket that will utilize improved strap-on boosters to achieve greater payload-to-orbit capability. It should be noted that these are the two systems that were the subject of the failure review investigations in which Loral and Hughes participated. See Chapter 2 for a detailed discussion of how these failure reviews assisted the PRC.

PRC Space Weapons

The PRC is believed to be developing space-based and ground-based anti-satellite laser weapons. Such weapons would be of exceptional value for the control of space and information. The Select Committee judges that the PRC is moving toward the deployment of such weapons.

Based on the significant level of PRC-Russian cooperation on weapons development, it is possible that the PRC will be able to use nuclear reactors to pump lasers with pulse energies high enough to destroy satellites.

In addition, Russian cooperation could help the PRC to develop an advanced radar system using lasers to track and image satellites.

The Select Committee judges that the PRC has the technical capability to develop direct ascent anti-satellite weapons. The CSS-2 could be modified for use in this role. This would be similar to the approach taken by the Soviets with their SS-9 ASAT system.

The PRC's Manned Space Program

The PRC has conducted research since the 1950s, including biological and life support research, on placing astronauts into orbit. Pursuant to its 921 Project, the PRC's plans since the 1980s have included concepts for Space Shuttle-like spacecraft, recoverable capsules, and a space station.70

In 1996, two PRC astronauts began training at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, Star City, Russia. The PRC appears set to launch these two astronauts into space sometime this year to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Communist rule in China.

For its manned space program, the PRC will use Soyuz capsules purchased during Yeltsin's visit to the PRC in April 1996. A Soyuz capsule will be carried on top of the Long March 2E, using a payload shroud (that is, a fairing) equipped with a launch escape system. (See Chapter 5, Satellite Launches in the PRC: Hughes for a discussion of fairing improvements to the Long March 2E.)

If the PRC is successful in placing men in orbit, it will be only the third nation, after Russia and the United States, to have done this.

The PRC's Communications Satellite Programs

Since the beginning of its domestic communications satellite programs, the PRC has suffered a string of problems with the performance of its communications satellites, as well as the rockets designed to place those satellites into orbit.

During the mid-to-late 1980s, the PRC was able to place four of its communications satellites into geosynchronous orbit. Today, however, the PRC has only one active domestically-manufactured telecommunications satellite on orbit. This satellite has reportedly suffered on-orbit problems that may have reduced its capabilities.71

The PRC's inability to place reliable communications satellites (COMSATs) into orbit has created serious gaps in the PRC's satellite communications capabilities, both for civilian and military purposes. The PRC has addressed the greatest part of its satellite communications requirement by leasing communications channels on Western-manufactured communications satellites.

The PRC first began developing its own communications satellites in the early 1970s, based on Western technology. All of these satellites were designed by the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST) for military purposes. They have all been operated by China Satellite Launch and Tracking Control General (CLTC), which is subordinate to COSTIND.72

The PRC's inability to design and produce advanced communications satellites has also led it to seek Western components and technology for its domestic communications satellite industry. The Select Committee judges that the use of Western technology cut in half the time required for the PRC to progress from an experimental communications satellite to the advanced DFH-3 satellites, which were first launched in 1994.

The following table shows a chronology of the PRC's history of launching PRC communications satellites.

History of the PRC's Domestic

Communications Satellite Launches

PRC SatelliteDate PRC RocketResult

DFH-2Jan. 29, 1984 Long March 3Rocket Failure

DFH-2Apr. 8, 1984 Long March 3Success

DFH-2Feb. 1, 1986 Long March 3Success

DFH-2AMar. 7, 1988 Long March 3Success

DFH-2ADec. 22, 1988 Long March 3Success

DFH-2AFeb. 4, 1990 Long March 3Success

DFH-2ADec. 28, 1991 Long March 3Rocket Failure

DFH-3Nov. 29, 1994 Long March 3A Satellite Failure

DFH-3May 11, 1997 Long March 3ASatellite Problem

The PRC's first generation communications satellite was the Dong Fang Hong-2 ("East is Red"). These satellites were designed to provide the PRC with test experience. The satellite design was similar to that used on the Hughes HS376 satellites, employing a spin-stabilized body and a de-spun horn antenna.

The first attempt to launch a DFH-2 satellite, in January 1984, was not successful due to the failure of the Long March 3 rocket that was to carry it into orbit. The second launch attempt on April 8, 1984 successfully placed a communications satellite into orbit. A third DFH-2 satellite was launched on February 1, 1986. This satellite provided communications services until it reached the end of its service life.

In 1988, the PRC launched an improved version of this satellite, known as the DFH-2A. The new satellite used the same spin-stabilized body, this time equipped with an improved antenna array that increased the number of communications channels available.

These satellites were able to handle five television channels and 3,000 phone calls simultaneously. The first three of these satellites were named "Chinasats" by the PRC, and were successfully launched twice in 1988 and once in 1990. A fourth DFH-2A satellite launch in 1990 was unsuccessful, when the failure of the rocket's third-stage engine left the satellite stranded in an incorrect orbit.

The PRC's third generation communications satellites, known as the DFH-3, are the PRC's most modern communication satellites. The DFH-3 is useful for military communications. These satellites have three-axis stabilized bodies, 24 C-band transponders and are designed to have an 8-year on-orbit life. Due to the increased weight of these satellites as compared to the DFH-2A, the DFH-3 satellites are launched on the more capable Long March 3A rocket.

The first launch of the DFH-3 satellite on November 29, 1994 was unsuccessful when the satellite failed to attain the proper orbit, rendering it useless for its intended communications function.

The PRC's second attempt to launch a DFH-3 satellite on May 11, 1997 successfully placed the satellite into a geosynchronous orbit at 125 degrees east longitude.73 The PRC, however, reportedly may have suffered problems with the satellite.74

The PRC's Use of Foreign Components on Communications Satellites

The PRC's limited communications satellite construction capabilities led it from the first to seek Western manufacturers for reliable components. Even the PRC's most modern communications satellite, the DFH-3, which was first successfully launched in 1997, contains a large number of Western components:

* The DFH-3 is reported to use a control processor built by Matra-Marconi75
* Messerschmitt Boelkow Blohm (MBB) provided the DFH-3 solar panel substrates to the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST), and CAST-produced solar cells were mounted on them. The solar panel assemblies were then returned to MBB for assembly into deployable solar arrays76
* Daimler Chrysler Aerospace Group provided the DFH-3's antenna assembly, consisting of a deployable dual gridded reflector, feed and interconnecting structure77
* Officine Galileo provided the Infrared Earth sensor to determine pitch/roll in geosynchronous orbit78
* The DFH-3's payload test equipment, according to 1993 reports, consisted of five racks and consoles with 80% U.S. Hewlett Packard and German equipment
* The equipment racks for the test equipment were provided by Germany's Ant Corporation79possible

PRC Assistance to North Korea

The PRC, through the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST), provides complete satellites and technology to other nations. On August 31, 1998, North Korea launched a three stage Taepo Dong-1 ballistic missile. The North Koreans claim to have launched their first satellite, known as Kwangmyongsong No. 1 (Bright Star 1), on this Taepo Dong-1 missile. Comparing the picture of the Kwangmyongsong No. 1 satellite released by North Korea with that of the PRC's Dong Fang Hong 1 satellite. The two bear a striking resemblance.

Several U.S. companies have also marketed their communications satellite technologies to the PRC. Loral, for example, offered the PRC a direct broadcast satellite (DBS) capability in 1996 using either a Loral-produced satellite bus or the DFH-3 series satellite bus.80 A 1995 Memorandum of Agreement between Loral and China Aerospace Corporation offered the PRC direct broadcast satellites, regional mobile satellite services systems, and the joint development of an advanced high capacity communications satellite. Under this agreement, Loral would provide design and technical support, while the final integration of the satellite was to have occurred in Germany or the PRC.81

Hughes and Loral competed for the Asia-Pacific Mobile Telecommunications (APMT) satellite. APMT is a Singapore-based, PRC controlled company. At least 51% of APMT is owned by PRC Government agencies, including China Aerospace Corporation, the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, China Satellite Launch and Tracking Control General, and Chinasat, a subsidiary of the PRC Ministry of Post and Telecommunications.82 See the Asia-Pacific Mobile Telecommunications Satellite section of this chapter, below.

The PRC's Reliance on Commercial Communications Satellites

Due to the failures of the PRC's rockets, and of its satellites, the PRC has become dependent on Western-manufactured communications satellites.

The PRC's dependency began as the early DFH-2A satellites reached the end of their on-orbit lives, while the fourth DFH-2A satellite failed to reach orbit. This created a gap in the PRC's satellite communications capabilities. As a result, the PRC was forced to look to foreign communications satellite manufacturers for supplemental capacity.

In December 1992, the PRC purchased Spacenet 1 on-orbit from GTE to replace its aging DFH-2A/1 and DFH-2A/2 satellites. The PRC renamed it "ChinaSat-5." This satellite was to provide supplemental capabilities until the PRC's first DFH-3 satellite was launched in 1994. The failure of the PRC's first DFH-3 satellite to reach orbit, and the imminent expiration of the useful life of ChinaSat-5, forced the PRC to purchase a Hughes HS-376 satellite to provide additional communications channels. But this satellite launch in August 1996, aboard a Long March 3 rocket, was also a failure. The third stage left the satellite stranded in an unusable orbit.83 The second DFH-3 satellite that the PRC launched in May 1997 reportedly has now developed on-orbit problems.

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Two years after the first successful launch of the Long March 2E, the PRC successfully launched the Long March 3A, a cheaper, higher performance rocket that would better meet both its military and commercial geosynchronous launch requirements. The Long March 3A was the first of a family of Long March 3A, 3B and 3C rockets.

The Long March 3A family of rockets uses a strengthened Long March 3 first stage. In the case of the Long March 3B and 3C, this permits the mounting of additional strap-on boosters. The Long March 3A, 3B, and 3C rockets also use a new, lighter weight, and cheaper inertial measurement unit. Furthermore, these rockets employ large "hammerhead" fairings to protect their satellite payloads. The launch history of the Long March 3A, 3B, and 3C rockets is listed below. The failure analysis of the Long March 3B launch carrying the Intelsat 708 satellite manufactured by Loral, is discussed in the chapter of this Report entitled Satellite Launches in the PRC: Loral.

Comparison of Two Different Inertial Measurement Units

Used in Guidance System of Long March Rockets59

Features of the Inertial Measurement Unit Used in the Guidance System of:

LM 2C/2E/3LM 3A/3B/3C

Number of Gimbals34

Number of Gyroscopes32

Number of Accelerometers33

Number of Torque Motors for Each Gimbal21

Dimensions (mm)500 x 600 x 800300 x 300 x 400

Mass (kg)14048

Maiden Flight1974 on Long March 2C1994 on Long March 3A

Manufactured by CALT (LM 2C/2E) CALT CAST (LM 3)
The PRC's Commercial Space Launch Program

The PRC's entry into the commercial space launch market coincided with a dark period for the U.S. launch industry that included the 1985 and 1986 launch failures of several Delta and Titan expendable rockets, and the 1987 explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger. At the time of the Challenger accident, the U.S. space launch industry was in the midst of a plan to phase out all expendable rockets in favor of the Space Shuttle, which was projected to be more economical.60 But that plan was cancelled with the

Challenger explosion. Instead, the United States imposed a hiatus in shuttle launches until September 1988, and a permanent decision that the Space Shuttle would not be used to launch commercial payloads.61

The lack of available U.S. commercial space launch capacity forced satellite manufacturers to seek alternative launch providers. The Soviet Union had the capacity to launch commercial satellites, but U.S. policy would not support the launching of U.S.-manufactured satellites on Soviet rockets. The European consortium of Arianespace had a rocket, but no extra capacity. This left the PRC as the only alternative for launching geosynchronous communications satellites.

In 1987, the United States viewed the PRC as a counterbalance to Soviet military power in Asia. Accordingly, the "Green Line" policy had been adopted to permit some technology transfers to the PRC, while limiting transfers of technologies that could improve the PLA's ballistic missile and anti-submarine warfare capabilities.62 In 1988, President Reagan agreed to allow the PRC to launch U.S.-manufactured satellites on the condition that the PRC sign three bilateral agreements with the U.S. on competitive pricing, liability, and the protection of U.S. technology. 63

The PRC's first success in the commercial market occurred in 1987. In that year, Matra of France contracted with the PRC to place a scientific payload in orbit, using a Long March 2C rocket. These French scientific experiments were launched on August 5, 1987 aboard a PLA military photo-reconnaissance satellite. The recoverable capsules of the PLA's reconnaissance satellites made them an ideal platform for microgravity experiments.64

The PRC's first commercial launch of a U.S.-manufactured communications satellite occurred on April 7, 1990. The Asiasat?a Hughes HS 376 model satellite? was launched into orbit aboard a Long March 3 rocket.65

From that point, in addition to their military launch schedule, the PRC has attempted 28 launches of Western-manufactured satellites.66 Of these satellites, 27 were U.S-manufactured: only the French-manufactured Sinosat, launched successfully on July 18, 1998, was produced by a non-U.S. manufacturer. 67 Twenty-three of the PRC's attempts to launch U.S. satellites were successful. Four have ended in failure.68 These four failures are detailed below.

PRC Commercial Launch Failures

SatelliteLaunch DateRocketFailure Mode

Optus B2Dec. 21, 1992Long March 2EFairing collapse

Apstar-2Jan. 25, 1995Long March 2EFairing collapse

Intelsat 708Feb. 15, 1996Long March 3BInertial measurement

unit malfunction

Chinasat 7Aug. 18, 1996Long March 3Third stage malfunction

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The Select Committee's classified Final Report contains additional information on PRC proliferation that the Clinton administration has determined cannot be made public.

The PRC's Military and Civil Space Program

The PRC's military and civilian space launch program began in the 1950s, concurrent with its development of long-range ballistic missiles. At that time, a small research effort was begun at the Chinese Academy of Sciences to develop indigenous space launch and satellite production capabilities.

The PRC's early efforts were aided by technology and knowledge transferred from the Soviet Union.

From that beginning, the PRC has developed a comprehensive space program that includes a family of rockets, numerous satellites, and a telemetry, tracking, and control network. These efforts have paid off, as the PRC is now a major space power. It offers international launch services and is working on placing men in space.

The PRC's first satellite launch occurred on April 24, 1970, using a CSS-3 intercontinental ballistic missile. The ICBM was modified by adding a third stage, which was used to place the satellite into orbit. This new rocket was named the Long March 1.

The 380-pound satellite it carried was named Dong Fang Hong-1 (East Is Red 1). The satellite orbited for approximately 26 days, transmitting to Earth the song "The East is Red." 45

After the PRC's second successful launch of a satellite on March 3, 1971, again using the modified CSS-3 ICBM, the PRC set out to launch heavier payloads into orbit. For this purpose, the PRC turned to the longer-range, more powerful CSS-4 ICBM. This rocket was named the Long March 2.

The first three launches of the Long March 2 rocket, from 1973 through 1974, were failures. Finally, on July 26, 1975, the PRC successfully launched the Long March 2C and placed its third satellite into orbit.

During the balance of the 1970s, the PRC launched nearly a dozen satellites on the Long March 2, many of which undoubtedly were for military purposes. Nearly half of these launches were unsuccessful, however, resulting in the destruction of many payloads.

The Long March 2 and its derivatives are the main rockets used by the PRC today, in both its military and civilian space programs. Because the Long March 2 was derived directly from the CSS-4 intercontinental ballistic missile, the two share much in common. The Long March 2 rocket and the CSS-4 ICBM use the same airframe structure, the same cluster of four YF-20 engines (known as the YF-21) in the first stage, and the same single YF-22 engine combined with the YF-23 vernier engines that form the YF-24 in the second stage.46 However, unlike the CSS-4, the Long March 2 was modified to deliver payloads to orbit rather than a nuclear weapon to a target.

In order to meet space launch requirements for heavier payloads and higher orbits, the PRC improved the performance of the Long March rocket. Among other changes, the PRC increased the amount of propellant the rocket could carry, improved the performance of the first and second stage engines, added new cryogenic liquid-propellant third stage engines, and attached additional boosters that were strapped on to the basic rocket. These changes led to the development of three new modifications to the Long March rocket.

The Long March 3 was developed in 1977 to meet the requirements for launching communications satellites into geosynchronous orbit. It was the PRC's first rocket built for this purpose.47 The Long March 3 uses the same first and second stages as the Long March 2C, except that aerodynamic fins are added to the base of the first stage.48 It also uses the same YF-21 and YF-24 engines.49 The main change from the Long March 2C is the addition of a restartable, cryogenic liquid-propellant third stage.50 This stage is designed to boost the payload into a geostationary transfer orbit.

The Long March 4 was developed by the PRC in the late 1970s to launch meteorological satellites for military and civilian purposes into sun synchronous orbits. The new rocket used improved first and second stage engines, and a first stage that was 13 feet longer than the standard Long March 2 first stage.51

When the PRC announced in 1986 that is was entering the commercial satellite launch market, it decided to develop a rocket that could provide heavy-lift capabilities to low earth orbit. However, the majority of commercial payloads at the time were for geosynchronous satellites.52 Moreover, the PRC's operational rockets at the time were limited in their performance compared to Western rockets.

The Long March 2C could only place a 1,350-pound payload into low earth orbit. The Long March 3 was only capable of placing an 870-pound payload into geostationary transfer orbit.53 In comparison, the U.S. Delta 3925 rocket could place 2,140 pounds into low earth orbit, and 795 pounds into geosynchronous orbit. The U.S. space shuttle could transport 15,400 pounds into low earth orbit.54 To place heavy payloads into geosynchronous orbit requires either a third stage or a perigee kick motor, which the Long March still lacked.

To meet this requirement, the PRC developed the Long March 2E rocket which was first launched successfully in 1992. The Long March 2E uses a stretched version of the Long March 2C first and second stages, increasing the amount of propellant carried, which increases the burn-time of the engines. 55 The Long March 2E also uses improved versions of the YF-20 engines used on the Long March 2C. Known as the YF-20B, these engines offer improved thrust.56 The Long March 2E also uses four strap-on liquid-propellant boosters. These boosters are attached to the rocket's first stage. Each booster is fitted with a YF-20B engine.

To permit the Long March 2E to place a satellite into geosynchronous orbit, the PRC mated the satellite payload with a perigee kick motor, which acted as a third stage. Because there was no indigenous PRC kick motor, however, foreign launch customers had to use Western-manufactured kick motors. This required a separate export license. The PRC later developed its own family of kick motors, allowing customers to choose between Western- or PRC-manufactured versions.

Finally, the Long March 2E employs an enlarged "hammerhead" fairing to protect the satellite payloads, which exceed the upper stage's diameter. The Long March 2E can place 5,450 pounds into low earth orbit and 2,140 pounds into geosynchronous transfer orbit.57

The Long March 2E has suffered a series of in-flight failures (see table below). The December 1992 and January 1995 failures resulted in the destruction of two Hughes-manufactured satellites. The results of the failure analyses conducted by Hughes as a result of these launch failures are discussed in the chapter entitled Satellite Launches in the PRC: Hughes.

Launch History of the PRC's Long March 2E58

Launch Date Satellite Manufacturer Owner Results

Jul. 16, 1990 Dummy AUSSAT Satellite and Badr-1 PRC Dummy AUSSAT Satellite ? PRC Badr-1 ? Pakistan

Perigee kick motor failed in the Dummy AUSSAT Satellite Badr-1 achieved orbit
Aug. 31, 1992 Optus-B1 Hughes Optus (Australia) Success
Dec. 21, 1992 Optus-B2 Hughes Optus (Australia) Failure - fairing collapse
Aug. 24, 1994 Optus-B3 Hughes Optus (Australia) Success
Jan. 25, 1995 Apstar-2 Hughes Asia-Pacific Telecom(APT) Failure- fairing collapse
Nov. 28, 1995 Asiasat-2 Lockheed-Martin Asiasat (Hong Kong) Success
Dec. 28, 1995 Echostar-1 Lockheed-Martin Echostar Inc. (U.S.) Success

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PRC Missile and Space Forces
page 3

The deployment of the PRC's new nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine could also lead to a shift in PRC doctrine, as these submarines will likely be deployed with their nuclear warheads already mated to the missiles. The long range of the JL-2 submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missile will allow the PRC to conduct patrols close to its base, and under the protective cover of the PLA Navy and Air Force. This would provide the PLA submarine fleet with a more survivable nuclear force.

The fact that these new nuclear weapons will be far more survivable than the PRC's current silo-based forces could signal a major shift in the PRC's current nuclear strategy and doctrine.

The PRC might allow the first use of nuclear weapons on its own territory, which the PRC views as including Taiwan.

The PRC has tested an enhanced radiation weapon (neutron bomb) that minimizes blast effects, while maximizing human casualties. The PRC probably originally developed the neutron bomb for use on its own territory against invading Soviet forces. Similarly, the neutron bomb would be useful in a conflict with Taiwan, since the PRC undoubtedly would intend to occupy the territory it was attacking. The PRC may have plans to deploy neutron bombs.

These enhancements to the PRC's nuclear forces, together with its expanding economic capabilities, present the PRC with additional options for changes in its strategic doctrine. The PRC's growing economy, for instance, could allow it to produce and deploy more missiles than earlier planned. Additionally, the Select Committee judges that if the PRC made a decision to do so, it could build multiple warheads for its ballistic missiles.

Moreover, the PRC's concerns about the vulnerability of its nuclear weapons could lead the PRC to develop an early warning system in order to support a launch-on-warning posture.

The secretive nature of the Chinese Communist Party's Central Military Commission, as well as the PLA's other decision-making bodies, means that changes in PRC nuclear force doctrine may not be apparent.

Clearly, the PRC views its conventional ballistic missile forces as potential weapons for use during regional conflicts. This strategy was implied by the PRC in the course of its CSS-6 short-range ballistic missile exercises during the March 1996 presidential elections in Taiwan. During the exercise, the PRC launched four CSS-6 ballistic missiles towards points north and south of Taiwan's major ports.

The PRC's Opposition to U.S. Missile Defenses

Statements by PRC Government officials make it clear that the PRC is opposed to the development of either theater or national missile defense systems that could counter Beijing's nuclear forces.

If the PRC were intent upon overwhelming these defenses, there are several options it could take in an attempt to preserve the offensive capability of its missile forces.

One of the PRC's responses could be to expand the size of its ballistic missile force, to increase the chances that some of its nuclear weapons overcome a nation's defenses. This would be an expensive option requiring the PRC to invest in the production of significant additional missiles and infrastructure.

A cheaper response to U.S. missile defenses for the PRC could be the development of penetration aids (PENAIDS) for its ballistic missiles. These PENAIDS could include:

* Decoys that create multiple radar targets, which must be tracked until discrimination of the actual nuclear warhead can be accomplished. Simple decoys are effective during exoatmospheric flight of the nuclear warhead, but burn up during reentry into the atmosphere.
* Chaff consisting of aluminum strips that are designed to reflect radar beams, thereby confusing a radar as to the location of the PLA warhead.
* Jammers used to jam the radar system during the flight of the PLA nuclear warhead.
* Radar absorbing materials, which can also be used to reduce the radar cross section of the PLA nuclear warhead.
* The PLA nuclear warhead itself could be reoriented to present the lowest radar cross section.31

The PRC is expected to pursue one or more PENAIDs in connection with its new nuclear missiles.

Given the PRC's aggressive opposition to missile defenses, the Select Committee judges that the PRC is collecting information about U.S. missile defense systems in order to help its development of PENAIDS.

Another option for countering U.S. missile defenses would be the development of a maneuvering reentry vehicle (MARV). The maneuvering capability could be used to complicate hit-to-kill or conventional warhead ballistic missile defense systems.

The PRC could also develop multiple independently-targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs) or multiple reentry vehicle (MRV) platforms. This would effectively increase the size of the PLA's nuclear force without the full expense required to deploy additional missiles. The PRC's theft from the United States of design information for the W-88 miniaturized nuclear warhead makes it possible that existing or future PLA missiles, which might have been too small in diameter to carry multiple warheads, could now do so.

Furthermore, existing PLA missiles, including the CSS-4 Mod 2, could be capable of carrying the new, smaller warheads in a MIRV or MRV configuration. Within a short period of time after a decision to proceed, the PRC has the ability to deploy missiles with multiple reentry vehicles (MIRVs or MRVs). The PRC has demonstrated similar concepts and technologies in the Smart Dispenser that it developed to place multiple Iridium satellites into orbit. The Select Committee did not, however, review sufficient evidence to permit a judgment whether the PRC will in the future decide to deploy a MIRV or MRV system.

The Iridium Smart Dispenser Controversy

In May 1998, allegations were made that Motorola had provided the PRC with technology that would allow it to build a multiple, independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) missile-dispensing platform. The allegations were that the Smart Dispenser used by the PRC to place two Iridium communications satellites into orbit would provide the PRC with technology that would be directly applicable to MIRV dispensing.32

The Smart Dispenser is an on-orbit maneuvering stage with its own independent guidance system. The Select Committee has determined that Motorola did not provide the PRC with information on how to design the Smart Dispenser; rather, the PRC built the Smart Dispenser indigenously to Motorola's specifications. However, the Select Committee's independent technical expert noted that the PRC has demonstrated all of the techniques that are required for developing a MIRV bus, and that the PRC could develop a MIRV dispensing platform within a short period of time after making a decision to proceed.

The PRC's Acquisition of Foreign Ballistic Missile Technology

The PRC constantly searches for technology for its ballistic missile programs. Any technology or know-how that the PRC can acquire from foreign sources will save the PRC time and money in the development of its future weapons systems.

The prospect of ballistic missile and nuclear weapons cooperation between Russia and the PRC would be especially troubling because of the advanced technical capabilities of the Russian strategic nuclear forces. Thus far, Russia has been the only nation to deploy a mobile intercontinental ballistic missile force. These missiles include the road-mobile solid-propellant SS-25 ICBM and the rail-mobile SS-24 ICBM. Any cooperation in the area of solid-propellant mobile missiles would clearly benefit the PRC's new road-mobile ICBM programs.

Additionally, the Russians have advanced guidance and control capabilities. Assistance in the guidance and control field could help the PRC improve the accuracy of its current and future missile forces.

Furthermore, the Russians have the ability to mass-produce large, solid-propellant missiles. The manufacturing capabilities for these missiles could help the PRC produce large numbers of its next generation ICBMs. Russia's use of advanced solid-propellant materials could benefit the PRC's ICBM and submarine-launched ballistic missile programs, allowing them to build lightweight, longer-range ballistic missiles.

The Russian designer of the SS-X-27 has claimed that the missile's advanced penetration capabilities will allow it to defeat any nation's ballistic missile defenses.33 While the validity of such a statement cannot be judged against a U.S. national missile defense system that is not yet deployed, or even finally designed, Russia's provision of these presumably advanced penetration technologies to the PRC could assist PRC efforts to counter a U.S. national missile defense system.

While the Select Committee has no evidence that the Russians or any other nation of the former Soviet Union have provided the PRC with complete ballistic missiles or missile subsystems, there have been reported instances of the PRC approaching Russia and Ukraine about acquiring SS-18 and SS-25 intercontinental ballistic missiles. Reportedly, the PRC was turned down.34

The PRC's Indigenous Ballistic Missile Design Capabilities

The PRC is judged to have a fairly sophisticated capability to design ballistic missiles and rockets. This assessment is based on the fact that the PRC is able to develop missiles and rockets that are capable of delivering large payloads to their intended destination with reasonable accuracy and reliability. However, these design capabilities are not in all cases as sophisticated as those of Western nations.

The Select Committee's independent technical expert noted that while PRC scientists and engineers may have a textbook understanding of problems, there is a difference between a textbook understanding and the application of this knowledge to specific problems. Interactions with U.S. and foreign scientists and engineers, therefor, could assist the PRC engineers and scientists in overcoming these limitations.

PRC Missile Proliferation

The PRC is one of the world's leading proliferators of complete ballistic missile systems, as well as missile components.

Despite the fact that, in 1991, the PRC agreed to adhere to the April 1987 Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) guidelines that call for restraint on the sale of missiles capable of delivering a 225-pound payload to 185 miles, the PRC has sold complete ballistic missile systems or missile components to a number of countries, including but not limited to Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia.35

In 1993, the MTCR States issued new expanded guidelines that called for a "strong presumption to deny" both sales of complete missile systems and sales of components that could be used in ballistic missile systems. Furthermore, the new guidelines call for restrictions on transfers of missiles that can deliver a weapons of mass destruction payload to 185 miles.36 However, the PRC has accepted neither these revised guidelines, nor the annex on the transfer of components and other commodities such as propellants and test equipment.37

Notwithstanding the PRC's purported adherence to the MTCR Category I restrictions, the PRC has provided, or is providing, assistance to the missile and space programs of Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and other countries. The PRC also continues to offer Category II missile components for sale to international customers. In addition, the PRC has provided assistance to the nuclear programs of Iran and Pakistan.

Iran

During the 1990s, the PRC sold Iran significant numbers of 90-mile range CSS-8 ballistic missiles, along with associated support equipment. In addition, PRC companies provided Iran with ballistic missile production technology. The PRC also reportedly sold Iran guidance components,38 and more recently telemetry equipment, for ballistic missiles.39 The PRC reportedly is currently providing Iran with solid-propellant missile technology.40 During the 1980s and 1990s, the PRC has transferred C-802 anti-ship cruise missiles to Iran.41 The PRC has also provided assistance to Iran's nuclear weapons programs.42

Pakistan

The PRC has provided Pakistan with a wide range of weapons assistance. The PRC has reportedly supplied Pakistan with CSS-X-7 (or M-11) ballistic missiles, mobile missile launchers, and the facilities necessary to produce M-11 missiles. The PRC has also provided Pakistan with assistance on uranium enrichment, ring magnets, and other technologies useful for Pakistan's nuclear weapons program.43

Saudi Arabia

The PRC provided complete CSS-2 missiles to Saudi Arabia in 1987. The conventionally armed missile has a range of 1,500 to 1,800 miles.

PRC Missile and Space Forces 2

2009-11-24T21:19:00.000-08:00

PRC Missile and Space Forces
page 2

The PRC first attempted a flight test of the CSS-4 in the 1970s. Following several flight test failures, the PRC continued its development of the CSS-4 through its development of the Long March 2 rocket. Of the next nine Long March 2 launches from 1973 through 1978, five were successful.

The CSS-4 uses nitrogen tetroxide (NTO) as the oxidizer and a lightweight, aluminum-copper alloy airframe. It is equipped with four YF-20 engines in its first stage, and a single YF-20 engine in its second stage. Unlike previous PRC missiles that use jet vanes in the exhaust for steering control, the CSS-4 uses steerable exhaust nozzles for control. It has been reported to the Select Committee that the CSS-4 uses a gimbaled guidance system for control.22

Starting in 1981, the PRC began deploying CSS-4 missiles in silos. Only two operational missiles were deployed in the 1980s, on what the PRC called "trial operational deployments."

During the 1990s, the PRC has deployed a total of approximately 20 CSS-4 ICBMs in silos, most of which are targeted on the United States. The Select Committee judges that despite the 1998 announcement that the PRC and the U.S. would no longer target each other with nuclear weapons, the PRC's missiles remain targeted at the United States.

Today, the CSS-4 has a range in excess of 7,400 miles. The PRC has begun deploying an improved version of the CSS-4, known as the CSS-4 Mod 2.23 The Mod 2 has improved range capabilities over the CSS-4. The additional range may provide the PRC with greater confidence that the missile will reach long distance targets such as Washington, D.C., although this and other U.S. cities are already within the range of the CSS-4 (see table on previous page).

This improved range may also translate into an improved throw-weight that could allow the PRC to deploy multiple warheads on the CSS-4 Mod 2, rather than the single warheads that are currently carried on the CSS-4.

The PLA's Future "East Wind" Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles

Missiles in silos are vulnerable to attack because their precise location can be known in advance. Concerns about the survivability of its silo-based CSS-4 ballistic missile forces have led the PLA to begin a modernization program that includes the development of road-mobile, solid-propellant ballistic missiles.

The use of a solid-propellant missile in place of the liquid-fueled CSS-4 will permit the PRC to launch its missiles with shorter notice. That is because the liquid fuel for the current CSS-4 must be stored separately from the missile until launch. Then, prior to launch, the CSS-4 missile must be fueled.

Substitution of a mobile missile for the silo-based CSS-4 will make it possible to hide the missile's location, thus protecting it from attack.

The PLA is currently developing two road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile systems. It also has under development a submarine-launched ballistic missile. The Select Committee judges that within 15 years, this modernization program could result in the deployment of a PLA intercontinental ballistic missile force consisting of up to 100 ICBMs.

The PRC's planned new mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles, and its planned new submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles, require smaller warheads than the large, heavy, 1950s-era warheads developed for the PRC's current silo-based missiles. Because U.S. thermonuclear warheads are significantly smaller, they are capable of use on mobile missiles and submarine-launched missiles. The Select Committee judges that the PRC will exploit elements of the stolen U.S. thermonuclear design information on these new ICBMs.

If any of the PRC's planned missiles were to carry multiple warheads, or if the CSS-4 were modified to carry multiple warheads, then a fairing (that is, a covering for the missiles in the nosecone) could be required. See the chapter entitled Satellite Launches in the PRC: Hughes for a discussion of the PRC's acquisition of fairing technology from the United States.

The aggressive development of a MIRV system by the PRC could permit the deployment of upwards of 1,000 thermonuclear warheads on ICBMs by 2015. See the chapter entitled PRC Theft of Nuclear Warhead Design Information for information on the PRC's development of nuclear warheads that may exploit elements of U.S. thermonuclear weapons design information.

The first of the three new intercontinental ballistic missiles that are being developed by the PRC is the DF-31 (or East Wind 31). It is estimated that the DF-31 will be a three-stage, mobile, solid-propellant ballistic missile. It will be deployed on a mobile erector-launcher.

The DF-31's 5,000-mile range will allow it to hit all of Hawaii and Alaska and parts of the state of Washington, but not other parts of the continental United States.24 Due to its limited intercontinental range, the DF-31 is most likely intended as the replacement for the PRC's aging CSS-3 force, rather than for the longer range CSS-4 ICBM.

The DF-31 missile may be tested this year. Given a successful flight program, the DF-31 could be ready for deployment as early as 2002.

The collapse of the Soviet Union has changed the PRC's strategic outlook, prompting the development of extended range missiles. To this end, the PRC is planning an even longer-range, mobile ICBM to add to its already deployed CSS-4 missiles. This new missile is believed to have a range of more than 7,500 miles, allowing the PRC to target almost all of the United States. These missiles can be deployed anywhere within the PRC, making them significantly more survivable.

The JL-2 (Julang 2, or Great Wave 2) is a submarine-launched version of the DF-31. It is believed to have an even longer range, and will be carried on the PLA Navy's Type 094-class submarine. Sixteen JL-2 missiles will be carried on each submarine.25

The JL-2's 7,500 mile range will allow it to be launched from the PRC's territorial waters and to strike targets throughout the United States.26

This range would allow a significant change in the operation and tactics of the PRC's nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines. Instead of venturing into the open ocean to attack the United States, the Type 094-class submarines could remain near PRC waters, protected by the PLA Navy and Air Force.

Additionally, if the JL-2 were to employ a shroud to protect its warhead as do the majority of submarine-launched ballistic missiles today, this would be the first use of a shroud or fairing on a PRC missile.

The PRC's Medium- and Short-Range Ballistic Missiles

The PRC is also deploying, or developing for future deployment, a series of short- and medium-range ballistic missiles, including both liquid- and solid-propellant technologies. Some are armed with conventional warheads and others with nuclear warheads. These missiles present a threat to U.S. forces deployed in the region, and to U.S. allies and friends in the region.

The PRC's short- and medium-range ballistic missiles include the CSS-6 short-range ballistic missile, the CSS-X-7 short-range ballistic missile, and the CSS-5 medium-range ballistic missile. The PRC is also developing new versions of its short-range ballistic missiles, and may produce these systems in larger quantities than earlier-generation PRC ballistic missiles.

The PLA's CSS-6 (DF-15 or East Wind 15; also known as the M-9) is an advanced, solid-propellant, short-range ballistic missile that uses 1990s technology. It has a range of 375 miles. It is a road-mobile missile, launched from a transporter-erector-launcher. The CSS-6 may be fitted with nuclear warheads or with an enhanced radiation weapon (neutron bomb).

According to published reports, the majority of the PRC's CSS-6 missiles are deployed adjacent to Taiwan.

The PRC may attempt various means to improve the CSS-6's accuracy. The PRC claims to be planning to use the Global Positioning System (GPS) on its "M" missiles, which likely include the CSS-6, CSS-X-7, and other short-range ballistic missiles.

On two recent occasions, the PRC has launched a number of CSS-6 missiles towards Taiwan as a means of political intimidation. In July 1995, the PRC fired CSS-6 missiles to a location north of Taiwan in an attempt to influence Taiwan's parliamentary elections. In March 1996, the PRC again launched CSS-6 missiles to areas north and south of Taiwan's two major ports in an effort to influence its presidential elections.

The PRC is also developing the CSS-X-7 (DF-11 or East Wind 11; also known as the M-11) short-range ballistic missile. The CSS-X-7 is a mobile, 185-mile range solid-propellant ballistic missile that is launched from a transporter-erector-launcher. This missile has been exported to Pakistan. The main advantage of the CSS-X-7 over the CSS-6 is its ability to carry a larger payload.

The CSS-5 (DF-21, or East Wind 21) medium range ballistic missile is now deployed by the PRC. The CSS-5 is a road-mobile, solid-propellant ballistic missile with a range of 1,100 miles. The CSS-5 is assessed to carry a nuclear warhead payload. An improved version, known as the CSS-5 Mod 2, is under development in the PRC. The range of these missiles, if fitted with a conventional warhead, would be sufficient to hit targets in Japan.

The CSS-5 has also been developed in a submarine-launched ballistic missile version. The Western designation of this missile is CSS-NX-3; its PLA designation is JL-1 (Julang 1, or Great Wave 1). This missile is assessed to have a range of 1,200 miles. Missiles of this type will be launched from the PLA Navy Xia-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine.

While the Xia submarines were completed in 1981, the PRC has yet to deploy the CSS-NX-3 missile.27 Due to the missile's 1,000 mile range, the CSS-NX-3 is best suited for theater targets, although it could threaten the U.S. if the PRC chose to deploy it in open-ocean operations.

The PRC has also developed the CSS-8 (8610) short-range ballistic missile. The CSS-8 is derived from the Soviet SA-2 surface-to-air missile. The PRC has sold the missile to Iran.

Stolen U.S. Technology Used on PRC Ballistic Missiles

The PRC has stolen U.S. missile guidance technology that has direct applicability to the PLA's ballistic missiles and rockets. The stolen guidance technology is used on a variety of U.S. missiles and military aircraft:

* The 90-mile range U.S. Army Tactical Missile System
* The U.S. Navy's Stand-off Land Attack Missile-Extended Range (SLAM-ER)
* The U.S. Navy F-14 fighter jet
* The U.S. Air Force F-15 fighter jet
* The U.S. Air Force F-16 fighter jet
* The U.S. Air Force F-117 fighter jet

The PRC's Strategic Forces Doctrine

Following the detonation of its first nuclear weapon in 1964, the PRC publicly declared that it would never use nuclear weapons first against the homeland of a nuclear power or a non-nuclear nation. The PRC pointedly does not include Taiwan in this formulation. The PRC's announced strategic doctrine is based on the concept of "limited deterrence," which is defined as the ability to inflict unacceptable damage on an enemy in a retaliatory strike.28

The PRC's currently deployed ICBMs are so-called "city busters": that is, they are useful for targeting entire cities or large military bases, rather than smaller, hardened targets such as U.S. ICBM silos. The intercontinental-range CSS-4s are deployed in their silos without warheads and without propellants during day-to-day operations.29

Strategic doctrine, however, can change, and the PRC's movement towards a nuclear missile force of several kinds of mobile, long-range ballistic missiles will allow it to include a range of options in its nuclear force doctrine. The acknowledged high accuracy of U.S. ballistic missiles, as well as the large number of increasingly accurate Russian missiles, may have left the PRC unsatisfied with the vulnerability of its silo-based forces. The PRC's new mobile missiles will be difficult to locate once they have been dispersed from their garrisons, giving them far better protection from attack. These new, mobile, long-range missiles can also be launched on much shorter notice than the PRC's current force, due to their planned use of solid propellants.

Because they will be much more difficult to locate and destroy than the PRC's current silo-based ICBM force, these new mobile ICBMs will present a more credible threat against the U. S. in the event a crisis develops over a regional conflict in East Asia.

According to the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States:

In a crisis in which the U. S. confronts China's conventional and nuclear forces at the regional level, China's modernized strategic nuclear ballistic missile force would pose a credible threat against the United States.

Deterring the U. S. can be important to China's ability to use force to achieve its goal of being the preeminent power in East Asia.

China demonstrated a willingness to use ballistic missiles in the Taiwan crisis of 1995/96.

The question of a senior Chinese official ó was the U. S. willing to trade Los Angeles for Taiwan ó suggests their understanding of the linkage between China's regional and strategic ballistic missile capabilities.30

PRC Missile and Space Forces

2009-11-24T21:18:00.000-08:00

PRC Missile and Space Forces
page 1

PRC Missile and Space Forces

Since its beginning, the PRC's ballistic missile and space program has received considerable foreign expertise and technology. This support has helped the PRC become a major ballistic missile and space power. The PRC has received considerable assistance from Russia (and previously from the Soviet Union) and the United States, as well as from other nations such as France and Germany.

From 1956 to 1960, the Soviet Union was the major supplier of ballistic missile technology and knowledge to the PRC. The Sino-Soviet split in 1960 ended this cooperation. Today, however, Russia is a major supplier of space launch technology to the PRC. This assistance could be expanded to help the PRC in its efforts to develop road-mobile ICBMs, which would provide the PLA with more confidence in the survivability of its retaliatory nuclear force.

Technology and knowledge acquired from the United States has also assisted the PRC's missile and space programs, although this assistance was never officially sanctioned. Qian Xuesen was a Chinese citizen who was trained in the United States and who worked on classified programs including the Titan ICBM program. After being accused of spying for the PRC in the 1950s, Qian was permitted to return to the PRC, where he became the "father" of the PRC's ballistic missile and space programs. The illegal acquisition of U.S. technology for the PLA's ballistic missiles and space programs has continued aggressively during the past two decades, up to the present day.

The PRC has stolen design information on the United States' most advanced thermonuclear weapons, elements of which could be emulated by the PRC in its next generation ICBMs.

The PRC has stolen U.S. missile guidance technology that has direct applicability to the PLA's ballistic missiles.

Assistance from U.S. companies has improved the reliability of the PRC's military and civilian rockets, and the transfer of some of these improvements to its ballistic missiles is possible.

Western nations, including the United States, Germany, and France, have provided significant support to the PRC's satellite programs. German companies provide the communications package for the PRC's DFH-3 communications satellites. U.S.-manufactured radiation-hardened chips are also used on the PRC's meteorological satellites, used for both military and civilian purposes, to increase the on-orbit life of the satellites.

The PRC is a major ballistic missile proliferator. While the PRC agreed in 1991 to abide by the Missile Technology Control Regime, the PRC transferred complete ballistic missile systems to Pakistan in 1992, and has provided other nations with ballistic missiles production-related technologies. The PRC has not agreed to the MTCR's revised limits on transfers of ballistic missile components.

The PRC has transferred ballistic missile technology to Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Libya, and other countries.

PRC Missile and Space Forces

Introduction

"By the next century, as high-tech space technology develops, the deployment of space-based weapons systems will be bound to make 'mastery of space' and 'mastery of outer space' prerequisites for naval victory."

PLA Navy Senior Colonel

Shen Zhongchang

In 1956, advisors from the Soviet Union convinced the leadership of the People's Republic of China (PRC) to include ballistic missile development in the PRC's Twelve Year Plan for the Development of Science and Technology (1956-1967). Having just fought a war against the United States in Korea and having come face-to-face with U.S. military supremacy, the PRC decided that combining long-range ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons offered its best chance to build weapons capable of neutralizing the United States' and the Soviet Union's formidable advantage.

Since that time, the PRC has embarked on an extensive ballistic missile and space program.

From its beginning in the 1950s, the PRC has also adapted its ballistic missile program into a major international space program. Since its first space launch in 1971, the PRC has developed ten variations of rockets that have allowed it to place 44 satellites into orbit.

Today, the PRC is embarked on a modernization plan for its ballistic missile and space forces. This expansion includes the exploitation of space-based military reconnaissance and communications satellites and space-based weapons.1 In addition, the PRC has set for itself the goal of putting men in space this year.

This chapter provides an analysis of the PRC's missile and space forces, and the impact that Western technology has had on those forces. It details the PRC's ballistic missile forces; its space forces, including its rockets and satellites; and the interaction between the two groups.

This chapter also serves as an introduction to the capabilities of the PRC's missile and space programs, and the degree to which foreign assistance and technology may affect the course of their future development.

This chapter is derived from an extensive chapter in the Select Committee's classified Report, much of which, due to national security concerns, cannot be reproduced here.

The PLA's Ballistic Missile Forces

Development of the PLA's Ballistic Missile Forces

The early development of the PLA's indigenous ballistic missile programs was marked by Soviet assistance, and by the guidance of a Chinese citizen who had returned to the PRC after working on the U.S. Titan intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program.2

The Soviet Union's Contribution to the PLA's Ballistic Missile Force

The PRC received its first ballistic missiles in 1956, with the acquisition of two Soviet R-1 missiles. These were copies of the German cryogenic liquid-propellant V-2 missiles used in World War II. The PRC quickly acquired more advanced missiles in the form of the R-2 in 1957. The R-2 had considerable technical improvements over the R-1, including a greater range and a larger payload, as well as the use of storable liquid propellants.

In addition to the ballistic missiles themselves, the Soviet Union provided the PRC with blueprints for the R-2 missiles, and with advisors to assist in the PRC's development of a copy of the R-2. With this Soviet technical assistance, the PRC was able to produce and deploy these missiles.

During this period, PRC engineers and students received training at the Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI). While at MAI, these students were trained in aeronautical engineering, and acquired experience with more advanced Soviet missiles such as the SS-3 and the SS-4. In many instances, the information gained about more advanced Soviet missiles came when the students made copies of restricted notes, and quizzed their professors about the Soviet missiles.

In 1960, the Sino-Soviet split ended all cooperation, including missile cooperation, between the PRC and the Soviet Union. This left the PRC to continue its missile programs on its own, using the know-how it had gained from the Soviet Union, and the expertise of its American-trained scientists.

The Role of Qian Xuesen in the Development Of the PRC's Ballistic Missile and Space Programs

The PRC's ballistic missile and space programs received substantial assistance during their early development from Qian Xuesen (also known as Tsien Hsue-Shen), a Chinese citizen who was trained in the United States and had worked on classified U.S. missile programs, including the Titan intercontinental ballistic missile program.

Qian Xuesen became instrumental in the PRC's ballistic missiles program, where he is known as the "father of China's ballistic missile force." A biography of Qian published in the PRC states that he "made significant contributions to the rapid development of Chinese rockets [and] missiles, as well as space flight." 3

Born in Shanghai in 1911, Qian left China in 1935 during the Japanese occupation. He received his Masters degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech). At Cal Tech, Qian worked as a member of the rocket research group of the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory, and at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

While at the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory he made "pioneering contributions" to aviation engineering theory in the areas of supersonic and transonic aerodynamics, as well as thin shell stability theory for ballistic missile structures.4

At JPL, Qian was recognized as one of the world's foremost experts on jet propulsion. During this time, he worked on Private A, which was the first solid propellant missile that performed successfully in the United States.5

Based on his rocket work at Cal Tech, Qian was recruited to join the U.S. Army Air Force in the development of its long-range missile programs.6 Commissioned a Colonel in the U.S. Army Air Force,7 he eventually began working on the Titan intercontinental ballistic missile.8

During the 1950s, allegations arose that Qian was spying for the PRC. 9 He lost his security clearances and was removed from work on U.S. ballistic missiles. 10 The allegations that he was spying for the PRC are presumed to be true.

Qian was invited back to the PRC and, after negotiations between the U.S. Government and the PRC, Qian was allowed to return to the PRC in 1955. Four other Chinese members of Qian's Titan design team also returned with him to the PRC.11 There were additional allegations that Qian attempted to ship classified documents to the PRC before he left in 1955.12

Once back in the PRC, Qian became the leading figure in the PRC's ballistic missile effort.13 Qian and his associates were able to apply the knowledge they gained from working on U.S. ballistic missile programs to the PRC's ballistic missile programs.

Qian became the chief project manager in all of the PRC's ballistic missile programs, and was the lead designer of the CSS-4 intercontinental ballistic missile. The CSS-4 is the nuclear-armed ICBM currently targeted on the United States. (All but two of the PRC's approximately 20 CSS-4 ICBMs have been deployed during the 1990s.)

Qian was also the first director of the PRC's Fifth Academy, which was responsible for aeronautics and missile development research.14 Today, the Fifth Academy is known as the China Aerospace Corporation (CASC), and its current Director is PRC Minister Liu Jiyuan.15

Qian was also instrumental in the development of the PRC's space program. In 1958, he began presenting his concepts for a satellite to the Communist Party leadership. In 1962, Qian began training PRC scientists in the design and development of satellites. The satellite, which would become known as the Dong Fang Hong-1, was launched on April 24, 1970. Qian was personally commended by Mao Zedong and other PRC leaders for his contributions to the design and launch of the satellite.16

The CCP leadership awarded Qian the honorary rank of Lieutenant General in the People's Liberation Army. It is a rank commensurate with his place as a senior scientist in the PRC's ballistic missile program.17

In 1991, President Jiang Zemin provided Qian with the "State Scientist of Outstanding Contribution" award, which is the highest honor a scientist in the PRC can achieve.18

Development of the PLA's Intermediate- and Short-Range Ballistic Missiles

The PRC began developing three ballistic missiles in the early 1960s. The first two, which would become known in the West as the CSS-2 and CSS-3, showed strong Soviet design influences, especially in the guidance and propulsion subsystems. The third missile, which would become known as the CSS-4, uses advanced gyroscopes for increased accuracy. The chart on the previous page illustrates current and future PRC ballistic missile systems.

The CSS-2 mobile missile is designated by the PLA as the Deng Feng 3 (that is, East Wind 3). It has evolved into a 1,700- to 1,900-mile range single-stage liquid-propellant ballistic missile. The PLA deploys CSS-2 ballistic missiles on mobile launchers. The PRC sold several dozen of these CSS-2 missiles, armed with conventional warheads, to Saudi Arabia in 1988.

The CSS-3 (PLA designation DF-4, or East Wind 4) was the PRC's first missile with "intercontinental" range. The CSS-3 is a two-stage liquid-propellant intercontinental ballistic missile. It has a range of more than 3,400 miles,19 but is considered a "limited range" ICBM because it cannot reach the United States. It uses the medium-range CSS-2 as its first stage. Targets for the PLA's CSS-3 missiles could include:

* India
* Russia
* The U.S. Naval Facility at Diego Garcia
* The U.S. Air Force Base at Guam

The CSS-3 missiles are based in silos, and in mountainside tunnels where they are rolled out and erected for launch.20 The CSS-3 missile has been deployed by the PLA since 1980.21

The PLA's Current "East Wind" Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles

The CSS-4 (PLA designation DF-5, or East Wind 5) is currently the PRC's main ICBM nuclear threat against the United States.

The CSS-4 program began in the 1960s. It was originally envisioned that the missile would use liquid oxygen and kerosene propellants, similar to those used in the Soviet R-7 (SS-6) missile and in the U.S. Atlas. In the early 1960s, however, the program transitioned into the use of storable propellant.

Progress in the CSS-4 program was slowed by the Great Leap Forward in 1963 and the Cultural Revolution from 1966-1976, which compounded the technical challenges of developing an ICBM. The CSS-4's development program continued to progress over the next 20 years.

New Questions About U.S. Intelligence on China:

2009-11-24T21:17:00.000-08:00

Summary

By locating the original Chinese-language source of this quote, we found that it does not represent an authoritative source on Chinese military space activities. Worse, an examination of the original Chinese shows that the quote is mistranslated in ways that significantly change its meaning.
Introduction
In its recently released 2005 annual report The Military Power of the People’s Republic of China, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) states that China “plans to field” anti-satellite (ASAT) systems.2 The report offers no evidence to support this assertion, which is noteworthy if true since it appears to be inconsistent with China’s longstanding diplomatic effort to begin negotiations on a new international arms control agreement that would ban attacks on satellites.
However, previous DoD claims about Chinese ASAT systems have been called into question. The 2003 and 2004 DoD Chinese Military Power reports referred to an advanced Chinese ASAT system called a “parasitic microsatellite” that had reportedly been “ground tested” and was ready for space-testing. The Union of Concerned Scientists challenged this assertion in an August 2004 analysis of the source of this claim, which showed that the original source was not credible.3 The 2005 DoD report is more circumspect about Chinese capabilities, and has withdrawn the claim about the “parasite satellite,” but it continues to state that China intends to deploy ASAT systems.

What is the basis of this claim? As noted above, the 2005 DoD report does not provide evidence or a source. A possible source is the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. NASIC’s website states that it is “The sole national center for integrated intelligence on aerospace systems, forces, and threats.”4
NASIC released a report entitled Challenges to U.S. Space Superiority in March 2005,5 which was during the time the DoD report was being prepared. A close evaluation of information in this report raises questions about the quality of the analysis NASIC provides, and more generally about the sources of information on which the DoD relies for its assessments of Chinese military capabilities.
Our intent is not to consider the issue of whether or not China is developing or fielding ASAT weapons, but to gain insight into the quality of U.S. intelligence on this issue.
Analysis of the March 2005 NASIC Report
The NASIC report discusses current uses of space and potential threats to U.S. space assets, but makes few specific claims about the capabilities of various countries.
However, the report highlights its concern about anti-satellite threats by including a quote—which is emphasized by being set off from the text in a box—by an official at a Chinese military facility. Its inclusion suggests that it was seen as an important quote that accurately reflects Chinese intentions regarding ASATs.
Although the NASIC report does not give a reference for the quote, we conducted a search of Chinese periodical databases and found the Chinese-language article from which it was taken. As we discuss in more detail below, it was written by Liying Zhang (not Zhan, as the NASIC report states) and two colleagues. Zhang was a junior instructor at the Langfang Army Missile Academy, which was closed in July 2004. Its primary responsibility was providing live-fire and simulated training for junior Chinese artillery officers. The article is far from an authoritative source on China’s military space program. More seriously, an examination of the original Chinese sentence shows that NASIC mistranslated the quote in ways that significantly change its meaning.
Considering the accuracy of this quote is interesting since it is the most specific claim the NASIC report presents about Chinese intentions regarding ASATs.
The quote in question appears on page 21 of the NASIC report. NASIC’s translation clearly states that China is actively developing anti-satellite weapons:
“China will monitor closely foreign developments in advanced satellite technology, paying close attention to progress made in military use of space while actively developing ASAT systems.” - Liying Zhan, Langfang Army Missile Academy

The quote is taken from the final sentence of the original Chinese article; a more accurate translation of the original is:
“While properly following foreign satellite advanced technology, (China) also should actively develop anti-satellite weapons and pay close attention to the progress of international space arms control, in order to facilitate the timely determination of a response.”6
The NASIC translation makes several important errors. The first is rendering the Chinese word ying as “will” instead of “should.” Zhang et al. use this sentence to close their essay with a recommendation about what China should do, not a statement of what China intends to do or is currently doing. This is an important distinction. The original text makes clear that the authors believe China has not yet made a decision about proceeding with anti-satellite weapons, and they therefore make a recommendation about China’s course of action..
The authors seem to be stating their view that China is currently following developments in foreign satellite technology, and that while it is proper for China to be following these developments,7 they believe China should also be actively developing anti-satellite weapons. The word jiji, which NASIC properly translates as “actively,” also has the meaning of energetically or vigorously, which suggests the authors feel China needs to do more than it is at present. This is very different than the meaning implied by the NASIC version of the quote.
The second translation error is the most disturbing. NASIC translates the phrase junbei kongzhi as “military use of space” when it should be translated as “arms control.” It is difficult to imagine how anyone familiar with these issues could make such a mistake.
The result is to completely obscure the Chinese authors’ intention, which is to recommend that China should factor developments in international arms control into its decision of how to respond to the escalating competition in military space technology that is described in the body of their article. NASIC compounds this error by omitting the final phrase “to facilitate the timely determination of a response,” which makes clear that the authors are saying that China has not yet made a decision about whether to respond by fielding ASATs. Moreover, it makes clear that Zhang et al. believe that China’s policy toward anti-satellite weapons should depend not only on new technologies, but also on the state of international arms control negotiations (China and Russia have proposed an international agreement at the Conference on Disarmament that would prohibit attacks on satellites). The authors seem to be advocating a hedging strategy, recommending that China should have anti-satellite weapons ready if the diplomatic effort to protect their space assets fails.
Implications
While there may be ambiguities in the meaning intended by the Chinese authors, NASIC’s translation of this quotation completely changes its meaning. As noted above, since this is the
6 The subject in Chinese sentences is often not explicitly stated. As is common practice in translating Chinese to English, we have indicated this by including the word “China” since it is implied but not stated in the original Chinese.
3
7 NASIC incorrectly translates the Chinese word zhengque as “closely” instead of “properly” or “correctly.” The difference is of some importance since the correct translation implies that the statement is a judgement by the authors, which is consistent with our interpretation of the full sentence.
most specific claim presented about Chinese intentions regarding ASATs in the NASIC report, the accuracy of this quote is important.
The inclusion of this quote in the NASIC report implies that the authors of the NASIC report either:
• are unable to translate Chinese competently and are unable to evaluate the quality of its sources, or are not interested in doing so;
• used a translation of the quote supplied by someone else and did not check it for accuracy or relevance; or
• were aware that the quote was mistranslated in a way that completely altered its meaning, and decided to use it anyway.
All of these possibilities are clearly problematic given the need for accurate intelligence information. It is important to determine whether this a case of poor scholarship, or making a quote fit a particular point of view.
Moreover, it is important to understand what this case may imply about about the quality of U.S. intelligence on China more generally.
The Department of Defense, the U.S. Congress, and the American public are justifiably interested in the progress of China’s military space program. They deserve high-quality intelligence information, which is necessary for making good policy decisions.
While public versions of intelligence reports typically reveal little information about their sources, with the result that those sources and claims are difficult to evaluate, two sources that we have been able to identify and analyze in the past two years have revealed serious problems in the intelligence reports. Our analyses have shown a failure of U.S. intelligence analysts to properly evaluate Chinese sources, and to properly translate and understand these sources. We do not know how widespread these problems are. But these examples indicate inadequacies in the nation’s intelligence that should be addressed immediately.
Identifying the Source of the Quote
Because the NASIC report does not provide a citation for the quotation about Chinese ASATs, we conducted a full-text search of eight major Chinese periodical databases containing over twenty-three million articles. The search returned 182 publications by authors from the Langfang Army Missile Academy, but none under the surname Zhan. There were, however, six publications by an instructor named Liying Zhang. Since the name “Zhan” is used twice in the NASIC report it does not appear to be a typographical error. Instead, the NASIC translator’s use of “Zhan” is a probably an incorrect Romanization of Ms. Zhang’s surname.8
It is worth noting that the Langfang Army Missile Academy was closed in July 2004, by a decision of the Central Military Commission. It was a small institute whose primary responsibility was providing live-fire and simulated training for junior Chinese artillery
We note that many Chinese routinely mispronounce standard Mandarin, and in some regions of China it is common to cut off the “g” sound at the end of words like zhang and shang.
officers. Most of these training missions were dispersed to other military facilities and a new branch of the PLA Artillery Command College was established on the old Langfang campus.9 There is no indication that Langfang was an important research or development center for Chinese military aerospace programs at the time the article was written; indeed, the Zhang article is the only article on anti-satellite weapons written by an author from Langfang that we were able to discover in our extensive searches.
Ms. Zhang was a junior faculty member in the Ground-to-Ground Missile Control Testing Engineering Teaching and Research Office at Langfang. None of the articles under her name have passages that correspond exactly to the sentence translated by NASIC, but one article, entitled “A Rudimentary Analysis of Anti-Satellite Weapons Technology and Defensive Measures,” published (in Chinese) in the journal Winged Missiles in March 2004 just before Langfang closed,10 is similar to the quotation contained in the NASIC report. Because our extensive searches did not turn up other articles by this author on this subject, and because the phrases are so similar, we assume this is the article the NASIC report used. In addition to Ms. Zhang, this article has two coauthors, Professors Zhang Qixin and Wang Hui, both from the same office at Langfang.

Revolt stirs among China’s nuclear ghosts .

2009-11-18T21:15:00.001-08:00

Up to 190,000 may have died as a result of China’s weapons tests: now ailing survivors want compensation
The nuclear test grounds in the wastes of the Gobi desert have fallen silent but veterans of those lonely places are speaking out for the first time about the terrible price exacted by China’s zealous pursuit of the atomic bomb.

They talk of picking up radioactive debris with their bare hands, of sluicing down bombers that had flown through mushroom clouds, of soldiers dying before their time of strange and rare diseases, and children born with mysterious cancers.

These were the men and women of Unit 8023, a special detachment charged with conducting atomic tests at Lop Nur in Xinjiang province, a place of utter desolation and – until now – complete secrecy.

“I was a member of Unit 8023 for 23 years,” said one old soldier in an interview. “My job was to go into the blast zone to retrieve test objects and monitoring equipment after the explosion.
When my daughter was born she was diagnosed with a huge tumour on her spinal cord. The doctors blame nuclear fallout. She’s had two major operations and has lived a life of indescribable hardship. And all we get from the government is 130 yuan [£13] a month.”

Hardship and risk counted for little when China was determined to join the nuclear club at any cost.

Soldiers galloped on horseback towards mushroom clouds, with only gas masks for protection.

Scientists jumped for joy, waving their little red books of Maoist thought, while atomic debris boiled in the sky.

Engineers even replicated a full-scale Beijing subway station beneath the sands of the Gobi to test who might survive a Sino-Soviet armageddon.

New research suggests the Chinese nuclear tests from 1964 to 1996 claimed more lives than those of any other nation. Professor Jun Takada, a Japanese physicist, has calculated that up to 1.48m people were exposed to fallout and 190,000 of them may have died from diseases linked to radiation.

“Nuclear sands” - a mixture of dust and fission products - were blown by prevailing winds from Lop Nur towards towns and villages along the ancient Silk Road from China to the West.

The victims included Chinese, Uighur Muslims and Tibetans, who lived in these remote regions. Takada found deformed children as far away as Kazakhstan. No independent scientific study has ever been published inside China.

It is the voices of the Chinese veterans, however, that will reso-nate loudest in a nation proud of its nuclear status but ill informed about the costs. One group has boldly published letters to the state council and the central military commission - the two highest government and military bodies - demanding compensation.

“Most of us are between 50 and 70 and in bad health,” they said. “We did the most hazardous job of all, retrieving debris from the missile tests.

“We were only 10 kilometres [six miles] from the blast. We entered the zone many times with no protective suits, only goggles and gas masks. Afterwards, we just washed ourselves down with plain water.”

A woman veteran of Unit 8023 described in an interview how her hair had fallen out. She had lost weight, suffered chronic insomnia and had episodes of confusion.

“Between 1993 and 1996 the government speeded up the test programme, so I assisted at 10 underground explosions,” she said. “We had to go into the test zone to check highly radioactive instruments. Now I’m too sick to work - will the government help me?”

The price was paid by more than one generation. “My father was in Unit 8023 from 1967 to 1979, when his job was to wash down aircraft that had flown through the mushroom clouds,” said a 37-year-old man.

“I’ve been disabled by chronic immune system diseases all my life and my brother’s daughter was born with a heart defect,” he said. “Our family has spent thousands of yuan on operations over the decades. Two and three generations of our family have such illnesses - was it the nuclear tests? Does our government plan any compensation?”

In fact, the government has already responded to pressure from veterans’ groups. Last year Li Xueju, the minister of civil affairs, let slip that the state had started to pay “subsidies” to nuclear test personnel but gave no details of the amounts.

Such is the legacy of the decision by Chairman Mao Tse-tung, in 1955, to build the bomb in order to make China a great power.

Mao was driven by fear of the US and rivalry with the Soviet Union. He coveted the might that would be bestowed by nuclear weapons on a poor agricultural nation. Celebrations greeted the first test explosion on October 16, 1964.

The scientists staged a total of 46 tests around the Lop Nur site, 1,500 miles west of Beijing. Of these tests, 23 were in the atmosphere, 22 underground and one failed. They included thermonuclear blasts, neutron bombs and an atomic bomb covertly tested for Pakistan on May 26, 1990.

One device, dropped from an aircraft on November 17, 1976, was 320 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

The last explosion in the air was in 1980, but the last underground test was not until July 29, 1996. Later that year, China signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and, once again, only the sigh of the winds could be heard in the desolation of the Gobi desert.

The financial cost remains secret, but the price of the first bomb was roughly equal to more than a third of the entire state budget for 1957 – spending that went on while at least 30m Chinese peasants died of famine and the nuclear scientists themselves lived on hardship rations.

Rare was the outsider who gained a glimpse of this huge project. One was Danny Stillman, director of technical intelligence at Los Alamos, New Mexico, home of America’s nuclear weapons. He made 10 visits to secret Chinese nuclear facilities during a period of detente and information exchange from 1990 to 2001.

“Some of the videos they showed me were of PLA [People’s Liberation Army] soldiers riding on horses - with gas masks over the noses and mouths of both the horses and the soldiers - as they were riding towards the mushroom cloud of an atmospheric surface detonation,” Stillman recalled.

“It was strange because the soldiers had swords raised above their heads as they headed for the radioactive fallout. I have always wondered how many of them survived.”

Stillman was also allowed to see the lengths to which the Chinese scientists had gone to experiment with annihilation in the desert.

Like the Americans, the Chinese placed caged live animals, tanks, planes, vehicles and buildings around test sites. Such were the remains gathered by the men and women of Unit 8302.

“The surprise to me was that they also had a full-scale Beijing subway station with all supporting utilities constructed at an undefined depth directly underneath,” said Stillman.

“There were 10,000 animals and a model of a Yangtze River bridge,” recalled Wu Qian, a scientist.

Li Yi, a woman doctor, added: “Animals placed two kilometres from the blast centre were burnt to cinders and those eight kilometres away died within a few days.”

China had borrowed Soviet blueprints and spied on the West, according to The Nuclear Express, a book by Stillman and Thomas Reed, the former US air force secretary.

It explains how China then exploited its human capital to win technological parity with the US for just 4% of the effort - 45 successful test explosions against more than 1,000 American tests.

“The Chinese nuclear weapon scientists I met . . . were exceptionally brilliant,” Stillman said.

Of China’s top 10 pioneers, two were educated at Edinburgh University - Cheng Kaijia, director of the weapons laboratory, and Peng Huan-wu, designer of the first thermonuclear bomb. Six went to college in the United States, one in France and one in Germany.

For all this array of genius, no Chinese scientist has dared to publish a study of the human toll.

That taboo has been broken by Takada, a physicist at the faculty of medicine at Sapporo University, who is an adviser on radiation hazards to the government of Japan.

He developed a computer simulation model, based on fieldwork at Soviet test sites in Kazakhstan, to calculate that 1.48m people were exposed to contamination during 32 years of Chinese tests.

Takada used internationally recognised radiation dosage measurements to estimate that 190,000 have died of cancer or leukaemia. He believes 35,000 foetuses were deformed or miscarried, with cases found as far away as Makanchi, near the Kazakh border with China.

To put his findings in perspective, Takada said China’s three biggest tests alone generated 4m times more radioactivity than the Chernobyl reactor accident of 1986. He has called the clouds of fallout “an air tsunami”.

Despite the pall of silence inside China, two remarkable proofs of the damage to health have come from official Communist party documents, dated 2007 and available on provincial websites.

One is a request to the health ministry from peasants’ and workers’ delegates in Xinjiang province for a special hospital to be built to cope with large numbers of patients who were “exposed to radiation or who wandered into the test zones by mistake”.

The other records a call by a party delegate named Xingfu for compensation and a study of “the severe situation of radiation sickness” in the county of Xiaobei, outside the oasis town of Dunhuang.

Both claims were rejected. Residents of Xiaobei report an alarming number of cancer deaths and children born with cleft palates, bone deformities and scoliosis, a curvature of the spine.

Specialists at hospitals in three cities along the Silk Road all reported a disproportionate number of cancer and leukaemia cases.

“I have read the Japanese professor’s work on the internet and I think it is credible,” said one. No cancer statistics for the region are made public.

Some memories, though, remain indelible. One man in Dunhuang recalled climbing up a mountain-side to watch a great pillar of dust swirl in from the desert.

“For days we were ordered to keep our windows closed and stay inside,” recounted another middle-aged man. “For months we couldn’t eat vegetables or fruits. Then after a while they didn’t bother with that any more.”

But they did go on testing. And the truth about the toll may never be known unless, one day, a future Chinese government allows pathologists to search for the answers in the cemeteries of the Silk Road.

The dead of Dunhuang lie in a waste ground on the fringe of the desert, at the foot of great dunes where tourists ride on camels. Tombs, cairns and unmarked heaps of earth dot the boundless sands.

By local tradition, the clothes of the deceased are thrown away at their funerals. Dresses, suits and children’s garments lie half-buried by dust around the graves.

“People don’t live long around here,” said a local man who led me to the graveyard. “Fifty, 60 - then they’re gone.

Last month there was an artilce wriiten by some senior Chinese nuclear officials about Indian nuclear.In that article they raised some doubts that Indian nuc arsenal is not safe and Inida is doing proliferation.By the above artilce we cna know how bad and wrost China is.The whole world knows how China proliferted to Pakistan and many othercountires.So my sincere advice to Chinese officials is to better concentrate on thier issues.

Nuclear Facilities redline

2009-11-18T21:12:00.000-08:00

China's numerous "third line" highly secret, remote and difficult to detect nuclear facilities—which were constructed in 1960s in an effort to duplicate critical defense infrastructure—span the entire country; however nuclear facilities, both secret and public, are primarily concentrated in the Sichuan province.The principle nuclear facility is the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics (CAEP) in Mianyang, Sichuan province. CAEP overseas 12 institutesdedicated to nuclear weapons research and design as well as nuclear and non-nuclear component development.In the last 15-20 years, the attention of China's nuclear program has been diverted from nuclear weapons towards civilian commercial energy.Since decommissioning most of China's military nuclear facilities, Chinese nuclear authorities has focused on plutonium and uranium enrichment for civilian nuclear energy. The primary plutonium processing plants for weapons grade plutonium were closed between 1984 and 1990. China has reportedly ceased the processing of plutonium and uranium enrichment for nuclear weapons; the exact volume of China's plutonium stockpiles is unclear. However, experts David Wright and Lisbeth Gronlund argue that amount ranges from 1-5 tons.The highly enriched uranium stockpiles are estimated to be 15-25 tons.China's maintained fissile material stockpiles have remained constant since 1991.

The Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) is the ultimate authority with regards to China's nuclear weapons, and the management of the relevant facilities.The PLA Second Artillery Corps is responsible for the deployment of nuclear weapons. The Second Artillery Corps answers directly to the CMC General Staff Department (GSD). The GSD is responsible for operational command of nuclear forces. Under the approval of the CMC, the GSD is responsible for the nuclear doctrine. China maintains a doctrine of minimum deterrence, and adheres to a no-first-use (NFU) policy.
The CMC has delegated authority over Chinese military nuclear facilities to the General Armaments Department (GAD), which is led by Gen. Chang Wanquan. The GAD is responsible for nuclear weapons research, development, testing, and military application. The nuclear facilities are led directly by the General Armaments Department (GAD) of the CMC; the facilities are operated at the discretion of the Chairman of the CMC.
The Chinese National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) is the principle governing body managing the civilian reactors. Important bodies within the civilian nuclear power leadership are the Chinese Institute of Atomic Energy (CIAE) and Chinese Atomic Energy Authority (CAEA). The CNNC holds authority over many civilian power reactors such as the Yibin Nuclear Fuel Component Plant, which is responsible for plutonium processing for civilian use. The CNNC also maintains authority over the CIAE which remains a principle organization dedicated to plutonium fuel science research and development. Nuclear facilities such as CAEP are directly under the supervision of the GAD, but also work, since 2008, with State Administration for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (SASTIND) under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). Previously, SASTIND was its own ministry-level organization--the Commission of Science, Technology, and Industry for National Defense (COSTIND). Prior to the 2008 reorganization, which saw the entity reduced in rank, COSTIND maintained research and development with the industrial enterprises which are contracted with GAD, such as the Chinese National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC). SASTIND appears to continue in this role.
China's first uranium enrichment plant, located in Lanzhou, Gansu province, was developed and made operational in 1964. The Lanzhou Gaseous Diffusion Plant operated commercially from 1980-1997; it, however, has been decommissioned. Another civilian enrichment plant at the same site, with 500,000 Separate Work Units (SWU) per year capacity, has been developed through Russian-Chinese third phase enrichment plant agreement. China's nuclear fuel cycle facilities have undergone numerous changes since the early 1980s, including the closure of the Jiuquan Atomic Energy Complex (Gansu province) in 1984 and to the decommissioning Guangyuan Plant 821 in Sichuan province in 1990. The highly enriched uranium (HEU) production facilities at Lanzhou and Heping (Sichuan province) have reportedly ended production of HEU for the military. The Heping Enrichment Plant produced highly enriched uranium for military purposes from 1975-1989; however, it is thought to be decommissioned. A gas centrifuge enrichment plant at Hanzhun was developed in cooperation with a Russian company Tenex, and is under IAEA safeguards. In 1996, Phase I of the Hanzhun Enrichment Plant agreement began where 200,000 SWU per year capacity was installed. In 1998, Phase II of the agreement say Hanzhun upgraded to a total of 500,000 SWU per year capacity. Phase III resulted in the construction of a 500,000 SWU facility in Lanzhou in 2001. Finally, in 2007 Tenex and China Nuclear Energy Industry Corporation (CNEIC) signed an agreement to provide technical assistance to construct the 500,000 SWU per year capacity for Hanzhun enrichment plant to commence in 2010 as part of phase IV of the Russia-China enrichment plant agreement.

Presently, China has 11 commercially operated nuclear power reactors under the leadership of either the CNNC or the China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group (CGNPC). Fourteen more civilian power reactor facilities are under construction, and ten are set to begin construction in 2009.

Uranium is mined in several sites including: Fuzhou (Fujian province), Chongyi (Jiangxi province), Yining (Xinjiang Autonomous Region), Lantian (Shaanxi province), and Benxi (Liaoning province). Once the uranium is milled it is transported to the Lanzhou Conversion Plant in Gansu province where it is converted to UF6. After conversion it is enriched at the Lanzhou plant or the Hanzhun facility in Shaanxi province. Both facilities have a 500,000 SWU per year enrichment plants. The enriched uranium is sent to Yibin Nuclear Fuel Complex or the Baotou Nuclear Fuel Complex for fabrication. Spent fuel is stored in nuclear power plants throughout the country. There is a reprocessing plant under construction in Lanzhou, and a wet storage facility under construction in the Lanzhou Nuclear Fuel Complex. HEU would then be placed in a bomb core and assembled.

Harbin in Heilongjiang province is the location of a possible warhead production site. Plant 821 site located in Guangyuan, Sichuan province, was a former weapons assembly facility. The warhead production site receives non-nuclear components from either the Baotou Nuclear Fuel Component plant or Institute 905 of the CAEP. The status of Harbin weapons assembly facility is unknown. China halted uranium enrichment for military purposes in 1987 and plutonium production for military purposes in 1991. Many of the military facilities were redirected towards supporting China's civilian power reactors.

The CAEP is responsible for nuclear weapons research and design, and is still in operation despite the unofficial moratorium on fissile material production. The CAEP has 12 institutes including the Institute of Applied Physics and Mathematics in Beijing which is responsible for nuclear weapons design computations. Before China halted nuclear weapon testing in 1996, the CAEP likely collaborated with the Northwest Nuclear Technology Institute in Malan, Xinjiang on nuclear research. However, the extent of this interaction is unknown. The Shanghai Institute of Nuclear Research engages in nuclear warhead for ballistic missiles development. The CAEP is the primary facility for nuclear weapons research and design, while the Shanghai Institute of Nuclear Research holds responsibility over China's nuclear missile program.

The Impact of U.S. NMD on Chinese Nuclear Modernization

2009-11-02T21:33:00.000-08:00

Chinese Nuclear Deterrence

The Chinese decision to build its own nuclear weapons was a response to the nuclear threats posed by the United States (U.S.).1 In the 1950s, China perceived constant nuclear threats from the U.S. and felt that the threat could be negated by nuclear deterrence. China chose to develop its own nuclear force rather than accepting the Soviet nuclear umbrella because it did not want to lose its sovereignty and independence in a military alliance with the former Soviet Union. In January 1955, the Chinese leaders made a decision to develop atomic bombs to defeat the U.S. nuclear blackmail and nuclear monopoly.2 The next year, China began to organize research on atomic bombs and the missiles that would carry them.3 After the Soviet Union tried to constrain China from further developing Chinese nuclear weapons, China became more determined to develop an independent nuclear force.4

The purpose of the Chinese nuclear development is to defend its vital national security by countering possible nuclear blackmail. China worries that the superpowers would feel free to offend China's vital security interests without apprehension if China did not have nuclear weapons. It expects that its nuclear arsenal would discourage the use of nuclear weapons or the threat of using nuclear weapons against China. The Chinese leaders believed that (1) a modest nuclear force would be able to neutralize nuclear blackmail made by the superpowers and deter their nuclear attacks; and (2) nuclear weapons are not militarily usable and therefore the Chinese nuclear weapons are not for war-fighting.5 Based on Mao Zedong's nuclear strategic thought, China made a no-first-use commitment immediately after its first nuclear test. In this commitment, China pledged not to be the first to use nuclear weapons. Since then, the no-first-use commitment has become an important part of the Chinese nuclear strategy.

To explore the impact of U.S. National Missile Defense on the Chinese nuclear deterrent, we need to quantitatively understand how the Chinese nuclear deterrent works now. The difficulty here is that the Chinese government has never explicitly explained how to translate the Chinese nuclear strategy into quantitative requirements for its nuclear force. So we have to make some educated guesses in our analysis on the Chinese nuclear deterrent. In addition, all the discussions on the Chinese nuclear deterrence in this paper will be only in the China-U.S. context.

Chinese nuclear development may be divided into three stages. In the first stage, China had only a symbolic or existential nuclear deterrence until it acquired the capability of launching Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) in 1980.6 After that, the Chinese nuclear deterrence entered into the second stage in which deterrence is based on the quantitative ambiguity of its nuclear force. In general, the creditability of the nuclear deterrent of a country depends on its rivals' perception about its nuclear retaliatory capability. It is widely believed that China has about twenty liquid-fuel silo-based ICBMs that can reach the U.S.7 The two dozen land-based ICBMs that have been detected and located by the U.S. intelligence agencies would have very little chance of surviving a U.S. preemptive nuclear strike. However, because China has neither confirmed nor denied any outside estimates about the size of its long-range nuclear force, it is difficult for the U.S. to rule out some errors in its estimate. If the U.S. considers launching a preemptive nuclear strike against China, the Americans would understand that they may not know the exact number of the Chinese ICBMs. They may have some confidence that they could destroy all the two dozen detected Chinese ICBMs in a preemptive strike, but they would have to worry about a Chinese nuclear retaliation with a few undetected ICBMs. Such a worry would discourage and deter the U.S. from attempting a nuclear strike against China.

The total number of the Chinese ICBMs do not make direct contribution to the Chinese nuclear deterrence because multiplying this number does not increase the strength of the deterrence. The error or uncertainty of the American estimate about the size of the Chinese long-range nuclear force forms the perceived Chinese retaliatory capability in the U.S. and the scope of this uncertainty or error is directly relevant to the credibility of Chinese deterrence.

To deter a first nuclear strike from the U.S., the Chinese nuclear retaliation must be able to cause an intolerable amount of damage to the U.S. There are different estimations about the minimum number of nuclear warheads needed for causing intolerable damage based on different criteria.8 The criterion used in this paper is drawn from the history of recent U.S. conventional wars. The U.S. ended two wars without winning them in the last half century: the Korean and Vietnam conflicts. There were several reasons for the U.S. withdrawing from these two wars. One important and common reason is that each war had caused tens of thousands of American casualties. So, I assume that the U.S. would choose other options rather than launching a nuclear strike against China in a crisis if the U.S. understands that the strike would initiate a Chinese nuclear retaliation and that the retaliation can cause more American casualties than the above figures: tens of thousands. A nuclear bomb with a yield of about one megaton TNT equivalent exploded over a big city would certainly cause many more casualties than tens of thousands. So, a Chinese retaliatory strike with a few nuclear warheads should be able to deter a first nuclear attack from the U.S.

The above discussion shows that the nature of the Chinese minimum nuclear deterrence is quite different from that of the other nuclear states. In its current stage, the Chinese minimum nuclear deterrence comes from the quantitative ambiguity of its nuclear force. As long as this uncertainty is larger than a few ICBMs, the deterrence is stable. Now, Chinese nuclear development is going to enter a third stage, in which China will have credible and visible minimum nuclear deterrence. The Chinese long-range nuclear force could not be saturated by a U.S. preemptive strike, i.e., at least a few Chinese ICBMs or Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBMs) would be able to survive a U.S. preemptive strike and could be used in a retaliatory strike no matter how well the U.S. measures the total number of the Chinese nuclear weapons. China has two options to acquire a credible nuclear deterrence: to increase the quantity or to raise the survivability of its nuclear force. Table 1 gives the number of nuclear weapons China needs to maintain a credible minimum nuclear deterrence in different Chinese deployment modes and at different levels of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. This paper gives one estimate based on the criteria explained above and assumptions listed below. Other estimates might give quantitatively different numbers, but the general pattern would be the same and would not change the argument made in this paper.

It shows to acquire a credible nuclear deterrence, China needs a big expansion of its long-range nuclear arsenal if it does not raise its survivability beyond placing the missiles in hardened silos. If China successfully develops mobile ICBMs or SLBMs, it needs very little, if any, increase in its long-range nuclear force. It is reported that the size of the Chinese long-range nuclear force has been stable over time in the last two decades and that China is working on mobile ICBMs.9 This suggests that China has chosen the second option, that is to build credible minimum deterrence by increasing the survivability rather than the number of its long-range nuclear weapons. If there is no missile defense, this will be the direction of the Chinese nuclear modernization. Nuclear development in this direction is very predictable and stable. This approach to nuclear modernization will increase Chinese security while without increasing the perception of threats in other countries. The National Missile Defense (NMD), if the U.S. decides to deploy it, would force China to consider incorporating approaches that would help defeat the defense and this would make the direction of the Chinese nuclear modernization diverge over a big range of possibilities.

Impact of NMD on Chinese nuclear deterrence

The effort of current U.S. missile defense development is focusing on Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD). There are five basic types of BMD: (1) pre-launch attack, meaning attacking the missiles before their launch; (2) boost-phase interception, meaning attacking the missiles while they are being accelerated by their rocket boosters; (3) exoatmospheric interception, meaning attacking the missiles or their warheads during midcourse in the upper atmosphere or above it; (4)endo-atmospheric interception, meaning attacking the missiles or their warheads during the reentry phase in the lower, denser atmosphere; (5) civil defense, meaning reducing the effects of the missile attacks by strengthening constructions on the ground or hiding personnel and facilities at safe locations. The U.S. BMD effort covers the first four approaches, which may have different impacts on Chinese nuclear deterrence.

In its history, the U.S. tried several times to acquire a capability to counter ICBM attacks. The U.S. first developed nuclear-armed anti-ballistic missiles (ABMs) in the 1960s but abandoned them later. In the 1980s, the U.S. attempted to develop layered missile defenses with directed energy and kinetic energy weapons under the Strategic Defensive Initiative (SDI), which was believed later to be too ambitious. Because the SDI technology was far from ready and East-West relations improved in the late 1980s and the early 1990s, the SDI program shrank. In the Bush Administration, it was changed to a more limited program referred as Global Protection Against Limited Strikes (GPALS). In the first Clinton Administration, the SDI program officially died and then it was revived in the current BMD programs.

The current U.S. BMD effort can be divided into two major parts. The first is the project to develop Theater Missile Defense (TMD), for which the declared goal is to defend U.S. military bases abroad or its allies against attacks by missiles with ranges less than 3,500 kilometers. The second is the project to develop a National Missile Defense (NMD), for which the declared goal is to defend the U.S. territory against ICBM attacks. To defend the entire United States, the U.S. would have to use exoatmospheric or boost-phase interception. Exoatmospheric defense is the emphasis of the current U.S. NMD project as designed by the Clinton Administration, while boost phase defense has also been proposed for discussion.10 The current TMD project includes lower-tier, upper-tier and boost phase systems. The lower-tier systems, e.g., the Patriot antimissiles, are endo-atmospheric defense systems that can defend only small areas. The upper-tier systems, especially the Navy Theater Wide (NTW) system, could defend a big area in principle, so they could be used to supplement the U.S. NMD if needed.

Before President Clinton decided to leave the decision on NMD deployment for the next president, the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) had designed an NMD architecture, calling for initial deployment of interceptors in Alaska. Many Republicans are pushing for a more robust NMD system, while others oppose the idea of NMD based on mid-course interception. At the same time, US-North Korean relations are improving and the perceived DPRK missile threat is declining. All these factors may fundamentally change the structure of NMD. This paper will only consider the Clinton Administration's NMD architecture and analyze its impact on China's nuclear deterrence. This analysis will also be valid if the main technology and structure of the NMD system remains similar in the next administration.

According to the Clinton Administration's NMD system design, the U.S. would deploy ground-based launchers and interceptors at two locations. The interceptors would be equipped with Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicles (EKVs) that kill incoming warheads by hitting them at high speed (hit-to-kill). The NMD system is designed to work as follows: the early-warning satellites of the NMD systems detect the launch of a missile by seeing the hot and bright plume from its engine. Once the missile is detected, the control center tells different sensors to track the missile or the warhead and decoys it releases and discriminate them. These sensors include some early-warning radars that would be upgraded to have a tracking capability accurate enough to guide interceptors, some X-band tracking and discrimination radars, and satellite-based infrared tracking sensors. The trajectory information obtained by these sensors would be used to launch and guide interceptors toward the target warhead. After the EKV is released, the infrared sensors on the EKV would guide it to approach the target. To increase the kill probability, several interceptors may be launched towards each target warhead.

According to the current plan, the U.S. would deploy NMD in several phases. In the first development phase, sometimes referred to as capability 1 (C1), the U.S. would deploy one hundred interceptors in Alaska, upgrade existing early warning radars, and deploy a new X-band tracking radar. The goal of this phase is said to be to defend against an attack by a few tens of missiles with simple or no countermeaures. It is noticeable that C1 system was originally designed to have twenty interceptors and to deal with a few ICBMs. Its proposed size and capability was subsequently enlarged to its current level. In the later phases, the U.S. would deploy more radars, low-orbit and high-orbit missile-tracking satellites, more interceptors and would add a new launch site. The stated goals of these phases are to defend against a few tens of missiles with complex countermeasures.

The number of missiles the C1 system is intended to defend against is comparable to the reported size of the whole Chinese long range nuclear force and is obviously larger than the number of the Chinese retaliatory ICBMs. As discussed in the last section, only a few Chinese ICBMs would survive a first U.S. strike and constitute a retaliatory capability if China does not expand the size of its long range nuclear force. So, even a very thin NMD system with very few interceptors would pose a serious threat to the Chinese retaliatory capability. No matter how the U.S. government clarifies its intentions in deploying NMD, many Americans still believe that a NMD designed for "rogue states" would have an inherent capability to defend against Chinese ICBMs.11 Chinese nuclear deterrence depends directly on American perceptions about the Chinese nuclear retaliatory capability. The deployment of NMD would change these perceptions and therefore significantly undermine the Chinese deterrent. Without the backup of NMD, the Americans would always worry about a Chinese retaliation with the few Chinese nuclear weapons that might survive a U.S. first nuclear strike against China. The deployment of a NMD system would provide the American public with an illusion that the several surviving retaliatory Chinese ICBMs would be intercepted by the NMD system - since it is both designed and said to be able to defeat attacks by small numbers of missiles. If the Americans tended to believe that a first nuclear strike plus a NMD system would be able to disarm the Chinese nuclear retaliatory capability, the U.S. could become incautious in risking nuclear exchanges with China in a crisis. It would therefore disturb the strategic stability between China and the U.S and increase the danger of war between the Chinese and American peoples.

China has realized these dangers and its arms control representative, Ambassador Sha Zukang stated that it is evident that the U.S. NMD will seriously undermine the effectiveness of China's limited nuclear capability from the first day of its (NMD) deployment. This can not but cause grave concerns to China."12

The structure of the NMD system designed for the Clinton Administration is obviously East Asia-oriented, especially in its first deployment phase, C1. In the C1 phase, the only new missile tracking radar will be deployed on Shemya, an outpost well located to watch missiles from East Asia, including Russian Siberia, Korea, and China. The only NMD launch site in the C1 and C2 phases would be in Central Alaska, which is much closer to East Asia than to the Middle East or the European part of Russia. This geographical structure provides more time and less required defense range for the interceptors in defending against missiles from East Asia than from other places in the world. This may help the U.S. take a strategy of "shoot-look-shoot" in defending against missiles from East Asia. This strategy could raise the kill probability of the NMD system and allow it to operate in a more efficient way. The East-Asia-emphasized structure of the NMD system could leave the Americans with a strong impression that missiles from East Asia would have little chance to penetrate the U.S. defense.

The above analyses show that the U.S. NMD system proposed by the Clinton Administration, based on its number of interceptors and geographical structure, would have an inherent potential capability to threaten the Chinese retaliatory nuclear force. This would reduce American perceptions of China's nuclear retaliatory capability and undermine Chinese nuclear deterrence. Besides the problem of the designed capability of NMD, the intention behind NMD in the U.S. is also worrying. As the relations between North and South Korea are improving, the voices in the U.S. calling for aiming the NMD at China are getting stronger. This will cause serious concerns in China and the Chinese will have to explore possible responses in their nuclear development if the U.S. decides to deploy NMD.

Requirements for Chinese responses

China is now using its diplomatic resources to influence the U.S. on the NMD matter. The hope is that the U.S. would take China's security concerns into account when it considers NMD deployment. But there is a danger that the U.S. would ignore China's concerns when making its deployment decision. If this happens, China will certainly seek possible approaches that help maintain the effectiveness of its nuclear deterrent. As Ambassador Sha Zukang stated, "China has not and will not participate in an arms race with anybody. But neither will we sit on our hands and allow our legitimate security interests to be compromised by any one."13 When China considers the approaches to protect the effectiveness of its nuclear deterrence, it is necessary to apply some requirements to these approaches. Our research indicates that four such requirements are fundamental.

(1) The approaches China takes should be FEASIBLE in helping defeat the U.S NMD. This is a requirement that takes precedence over all others. Judging the feasibility of proposed approaches is sometimes difficult because of the following four reasons: (a) The BMDO has declared that the NMD system would be able to defeat simple and complicated countermeasures as its development proceeds. It is not clear how the NMD would do this based on all the proposed technology; (b) although the technology of the NMD plan proposed by the Clinton Administration is clear, the plan itself is still uncertain. For example, the Republicans are pushing for a stronger missile defenses; (c) China needs to worry about any scientific surprises in NMD development; (d) different organizations in the Chinese defense industry may have different assessments of the feasibility of different approaches. Due to the uncertainty about the feasibility of various approaches, the Chinese government may want to pursue more than one set of approaches in case one does not work.

(2) Some of the approaches should be VISIBLE to the U.S. It is necessary but not sufficient if the Chinese approaches can defeat the U.S. NMD. The reason is that the Chinese deterrence depends on the American perception about the Chinese retaliatory capability rather than its real capability. Thus, some of the Chinese approaches should be visible to the Americans so that they will know that their NMD system will not be able to counter the Chinese retaliatory capability.

(3) The approaches should be AFFORDABLE and not constitute a financial burden on China. China is now concentrating on economic development. It does not want a sharp expansion of military expenditure that would disturb its economic progress. The Chinese government's policy takes economic development as its priority and the policy has strong support from the Chinese people.

(4) The approaches should be MODERATE and not increase perceptions of a "China threat" in other countries. China is now in the process of fully participating in the international community and it needs a peaceful environment for its economic development. In order to continue this peaceful profile, China would prefer approaches that avoid negative consequences in arms control or that would lead to new tensions.

In addition to the above four key requirements, there are some additional factors that could also influence decision-making in selecting possible approaches. These factors are not as critical as the four above, but sometimes they can be important when the potential approaches are assessed in different Chinese organizations. These factors are the following:

(5) The decision makers will prefer approaches that are COMPATIBLE with each other. All approaches applied to the missile defense problem must be compatible with each other. On the other hand, decision makers sometimes prefer competition in the early part of the development process, so incompatible approaches may not be excluded in the early Chinese plans.

(6) Some PRECAUTIONARY approaches are needed. The U.S. BMDO declares that NMD will defeat simple and complicated countermeasures in different development phases. It is not clear how the current NMD technology will do this. So the Chinese would have to worry about some possible scientific surprises. On the other hand, some people in the U.S. are pushing for stronger missile defenses or even a revival of part of the SDI program. The Chinese may want to have some technical preparation for the approaches that can also deal with a stronger missile defense.

(7) Approaches based on CHALLENGING technology could obtain more support. China worries that one of the intentions behind the U.S. NMD is to acquire preemption in military technology in the new century. Chinese scientists would hope that their work could narrow the technical gap between China and the U.S., although some approaches may not be the best option to respond to the U.S. NMD.

The above list is not an exhaustive one. There may be some other factors which could sometimes play a role in determining Chinese responses. For example, if an approach has traditional bases in the Chinese defense industry or dual-use industry, it would have more of a chance to be recognized and recommended by the scientists in those industries. Therefore, it would have a better chance to be chosen by the government. However, these factors may not be as important as the seven described above.

The U.S. development of missile defenses is forcing China to consider taking approaches to protect its nuclear deterrent. This poses some new requirements and challenges for Chinese nuclear development. As discussed in the first section, if there is no missile defense, China needs to worry only about survivability, reliability and safety in its further nuclear development. The appearance of missile defenses would disturb the process and introduce many uncertainties. The next section will comment on different Chinese approaches based on the above listed seven factors.

Comments on possible Chinese responses

Many approaches that could help defeat NMD have been discussed.14 These approaches may be divided into four groups. The first group aims to overwhelm the defense. This could be done by (A) building more ICBMs; (B) MIRVing the Chinese ICBMs to multiply the number of warheads; (C) releasing decoys from the missiles; or (D) dispersing chaff to fool the sensors of the defense. The second group aims to lower the observability of the warheads by applying stealth technology. This group includes: (E) radar stealth, meaning that the radar reflection from the warhead is reduced; and (F) infrared stealth, meaning that the infrared radiation emitted by the warheads is reduced. The third group creates a rivalry between the warheads and the interceptors during the flight, for example, (G) by making the warheads maneuver. The fourth group raises the survivability of the Chinese ICBMs by (H) deploying mobile ICBMs and/or SLBMs; (I) building a missile defense; or (J) putting the Chinese nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert.

There are two very different scenarios in which more ICBMs are built to overwhelm the defense. In the first scenario, China builds more silo-based ICBMs; and in the second scenario, China builds more survivable ICBMs or SLBMs. These two scenarios give very different results.

As discussed in the first section, the current Chinese nuclear deterrent is based on quantitative uncertainty in the minds of its rivals. The NMD would strengthen U.S. confidence about being able to counter Chinese retaliatory capability. If China wants to overwhelm the defense by developing more warheads, the size of its retaliatory force should be larger than the sum of the number of warheads intercepted by the defense and the number of warheads that can produce "intolerable damage". Here we assume that two interceptors are used to kill one warhead, so that a C1 system with 100 interceptors is able to kill 50 warheads. Table 2 gives the number of warheads China needs to overwhelm a C1 or C2 system.
However, if there is no missile defense, China could maintain its nuclear deterrence by keeping some quantitative ambiguity about its nuclear force before it deploys survivable nuclear weapons. If there is a missile defense, the effect of the quantitative uncertainty would be eliminated by the defense. China would then have to seek a credible deterrent. The conclusion is that it is not economic or efficient for China to enlarge its silo-based nuclear force in response to a U.S. NMD deployment. It would be a more reasonable option for China to overwhelm the defense with fully mobile ICBMs or very survivable SLBMs when these technologies are ready. A key problem here is the timing: If China wants to overwhelm the defense with an enlarged nuclear force, China needs to raise the survivability of its nuclear force before the U.S. finishes the deployment of NMD. If Chinese technology cannot be ready in time, or if China chooses to deploy combined modes of its long-range nuclear force, the number of nuclear warheads China needs to overwhelm the defense varies from one hundred to several thousands. This would create a big uncertainty about the future of Chinese nuclear forces.

Enlarging Chinese nuclear forces to overwhelm the defense may have some significant costs for China: (1) it may not be good for China's peaceful profile; (2) it may involve a big financial burden if China chooses to enlarge the silo-based nuclear force; (3) China may need to produce additional fissile materials for the new warheads, especially if China chooses to add silo-based ICBMs. This factor would make China reluctant to join a Fissile Materials Cut-off Treaty (FMCT) if it wants to keep open the option of such a buildup. Although the costs could be large, the buildup option cannot be ruled out. The reason for this is that the buildup option is so mathematically simple to understand and so certain to work. So, in the Chinese debate this idea would easily win some support from non-technical people. Another advantage is that the buildup would be visible to the outside and would therefore help discourage any first strike against China.

An efficient way to enlarge a nuclear force is to deploy Multiple Independently-targeting Re-entry Vehicles (MIRVs) if the technology is available. In U.S. efforts to persuade Russia to revise the ABM treaty, one inducement has been to allow Russia to keep its MIRVs. This could encourage China to think about this option. However, for China, MIRVing the silo-based ICBMs is not a good idea because its nuclear force is much smaller than Russia's. MIRVing the survivable ICBMs could be better. But this depends on whether the technology is mature.

Some Chinese articles mention multiple-warheads as countermeasures,15 but they do not always refer to real warheads. So, multiple warheads in these articles could also mean one real warhead plus many decoys. As discussed in a report made by a group of American scientists (UCS/MIT),16 the proposed NMD sensors cannot differentiate the real warhead from anti-simulation decoys during the midcourse of the flight. This technology is not too complicated for China. This means that the deployment of decoys is a much more efficient and simple way than MIRVs for China to defeat the NMD system.

If some metal chaff strands are dispersed around the warheads, they can fool the radars of the defense. This technology should not be difficult for China.

Stealth technology can be used to make the warheads less observable during their flights. For example, the radar reflection of a warhead can be reduced by putting the warhead in a reentry vehicle with a pointed cone-sphere shape or painting the reentry vehicle with radar absorbing materials. This countermeasure is based on not too complicated technology and can reduce the effectiveness of the defense. Another stealth technology, which is discussed in UCS/MIT report, is to reduce the infrared radiation of the warhead by cooling the skin of the warhead. This countermeasure is also based on not-too-complicated technology and can completely defeat the defense.

The only countermeasure mentioned by the Chinese defense industry is the use of a maneuvering warhead.17 To defeat the interceptor, the maneuver capability of the warhead should be comparable to that of the interceptor. So, the warhead needs to detect the approaching interceptor and start its maneuver at an appropriate time; otherwise, the warhead needs to carry a lot of fuel so that it can maneuver continuously. Either option is a challenge to the designers of the warhead. The first option needs very capable sensors on the warhead that can search for approaching interceptors from all possible directions while the latter needs to reduce considerably the weight of the nuclear device so that the re-entry vehicle can carry additional fuel and an engine. To match the maneuver capability of the interceptor, the warhead may need a new design to tolerate off-axis accelerations during maneuvers. This may require new nuclear tests and therefore create difficulties for China to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). The result of the competition between the warhead and interceptor is dependent on the competition of technologies of the defensive and offensive sides, and thus difficult to assess.

Raising the survivability of the Chinese nuclear weapons cannot directly defeat the U.S. NMD system; however, it can make some other approaches much more effective and efficient. For example, China would need many fewer nuclear warheads to overwhelm the defense if China can deploy survivable ICBMs rather than silo-based ICBMs. If there is no missile defense, it is the main goal of the Chinese nuclear modernization to build a survivable mobile or/and a sea-based nuclear force. This goal is still important for China even if the factor of a missile defense is added.

So-called 'point' missile defenses protecting missile silos may also help raise the survivability of Chinese ICBMs. However, the technology is very challenging and the cost is very high.

Another approach to increasing nuclear weapon survivability is to put the Chinese nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert. This would mean that China would need to launch its nuclear weapons after it detects a nuclear attack but before the incoming nuclear weapons arrive. This strategy is called "launch on warning" and was cited as a destabilizing factor by American negotiators to their Russian counterparts in their consultations on the ABM Treaty.18 This approach requires advanced and reliable early-warning systems, which China may not currently possess.

The above discussions show that there is not one simple choice for China in responding to U.S. NMD deployment. All approaches discussed above and maybe some others would be considered by Chinese decision-makers. An assessment of the priorities of different options for China would be very difficult because the very strict and different requirements listed in the last section may produce different judgements. The competition among these approaches would lead to a big range of uncertainties in China's nuclear modernization.

Possible Arms Control Responses

China is making diplomatic efforts to dissuade the U.S. from deploying NMD in both bilateral and multilateral forums. In bilateral exchanges, China has expressed its concerns over NMD through official visits and "track two" meetings that include both governmental and non-governmental officials. These bilateral dialogues have helped the two countries understand each other's positions and concerns and are laying the base for possible resolution of the dispute over the NMD issue.

China has also spoken out against NMD at two major multilateral meetings. The first was at the First Committee of the United Nations (UN), where China endorsed the Russian proposal to sustain the ABM treaty, a proposal that won the overwhelming support of the UN members. The second forum is the Conference on Disarmament (CD), where China is trying to initiate a negotiation on the prohibition of weapons targeting outer space. In addition to the UN and CD, China also outlines its concerns over NMD (or TMD that could supplement NMD) at several regional forums.19 Chinese diplomats have talked more and more with the western news media, thereby providing more transparency on China's positions to the American people.

If this diplomatic effort fails, however, China would make some responses in the area of arms control in addition to its responses in nuclear development.

NMD deployment would harm Chinese confidence in arms control. Before China gradually opened its door to the world in the early 1980s, it was skeptical of the utility and effectiveness of international efforts in global arms control and it did not believe that the superpowers would be faithful to their commitments when they feel that they have the power to break them. As it has been involved more and more in international arms control regimes and negotiations, China has learned the importance of participation in international cooperation on arms control and has become very active in this area. U.S. attempts to modify or withdraw from the ABM treaty are reviving old doubts in China about whether the U.S. will be faithful to its arms control commitments and about the sustainability of international arms control cooperation. The Chinese would worry that participating in arms control would reduce, not strengthen, China's self-defense capabilities. In conclusion, China could become less cooperative with the U.S. in the area of arms control and non-proliferation if the U.S. finally revises or abandons the ABM treaty.

As discussed in the last section, some approaches may add difficulties for Chinese participation in arms control. For example, China may need some additional fissile materials to saturate the defense by building more nuclear weapons, especially silo-based ICBMs. It will be difficult for China to accept a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, one that puts a ceiling on the size of the Chinese nuclear force and makes China lose an option for countering the NMD, even though China may not take such an option immediately. Another concern would add to the difficulty of ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. In China, there have been some voices arguing that China lost too much in signing the CTBT.20 If some Chinese feel that a few more nuclear tests are required to develop countermeasures like the maneuvering warhead discussed above, the voices opposing the CTBT would certainly become stronger in China.

In the non-proliferation area, China would become less interested in legally accepting the MTCR, including its annexes, as China's export control law if the U.S. does not respond to China's concern over NMD. The U.S. would become less influential in dissuading China to cut its cooperation with some countries if China believes that such cooperation is consistent with existing international law. In the area of nuclear disarmament, NMD will become a new and serious obstacle that blocks China from considering joining global nuclear reduction efforts.

CHINESE MILITARY STATS:

2009-11-02T21:28:00.000-08:00

CHINESE MILITARY STATS: Top Stats All Stats
Armed forces growth -28
Armed forces personnel 2,810,000
Branches
People's Liberation Army (PLA): Ground Forces, Navy (includes marines and naval aviation), Air Force (includes airborne forces), and Second Artillery Corps (strategic missile force); People's Armed Police (PAP); PLA Reserve Force
Conscription
Selective conscription (FWCC).
Conventional arms exports $125,000,000.00
Conventional arms imports $2,238,000,000.00
expenditure > % of GDP 1.98 % Time series
Expenditures > Dollar figure $67,490,000,000.00 Time series
Exports to developing nations $6,372.00 million
Manpower > Availability > Males age 15-49 375,520,000
Military Capabilities > Active Troops 2,255,000
Military Capabilities > Defense Budget $81,480,000,000.00
Military Capabilities > Military Capabilities > Frigates 43
Military Capabilities > Tanks 7,580
personnel 3,755,000 Time series
Service age and obligation
18-22 years of age for selective compulsory military service, with 24-month service obligation; no minimum age for voluntary service (all officers are volunteers); 18-19 years of age for women high school graduates who meet requirements for specific military jobs
Tanks 11,000 tanks [3rd of 22]
Weapon holdings 34,281,000 [2nd of 137]
WMD > Missile
China has produced and deployed a wide range of ballistic missiles, ranging from short-range missiles to intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). China's missiles are operated by the Second Artillery Corps, and include about 650 DF-11 (M-11) and DF-15 (M-9) missiles opposite Taiwan; several dozens of DF-3, DF-4, and DF-21 medium-range missiles that can reach Japan, India, and Russia; and 18-24 DF-5 ICBMs that can reach the United States and Europe. A transition is currently underway from relatively inaccurate, liquid-fueled, silo/cave-based missiles (DF-3, DF-4, DF-5) to more accurate, solid-fueled, mobile missiles (DF-11, DF-15, and DF-21, and a new ICBM [the DF-31] and SLBM [the JL-2], which are currently under development). China is replacing its older DF-5 missiles with new DF-5A variants, which may eventually be equipped with multiple warheads. A key question is how US deployment of ballistic missile defense (former known as theater and national missile defense) will affect the pace and scope of Chinese strategic modernization. Chinese missile exports have been a problem for more than a decade. China transferred 36 DF-3 medium-range missiles to Saudi Arabia in 1988, and supplied Pakistan with 34 M-11 short-range missiles in 1992. China has provided technology and expertise to the missile programs of several countries, including Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea. China has not joined the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), but has pledged to abide by its main parameters. In November 2000, China promised not to assist any country in the development of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles. In August 2002, China issued regulations and a control list restricting the export of missiles and missile technology. Since 2004, China has been engaged in consultation with the MTCR; however, its application for membership was not successful in the regime's latest plenary meeting in Seoul, South Korea, in October 2004. Concerns about Chinese missile technology transfers continue.
WMD > Nuclear
China's nuclear weapons program began in 1955 and culminated in a successful nuclear test in 1964. Since then, China has conducted 45 nuclear tests, including tests of thermonuclear weapons and a neutron bomb. The series of nuclear tests in 1995-96 prior to China's signature of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) may have resulted in a smaller and lighter warhead design for the new generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) now under development. China is estimated to have about 400 strategic and tactical nuclear weapons, and stocks of fissile material sufficient to produce a much larger arsenal. China joined the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1984 and acceded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1992 as a nuclear weapon state. China provided nuclear reactors and technology to several countries in the 1980s and early 1990s, including design information and fissile material that reportedly helped Pakistan develop nuclear weapons. Since the early 1990s, China has improved its export controls, including the promulgation of regulations on nuclear and nuclear dual-use exports and has pledged to halt exports of nuclear technology to un-safeguarded facilities. In 2002 China ratified the IAEA Additional Protocol, the first and only nuclear weapons state to do so.

North Korea Nuclearbase

2009-10-28T02:03:00.001-07:00

North Korea has completed the construction of its largest and most sophisticated missile base on the west coast, laying the groundwork for improved intercontinental ballistic missiles, senior officials here said Monday. The Dongchang-ri base has been under construction for several years, deepening outside concerns that North Korea is continuing to develop its capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction. "The construction is as good as finished," one South Korean official said, asking for anonymity because he was speaking on matters of intelligence. "The necessary facilities are all there" Another official said North Korea has been testing missile parts such as boosters at the site about 200km northwest of Pyongyang and only 70km west of the main nuclear complex in Yongbyon. "It's a leap in North Korea's ballistic missile development," the official said, also speaking on condition of anonymity and adding the construction ended "only recently." Analysts say the Dongchang-ri base is about three times larger than the Musudan-ri site where North Korea launched a long-range rocket in April, claiming that it put a satellite into space. The launch on the east coast drew condemnations worldwide. The U.S. and South Korea denounced it as a thinly veiled test of a Taepodong-2 missile technically capable of reaching the western U.S. Less than a month later, North Korea went ahead with its second nuclear test, triggering U.N. sanctions tougher than those imposed after the first one in 2006. In June, South Korean officials said North Korea transported an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, by train to the Dongchang-ri site from a munitions factory near Pyongyang, fueling tensions already high from the nuclear blast. Nam Sung-wook, who heads a research institute affiliated with South Korea's spy agency, said in July that the Dongchang-ri site would allow for testing of missiles with a range of over 3,000km. The officials said the newest base is for ICBMs, which can fly at least 5,000km. The long-range rocket which the North fired in April is believed to have flown at least 3,000km. North Korea has test-fired a range of short-range and mid-range missiles this year. The country, which has in recent months shown willingness to return to talks on its nuclear program, is believed to have up to 1,000 ballistic missiles, including 700 Scuds.

2009-10-26T22:18:00.001-07:00

CHINESEMENACE&ERKINGFORWARIN EASTASIA

2009-10-26T22:14:00.000-07:00

Triggered by the geopolitical shifts that accompanied the end of the cold war, fueled by the nation’s rapid economic growth, and driven by a mix of insecurity and ambition, today’s buildup has been under way for the better part of two decades. Even before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Chinese strategists began to shift their attention from preparing for a massive, all-out “People’s War” against a nuclear-armed northern invader toward what they labeled “local war under high-tech conditions.” Such a war would be fought for limited aims, using only conventional weapons, in the sea and airspace off China’s eastern coasts. It was from this direction that the greatest threats to the nation’s security were expected to come, whether from Taiwanese “separatists,” Japanese “militarists,” American “hegemonists” or, in the most nightmarish scenarios, all three at once.

Over the course of the past twenty years, this shift in priorities has been reflected in a substantial, sustained military buildup, especially in China’s aerospace and naval capabilities. With the nation’s economy expanding at near double-digit rates, Beijing was able to increase defense budgets even faster without imposing noticeable burdens on society. According to the Defense Department’s latest figures, between 1996 and 2008 China’s officially disclosed (and likely understated) defense budget grew by an average of 12.9 percent per year, while GDP grew at around 9.6 percent.

Western observers have tended for some time to downplay the significance of these figures. The post-cold-war People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was, after all, backward, poorly equipped and badly in need of modernization. Despite the vast sums being spent on imported and domestically produced weapons, it was widely assumed that the overall quality of China’s armed forces, and the specific capabilities of most of its major military systems, would continue to lag far behind their American counterparts. Throughout the 1990s, most experts also believed that Beijing was focused exclusively on acquiring the means to coerce or attack Taiwan. As the wider scope and potential significance of its military buildup have become more evident, yet another reassuring rationale has emerged. China is a rising nation and, as such, it is just doing what comes naturally: acquiring the capabilities it needs to project its power, extend its influence and defend its increasingly far-flung interests.

The distribution of long-range nuclear capabilities was also profoundly unbalanced. Even after the superpower arms reductions of the early 1990s the United States retained thousands of nuclear bombs and missile warheads capable of striking China. At that time, the PRC had no more than twenty nuclear-tipped missiles with sufficient range to reach the continental United States, of which only four may actually have been deployed and ready for use at any given moment.

Because of the severe limits on its ability to project power, virtually the only place that China could have engaged U.S. forces was in its immediate coastal waters, most likely in a conflict over the fate of Taiwan. The outcome of such a struggle would have been a foregone conclusion, with America and its allies quickly clearing the sea and skies of enemy forces. If Beijing refused to end hostilities after having suffered these initial losses, the United States could have imposed a crippling economic embargo backed up by an airtight naval blockade up and down China’s coasts. At the slightest hint that Beijing was preparing for nuclear escalation, Washington could have unleashed a preemptive strike aimed at destroying all of China’s limited long-range nuclear force and at least a portion of its shorter-range systems. In sum, at every level of potential conflict, from limited engagements at sea to transcontinental nuclear war, the Americans held the upper hand.

Despite impressive Chinese advances, in maritime East Asia the United States retains military superiority and effective deterrence and war-fighting capacities. But just as the United States cannot base policy on an exaggerated assessment of the China threat, it cannot allow strategic complacency to undermine U.S. security. Washington must maintain those capabilities that underpin U.S. strategic partnerships with the maritime states in China’s neighborhood and a favorable regional balance of power. Respect for Beijing’s strategic potential requires that U.S. defense policy continues to stress advancement of those capabilities that support American power projection in the western Pacific Ocean, even as the United States prepares for a protracted era of counterinsurgency warfare. Short-term contingencies cannot preclude attention to long-term great-power competition. If the United States maintains its focus on the multiple sources of maritime supremacy, including carrier-based power projection, subsurface platforms and information technologies, it can continue to engage the rise of China without undermining U.S. security.

China Daily reports that construction of a nuclear power station began on Monday in Fujian

2009-10-23T22:28:00.001-07:00

China Daily reports that construction of a nuclear power station began on Monday in Fujian province. The plant is estimated to cost $7.1 billion for four nuclear reactors. They expect the first nuclear reactor to be put into commercial use by the end of 2012.

As the world’s second-largest energy consumer, China is looking more to nuclear power for a balanced energy mix. According to official figures, nuclear power is now the third largest power source in the country.

The 11 nuclear reactors currently in operation have a combined capacity of about 8,000 MW, and last year generated 62.86 billion kWh, up more than 14 percent on 2006, the Commission of Science Technology and Industry for National Defense said.

However, nuclear power still accounts for less than 2 percent of the country’s total output. The NDRC said it wants to boost this figure to 4 percent by 2020.

BHP Planning to Sell Uranium to China ‘for Decades’

2009-10-23T22:27:00.001-07:00

As Venezuela positions itself to sell more oil to help China meet its rising demands, Australia’s BHP Billiton mining giant is getting ready to export uranium to China as the country prepares to expand its nuclear energy program. From AFP:

The chief executive of the Anglo-Australian miner, Marius Kloppers, said BHP Billiton was “very actively positioning” to take advantage of China’s move towards greater use of nuclear energy.

[...] BHP Billiton, whose Olympic Dam in South Australia holds the world’s largest known uranium reserves, said nuclear energy could help cut back on carbon emissions, which are generated from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal.

[...] Australia and China last year ratified a nuclear agreement clearing the way for the export of uranium to feed Beijing’s giant nuclear power programme.

While BHP Billiton does not yet have any supply contracts with China, it exports uranium to the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, Finland, Belgium, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Canada and the United States.
China is heavily dependent on cheap coal to generate much of its electricity but is on a drive to cut carbon and other pollution in its smog-filled cities by going at least partly green. Statistics show it consumed 2.74bn tonnes of coal in 2008, up 4.5% on the previous year, but the rate of growth was 1.6% lower than in 2007.

China Eyes Massive Hike in Atomic Energy Target

2009-10-23T22:25:00.000-07:00

China announced plans to expand its energy sector on Wednesday, with nuclear energy as one of its main targets. From AFP:

China plans to nearly double its target for nuclear energy by 2020, state media said Wednesday, a move likely to reaffirm the nation’s position as a prime market for the global atomic industry.

The new objective is for nuclear power plants to reach a capacity of 70 gigawatts in 11 years, the China Daily reported, enough to power 70 cities the size of San Francisco.

The objective, if approved by the State Council or Cabinet, will be up from a previously announced target of 40 gigawatts for 2020.

These and other plans for wind and solar-powered energy sources are in part a response to the environmental crisis in China’s cities. From The Guardian:

State-owned power companies were stepping up investment to meet growing demand and boost economic growth as part of a government stimulus plan, said Zhang Guobao, director of China’s National Energy Administration. He also called on ministers to ensure there were appropriate measures to raise and save energy as well as using it more efficiently.

VARYAQ-Chinese AirCraft Carreir

2009-10-20T21:58:00.000-07:00

Welding torches flare at dusk in the coastal Chinese city of Dalian as workers mill about on the flight deck of an unfinished aircraft carrier once intended for the Soviet navy.

More than 400 miles (643 kilometers) from the ocean, a full-size mock-up sits next to a lake in Wuhan. While the twin can be used to train deck crews, it will never sail. Its “hull” is a 1,000 foot-long (300 meter) building.

China’s leaders have talked for five decades about acquiring what they call “aircraft mother ships.” Spurred by dependence on safe sea lanes for exports and inbound shipments of oil, gas and iron ore, the world’s fastest-growing major economy is preparing to send a carrier to sea within a few years, military analysts say. Such a move in the Pacific, where the U.S. has dominated since World War II, would give China added power in territorial disputes with Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines.

“A Chinese aircraft carrier is probably a matter of when, not if,” says David Finkelstein, director of China studies at CNA, an Alexandria, Virginia-based consulting group with national-security expertise. “There is already a strategic rationale for the need for an aircraft carrier or some sort of vessel that can project air power within the region.”

The first will be the former Varyag being completed in Dalian, according to a July report by the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence. It predicts the warship will become operational as a training platform between 2010 and 2012, with domestically built carriers “sometime after 2015.”

Destroyers, Submarines

They would join a fleet of about 190 principal ships, including destroyers, submarines and amphibious vessels, according to a 2009 U.S. Defense Department report. That compares with about 285 U.S. ships, including 11 aircraft carriers displacing about one-third more than the 65,000-ton ex- Varyag.

China must buy jets, train aviators, build support vessels and learn the skills required to conduct air operations at sea. One such battle group costs about $10 billion, U.S. Naval War College researchers estimate.

While China’s commission of an aircraft carrier may cause consternation in Washington, it won’t change the military balance between the two nations because of the U.S. lead in numbers of carrier battle groups and platforms such as ultra- silent cruise-missile-carrying nuclear submarines, says Robert Ross, a professor at Boston College in Massachusetts who specializes in U.S.-China relations.

Military Installations

That reality may be lost amid alarm in the U.S. Congress and among allies including the Philippines, which came to the brink of conflict with China in 1995 over alleged Chinese military installations on a South China Sea reef and will look for reassurance from the U.S. that defense ties remain strong.

“The carrier is a symbol of power projection, which will simply resonate in other countries as it resonates in China,” Ross says.

China concentrated on protecting its home waters with missiles, submarines and minelayers until this decade; carriers weren’t seen as necessary or cost-effective, Ross says. It bought a World War II-era vessel from Australia in 1985 that it later scrapped, according to the Australian Navy. Two Russian carriers became tourist attractions.

China’s fleet has begun to range beyond its coast. Two destroyers and a supply ship deployed for anti-piracy patrols off Somalia in December 2008. With a $3.9 trillion economy and the world’s largest foreign-exchange reserves, at $2.3 trillion, China’s leadership is showing signs it is serious about joining the U.S., Russia, France and Brazil in possessing vessels capable of launching conventional fixed-wing airplanes.

Offensive Operations

China “won’t forever be without an aircraft carrier,” Defense Minister Liang Guanglie told his Japanese counterpart in March, Xinhua News reported. China’s 2006 Defense White Paper said the navy would extend its mandate beyond coastal defense to include “offshore defensive operations.”

The Varyag was originally intended to be the second 65,000- ton carrier of the former Soviet Union when construction began in the 1980s; it wasn’t completed after the country broke up in 1991, according to the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence July report. Its sister, the Admiral Kuznetsov, is the flagship of Russia’s navy.

Ukraine inherited the Varyag, selling it to China in 1998. It arrived in 2002 in Dalian, site of China’s largest shipyard, the report said. It was in plain view during a visit last month, in drydock about 600 meters from an Ikea furniture store.

Crew Training

During renovation, its future crew could train in Wuhan’s southern suburbs. Construction on the mock-up began last year, heralded by drummers and the provincial Communist Party leader, according to a press release from state-owned China Shipbuilding Industry Corp. in Beijing. Two cranes towered above the structure as of last week, visible to farmers across Huangjia Lake fertilizing vegetable plots.

Finkelstein and Ross say they believe China is trying to avoid surprising the world when it inaugurates its carrier program and has allowed the military to make public statements about its plans, even though two people at China Shipbuilding’s 701 Institute hung up when called about the project, and the Defense Ministry didn’t return fax and e-mail requests for comment.

“This shouldn’t be a shock when it happens,” Finkelstein says. “The real question is, what are they going to do with these things?”

The Navy Of The People's Republic Of China: Once And Future Seapower?

2009-10-20T21:45:00.000-07:00

The thesis question of this paper is that given China's maritime heritage, current economic strength and regional ambitions, can China become a blue-water seapower in the 21st century? This paper will examine that question while assessing the current state of the Chinese People's Liberation Army-Navy (PLAN), its plans for development, and the political and economic context in which it functions.

Background: The PLAN is divided into thee fleets: North Sea Fleet, East Sea Fleet, and South Sea Fleet. The North Sea Fleet, with headquarters at Qingdao, has responsibility for the Yellow Sea area. The East Sea Fleet, with headquarters at Ningbo (near Shanghai), has responsibility for the East China Sea area. The South Sea Fleet, with headquarters at Zhanjiang (near Hong Kong), has responsibility for the politically sensitive South China Sea. The Chinese Navy is supported by a substantial national maritime infrastructure. Within mainland China exist 110 major shipyards, of which 10 produce ships often thousand tons or greater displacement. In 1997, China will come into possession of the extensive shipyard facilities of Hong Kong, further enhancing its naval infrastructure capabilities. The Chinese PLAN ranks as one of the world's largest navies, however its equipment is composed largely of outdated technology at least thirty years old. Currently, the PLAN enjoys a position of primacy in Chinese national strategy. In the wake of the Cold War, the national leadership has shifted focus to maritime interests. Deng Xiaoping's socialist modernization program has moved China economically from a closed self reliance to an open market, maritime orientation. The result has been that an estimated one third of the overall defense budget goes to the PLAN. The PLAN is pursuing development programs aimed at improving existing hardware and infrastructure as well as acquiring new capabilities. A prerequisite to seapower is a strong economic base. China is well endowed in this area. Certain trends and influences may serve to mitigate China's seapower development. China's continued economic growth is dependent on foreign trade and investment. The question of foreign trade and investment may serve as a possible restraint on Chinese aggressiveness, but not necessarily on China's seapower ambitions. The Chinese "economic miracle" relies on a regional development strategy that pits region against region and regions against the central government. The precedent does exist in Chinese history for China to dissolve into strong regional actors and a weak central government. Lastly, a change in government vision can derail China's seapower ambitions.

Conclusion: In conclusion, there exists in China a commitment on the part of the national leadership for the PLAN to become the preeminent regional seapower. Despite the recent shakeup in the PLAN's top-level leadership, the goal of becoming a regional blue-water navy is still supported by Jiang Zemin, Deng's heir-apparent. China's current seapower is more potential than actual. There exists major shortcomings in the areas of anti-submarine warfare, anti-air warfare, and electronic warfare. Correcting these shortcomings will require a major commitment in financial capital. In the meantime, China's naval strength lies in its numerical advantage vis-a-vis other regional actors.

INTRODUCTION

The thesis question of this paper is that given China's maritime heritage, current economic strength and regional ambitions, can China become a blue-water seapower in the 21st century? This paper will examine that question while assessing the current state of the Chinese People's Liberation Army-Navy (PLAN), its plans for development, and the political and economic context in which it functions. Blue-water seapower is considered by this author to be the ability to conduct sustained naval operations beyond coastal waters for the purposes of sea control and power projection missions.

In assessing China's prospects for becoming a major seapower, it is pertinent to note its maritime heritage. Unlike many lesser developed countries, China has not sought to purchase seapower though the acquisition of an "instant" navy. Rather, China possesses the inherent elements of seapower, including a maritime heritage that goes back centuries. Between 1405 and 1433, Admiral Zheng He conducted seven large scale naval expeditions that involved hundreds of ships and thousands of sailors and troops. These expeditions were charged by the emperor to "show the flag" and establish suzerainty over the southern ocean states. Zheng He's expeditions ranged as far west as the Red Sea and the east coast of Africa, included the Persian Gulf, and conquered present-day Sri Lanka. China's current claim to the South China Sea rests in part on the naval operations of Zheng He.

THE CURRENT STATE OF THE PLAN

Currently, the People's Liberation Army-Navy (PLAN) consists of 265,000 officers and men including: 25,000 personnel in the naval air force; 40,000 conscripts; 28,000 coastal defense personnel manning anti-ship missile and artillery batteries; and 5,000 marines (the marine force expands to 28,000 in wartime upon mobilization). The national service

obligation for sea duty personnel is four years. The PLAN however, retains many career sailors, with an average service length of fifteen years. The ability to retain a core of career sailors is a significant requirement for building a professional navy.

The PLAN is divided into three fleets: North Sea Fleet, East Sea Fleet, and South Sea Fleet. The North Sea Fleet, with headquarters at Qingdao, has responsibility for the Yellow Sea area. The East Sea Fleet, with headquarters at Ningbo (near Shanghai), has responsibility for the East China Sea area. The South Sea Fleet, with headquarters at Zhanjiang (near Hong Kong), has responsibility for the politically sensitive South China Sea.4 Indicative of the PLAN's current political prominence is the fact that all three fleets are commanded by vice admirals.

The Chinese Navy is supported by a substantial national maritime infrastructure. Within mainland China exist 110 major shipyards, of which 10 produce ships often thousand tons or greater displacement. The two principal naval shipyards are at Shanghai and Guangzhou. Nuclear-powered submarines are built at only one shipyard -- Huludao. In 1997, China will come into possession of the extensive shipyard facilities of Hong Kong, further enhancing its naval infrastructure capabilities.

The Chinese PLAN ranks as one of the world's largest navies, however its equipment is composed largely of outdated technology at least thirty years old. The core of its surface fleet consists of 52 destroyers and frigates. The PLAN also operates over 400 fast attack craft, with an additional 250 in reserve status. Its mine warfare forces number 60 vessels with an additional 56 vessels in reserve. The PLAN's amphibious warfare force, which would be its primary power projection tool for forcibly resolving disputes in the South China Sea and with Taiwan, numbers 27 major types -- tank landing ships (LST) and assault

transports (AP). This force is supplemented by 152 active and 200 reserve minor amphibious craft, consisting of medium landing ships (LSM), medium landing crafts (LCM) and utility landing crafts (LCU).6 This amphibious shipping, if adequately screened during the assault phase, is capable of delivering a sizable landing force to the beach.

The submarine force numbers one nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) in its inventory. The Xia SSBN, of which a second unit may have been lost in an accident in 1985, is armed with 12 CSS-N-3 submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBM). The CSS-N-3 possesses a range of 1400 nautical miles. A new class of SSBN is planned by the Chinese. Five units of the Han class of nuclear-powered attack submarine (SSN) round out the high-end of the Chinese submarine technology spectrum. The Han class, however, is afflicted with high radiation levels, which caused production to terminate at five units. At the low-end of the technology spectrum is the Romeo class of diesel-electric submarines. This is a 1960's Soviet design of limited capability against modern anti-submarine forces. Together with the indigenous and somewhat updated Ming design, these conventionally powered patrol submarines (SSK) number 41 with another 35 in reserve.7 The shortcoming in these diesel-electric submarines lies not in their conventional propulsion, but in their limited sensor capability and endurance. Indeed, a diesel-electric submarine operating on batteries is a nearly silent threat.

As with the rest of the PLAN, Chinese naval aviation's principal strength lies in its numbers. With 665 fixed wing aircraft and 44 helicopters, Chinese naval aviation is larger than most of the world's air forces. This force includes 460 interceptors, of which the 1960's designed MIG-21 variant is the most modern. Maritime strike capability is provided by 185 bombers, mostly of elderly design, with the exception of the indigenous Q-5 design, which

numbers 75 units.8 The state of the art SU-27 air superiority fighters, recently purchased from Russia, have gone to the Chinese air force and not naval aviation units. Considering China's desire to be able to project combat power into the contentious South China Sea, this is puzzling. However, the SU-27 is planned for license production in China. It can be assumed therefore that the SU-27, with its long range and advanced capability, will eventually equip PLAN naval aviation.

Lastly, in assessing the current state of the PLAN, a brief look at its weaponry is necessary. In addition to the CSS-N-3 SLBM discussed earlier, the Chinese navy also employs several types of anti-ship missiles of Soviet and indigenous design. The Hai Ying is a large, older design anti-ship cruise missile of approximately 50 mile range, that can be launched from ships, bomber-sized aircraft and coastal batteries. The C801 and C802 are newer Exocet-like anti-ship cruise missiles. These types are smaller than the Hai Ying and, as a result, capable of being launched by a greater variety of platforms, including submarines. Range performance for both the C801 and C802 is similar to the Hai Ying.9

THE PLAN IN CHINESE NATIONAL STRATEGY

Currently, the PLAN enjoys a position of primacy in Chinese national strategy. In the wake of the Cold War, the national leadership has shifted focus to maritime interests. Deng Xiaoping's socialist modernization program has moved China economically from a closed self-reliance to an open market, maritime orientation. This is evidenced by the creation of coastal special economic zones for foreign investment; exploitation of offshore oil and mineral resources; and to protect these maritime interests, the creation of a blue-water navy.10

The Chinese decision to build a blue-water navy was influenced by two principal factors. The first factor driving the decision to build a blue-water navy is the elevated importance, both politically and economically, of territorial disputes in the South China Sea.11 Second, there is a diminished threat from a land power; China has moved toward rapprochement with both Russia and India, its two biggest antagonists on the continent. The result has been that an estimated one third of the overall defense budget goes to the PLAN. Significantly, for internal political reasons, the PLAN is equal to the ground forces in the Central Military Commission (CMC) heirarchy.12 The Chinese national military strategy drives the PLAN's naval strategy and its development. The national military strategy has its roots in the people's war principles of Chairman Mao but has been forced to reform and modernize for several reasons. The failed Chinese punitive invasion of Vietnam in 1979, the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and Russia, and the Persian Gulf War, which showcased the war-winning capability of high technology, all combined to force the Chinese to reevaluate their people's war strategy.13

As a result of this reevaluation and the increased importance of maritime affairs, the PLAN 's maritime strategy has been expanded in scope. Under the maritime strategy, the PLAN's mission is to establish and maintain strategic depth for national defense and safeguard maritime interests within the offshore waters.14 Officially, the Chinese have left the definition of offshore waters ambiguous. This is probably to allow them flexibility in response to threats and to compensate for current technology and equipment shortfalls. However, the general consensus is that the Chinese consider their offshore waters to consist of the following four sea areas: the Bohai, Yellow Sea, East China Sea, and South China Sea. Also included in the offshore waters is the continental shelf out to what is referred to as the

first island chain.15 The island chain concept refers to the two defensive chains protecting the Chinese mainland. The first island chain consists of: the Aleutians, Kuriles, Japan, Ryukyus, Taiwan, Philippines, and Sunda islands. The second island chain consists of: the Bonins, Marianas, and Palau island groups.16

The PLAN's maritime strategy achieves a number of political and military objectives. First, it asserts the image of China as a regional maritime power. Second, it acknowledges the importance of maritime economic interests in national defense. Third, it seeks to protect the coastal economic zones and bolsters China's offshore territorial claims. Fourth, it maximizes the PLAN's national defense strategic function by establishing an sea-air-land integrated defense system.17 Furthermore, the maritime strategy supports the PLAN's requirements for high technology equipment purchases in any budget battle with the other services. It presents a comprehensive plan for naval modernization from training and equipment through operations and logistics.18 With the exception of the national sea-air-land integrated defense, these objectives are complimentary and advance China's maritime ambitions. The national sea-air-land integrated defensive structure however, implies a fixed and geographically limited strategy. This defensive structure appears incompatible with a forward deployed blue-water navy. It may in fact be more for domestic political consumption and budgetary "turf" battles than representative of China's maritime strategy.

CHINESE NAVAL BUDGET AND DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS

The PLAN's budget is a subset of the overall Chinese defense budget. The People's Republic of China's defense budget has grown 159 percent from 1986 to 1994, according to the U.S. General Accounting Office.19 From 1990 to 1994, the defense budget increased by sixty percent. This level of increase is unmatched by any other state in the region, with the

exception perhaps being Taiwan.20 The 1994 budget alone represents a 22 percent increase over the previous year.21

The PLAN budget is officially claimed to be a little over six billion U.S. dollars. This figure does not reflect many expenditures, however. Such items as weapon acquisitions and research and development are not reflected in this official budget total.22 Funding curbs have been recently imposed which have curtailed procurement. However, this has not been for technical reasons nor does it appear to signal a change in national policy.23 The decision to impose funding curbs appears to have been for fiscal reasons only.

The PLAN is pursuing development programs aimed at improving existing hardware and infrastructure as well as acquiring new capabilities. In the area of logistics, streamlined and standardized supply procedures have been implemented. A centralized repair management organization has been established. Additional underway replenishment ships (which are essential for sustained blue-water operations) have been commissioned. Additionally, construction of ports and naval air stations has increased. The force structure has been improved by retiring obsolete ships and submarines, while doubling the number of destroyers and frigates in fleet service. Recently, training has emphasized naval combined arms (surface, subsurface and air) exercises.24

As stated earlier, the Han SSN class has been terminated at five units due to excessive internal radiation levels. As a result, a new design is being developed with Russian assistance. In the interim, at least three units of the Han class are being upgraded with improved electronic surveillance measures (ESM), probably of French design, and the capability to launch C801 antiship cruise missiles.25

The greatest leap in technology for the PLAN is the construction of the Luhu class of guided missile frigate (FFG). This is the first gas-turbine powered warship for the Chinese navy and the first to be equipped with an automated tactical data system and combat systems suite. The tactical data system and combat system suite is of French design. It integrates a Sea Tiger long range search radar, Crotale surface-to-air missile system, Castor fire control radar and automated command system.26 This is a revolutionary class of warship for the PLAN and is comparable to modern Western frigate designs. The advanced capabilities (vis-a-vis existing Chinese ship types) must change Chinese tactics and command and control procedures if the Luhu's full potential is to be exploited.

The question of China procuring an aircraft carrier capability has been a focus of analysis since at least 1989. An organic naval air capability would greatly enhance the PLAN's ability to project power into the South China Sea. Since 1989, three scenarios have been advanced: China would buy an older or uncompleted Russian carrier; China would rebuild an old U.S. carrier purchased from scrap; or China would buy one constructed in Spain. All three scenarios have proved false.27 In November 1992, the Chinese press announced that supreme leader, Deng Xioaping, decided China will design and build an aircraft carrier, with work commencing in 1993. Further, a 1993 report indicated plans to build two 48,000 ton aircraft carriers by 2005.28 The Central Military Commission itself announced in March of 1993 the plan to build three "large aircraft carrying ships". Outside naval observers place the first one as operational no earlier than 2010.29 Given China's announced commitment to the program, a PLAN aircraft carrier going to sea early in the next century is a likely reality. A force of three medium or heavy aircraft carriers would give the PLAN operational flexibility and regional dominance. It would be quite possible for China

to field a carrier fleet to rival even the U.S. Navy within the region. A continued U.S. drawdown would narrow the gap between the two navies more quickly, making this prospect feasible.

THE PLAN AS A TOOL FOR REGIONAL INFLUENCE

The greatest source of instability in the Asian Pacific region currently is the contentious claims to the South China Sea. China's disputed claims in this region have given impetus to the PLAN's blue-water ambitions. The South China Sea spans 1800 nautical miles from Sumatra in the south to Taiwan in the north. It is larger than the Mediterranean Sea. Two specific island groups are the focus of tension: the Spratlys and the Paracels.30

These islands are small coral atolls and rock outcroppings. Their significance lie not in their size however. They sit astride the crossroads of international commercial shipping lanes. Over 40,000 ships transit through this region every year.31 The islands' real value lie in the potential oil and mineral deposits in their adjoining seabeds. The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) give full maritime exclusion zone rights to island formations and their owners.32 This economic imperative combined with the political issue of national sovereignty make the South China Sea dispute a volatile one. In China competing political factions are attempting to establish their nationalist credentials with issues such as the South China Sea as they maneuver for power in the post-Deng transition.

The Chinese claim virtually the entire South China Sea and it associated island groupings discussed above. These claims come within thirty miles of the coasts of Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Brunei. These states, in turn, claim segments of the Spratlys.33 A brief chronology of the South China Sea dispute is useful. In 1974, the People's Republic of China (PRC) evicted Vietnam by force from the Paracel islands and built an airstrip on

Woody island of that group. In 1988, naval clashes occurred between the PRC and Vietnam in the vicinity of the Spratlys. In 1996, the PRC built fortified positions on certain islands in the Spratly group and clashed with Philippine naval units in the vicinity of the Spratly islands claimed by the Philippines.34 All claimants to the Spratlys have attempted to exert their claims by physically marking or occupying selected islands in the group. China, however, has been the most aggressive and successful by virtue of its navy.

China bases its claim to the Spratlys on historical legacy, including the expeditions of Zheng He. Artifacts dating to the time of his expeditions have been found on islands in the Spratly group. On 25 February 1992, the PRC announced the Law on the Territorial Sea and Contiguous Zone, which officially stated the PRC's maritime claims.35 As stated above, China, as well as the other claimants, are motivated by economics and nationalism in the South China Sea dispute. Specifically, with regard to the Spratlys claim, is the question of petroleum deposits. In 1994, the PRC became a net importer of oil, with energy demands expected to increase 160 percent in the next twenty years. The possibility of mineral deposits in the surrounding seabed of the Spratlys also makes them an attractive prize. Lastly, the Spratlys contain fertile fishing grounds which draw China, a country where fish consumption doubled in the last ten years.36

The issue of Taiwan is another regional dispute where the PLAN has been employed to influence the situation. In July and August of 1995, large scale naval exercises and missile tests were conducted off the coast of Taiwan to protest Taiwanese president Lee Teng-hui's visit to the United States. In November 1995, China conducted its largest scale ever amphibious exercise, simulating an invasion of Taiwan. This exercise and land, sea and air maneuvers off Taiwan in February of 1996 were designed to influence the Taiwanese

presidential election.37 The Chinese saber-rattling had the opposite effect, however, resulting in increased support for President Lee and reduced Taiwanese investment in the PRC. It also served to reinforce China's image as a regional bully.38

The Senkaku islands lie 100 nautical miles to the northeast of Taiwan and 200 miles to the west of Okinawa. They are occupied by Japan, but claimed by China. To date, both sides have refrained from provocative military gestures in this dispute. Although, in 1995, Chinese military aircraft approaching the islands were intercepted and escorted away by fighters of the Japanese Air Self Defense Force. The economic and political issues involved lend potential for events to gain a momentum of their own. As with the South China Sea dispute, China bases its claims on historical legacy, such as Ming dynasty records dating back six thousand years, and recent legal pronouncements. In 1971, Taiwan made a claim for the Senkakus. China made its claim to the Senkakus based on its overall claim on Taiwan. The 1992 PRC Law on the Territorial Sea and Contiguous Zone also states China's claim to the Senkakus.39 Japan's claim to the Senkakus dates back to 1895, when China ceded the islands to Japan under the terms of the Shimonoseki Peace Treaty. The U.S. ousted the Japanese from the islands during World War Two, but returned them to Tokyo in 1971 under the Okinawa Revision Treaty.40 The value of the Senkakus lay in their ownership. Sovereignty over the islands could give jurisdiction to over 20,500 square miles of sea space and associated seabed.41

Since at least the end of the Cold War, a regional arms race has simmered in the Asia-Pacific area. Many regional players consider China a potential regional threat. Further fueling a sense of insecurity in the region is the collapse of the Soviet Union and its withdrawal from Cam Ranh Bay and a fear of U.S. withdrawal from the region. It has been

argued that the arms buildup of regional players vis-a-vis China is creating a self-fulfilling

prophecy of a Chinese threat. However, China's actions, specifically in the realm of maritime disputes, has indicated a willingness on the part of the Chinese to use force to impose its will. The end of the Cold War, the absence of a significant land threat, and continued economic

prosperity will probably encourage the PRC to further its efforts at regional dominance.

PROSPECTS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

For China to become a major seapower in the next century, she must possess the

physical capability to do so, as well as the political will. In this China is well endowed. A prerequisite to seapower is a strong economic base. China's foreign exchange reserves

exceed 100 billion U.S. dollars. Its gross domestic product is expected to double in the next fifteen years. Its large and growing middle class is prosperous and currently numbers 100

million people. The Asian Development Bank expects China's economy to continue double digit growth until the year 2000 at least. Its coastal economic zones and desire for foreign capital are influencing overseas corporations and foreign government policies. Using a

projection of current growth rates, the World Bank expects China to have the world's premier economy within twenty five years.42

A useful tool in assessing China's prospects for seapower from the perspective of

economic and national resources is Admiral A.T. Mahan's elements of seapower.43 Mahan identified six elements of seapower: geographic position, physical conformation, extent of territory, population, national character, and character of government. China compares

favorably in all areas.

Geographic position: China possesses a long coastline with many ports positioned near some of the world's principal international sealanes.

Physical conformation: China's interior is connected to the coast by two major river systems, the Yellow and the Yangtse. It possesses some of the world's busiest commercial ports. Extent of territory and population: These are two related criteria that deal with a nation's ability to man a merchant fleet, and gauge the percentage of the population engaged in maritime pursuits. With one of the world's largest merchant fleets and a large segment of the population employed in port services and shipbuilding, the PRC meets both criteria. National character: This pertains to an aptitude for commercial pursuits. The Chinese traditionally have been adept at commercial pursuits. Decades under communism have not deadened that spirit. Tens of millions of entrepreneurs are currently flourishing in the PRC.

Character of government: This criterion pertains to the ability of a government to nurture seapower through consistent and supportive policies. Currently, the PRC leadership is doing just that through the use of the PLAN as a foreign policy tool, budget allocations for modernization of the PLAN; and the creation of special economic zones along the coast.

Certain trends and influences may serve to mitigate China's seapower development. China's continued economic growth is dependent on foreign trade and investment. Foreign trade makes up more than 35 percent of the gross national product (GNP), and is an indication of economic interdependence. Foreign investment in the Chinese economy totals some 275.1 billion U.S. dollars.44 This dependence on foreign trade and investment is really a two-edged sword that makes both parties dependent upon each other. Furthermore, as much as eighty percent of the foreign investment in China come from overseas Chinese, who may be reluctant to part company with China over policy issues. The question of foreign trade and investment may serve as a possible restraint on Chinese aggressiveness, but not necessarily on China's seapower ambitions.

China's seapower potential will come to naught if the country breaks up into regional substates. The Chinese "economic miracle" relies on a regional development strategy that pits region against region and regions against the central government. The precedent does exist in Chinese history for China to dissolve into strong regional actors and a weak central government, recalling the time of the warlords and impotent emperors.
Lastly, a change in government vision can derail China's seapower ambitions. Recently, the Commander in Chief of the PLAN, Admiral Zhang Lianzhang, was forcibly retired along with most of the older generation of military officers in all three branches of the Chinese military. This was done in preparation for the post-Deng transition of power. This was a blow to the PLAN because Zhang was a proponent for the Chinese aircraft carrier program. A loss of focus or direction may result for the PLAN as the delay in naming a successor continues. It is anticipated that the loss of Zhang's influence on the Politburo and Central Military Commission may result in curtailed investment in new ship construction. Even if China were to embrace democracy, it is this author's opinion that she would still seek a blue-water navy to promote and protect its maritime interests. The United States and the United Kingdom are the two greatest seapowers of the modern world and its two greatest democracies as well.
In conclusion, there exists in China a commitment on the part of the national leadership for the PLAN to become the preeminent regional seapower. Despite the recent shakeup in the PLAN's top-level leadership, the goal of becoming a regional blue-water navy is still supported by Jiang Zemin, Deng's heir-apparent.47 China's current seapower is more potential than actual. There exists major shortcomings in the areas of anti-submarine warfare, anti-air warfare, and electronic warfare. Correcting these shortcomings will require a major commitment in financial capital. In the meantime, China's naval strength lies in its numerical advantage vis-a-vis other regional actors. Japan alone among the regional actors, possesses the economic and technological capabilities to challenge China on the high seas. Unless the U.S withdraws from the region however, Japan is unlikely to take on this challenge. Even faced with a U.S. pullout, Japan may seek accommodation rather than confrontation with an assertive China.
Barring a change in focus by the national leadership, breakup of the country into regional substates, or economic reversal, China possesses the necessary elements to be a seapower of the first order. This ascendancy to seapower status will not happen overnight. It will require between ten and twenty years of sustained political and financial commitment on the part of the Chinese. The most significant variable in determining China's blue-water potential is economics. Only its continued economic vitality will generate the huge fiscal and material resources necessary for China to achieve its maritime ambitions.

Express route for Chinese nuclear

2009-10-20T21:39:00.000-07:00

Hunan and Jiangxi provinces will have new nuclear power plants after recent agreements made by China National Nuclear Company (CNNC). A roadbuilding company is a partner in one of these.
First came a framework agreement with the city of Hengyang, Hunan Province on 24 August for a nuclear power plant which could start construction in 2010 or 2011. About a week later another project was started with the signing of a co-investment agreement towards a power plant in Jiangxi province provisionally named Wanan Yianjiashan.
Yu Jianfeng, deputy general manager of CNNC, said that the company was actively planning to use its resources to accelerate the Hengyang project. Wen-Xiong Zhang of the Hengyang City Party Committee said that the city government's attitude towards the development of nuclear power is 'very seriously, very seriously, very sincere.' He said that the city would 'wholeheartedly' cooperate with CNNC to advance preliminary work for the plant.
There are currently two candidate sites near Hengyang under consideration for hosting the nuclear power plant, according to a recent XXCB report. One is at Changning City and the other is in Hengdong county. Representatives from China Guodian Corp, Shanghai Nuclear Engineering Research and Design Institute and Hunan Electric Power Design Institute have visited Hengyang to investigate the sites, the report added.
Highway star
The project in inland Jiangxi province is less well advanced, but a deal was signed on 30 August to set up a joint venture office to prepare for the power plant. It will be jointly owned by CNNC (51%) with the remainder split between Jiangxi province and Jiangxi Provincial Expressway Company. The latter two firms are to decide their relative stakes in the 49% they will share after advice from the Jiangxi Province Reform Commission Energy Agency.
Both the projects would be the second in their provinces. CNNC's Taohuajiang nuclear power plant at Xiaochetang Village near Yueyang is expected to start construction at the end of 2010 or 2011. A twin-AP1000 plant is proposed in for Pengze in Jiangxi.

Chinese nuclear submarine crash behind 'Tonga ocean volcano eruption' story

2009-10-18T22:04:00.000-07:00

The remains of the Chinese sub hurtled into the air along with millions of fish and the entire crack cocaine cargo

A tense standoff between the US Navy surveillance
ship Impeccable and the Chinese fleet's flagship Who Flung Dung nuclear submarine resulted in a massive underwater crash today.Pentagon sources immediately spun the incident as a 'routine underwater volcanic eruption' near the Pacific islands of Hunga Tonga and Hunga Ha'apai, east of Fiji.
he Impeccable's captain had earlier reported having been harassed in a near collision with an armed Chinese submersible following weeks of covert tailing of oriental drug trafficking craft.

The explosion registered 7.0 on the Richter scale and caused millions of fish to be blown sky high out of the water along with bits of the Chinese sub.

Coastal residents are said to be very pissed that their entire recreational drug supplies for the Spring Equinox celebrations are now up in smoke.

Chinese submarines' transportation from Severodvinsk to begin in soon.

2009-10-18T22:02:00.000-07:00

A special transport dock for ship loading and transportation has arrived at the sea area adjacent to the Sevmashpredpriyatie shipyard, a spokesman for the shipyard directorate told Interfax on Monday.

The dock is expected to deliver two diesel-electric submarines, built by the shipyard for the Chinese Navy, to their permanent basing area, the spokesman said.

The submarines were built under a contract with the Rosoboronexport.

Chinese Will Build Modular High Temperature Nuclear Reactors Like Cans of Soda: in Eight Packs

2009-09-13T21:57:00.000-07:00

A 60 slide presentation Chinese HTR Program: HTR-10 results & Work Progress on HTR-PM by Zuoyi ZHANG, Institute of Nuclear and new Energy Technology (INET), Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China The Chinese High Temperature Reactors is one of the top 16 programs for the Chinese Government from 2006-2020. They figure that as they make their 13th to 31st pack of eight 200MW high temperature nuclear plants that cost will come down to 60% of the first one. Buying and building modular nuclear reactors like eight packs of beer or soda.They figure that as they make their 13th pack of eight 200MW electrical plants that cost will come down to 60-70% of the first one.They are targeting 90% of the cost of a Pressure Water Reactor (PWR) but worst case the HTR figures to 120% of the cost of the PWR.China plans to go to a very high temperature reactor design before 2020 and make hydrogen, switch to gas turbine and super-critical power cycle, and use spent fuel.

China hints at unveiling of new DF-41 ICBM

2009-09-13T21:54:00.000-07:00

China hints at unveiling of new DF-41 ICBM
China will display five new missiles in its National Day Parade on Oct. 1, although the much-anticipated third generation Dongfeng 41 is not named directly.

Some Chinese media are quoting an unnamed military "leading missile expert" saying that the missiles will be second generation and already in use by the military. Other media are saying that the unveiling of the DF-41 is a possibility because it is not excluded by name.

"Military aficionados have been expecting to see the Dongfeng 41, known as the DF-41 or the CSS-X-10," but they will be disappointed, said the missile expert speaking to the Chinese-based news Web site Global Times. "The third generation is still under development and is unlikely to be displayed this time," said the source from the "Second Artillery Force."

According to Chinese media reports, the force is at the core of the country's counterattack nuclear deterrence, as noted in a Beijing government white paper titled China's National Defense in 2008, issued earlier this year by the Information Office of the State Council.

The first of the Dongfeng missiles, the DF-1, was a copy of the Soviet SS-2 Sibling missile and produced under license in China in the 1960s. It had a single RD-101 rocket engine running on a mixture of liquid oxygen and alcohol. Maximum range of the DF-1, long retired, was around 350 miles with a 1,000-pound payload.

The DF-41 is believed to have a range between 7,000 and more than 8,500 miles and have a flexible warhead capacity. It can carry one, three, six or 10 multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle warheads.

The latest Dongfeng, the DF-41, is an improvement on the DF-31 and its longer-range sister the DF-31A, which are road-mobile, solid-fuel ICBMs developed by the 4th Aerospace Academy, now Academy of Rocket Motor Technology.

The DF-31 has a range of more than 5,000 miles with a single 1,000 kt warhead, or up to three 20-150 kt MIRV warheads. The upgraded DF-31A has a range of around 7,000 miles. Only around 12 are believed to be in service.

The Global Times report hinted that more might be on view during the parade, including a new submarine-launched ballistic missile, the Julang 2, also known as JL-2 or CSS-NX-4. The JL-2 is a sea-based variant of the DF-31 with a similar range and designed for current and next-generation nuclear-powered submarines.

The JL-2 is comparable in size and performance to the American Trident C-4 long-range multiple-warhead three-stage solid-fuel missile.

The Global Times said that another source, naval expert Li Jie, "didn't exclude the possibility of Julang-2's appearance" on Oct. 1. The navy would showcase some types of ship-to-ship missile, ship-to-air missile and multiple rocket launchers at the parade. "Maybe two to three of them will be unveiled for the first time," Jie said.

Western analysts and military bloggers have said that the National Day Parade could be the time to unveil the DF-41 and other hardware because of the significance of this year's event, which is put on only once every 10 years. The 2009 parade celebrates the birth of communist-run China 60 years ago.

First rehearsals for the parade in Tiananmen Square featured a mass pageant involving nearly 200,000 people and 60 simulated floats, media reported at the end of August. The rehearsal was held at night "to avoid affecting the public," a spokesperson for the celebration preparation committee said.

Li Daguang, a senior military expert at the PLA University of National Defense, said that the parade is not for saber-rattling but to promote national pride, confidence and awareness of national defense. "Some countries, observing China's parade with colored glasses, show off their weapons around the world on the battlefield instead," he said.

PRC Theft of U.S. Nuclear Warhead Design Information ; Proliferation

2009-09-06T22:05:00.000-07:00

The PRC is one of the worldís leading proliferators of weapons technologies. Concerns about the impact of the PRCís thefts of U.S. thermonuclear warhead design information, therefore, include the possible proliferation of the worldís most sophisticated nuclear weapons technology to nations hostile to the United States.

Russian Assistance to the PRCís Nuclear Weapons Program

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the PRC and Russian scientists became increasingly cooperative in civilian nuclear technology, and apparently, military technology. The Select Committee is concerned that the growing cooperation between Russia and the PRC is an indication of current or future nuclear weapons cooperation. The Select Committee judges that Russiaís nuclear weapons testing technology and experience could significantly assist the PRC with its nuclear weapons program under the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which does not permit physical testing.

While the PRC could share its knowledge of U.S. advanced thermonuclear warhead designs with Russia, Russia may not be interested in deviating from its past developmental path, since existing Russian warhead designs are apparently simple and reliable. The large throw-weight of Russian ballistic missiles has given them less cause for concern about the size and weight of their warheads. Russiaís nuclear stockpile maintenance requirements under a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty are thus very different than those of the United States.

The prospect of PRC-Russian cooperation, if that were to include military cooperation, would give rise to concerns in several areas, including nuclear weapons development and nuclear stockpile maintenance, nuclear weapons modeling and simulation, and nuclear weapons testing data.

How the PRC Acquired Thermonuclear Warhead Design Information from the United States: PRC Espionage and Other PRC Techniques

The Select Committee judges that the PRCís intelligence collection efforts to develop modern thermonuclear warheads have focused primarily on the following U.S. National Laboratories: Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, Oak Ridge, and Sandia. These efforts included espionage, rigorous review of U.S. unclassified technical and academic publications, and extensive interaction with U.S. scientists and Department of Energy laboratories.

Espionage played a central part in the PRCís acquisition of classified U.S. thermonuclear warhead design secrets. In several cases, the PRC identified lab employees, invited them to the PRC, and approached them for help, sometimes playing upon ethnic ties to recruit individuals.

The PRC also rigorously mined unclassified technical information and academic publications, including information from the National Technical Information Center and other sources. PRC scientists have even requested reports via e-mail from scientists at the U.S. national weapons laboratories. Peter Lee, who had been a scientist at both Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories and was convicted in 1997 of passing classified information to the PRC, gave the PRC unclassified technical reports upon request. The PRC also learned about conventional explosives for nuclear weapon detonation from reviewing unclassified technical reports published by Department of Energy national weapons laboratories.

PRC scientists have used their extensive laboratory-to-laboratory interactions with the United States to gain information from U.S. scientists on common problems, solutions to nuclear weapons physics, and solutions to engineering problems. The PRC uses elicitation in these meetings, where it shows familiarity with U.S. information in an effort to "prime the pump" in order to try to glean information about U.S. designs. U.S. scientists have passed information to the PRC in this way that is of benefit to the PRCís nuclear weapons program.

Specific examples of the loss of classified U.S. information in this manner are detailed in the Select Committeeís classified Final Report. The Clinton administration has determined that these examples cannot be publicly discussed.

The PRCís espionage operations, which use traditional intelligence gathering organizations as well as other entities, are aggressively focused on U.S. weapons technology.

The PRCís Academy of Engineering Physics (CAEP), which is under the Commission of Science, Technology, and Industry for National Defense (COSTIND), is the entity in charge of the PRCís nuclear weapons program. It is responsible for the research and development, testing, and production of all of the PRCís nuclear weapons. The figure below shows the organization of the PRCís nuclear infrastructure.5

The China Academy of Engineering Physics has pursued a very close relationship with U.S. national weapons laboratories, sending scientists as well as senior management to Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore. Members of the China Academy of Engineering Physics senior management have made at least two trips during the mid-to-late 1990s to U.S. national weapons laboratories to acquire information and collect intelligence. These visits provide the opportunity for the PRC to collect intelligence. The presence of such PRC nationals at the U.S. national weapons laboratories facilitates the PRCís targeting of U.S. weapons scientists for the purpose of obtaining nuclear weapons information.

U.S. and PRC lab-to-lab exchanges were ended in the late 1980s, but were resumed in 1993. Scientific exchanges continue in many areas including high-energy physics.6 Discussions at the U.S. national weapons laboratories in connection with the foreign visitors program are supposed to be strictly limited to technical arms control and material accounting issues. Nonetheless, these visits and scientific conferences provide opportunities for the PRC to interact with U.S. scientists outside of official meetings, and facilitate the PRCís targeting of U.S. weapons scientists.

The U.S. national weapons laboratories argue that there are reciprocal gains from the exchanges. The Department of Energy describes some of the insights gained from these exchanges as unique. On the other hand, PRC scientists have misled the U.S. about their objectives and technological developments. Despite considerable debate in Congress and the Executive branch, including several critical Government Accounting Office reports, the U.S. Government has never made a definitive assessment of the risks versus the benefits of scientific exchanges and foreign visitor programs involving the U.S. national weapons laboratories.7

How the U.S. Government Learned of the PRCís Theft of Our Most Advanced Thermonuclear Warhead Design Information

The U.S. Government did not become fully aware of the magnitude of the counterintelligence problems at the Department of Energy laboratories until 1995. The first indication of successful PRC espionage against the laboratories arose in the late 1970s. During the last several years, more information has become available concerning thefts of U.S. thermonuclear warhead design information, and how the PRC may be exploiting it. A series of PRC nuclear tests conducted from 1992 to 1996 that furthered the PRCís development of advanced warheads led to suspicions in the U.S. intelligence community that the PRC had stolen advanced U.S. thermonuclear warhead design information.

The "Walk-In"

In 1995, a "walk-in" approached the Central Intelligence Agency outside of the PRC and provided an official PRC document classified "Secret" that contained design information on the W-88 Trident D-5 warhead, the most modern in the U.S. arsenal, as well as technical information concerning other thermonuclear warheads.

The CIA later determined that the "walk-in" was directed by the PRC intelligence services. Nonetheless, the CIA and other Intelligence Community analysts that reviewed the document concluded that it contained U.S. thermonuclear warhead design information.

The "walk-in" document recognized that the U.S. nuclear warheads represented the state-of-the-art against which PRC thermonuclear warheads should be measured.

Espionage Definition of a "Walk-In"

A "walk-in" is an individual who voluntarily offers to conduct espionage. The Encyclopedia of Espionage defines a "walk-in" as "an unheralded defector or a dangle, a ëwalk-iní is a potential agent or a mole who literally walks into an embassy or intelligence agency without prior contact or recruitment." See the Spy Book, The Encyclopedia of Espionage, by Norman Polmar and Thomas B. Allen (RH Reference & Information Publishing, Random House).

The individual who approached the CIA in 1995 is suspected of being a "directed walk-in": a "walk-in" purposefully directed by the PRC to provide this information to the United States. There is speculation as to the PRCís motives for advertising to the United States the state of its nuclear weapons development.

Over the following months, an assessment of the information in the document was conducted by a multidisciplinary group from the U.S. Government, including the Department of Energy and scientists from the U.S. national weapons laboratories. The Department of Energy and FBI investigations focused on the loss of the U.S. W-88 Trident D-5 design information, but they did not focus on the loss of technical information about the other five U.S. thermonuclear warheads. A Department of Energy investigation of the loss of technical information about the other five U.S. thermonuclear warheads had not begun as of January 3, 1999, after the Select Committee had completed its investigation. Also, the FBI had not yet initiated an investigation as of January 3, 1999.

The PRCís Future Thermonuclear Warhead Requirements: The PRCís Need for Nuclear Test Data and High Performance Computers

Since signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996, the PRC has faced new challenges in maintaining its modern thermonuclear warheads without physical testing. Indeed, even after signing the CTBT, the PRC may be testing sub-critical or low yield nuclear explosive devices underground at its Lop Nur test site.

The PRC likely does not need additional physical tests for its older thermonuclear warhead designs. But maintenance of the nuclear weapons stockpile for these weapons does require testing. The ban on physical testing to which the PRC agreed in 1996 has therefore increased the PRCís interest in high performance computing and access to sophisticated computer codes to simulate the explosion of nuclear weapons.8

The Select Committee judges that the PRC has likely developed only a very modest complement of codes from inputting its own testing data into high performance computers. The PRC would, therefore, be especially interested in acquiring U.S. thermonuclear weapons codes for any new weapons based on elements of stolen U.S. design information.

The Department of Energy reports that the PRC has in fact acquired some U.S. computer codes, including: the MCNPT code; the DOT3.5 code; and the NJOYC code.9 MCNPT is a theoretical code that is useful in determining survivability of systems to electronic penetration and dose penetration in humans. DOT3.5 is a two-dimensional empirical code that performs the same kinds of calculations as MCNPT, except uses numerical integration. NJOYC acts as a numerical translator between DOT3.5 and MCNPT.

Given the limited number of nuclear tests that the PRC has conducted, the PRC likely needs additional empirical information about advanced thermonuclear weapon performance that it could obtain by stealing the U.S. "legacy" computer codes, such as those that were used by the Los Alamos National Laboratory to design the W-88 Trident D-5 warhead. The PRC may also need information about dynamic three-dimensional data on warhead packaging, primary and secondary coupling, and the chemical interactions of materials inside the warhead over time.

The Select Committee is concerned that no procedures are in place that would either prevent or detect the movement of classified information, including classified nuclear-weapons design information or computer codes, to unclassified sections of the computer systems at U.S. national weapons laboratories. The access granted to individuals from foreign countries, including students, to these unclassified areas of the U.S. national weapons laboratoriesí computer systems could make it possible for others acting as agents of foreign countries to access such information, making detection of the persons responsible for the theft even more difficult.

The Select Committee believes that the PRC will continue to target its collection efforts not only on Los Alamos National Laboratory, but also on the other U.S. National Laboratories involved with the U.S. nuclear stockpile maintenance program.

The PRC may also seek to improve its hydrostatic testing capabilities by learning more about the Dual-Axis Radiographic Hydrotest (DARHT) facility at Los Alamos.

PRC Theft of U.S. Nuclear Warhead Design Information

2009-09-06T22:03:00.000-07:00

The Peoples Republic of Chinaís penetration of our national weapons laboratories spans at least the past several decades, and almost certainly continues today.

The PRCís nuclear weapons intelligence collection efforts began after the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, when the PRC assessed its weaknesses in physics and the deteriorating status of its nuclear weapons programs.

The PRCís warhead designs of the late 1970s were large, multi-megaton thermonuclear weapons that could only be carried on large ballistic missiles and aircraft. The PRCís warheads were roughly equivalent to U.S. warheads designed in the 1950s. The PRC may have decided as early as that time to pursue more advanced thermonuclear warheads for its new generation of ballistic missiles.

The PRCís twenty-year intelligence collection effort against the U.S. has been aimed at this goal. The PRC employs a "mosaic" approach that capitalizes on the collection of small bits of information by a large number of individuals, which is then pieced together in the PRC. This information is obtained through espionage, rigorous review of U.S. unclassified technical and academic publications, and extensive interaction with U.S. scientists and Department of Energy laboratories.

The Select Committee judges that the PRCís intelligence collection efforts to develop modern thermonuclear warheads are focused primarily on the Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, Sandia, and Oak Ridge National Laboratories.

As a result of these efforts, the PRC has stolen classified U.S. thermonuclear design information that helped it fabricate and successfully test a new generation of strategic warheads.

The PRC stole classified information on every currently deployed U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM). The warheads for which the PRC stole classified information include: the W-56 Minuteman II ICBM; the W-62 Minuteman III ICBM; the W-70 Lance short-range ballistic missile (SRBM); the W-76 Trident C-4 SLBM; the W-78 Minuteman III Mark 12A ICBM; the W-87 Peacekeeper ICBM; and the W-88 Trident D-5 SLBM. The W-88 warhead is the most sophisticated strategic nuclear warhead in the U.S. arsenal. It is deployed on the Trident D-5 submarine-launched missile.

In addition, in the mid-1990s the PRC stole from a U.S. national weapons laboratory classified U.S. thermonuclear weapons information that cannot be identified in this unclassified Report. Because this recent espionage case is currently under investigation and involves sensitive intelligence sources and methods, the Clinton administration has determined that further information may not be made public.

The PRC also stole classified information on U.S. weapons design concepts, on weaponization features, and on warhead reentry vehicles (the hardened shell that protects a warhead during reentry).

The PRC may have acquired detailed documents and blueprints from the U.S. national weapons laboratories.

The U.S. Intelligence Community reported in 1996 that the PRC stole neutron bomb technology from a U.S. national weapons laboratory. The PRC had previously stolen design information on the U.S. W-70 warhead in the late 1970s; that earlier theft, which included design information, was discovered several months after it took place. The W-70 has elements that can be used as a strategic thermonuclear warhead or an enhanced radiation ("neutron bomb") warhead. Following the initial theft of W-70 design information, the PRC tested a neutron bomb in 1988.

Classified U.S. Nuclear Weapons Information Acquired by the PRC

Designation Design Laboratory Weapon Platform

W-88 Los Alamos Trident D-5 SLBM

W-87 Lawrence Livermore Peacekeeper/M-X ICBM

W-78 Los Alamos Minuteman III Mark 12A ICBM

W-76 Los Alamos Trident C-4 SLBM

W-70 Lawrence Livermore Lance SRBM

W-62 Lawrence Livermore Minuteman III ICBM

W-56 Lawrence Livermore Minuteman II ICBM

The PRC may have also acquired classified U.S. nuclear weapons computer codes from U.S. national weapons laboratories. The Select Committee believes that nuclear weapons computer codes remain a key target for PRC espionage. Nuclear weapons codes are important for understanding the workings of nuclear weapons and can assist in weapon design, maintenance, and adaptation. The PRC could make use of this information, for example, to adapt stolen U.S. thermonuclear design information to meet the PRCís particular needs and capabilities.

During the mid-1990s, it was learned that the PRC had acquired U.S. technical information about insensitive high explosives. Insensitive high explosives are a component of certain thermonuclear weapons. Insensitive high explosives are less energetic than high explosives used in some other thermonuclear warheads, but have advantages for other purposes, such as thermonuclear warheads used on mobile missiles.

The PRC thefts from our national weapons laboratories began at least as early as the late 1970s, and significant secrets are known to have been stolen as recently as the mid-1990s. Such thefts almost certainly continue to the present.

The Clinton administration has determined that additional information about PRC thefts included in this section of the Select Committeeís Report cannot be publicly disclosed.

The PRCís Next Generation Nuclear Warheads

The PRC has acquired U.S. nuclear weapons design information that could be utilized in developing the PRCís next generation of modern thermonuclear warheads.

The Department of Energy identifies two general design paths to the development of modern thermonuclear warheads:

* The first path, which apparently has been followed by the Russians, emphasizes simplicity and reliability in design
* The second path, which the U.S. has taken, utilizes innovative designs and lighter-weight warheads

The Select Committee judges that the combination of the PRCís preference for U.S. designs, the PRCís theft of design information on our most advanced thermonuclear warheads, and the PRCís demand for small, modern warheads for its new generation of mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles will result in the PRC emulating the U.S. design path to develop its next generation of thermonuclear warheads.

The PRC has already begun working on smaller thermonuclear warheads. During the l990s, the PRC was working to complete testing of its modern thermonuclear weapons before it signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996.1 The PRC conducted a series of nuclear tests from 1992 to 1996. Based on what is known about PRC nuclear testing practices, combined with data on PRC warhead yield and on PRC missile development, it is clear that the purpose of the 1992 to 1996 test series was to develop small, light warheads for the PRCís new nuclear forces.2

These tests led to suspicions in the U.S. Intelligence Community that the PRC had stolen advanced U.S. thermonuclear warhead design information. These suspicions were definitely confirmed by the "walk-in" information received in 1995.

The Select Committee judges that the PRC is developing for its next generation of road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles smaller, more compact thermonuclear warheads that exploit elements of stolen U.S. design information, including the stolen design information from the U.S. W-70 Lance warhead or the W-88 Trident D-5 warhead.

The following graph shows an unclassified history of the PRCís thermonuclear weapons development and its acquisition of classified information from the United States.

Completing the development of its next-generation warhead poses challenges for the PRC. The PRC may not currently be able to match precisely the exact explosive power and other features of U.S. weapons. Nonetheless, the PRC may be working toward this goal, and the difficulties it faces are surmountable. Work-arounds exist, using processes similar to those developed or available in a modern aerospace or precision-guided munitions industry. The PRC possesses these capabilities already.

The Impact of the PRCís Theft of U.S. Thermonuclear Warhead Design Information

Mobile and Submarine-Launched Missiles

The main application of the stolen U.S. thermonuclear warhead information will likely be to the PRCís next-generation intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The PRC is developing several new, solid-propellant, mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles. These include both road-mobile and submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Road-mobile ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles require smaller, more advanced thermonuclear warheads. The Select Committee judges it is likely that the PRC will use a new, smaller thermonuclear warhead on its next generation road-mobile, solid-propellant ICBM, the DF-31.

The DF-31 is likely to undergo its first test flight in 1999, and could be deployed as early as 2002. Introduction of the PRCís new, smaller thermonuclear warhead into PLA service could coincide with the initial operational capability of the new road-mobile DF-31 ballistic missile system.

The Select Committee judges that the PRCís thermonuclear warheads will exploit elements of the U.S. W-70 Lance or W-88 Trident D-5 warheads. While the PRC might not reproduce exact replicas of these U.S. thermonuclear warheads, elements of the PRCís devices could be similar.

Acceleration of PRC Weapons Development

The PRCís theft of classified U.S. weapons design information saved the PRC years of effort and resources in developing its new generation of modern thermonuclear warheads. It provided the PRC with access to design information that worked and was within the PRCís ability to both develop and test. And it saved the PRC from making mistakes or from pursuing blind alleys.

The loss of design information from the Department of Energyís national weapons laboratories helped the PRC in its efforts to fabricate and successfully test its next generation of nuclear weapons designs. These warheads give the PRC small, modern thermonuclear warheads roughly equivalent to current U.S. warhead yields.

Assessing the extent to which design information losses accelerated the PRCís nuclear weapons development is complicated because so much is unknown. The full extent of U.S. information that the PRC acquired and the sophistication of the PRCís indigenous design capabilities are unclear. Moreover, there is the possibility of third country assistance to the PRCís nuclear weapons program, which could also assist the PRCís exploitation of the stolen U.S. nuclear weapons information. Nonetheless, it is patent that the PRC has stolen significant classified U.S. design information on our most modern thermonuclear warheads.

While it is sometimes argued that eventually the PRC might have been able to produce and test an advanced and modern thermonuclear weapon on its own, the PRC had conducted only 45 nuclear tests in the more than 30 years from 1964 to 1996 (when the PRC signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty), which would have been insufficient for the PRC to have developed advanced thermonuclear warheads on its own. This compares to the approximately 1,030 tests by the United States, 715 tests by the Soviet Union, and 210 by France.3

The following illustrates the evolution of smaller U.S. warheads.4

Effect on PRC Nuclear Doctrine

Deploying new thermonuclear weapons provides the PRC with additional doctrinal and operational options for its strategic forces that, if exercised, would be troublesome for the United States.

Smaller, more efficient thermonuclear warheads would provide the PRC with the opportunity to develop and deploy a multiple independently-targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) should it decide to do so. These smaller designs would allow the use of lighter and faster reentry vehicles that may be better able to stress and to overcome ballistic missile defenses.

The PRC has expressed considerable opposition to U.S. deployment of ballistic missile defenses.

Other advantages of increased warhead yield-to-weight ratios include extended missile ranges and accuracy improvements. Smaller warheads result in a more compact missile payload, extending the range of ballistic missiles. This permits the use of smaller-diameter sea-launched ballistic missiles and mobile missiles to strike long-range targets. Longer range could enable PRC ballistic missile submarines to strike the U.S. from within PRC waters, where they can operate safely.

Multiple Warhead Development

The deployment of multiple warheads on a single missile requires smaller warheads that the PRC has not possessed.

The Select Committee has no information on whether the PRC currently intends to develop and deploy multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle systems. However, the Select Committee is aware of reports that the PRC has undertaken efforts related to multiple warhead technology.

Experts believe that the PRC currently has the technical capability to develop and deploy silo-based ballistic missiles with multiple reentry vehicles (MRVs) and multiple independently-targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs). Experts also agree that the PRC could develop and deploy its new generation of mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles with MRVs or MIRVs within a short period of years after a decision to do so, and consistent with the presumed timeframe for its planned deployment of its next-generation intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Peace-Mission 2009: A Military Scenario Beyond Central Asia

2009-08-28T21:49:00.000-07:00

Most analyses of the Sino-Russian strategic partnership focus either on Russian arms sales to China or on the joint military exercises conducted by Moscow and Beijing under the auspices of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which limits the scope of the analytical framework to a consideration of Central Asian scenarios. Given the recent outbreak of ethno-sectarian violence in Xinjiang in early July, such a scenario may seem appropriate, but according to the Shenyang Military Area and head of the Center for Commanding and Decision-making for "Peace Mission 2009," Senior Colonel Zhang Xudong, his military command was ordered to prepare for this exercise in February, but "Due to the late decision to hold the drill, we only had three months to prepare for it" (China Daily, July 27). This was at the height of regional tensions over Pyongyang's brinkmanship. Experts debate the strategic implications of this military partnership, which arguably go beyond just Russian arms sales to China, and appears to be clearly tied to an anti-American military scenario, and probably connected to Taiwan or to ousting the United States from Central Asian bases, or to a common opposition to U.S. missile defenses. A less discussed but increasingly plausible scenario includes the possibility of joint military action in response to a regime crisis in the Democratic Republic of North Korea (DPRK). An examination of their most recent military exercise, “Peace Mission-2009," suggests as much, and furthermore is not the first such exercise allegedly conducted under SCO auspices to raise that possibility.

In 2005, the “Peace Mission” exercises featured large-scale combat operations by both forces. Specifically these exercises involved:

A substantial naval contingent from the Russian Pacific Fleet, including a large BDK-11 assault ship; an anti-submarine vessel, the Marshal Shaposhnikov; the destroyer Burny; and diesel submarines. The naval squadron joined with the Chinese forces to simulate a major amphibious landing on a beachhead in the Jiaodong [Shangdong] peninsula. Russian bombers (TU-95S Bear strategic bombers and TU-22M3 Backfire long-range bombers) also staged an air landing near Qingdao City, including air cover by SU-27SM fighters armed with AS-15, 3,00 kilometer cruise missiles against naval targets.

As experts noted, this exercise sent Japan (and by implication the United States) a message regarding Russia and China’s capability to defend their interests in the Korean peninsula against both allies and second, in China’s case its capability to defend itself against Japan in any territorial disputes [2]. While such operations have been conducted against so-called "separatists" in the past, it is likely that the exercises were intended for other audiences as well.

Indeed, both sides had previously considered military intervention in North Korea both individually and jointly. “In conversations with JIR (Jane’s Intelligence Review) in 2003, Russian officials were candid about the scope of a “Ceausescu scenario” if conditions worsened in North Korea and Kim Jong Il lost control over some of the security forces” [3]. Russian officials also showed concern about a North Korean collapse by holding maneuvers with Japan and South Korea on a refugee scenario as far back as 2003 [4], but they also made veiled statements in 2004 indicating their concern for the future of the DPRK’s regime [5]. Similarly, some Western experts claim that China made contingency plans for a possible invasion of North Korea in 2003, when it was alerted by rumors about a U.S. strike against the DPRK’s nuclear facilities, with the aim of installing a pro-Chinese regime that would forsake nuclearization, but he reported that China’s military chiefs said this was not feasible [6].

A noted Japanese military correspondent for the Asahi Shimbun, Shunji Taoka, recently suggested that the recent joint Sino-Russian exercises of 2009 in China’s Jillin province may be intended to intimidate the DPRK. The five-day joint military exercise, dubbed “Peace Mission 2009,” took place from July 22 in the Russian Far East and the Shenyang Military Area Command in northeast China, and were intended “to verify operation plans and capabilities to respond to unexpected incidents under the unstable environment of countries and regions.” The exercise involved paratroops, tanks, self-propelled guns, armored personnel carriers, helicopter gunships, fighter planes, and jet transports, which led Taoka to conclude that the scope of the operations extended beyond an anti-terrorist measure, which are the SCO’s remit. Taoka further asserts that there may be a joint plan of action for “unexpected incidents” in North Korea and that these exercises verify that claim [7].

Indeed, the supposed terrorists that were targeted in the operation possessed combat aircrafts—a very uncommon asset for any terrorist force—and a major electro-magnetic operation took place, signaling a very intricate, large-scale, and even atypical counter-terrorist operation [8]. These large-scale conventional exercises involving combined arms operations against terrorists in an urban setting, while deploying missiles, air assaults, aerial bombings, air defense forces and ground attack all point to the fact that these operations could easily be duplicated to scenarios extending beyond Central Asia [9]. Not surprisingly, a number of commentators on international affairs have argued that the SCO either should or could take the lead in dealing with the North Korean issue [10]. Finally, at the latest SCO summit the six members agreed that Pyongyang’s threats were unacceptable [11]. Certainly venturing into the Korean issue would mark a major step forward for the SCO and by extension China and Russia in terms of their influence in Asia.

The Russo-Chinese interest in linking their relationship to developments in and around North Korea did not end here. The 2009 exercises had overt signs of attempts on both sides to connect those large-scale operations that both sides rehearsed to North Korean scenarios. In kicking off the exercises, Russian General Nikolai Makarov and Chinese General Chen Bigde, the two Chiefs of Staff of their respective armed forces, appeared together to address the press about the aim of the exercise. The Chinese were characteristically vague, but Makarov went further and said that “Russia and China should develop military cooperation in the wake of North Korean missile threats that prompted intensified military preparations in Japan and South Korea.” That cooperation was necessary in addition to the “complicated’ situations in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia as rationales for this cooperation [12]. Makarov went further and highlighted the need for interoperability in command and control of future common groups of Russian and Chinese troops. While Chen Bigde denied that these exercises are targeted at a third party, Colonel Li Jiang, Deputy Chief of the Foreign Affairs Office of China’s Ministry of Defense stated:

“The world order must be multipolar, which would rule out the possibility of any diktat of any country with regards to other members of the international community.” Consequently, it is not ruled out that, as was the case during the Mirnaya Missiya-2005 training exercises, a situation in which the armed forces of the two countries receive the order: “Not to allow the navies of third countries to have access to the place of conducting a peacekeeping operation” will be a scenario of the current peacekeeping exercises [13].

Since there are no navies or third party naval operations possible in Central Asia, the operation can only be applied to a Taiwan or Korea scenario. Further, since it is quite unlikely that Russia would send forces to a PLA operation in Taiwan—and it is currently inconceivable that a “peacekeeping” operation is needed in Taiwan—this most likely applies to Korea and fears of a succession contingency involving violence in North Korea, or a United States and allied operation against it. Since the United States has admitted that it has contingency plans for any crisis that may develop in the wake of a succession to Kim Jong Il (and presumably other threatening events), it is not surprising that both Moscow and Beijing have such plans of their own [14]. Yet, what is noteworthy is the fact that they have been rehearsing quite extensively what appears to be a plan for a joint operation there. In view of this growing body of evidence, U.S. policymakers need to rethink the potential contingencies and purposes to which a Sino-Russian military partnership may be applied. Furthermore, determine whose interests would most be served by a military intervention in Korea? Only after having answered that question could we then ask ourselves—given the answer to the first question—using Bismarck’s analogy of alliance, who then is the rider and who is the horse in this partnership, Russia or China?

Promising Future For Chinas Aerospace Industry

2009-08-16T22:06:00.000-07:00

Chinas plans to create a new civil aviation company in the first quarter of 2008 could signify much more than prospective competition in the regional jetliner class. The shift is emblematic of an evolving mindset in Chinas defense industry one with far-reaching consequences.

Huang Qiang, secretary-general of Chinas commission on science, technology and industry for national defense, confirmed rumors in January that the nation would create a new aviation company before March.

In 1999, five bulky state-owned administrative entities of the domestic defense industry were reorganized into 10 major military-industrial groups, two of which have since seen success as Aviation Industry of China (AVIC) I and AVIC II. Working together, the two groups are responsible for the design of the advanced regional jet of the 21st century (ARJ-21), Chinas first indigenously produced civilian jetliner.

With passenger, executive and freight versions, the ARJ-21 was designed from the ground up with the needs of the Chinese regional aviation market in mind. Despite its homegrown design, however, some 50 percent of its components are foreign made. While the ARJ-21 is probably not destined for major sales in the U.S. market, certification will be sought from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, a process that will provide Beijing with much insight into standards and procedures of the U.S. aviation industry.

Focusing on larger civilian aircraft, the new Chinese company to be named AVIC III will represent the next milestone in the shaping of Chinas aircraft manufacturing sector, even as it results in infighting for resources among the three groups. Ultimately, AVIC-produced civilian aircraft and military variants could well find a market among countries that cannot afford state-of-the-art Western technology.

Reform in Chinas aircraft manufacturing sector is part of a larger shift in mindset from Soviet defense industrial thinking to more Western models in which the crossover between military and civilian technological applications is recognized and exploited. In April 2005, testifying before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a senior fellow in trade and productivity at Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI Inc. said the Chinese defense industry went through a fundamental restructuring from 1997 to 1999 that shifted control of defense enterprises from the military to the civilian government.

The move integrated their operations with commercial advanced technology enterprises, including competitive bidding for defense contracts, said Ernest H. Preeg, who had been executive director of the Economic Policy Group at the White House before his MAPI fellowship. In effect, China shifted from the discredited Soviet model toward the U.S. model for weapons development and production.

The full course of this transition by no means a simple one remains to be seen. Nevertheless, recent developments with the ARJ-21 and AVIC III are starting to show the potential for more significant progress and the maturation of organizational changes begun in the late 1990s.

Production of the ARJ-21 regional jet and an agreement with Airbus to produce similarly sized A319/320 airframes in China are two ways Beijing is trying to address the massive expansion of domestic air travel and leverage that expansion for high-end domestic production. In line with that expansion, Chinas civilian radars and air-traffic-control systems will have to keep up.

The countrys airspace traditionally has been shaped by military demands, with civilian access and routes a secondary priority. Civil aviation currently has access to less than a third of all Chinese airspace. The Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) is reportedly the ultimate decision-maker regarding domestic air routes, an issue that still must play itself out.

But while the pace of Chinas domestic aviation expansion might make for a steep learning curve and some points of friction with the PLA, the management of heavier and heavier volumes of air traffic will also begin to inform and alter Chinas management of military air operations. Meanwhile, the Chinese radar industry is proceeding apace, and the avionics industry appears to have avoided some of the more counterproductive pitfalls of Soviet-style industry that have ensnared other sectors of Chinese industry.

The problem with the Soviet model was that military developments were closely guarded and, for the most part, segregated from civilian production, which was a secondary priority for the Soviet economy. Indeed, the entire economy was structured so that the Red Army was the primary privileged beneficiary. Efficiencies were not always encouraged, and the benefits of research and development, hindered by Stalinist classified systems, could not be applied to civilian projects.

Not only did the rollover ideas go unrecognized but they were rarely strong enough in the first place to overcome the Soviet culture of secrecy. The 1950s and 60s in the United States, on the other hand, were rife with the benefits of pooling civilian and military research and development in the aerospace sector. It was that very crossover that eventually made not only world-class airliners possible but also things like Iridium phones and satellite television.

Understanding how the lessons of one realm can be applicable to another offers Beijing a valuable avenue to further both civilian and military aerospace development. While managing crowded airspace over Beijing is certainly different from military command, communication and coordination in combat operations, such experience could be an important stepping stone for a China that is now talking extensively about informationalization (its word for network-centric warfare) in its national defense strategy documents.

The PLA has certainly studied the military developments of the last two decades. Seminal moments like the coordination of the U.S. air campaign during Desert Storm were wake-up calls for Beijing to modernize its military. At the same time, the increasingly global lines of communication that sustain the Chinese economy concurrently began to extend beyond the PLAs ability to project force. As China moved into the 21st century, its military was intent upon following and integrating the teachings of Western military powers.

From developing the FC-1/JF-17 fighter jet, which is equipped with a Russian engine, to bringing the new J-10 fighter on line, equipped with a domestic engine, China has already refined its domestic military aviation industry. Reduced engine noise levels and increased fuel efficiency are necessary to compete with Western airframes such as Bombardier, Boeing and Airbus. But these issues are not always among the top priorities in military designs. However, the ability to design and produce indigenously two fighter aircraft possibly equivalent to early F-16s is noteworthy.

The ARJ-21, a regional-scale stepping stone to larger aircraft, is not confined to the civilian sector. Both the regional jet and a potential wide-body airliner could one day offer great potential for the Peoples Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF). This will be the case for at least a decade, even though Boeing and Airbus have yet to acknowledge the trajectory of the Chinese aerospace industry and where it might be by 2020.

Most modern air forces are made up of big and slow transport aircraft, rather than sleek fighter planes. Should a wide-body design pan out in a decade, China could start replacing its old Soviet transports with modified civilian airframes optimized for everything from airborne command-and-control and early warning to aerial refueling and palletized cargo transport. It has already begun doing this with smaller prop-driven aircraft.

The development of new transports would allow the PLAAF to become less dependent on foreign suppliers, and would also speed up its modernization.

Combine these trends with the mass-production experience and capacity of China and it becomes clear that the country will be playing a prominent role in the world arms market with larger and more complex weapons systems. In this regard, China will likely follow South Korea, which is perhaps the next burgeoning military-industrial powerhouse. South Koreas combination of industrial capacity, research and development and technological innovation have already positioned Seoul to take a leading position in the worlds arms market over the next decade.

Chinese quality is unlikely to capture the top end of the market. An affordable Chinese airborne early warning platform might sell well in the mid-range markets that could not otherwise afford one. A low-cost Chinese tanker could make that capability accessible to militaries that cannot afford to buy from Boeing or Airbus.

Chinese anti-ship missiles have already found their way via Iran to Hezbollah. Play that trend through and the strategic and industrial implications of the PLAs continued modernization are certainly worthy of note. Indeed, the military utility and export potential of domestically produced regional and longer-range civilian jets are only the beginning. It remains to be seen whether China can adopt a more open and innovative approach to military research and development.

China's defense budget to grow 14.9% in 2009

2009-08-16T22:01:00.000-07:00

China's defense budget to grow 14.9% in 2009
China plans to increase its defense budget by 14.9 percent in 2009, a parliament spokesman said in Beijing on Wednesday.

The planned defense budget is 480.686 billion yuan ($70 billion), a rise of 62.482 billion yuan from last year, Li Zhaoxing, spokesman for the second session of the 11th National People's Congress (NPC), told a press conference.

Defense spending accounts for 6.3 percent of the country's total fiscal expenditure in 2009, slightly down from the level of previous years, Li said.

The budget rise follows a 17.6 percent increase in 2008 compared with the previous year.

Li said the increased spending is mainly for better treatment of servicemen, adding that more money would be used to adjust the subsidies and salaries to lift their living standards.
The increased budget will also be spent on the purchase of equipment and construction of facilities to enhance the ability of the military force to defend the country in the age of information, Li said.

The capacity of the armed forces for disaster relief and anti-terror operations shall also be enhanced. Spending on the reconstruction of military facilities damaged in the 8.0-magnitude earthquake that stroke southwest China's Sichuan province on May 12 last year was also listed in this year's defense budget, he said.

Li described the defense budget growth as "modest", saying that China's defense expenditure was fairly low compared with other countries, considering the size of China's population and territory.

"China's defense expenditure accounted for 1.4 percent of it's GDP in 2008. The ratio was 4 percent for the United States, and more than 2 percent for the United Kingdom, France and other countries.

"China's limited military force is mainly for safeguarding our sovereignty and territory and forms no threat to any other country," he said.

This year's draft national budget would be deliberated at the NPC annual session due to open in Beijing on Wednesday.

Li said the Chinese government began to submit an annual report on military expenditure to the United Nations from 2007.

"So the country has no so-called 'hidden military expenditure', " Li said.

In a white paper on China's national defense in 2008, issued in January this year, China said its defense expenditure had always been kept at a reasonable and appropriate level.

In the past three decades of reform and opening up, China has insisted that defense development should be both subordinated to and in the service of the country's overall economic development, according to the white paper.

"Although the share of China's defense expenditure in its GDP increased, that in the state financial expenditure continued to drop on the whole," says the paper.

In the past two years, the increased part of China's defense expenditure was primarily used to increase the salaries and benefits of servicemen, compensate for price rises and push forward the revolution in military affairs, according to the paper.

China casts a wary eye on India's nuclear sub

2009-07-30T01:12:00.000-07:00

China took wary note of India's launch of its first indigenously built nuclear-powered submarine, but with Chinese focus shifting to the upgraded, high-profile Sino-US strategic and economic dialogue in Washington, DC, the official media gave it only passing mention.

The official news agency Xinhua put out a factual report on the launch, without any commentary. Even the rather more stridently nationalist Global Times, which has in recent times kept up a barrage of articles criticising India's "unwise military moves", offered no immediate comment.

Xinhua, however, amplified a Pakistan Navy spokesman's comment that India's launch of a nuclear-powered submarine would "trigger a nuclear arms race" and "destabilise the region".

Shijie Junshie (Global Military) magazine executive editor Chen Hu, a military historian and specialist in strategic affairs, said the muted international response to India's announcement of its nuclear-powered submarine programme reflected the world's "duplicitous" efforts to focus attention away from the development.

"If, instead of India, it had been Iran or North Korea that had made this announcement, there would have been a more stirring response from the international community... There would have been economic, diplomatic, and military sanctions and intimidation -- and even the threat of war," he noted.

Global Times has been far more shrill in recent weeks, and one of its most recent articles on India's "unwise military moves" remains one of the 'most commented' articles on its website. That article bluntly said: "India sees China as both a potential threat and a competitor to surpass. But India cannot compete with China in a number of areas, like international influence, overall national power, and economic scale. India apparently has not realised this."

Indian politicians "seem to think their country would be doing China a huge favour simply by not joining the 'ring around China' established by the US and Japan," the article speculated. It further claimed that India believes China will respond with "fear and gratitude" and "defer" to India on territorial disputes. "But this is wishful thinking, as China won't make any compromises in its border disputes with India. And while China wishes to coexist peacefully, this desire isn't born out of fear."

Thirty Year Old SSG Refurbished

2009-07-27T22:16:00.000-07:00

China's lone Golf class ballistic missile sub has apparently been refurbished, rather than scrapped. These diesel electric boats (SSGs) were introduced by Russia in the late 1950s, and 23 were built by the early 1960s, when attention was turned to nuclear ballistic missile boats (SSBN).

Fourteen Golfs were modified in 1966-72 to carry larger R-21 (1600 kilometer range) missiles. These boats remained in commission until 1990. A few years later, ten were sold to North Korea for scrap. It's not certain that North Korea actually dismantled all these subs. The North Korean No-Dong missiles was based on the R-21.

China received two Golf boats, seven R-11F missiles (a 300 kilometer range SCUD) and the building plans, from Russia in the 1960s, and the Chinese built one in the 1970s, as the JL-2. This boat rarely put to sea. The R-11F was the basis of later Chinese ballistic missile design. The recent refurbishment of the Chinese Golf apparently included changes to the three missile silos so the boat could be used to test new submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBM).

The Golf was a 2,800 ton boat with a crew of 83 and three missile silos. There were also six torpedo tubes, and during the Cold War, these boats carried two torpedoes with nuclear warheads.

China unveils fleet of submarines in bid to build global trust

2009-07-26T21:54:00.000-07:00

china will unveil its nuclear submarines this week at an international fleet review marking the 60th anniversary of its navy, official media reported yesterday.

The first known public appearance of the craft, off the northern port of Qingdao, will underscore the growing might of the People's Liberation Army navy and its attempts to build goodwill by increasing transparency.

The Chinese navy has gained prominence lately thanks to participation in the fleet battling pirates off the coast of Somalia - the first active mission outside the Pacific - and a confrontation with the US in the South China Sea last month.

The Chinese navy's commander, Admiral Wu Shengli, said the celebrations, which would include 21 ships from 14 foreign countries, would show his country as a force for "peace, harmony and co-operation" at sea, the Liberation Army Daily reported.

Wu told foreign commanders yesterday that navies needed to work together to confront transnational security threats such as piracy and terrorism. "Suspicions about China being a 'threat' to world security are mostly because of misunderstandings and lack of understandings about China," Wu's deputy, Vice-Admiral Ding Yiping, told the state news agency Xinhua. "The suspicions would disappear if foreign counterparts could visit the Chinese navy and know about the true situation."

He added: "It is not a secret that China has nuclear submarines, which are key to safeguarding our country's national security." Chinese media have speculated that the government will also use the celebrations to announce more details of its plan to build an aircraft carrier, which is seen by many as emblematic of its ambitions.

The United States and governments in the region are concerned about China's growing naval power, sea boundary disputes and rivalry for resources.

Admiral Gary Roughead, chief of US naval operations and a guest at the fleet parade, told reporters in Beijing he would use the visit to try to improve military relations, Reuters said. "We can all look at the types of ships and the types of airplanes and the numbers of airplanes - that's interesting and worthy of note," he said. "But it is how countries elect to use those capabilities, and what the purposes are that they see, and how they will use them and how they will interact with other navies. That's important and that's why this dialogue is under way."

He said Beijing had yet to specify the role an aircraft carrier would play.

"The fleet review and Somalia are being used by China to try to show that even as it projects its power it is not a threat to anyone," said Christian Le Miere, senior analyst for Asia at defence publication Jane's Country Risk. He said the PLA had sought to portray itself as transparent and a responsible partner, rebuilding military-to-military links with the US.

But he added that the US and Japan would be watching warily.

"The incident in the South China Sea was a very clear indication of the fears of both sides ... China is increasingly concerned by US monitoring of its activities and the US is increasingly concerned that the Chinese are developing longer-range blue-water capabilities," he said.

Last month the US accused Chinese boats, including a naval vessel, of harassing the USNS Impeccable in international waters, while China said the surveillance ship should not have been operating in its "exclusive economic zone". The stand-off took place 75 miles south of a major naval base.

The PLA navy has more than 225,000 personnel and is thought to have as many as 70 submarines, 10 of them nuclear-powered. It also has about 72 combat ships. But it is continuing to invest heavily in expanding and upgrading its fleet, with much of the PLA's hefty budget increases in recent years going to the navy.

Le Miere said China had focused on improving naval capabilities since the early 1990s as it became more confident about its land borders because of improved relations with Russia and the US, and land and air capabilities superior to those of its neighbours.

"We have seen new nuclear submarines, amphibious landing ships, fast attack craft and major surface weapons, and under the somewhat opaque 'Project 48' we are likely to see an aircraft carrier as well," he added.

CNPIPC / CEIEC H-200 KS-1A / HQ-12 Phased Array / Triumphant Mountain

2009-07-06T22:02:00.001-07:00

CNPIPC / CEIEC H-200 KS-1A / HQ-12 Phased Array / Triumphant Mountain
H-200 engagement radar and KS-1A TEL. The H-200 is semi-mobile, but with further evolution could qualify as mobile.

In 2000 the KS-1A was promoted as a new air defence missile, supplanting the earlier SA-2 copy known as the KS-1 (Kaishan-1, refer SJ-202).

A ‘medium-to-high altitude, long-range SAM guidance station’ is how this radar is presented and it is believed to be a Chinese reverse engineered copy of the American AN/MPQ-53 Patriot radar. This being the case, the H-200 can be expected to function in G-bands, offering integrated electronic sector surveillance, target detection (TD), target tracking (TT), Identification Friend & Foe (IFF), and missile guidance (MG) functionality.

The antenna face comprises surveillance, IFF, target illumination and data transmission elements, and will offer phase steered target detection over an approximate 90º sector and tracking over a somewhat wider sector, but less than 160º. Reported capability is as follows:

Target detection & tracking ranges:
Max detection range: ≥120km @8km altitude ≥50km @ 0.1km alt
Max stable tracking: ≥90km @8km alt ≥45km @ 0.1km alt
Target characteristics: RCS: 2m2
Max target velocity: 750m/s (2.18 Mach)
Manoeuvre overload: 5.5g
Tracking capacity: Accurate tracking 3 targets; Monitoring 3 targets; Guidance 6 missiles; Guidance error: ≤50m

Set-up time ≤30 mins Tear-down time ≤20 mins qualifying the radar as semi-mobile.

Note 1: The KS-1 missile is usually associated with the SJ-202, whereas the KS-1A is being associated with the H-200 / KS-1A phased array.
Note 2: Antenna is very similar to that of BL904. A deployed example of a H-200 / KS-1A phased array radar can be seen at 43º 56’ 57.18” North, 87º 40’ 25.49” East, surrounded by six probable KS-1A missile launchers.

CASIC SJ-231 / KS-1A/HQ-12 Phased Array Radar

2009-07-06T21:59:00.000-07:00

CASIC SJ-231 / KS-1A/HQ-12 Phased Array Radar

The SJ-231 is an alternate radar for the KS-1A/HQ-12 SAM system, based on the HT-233 PESA antenna and cabin design. Cited performance is virtually identical to the H-200. Unlike the towed H-200, the SJ-231 is self propelled, but unlike the HT-233 it is split across a pair of 6 x 6 or 8 x 8 vehicles.

Specifications (CASIC):
Operating band: C (G/X) band
Radar cross section: 2m2
Maximum detection range: ≥120km
Minimum detection range: 3km
Operational performance: Altitude: 0.05~27km
Slant range: 5~70km (120 km)
Maximum operational airspace: Azimuth: 0~360º (mechanical rotation range)
-30º~+30º (electrical scanning range)
Elevation: -1º~+70º (electrical scanning range)

Target capability:
Guide 4~8 missiles to intercept 4 targets at the same time

"The SJ-231 guidance station is an important constituent part and the operational command and control center of the KS-1A weapon system. It is used to detect and track the aerial target and control and guide the missile. The SJ-231 guidance station is an advanced guidance radar system and is developed according to the modern war characteristics and the modern air-defense combat requirements. During the development of the guidance station, many advanced techniques in the radar technique development since 1990s are applied to improve the technical performance of the SJ-231 guidance station to a new level."

Engagement and Fire Control Radars of China

2009-07-06T21:54:00.000-07:00

CPMIEC HT-233 / HQ-9/10 Phased Array Radar
This is the Chinese derivative of the Russian 30N6E1 Tomb Stone used to detect and track targets, and control the launch of the S-300PMU1 / SA-20 Gargoyle air defence missile. In the Chinese case, however, the HT-233 is also associated with the HQ-10, HQ-15, HQ-9 / FD-2000 or HQ-9 / FT-2000 surface-to-air Anti Radiation Missile. The latter was a combined Israeli/Chinese missile designed to take out the stand-off jammers which threaten SAM target designation radars. The parameter set is likely to be similar to that of 30N6E1 which it emulates.

It is reported that the PLAAF air defence forces based in Fujian Province near the Taiwan Strait, are equipped with the FT-2000 and Russian-made S-300PMU1 SAMs acquired between 1991 and 1998.

An FT-2000 battalion can function alone where it would seek its targets with ESM systems, but more commonly it is anticipated to be part of an S-300 detachment.

Little is known about the radar other than it may function in G-band, probably between 5.2 and 5.9 GHz a sub-band for which production components are readily available. From recent descriptions, the antenna would most likely appear to be a passive phased array employing some 3,000 ferrite phase shifters (the 30N6 uses ~10,000 elements). It has mechanical scan in azimuth and electronic beam steering in azimuth/elevation, like the 30N6E1, up to 65° off aperture boresight, and can track up to 50 targets simultaneously.

It is possibly that a variant of this radar, referred to by NATO as TOMB STONE, is installed in Type 051C LANZHOU class destroyers. S-300PMU1 / SA-20 and FT-2000 systems are deployed around Beijing and at Longtian, near Fuzhou, facing Taiwan. They are also deployed near the coastal cities of Xiamen in Fujian Province and Shantou in Guangdong province.

The radar is deployed primarily on the WS-2400 series 8 x 8 chassis, based on the Russian MAZ-543 vehicle.

HQ-9

2009-06-29T22:01:00.000-07:00

HQ-9 Batterry-models

china

2009-06-29T22:00:00.000-07:00

2009-06-29T21:57:00.000-07:00

china signalint station

China’s Air Defence missile systems

2009-06-29T21:54:00.000-07:00

When the Soviet Union collapsed in
1991, China’s air defence capabilities
were of debatable effectiveness, built
around indigenous clones of the
Soviet S-75 Dvina / SA-2 Guideline
along with indigenous fighter aircraft
such as the Chengdu J-8 Finback
in addition to vast numbers of
1950s and 1960s technology J-6
Farmer and J-7 Fishbed fighters.
Radar capabilities centred on cloned
1950s Soviet equipment, some pre-
Tienamen Western imports, and a
stalled indigenous AEW&C program
centred on a turboprop engined Tu-4
Bull / B-29 Superfortress airframe.
Much has changed over the following
decade and a half. While the SA-
2 remains numerically significant,When the Soviet Union collapsed in
1991, China’s air defence capabilities
were of debatable effectiveness, built
around indigenous clones of the
Soviet S-75 Dvina / SA-2 Guideline
along with indigenous fighter aircraft
such as the Chengdu J-8 Finback
in addition to vast numbers of
1950s and 1960s technology J-6
Farmer and J-7 Fishbed fighters.
Radar capabilities centred on cloned
1950s Soviet equipment, some pre-
Tienamen Western imports, and a
stalled indigenous AEW&C program
centred on a turboprop engined Tu-4
Bull / B-29 Superfortress airframe.
Much has changed over the following
decade and a half. While the SA-
2 remains numerically significant,
it has been modernised.
Patriot
class S-300PMU / SA-10 / SA-20
Grumble / Gargoyle long range SAMs
have been acquired in strategically
significant numbers. The Tor M1 /
SA-15 has been reported and a range
of indigenous short range SAMs have
been developed. The KJ-200 / Y-8 and
KJ-2000 / A-50 AEW&C programs are
well into advanced development, and
strategically significant numbers of the Su-27SK /
J-11 and Su-30MK have been deployed, while the
indigenous ‘Sinocanard’ J-10 fighter has achieved
Initial Operational Capability.
The PLA’s air defence capabilities are transforming
from a legacy force with static and undeployable
systems to a state of the art force, which is
highly deployable in-country and demonstrably
expeditionary as it matures. This evolution in
capabilities has been sufficient to elicit alarm in
many US analysts, recognising that legacy fighters
such as the F-15C/E and F/A-18C-F have very poor
odds of surviving if they need to penetrate the
emerging PLA IADS.
China’s investment in top tier SAMs has not gone
unnoticed across the wider region. Indonesia has
for some time been coveting the S-300PMU SAM
system, and in a recent statement expressed an
interest yet again in acquiring the latest Russian
SAM technology. What the growth in China’s
capabilities is achieving more than anything else is
the stimulation of arms purchases, more than often
of like technology, in lesser regional nations.
The scale of growth in the PLA’s capabilities is
revealed in any survey of the full gamut of area
and point defence SAM systems deployed and
developed.
HQ-1/HQ-2/CSA-1 (S-75 / SA-2)
GUIDELINE
The Chinese-built derivatives of the Soviet SA-2
Guideline were until the arrival of the SA-10/20
the numerically most important SAM system in
PLA service. Current official US estimates put the
remaining inventory at more than 60 batteries, for
a total of about 400 single rail launchers.
When the PRC split with the Soviets during the
Krushchev era, early variants of the S-75 were
the only then modern weapons China possessed,
with a mere six batteries in service.
These comprised the standard static
road transportable semi-mobile rail
launchers, the S-band Fan Song
engagement radars, and the VHF
band P-12 Spoon Rest acquisition
radars. China’s 5th Research
Academy of the Ministry of Defence
subsequently reverse-engineered
this hardware and started the
manufacture of the HQ-1, a cloned
S-75 system. By 1966 an improved
HQ-1, the HQ-2, was introduced
with incremental upgrades to the
HQ-2A during the 1970s, and HQ-
2B during the 1980s.
The HQ-2B was a significant
advance on the Soviet original since
it introduced a high mobility tracked
TEL (Transporter Erector Launcher)
vehicle. Other improvements
included a better liquid rocket
motor, more G capability, better
warhead, digital command link for
guidance with crypto capability,
a monopulse engagement radar
capability for jam resistant angle
tracking, and electro-optical angle
tracking.
The stated long term intent is to replace the HQ-
2 with the indigenous HQ-12/KS-1A SAM, as a
second tier supplement to the Russian S-300PMU
series.
HQ-12 / KS-1A KAI SHAN 1
The indigenous HQ-12 is now being deployed with
PLA air defence units, and the US DoD puts the
number of fielded launchers at 60 units. Developed
to replace the HQ-2, the HQ-12 has been observed
in a number of variants, these including static rail
launchers clearly derived from the HQ-2 design,
a 6x6 road mobile TEL also derived from the
HQ-2 launcher, and a road mobile Patriot like box
launcher.
The single stage solid propellant KS-1A missile itself
compares best to the RIM-66 SM-1/2 in general
layout, but with a very short span delta wing design
more akin to the US Hawk. The rail launchers
are conceptually similar to the underslung SM-1
rail launcher. Missile performance is cited at a
maximum range of 27 nautical miles, maximum
altitude of 80 kft, and a maximum load factor of
20G with capability against 4-5 G targets. The
nearest equivalent US missile is the RIM-66 SM-1
and SM-2 series, the KS-1 falls between the SM-1
and SM-2 in performance, and it is about 20 per
cent larger and 40 per cent heavier at launch.
Chinese sources claim early KS-1 variants used
the HQ-2 radar package, but since then the H-
200 phased array engagement radar has been
disclosed as the primary radar component of
the KS-1A system. This phased array compares
closely in configuration to the US MPQ-53 Patriot
and Russian 30N6E series engagement radars,
and is available either as a static relocatable
installation, or a fully road mobile design on a 6x6
truck. Chinese sources claim a high resistance to
jamming, which is credible given the phased array
design technique used.
The HQ-12 is clearly a credible modern SAM
system, and like the J-10 fighter, illustrates China’s
technological capability to compete in the design of
modern weapons.
CADT HQ-9 / CPMIEC FT2000
The HQ-9 was developed to provide a long range
SAM capability, distinct from the medium range
capabilities of the HQ-12/KS-1 series. The FT-2000
is a derivative fitted with an anti-radiation seeker
and intended for engagements against AEW&C/
AWACS and stand-off jamming aircraft. The US
DoD puts current deployments at 64 launchers,
making for 8 to 16 batteries.
The PLA have not been overly generous in disclosing
details of this design. There is general agreement
in open sources that the HQ-9 uses Russian S-
300PMU technology extensively, including the cold
launch design for vertical ejection from launcher
tubes on TELs, 48N6 rocket motor technology,
and a range of other S-300PMU components,
including an 8x8 four tube TEL modelled on the
5P85DU series. Some sources claim the weapon
uses a two-stage arrangement akin to the S-300V
but in the absence of good imagery this is difficult
to validate. Slant range performance figures also
vary across sources, between 50 and 100 nautical
miles. What data is available suggests a missile
which is similar in capability to early variants of
the MIM-104 Patriot and SA-10B 48N6E, including
Track via Missile (TVM) guidance.
The HQ-9 is supported by the HT-233 phased array
engagement radar, like the H-200 modelled on the
MPQ-53 and 30N6E designs, carried on the Taian
TAS5380 8X8 high mobility vehicle, common to
the HQ-9 TEL and similar in design to the S-400’s
BAZ-6900 series vehicle. Chinese sources claim
C-band operation with 300 MHz receiver/antenna
bandwidth, detection range of 65 nautical miles,
and monopulse angle tracking to resist jamming.
According the US DoD, the FT2000 has yet to be
deployed, as is the case with the follow-on HQ-9
variants. Open sources describe the FT2000 as
an inertially guided SAM with an anti-radiation
terminal seeker, programmed before launch for the
characteristics of the intended target. Each battery
includes four ESM vehicles, used to generate
targeting data for the missile battery.
Given that the FT2000 is derived from the HQ-9,
any claims that this weapon has not been deployed
should be treated with caution since the missile
and its guidance support package could have been
integrated into the baseline HQ-9 system design,
and other than by covert intelligence gathering or
PLA disclosure, this cannot be easily determined
by simple observation. It is entirely conceivable
that a HQ-9 battery could be armed with a mix of
HQ-9 and FT2000 rounds, and this could only be
determined in combat once missiles are actually
launched and enter their terminal guidance phase.
ALMAZ S-300PMU / SA-10B/C
GRUMBLE
The S-300PMU was the first of the S-300 family
of missiles to be procured by the PLA, and the US
DoD puts current launcher numbers at 32, making
for 4 to 8 deployable missile batteries. This system
is the export configuration of the high mobility
Soviet S-300PS (P- PVO, S – Samochodnyy/Selfpropelled)
system, usually designated SA-10B
Grumble, successor to the Patriot-like semi-mobile
S-300PT. This subtype is either designated as an
SA-10B or SA-10C in the literature.
The S-300PMU best compares to earlier variants
of the US Patriot system, but with the important
difference that the S-300PMU is highly mobile, with
all key battery elements carried on MAZ-7900/543
variant 8x8 vehicles, common to the Scud TEL. The
S-300PS/PMU was the first true ‘shoot and scoot’
SAM system to be deployed, specifically built to
evade the F-4G Wild Weasel. When the export
variant was defined a towed semitrailer TEL was
introduced, the 5P85T with a KrAZ-260B tractor,
self-contained electrical power supply and masted
radio datalink for remote launch control of TELs.
Excluding mast mounted components, the battery
could deploy or stow itself in five minutes or less.
The search and acquisition radar package
comprised the high altitude oriented 36D6/ST-
68UM Tin Shield rated between 1.23 MegaWatts
and 350 kiloWatts, optionally on a semi-mobile
40V6, 40V6M and 40V6MD mast system, and
the low altitude FMCW (Frequency Modulated
Continuous Wave) 76N6 Clam Shell radar. The
latter, mounted on the 23.8 metre tall 40V6M or
37.8 metre tall 40V6MD, was specifically built
to hunt the US AGM-86 and BGM-109 cruise
missiles. The engagement radar is the 30N6E Flap
Lid, usually fully mobile on a MAZ-7900/543 but
also available semi-mobile on the 40V6M mast
for cruise missile defence. Technically, the 30N6E
compares best to the MPQ-53 Patriot radar.
The command link guided missiles in the S-300PT
were supplanted by TVM guided extended 50
nautical mile range 5V55KD and 5V55R rounds.
With all-altitude coverage the S-300PS/PMU was
a formidable system, capable of threatening the
full gamut of conventional combat aircraft, and
provided the impetus for the development of the
F-117A and B-2A stealth aircraft.
ALMAZ S-300PMU-1 / SA-20A
GARGOYLE A
Initially designated the SA-10D Grumble, and later
redesignated the SA-20A Gargoyle, the S-300PMU-
1 was a ‘deep modernisation’ of the S-300PS/PMU
system. The US DoD puts the current PLA inventory
at 64 launchers, for a total of 8 to 16 batteries.
While the S-300PMU-1 retained improved Flap
Lid, Clam Shell and 5P58TE/DE TELs, it introduced
two major new improvements intended to match
or outperform the Patriot PAC-1 and PAC-2
configurations. The first was a new missile design,
the 80 nautical mile range 48N6 with a seeker
capable of engaging 0.02 square metre targets.
The more important addition was the NIIIP 64N6E
Big Bird 3D search and acquisition radar carried on
a high mobility 8x8 MAZ-7910 series articulated
vehicle. This Janus-faced large phased array
was built to provide the S-300PMU-1 with long
range acquisition and tracking capabilities akin
to those in the SPY-1 Aegis naval radar – so
that the missile batteries could survive in heavily
jammed environments and engage supersonic
aircraft, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles. The
64N6E has no Western equivalent and provides
a significant capability to manage engagements
in a rapidly evolving high threat and high density
environment.
Until recently, the S-300PMU-1 was the most lethal
SAM system the PLA deployed but it has been now
supplemented with the S-300PMU-2.
ALMAZ S-300PMU-2 FAVORIT / SA-
20B GARGOYLE B
The last of the S-300P derivatives to carry the S-
300P designation, the S-300PMU-2 Favorit, adds
further capabilities. According to the US DoD, the
PLA has deployed 32 launchers for a total of 4 to
8 batteries.
The Favorit is an incrementally enhanced S-
300PMU-1 encompassing the 30N6E2 Flap Lid,
64N6E2 Big Bird, 54K6E2 command post. and
providing interfaces and software to control
legacy missile batteries, such as the S-200VE/
SA-5 Gammon. It is intended to compete directly
against the Antey S-300V Giant and Patriot PAC-
2/3 systems as an Anti-Ballistic Missile system.
The new LEMZ 96L6E search radar is available as
an option with the Favorit.
With the S-300PMU-1 and PMU-2, the PLA gains
enough range to be able to threaten aircraft over
Taiwan if the missile batteries are deployed along
the coastline. The systems have a robust capability
to engage reduced signature aircraft such as the F/
A-18E/F and Eurofighter Typhoon, and from some
aspects will threaten the Joint Strike Fighter. US Air
Force sees only the F-22A and B-2A as survivable
against these systems.
S-400 TRIUMF / SA-21A GROWLER A
There are no reports to date that the S-400 has
been procured by the PLA although there are
claims that China partly financed the development
of this S-300PMU-2 derivative.
The S-400 recently achieved IOC in Russia with
the first batteries deploying around Moscow last
year. The system extends the reach of the S-
300PMU-2 by adding the 200 nautical mile class
48N6DM missile, and the highly agile 9M96E/E2
interceptor missiles modelled on the PAC-3 ERINT
design. In an S-400 battery, 48N6 launch tubes
can be replaced by four-round tube clusters of the
9M96E/E2, providing a battery with considerably
more firepower.
9K331 TOR-M1 / SA-15 GAUNTLET
While most of the PLA’s investment in SAMs has
been focused on expanding and enhancing strategic
and long range area defence coverage, much effort
has also been put into the modernisation of point
defence SAM capabilities.
During the 1990s the PLA procured the Russian
9K331 Tor-M1 / SA-15 Gauntlet system, a highly
mobile rapid reaction SAM built to replace the Cold
War era SA-8 Gecko system. Like the SA-8 Gecko,
the Tor M1 TELAR is a fully self contained package,
with a search radar, a monopulse tracking and
engagement radar, and a magazine of Automatic
Command to Line Of Sight guided missiles. The
design aims of the Gauntlet were, however,
broader than those for the Gecko, and not only are
low flying aircraft and helicopters intended targets
but also cruise missiles, standoff missiles and
smart bombs during their terminal flight phase.
Russian thinking is that S-300PMU/S-400 battery
elements such as radars and command posts are
to be covered by Gauntlet point defence systems,
intended to engage and destroy guided munitions
targeting the S-300PMU/S-400 battery elements.
The Gauntlet is carried on a GM-355 tracked
chassis. The E/F-band folding surveillance radar is
carried on the top of the turret, and the G/H-band
engagement radar, claimed to be a phased array
design, is mounted on the front. Eight vertically
launched 9K331 SAM rounds are carried in sealed
magazines. These are vertically ejected before
ignition using the cold launch technique. Once
clear of the TELAR, the canard missiles use nose
rocket thrusters to pitch over in the direction of the
target and effect the engagement. Reaction time
to threats is credited in seconds between track
confirmation and launch.
While in conceptual terms the Gauntlet compares
well to the Franco-German Roland; the missile is
more advanced and the TELAR far more capable
than the Roland ever could be.
Chinese sources put the SA-15 inventory at around
25 systems deployed with the 31st and 38th Army
Groups. The Russians have exported this system to
Greece and Iran.
HQ-6 AND HQ-7/FM-80/FM-90 /
CSA-4 CROTALE
The US DoD credits the PLA with 30 ‘HQ-6’
launchers, most likely referring to the HQ-61
series point defence SAMs deployed during the
1980s. The missile round most closely resembles
the US RIM-7 Sparrow but is larger, heavier and
is equipped with a semi-active radar homing
seeker and midcourse command link guidance. A
6x6 YanAn SX2150 truck carries two rounds on a
slewable elevating launcher. Guidance is provided
by the Type 571 radar system. The HQ-61 series
has been largely superceded by the HQ-7.
The HQ-7 is a Chinese clone of the French Thales/
Thomson CSF Crotale SAM. During the 1970s the
French supplied samples of the Crotale, which
was promptly reverse engineered. The cloned
Crotale has been built in two configurations, a high
mobility variant for PLA Army units on a 4 x 4 scout
vehicle and a less mobile PLA-AF air field defence
system, using either a trailer or a truck platform. A
four-round elevating tube launcher turret is used,
mounting the X-band Automatic Command to Line
Of Sight monopulse radar dish antenna. Export
variants are the FM-80 and FM-90 with a FLIR
tracker and longer ranging missiles. HQ-7 batteries
are typically supported by an acquisition radar
system, usually on a 6x6 light armoured personnel
carrier. The HQ-7 has been widely deployed as a
naval point defence weapon on PLA-N warships.

China’s participation in Asian multilateralism: pragmatism prevails

2009-06-21T21:46:00.000-07:00

Introduction

China started to truly participate in various multilateral regimes after it was admitted into the United Nations (UN) and became a permanent member of the UN Security Council in the early 1970s. Its involvement in international economic institutions intensified as its reform and opening-up program was initiated in the early 1980s and deepened in the 1990s. China’s participation in Asian regional multilateralism, however, lagged behind its presence in regimes at the global level. It was really in the late 1990s that China started to take an active stance towards multilateralism in Asia, partly because of the belated development of multilateralism in the region. Beijing now regards multilateral diplomacy as an integral and important part of its foreign policy.

It now seems a cliché to say that China no longer shuns multilateralism in the Asian region. Not only is China a participant in almost all official and track-two institutions and forums, it has played a leading role in creating one of the most influential regional organisations: the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). China is now not only involved in all these processes, it actively makes proposals on all sorts of issues of regional concern. In recent years, Beijing has even shown some signs of confidence in participating in multilateral security activities—for example, joint military exercises. On the South China Sea issue, which is a highly contentious one in East Asia, China has changed its previous callous position of adhering to bilateral talks and now at least grudgingly agrees to multilateral discussions. In fact, in the past few years, China has conscientiously pushed for trilateral cooperation—with the Philippines and Vietnam—on resource exploration in the South China Sea.

Why has China become so active in multilateralism? What are the most notable Chinese concerns about regional multilateralism? This chapter, extensively utilising various Chinese sources and interviews, attempts to address these questions. I seek some answers by looking at the track record of China’s participation in regional multilateral processes and comparing the differences in China’s participation and role in the three subregions in Asia: South-East Asia, North-East Asia and Central Asia. I conclude that China has not yet developed a grand vision for regional multilateralism and integration. China’s behaviour in Asian multilateralism has been driven largely by pragmatism: the pursuit of short-term national interests in accordance with changes in regional political and economic circumstances. This pragmatism is revealed in China’s super-activism in economic multilateralism, enthusiasm for non-traditional security cooperation and differentiated approaches to conflict prevention in East and Central Asia.
China assesses the prospect of East Asian multilateralism

It goes without saying that China attaches great importance to its relations with countries in its neighbourhood. In fact, Chinese analysts propose that as part of its strategy to ensure its own rise, China should regard East Asia as its strategic hinterland and should actively participate in regional institution building as a fundamental policy (Angang and Honghua 2005). The Chinese Communist Party’s sixteenth congress report in 2002, for the first time, juxtaposed regional multilateral cooperation with bilateral relations—a clear indication that Beijing had begun to attach greater importance to multilateralism (Honghua 2008). Five years later, Chinese leaders reaffirmed this position at the Seventeenth Party Congress. In recent years, China has regarded good relations with its contiguous neighbours and multilateralism as two of its four basic foreign policy guidelines. [1]

This section describes China’s overall assessment of the ultimate prospect of various multilateral mechanisms in Asia. Even though China has willingly accepted multilateralism as an approach in its international relations in Asia, it is not clear what Beijing regards as the ultimate goal or what kind of regional community all these multilateral mechanisms should eventually lead to. In 1999, at the landmark third ‘10+3’ summit, leaders of the 13 countries agreed on the principles, direction and key areas for East Asian cooperation. Together with other members of the 10+3 framework, at the sixth 10+3 summit, China approved the report drafted by the East Asian Vision Group in 2002. The report proposed an East Asian free trade agreement (FTA) and an East Asian community. Despite clear support for an East Asian FTA, Beijing has offered no clear blueprint of its own version of an East Asian community.

In fact, there is profound scepticism among Chinese decision makers and analysts with regard to the prospect of East Asian regionalism. In the Chinese understanding, many challenges remain with regard to the further development of regionalism in East Asia. One of the challenges is the geographical expansion of regional cooperation and forums—for example, the East Asian Summit (10+6), which also includes India, Australia and New Zealand. Many Chinese analysts regard the East Asian Summit (EAS) as a setback or at least a new barrier to the growth of East Asian multilateralism. They believe such expansion has made forming a common geographical identity (related to cultural identity and common values)—an essential element in any regionalism—more difficult, if not impossible (Jianren 2008). Chinese analysts also take note of the fact that the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), currently the driver of East Asian regionalism, has no consensus on the geographical boundary of regional multilateral processes. For instance, two of the three conditions required by ASEAN for other states to become EAS–ASEAN dialogue partners—signing ASEAN’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC) and substantive interactions with ASEAN—have no specific geographic limitation. According to Chinese analysts, this vision of a borderless regional community would only compound the growth of multilateralism in the region given the fact that even within the 10+3 framework, differences in cultural identities and values are already a huge challenge.

Related to this concern, and perhaps a much more important factor in China’s assessment of Asian multilateralism, is the role of the United States. Many analysts in China simply do not believe that the United States will play a constructive role in promoting East Asian integration. Many believe that US supremacy in East Asia is not good for regional integration. They argue that since many East Asian countries still depend on the United States for political, economic and security interests, they have little incentive to further enhance multilateral cooperation within the region. Regional states still have to pay respect to US preferences when it comes to regional multilateralism. For instance, during the East Asian financial crisis, Japan proposed setting up an Asian monetary fund to cope with future financial problems in the region. Japan had to drop the idea, however, when the United States strongly opposed it (Hongsong 2006).

Beijing also believes that the traditional US ‘hub and spokes’ security arrangements are not conducive to the growth of new security modes in East Asia—for example, cooperative security. The popular expectation among regional states of US security protection does not provide any incentive to push for new security arrangements. Given the fact that US predominance and its bilateral security ties with various regional states are perceived as effective in maintaining regional security, cooperative security in East Asia is not likely to take shape in the foreseeable future (Fan 2005).

In the Chinese understanding, the United States can live with an East Asian regionalism that is open, inclusive and capable of solving all problems, including security issues, but Washington is opposed to a stronger Chinese role in any regional grouping. Washington once favoured Japan as the leader in spearheading East Asian multilateralism, but in recent years it has realised that there are many restraining factors for Japan: its relations with neighbouring countries and its declining economic importance as China’s economy continues to grow. The United States is, however, not ready to accept any Chinese leadership role in pushing for East Asian regionalism, fearing that the rise of Chinese influence might diminish American clout in the region. By default, Washington continues to support ASEAN remaining in the driver’s seat. The United States is also concerned about the function of a future East Asian community, fearing that it might marginalise the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) group and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), two institutions that Washington has a lot of complaints about yet still regards as useful tools to advance its interests in East Asia (Xinbo 2007).

In addition to these factors, Beijing takes note of conflicting policy pronouncements from Washington and believes that American policy on East Asian multilateralism is uncertain. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell (2004) commented that the United States regarded an East Asian community as unnecessary and warned that any effort towards such a community should not be carried out at the expense of Washington’s good and stable relations with its Asian friends. In early 2006, US APEC senior official Michael Michalak (2006) commented on East Asian regional processes by saying that the United States did not think the ASEAN+3 or EAS would harm American interests but, at the same time, he unequivocally reiterated the importance of cross-Pacific institutions and organisations. In May 2006, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill (2006) said that America understood Asian countries’ consideration for regional architecture, which was largely a reflection of the economic and financial integration among these nations. The United States welcomed that effort.

Some Chinese scholars believe that the uncertainty in American policy is reflected in its conditional support for and selective participation in East Asian multilateralism. They argue that the United States should further adjust its policy to become a constructive force in East Asian integration (Rongsheng 2007). On the part of China, despite profound suspicion of US intentions, there has been growing awareness that Beijing will ultimately have to recognise US preponderance in the region even in the long run and accommodate US interests in any future East Asian multilateral mechanisms. Lin Limin, a strategic analyst at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR) argues that the United States is a ‘special’ external power to East Asia due to all the political, economic, historical and emotional ties it has with many countries in the region. He argues that US policy towards East Asian regionalism is at a crossroads. The United States should support and participate in the process of East Asian integration and be a responsible member of the grouping. East Asia, in return, should adopt a ‘grand’ scheme of integration to incorporate the United States (Limin 2007).

In the Chinese perception, Japan’s policy on regional multilateralism has also been inconsistent. This is largely a result of Japan’s uncertain orientation—whether it should identify itself as one of the Western powers or root itself in East Asia. Chinese analysts detect some sort of oscillation in Japanese strategy in regional multilateralism between strengthening its alliance with the United States as its key international strategy and pushing for a leadership role in regional integration. They believe that currently Japan does not have a coherent regional integration plan, which does not bode well for a Japanese leadership role in furthering regional multilateralism (Shichun 2007).

Many Chinese analysts believe that Japan, nevertheless, intends to strive for a leadership role and restrain China and forestall China’s dominance in East Asia, which is likely to work against a smooth development of multilateral cooperation in the region (Hongling 2006). They point to many instances in Japan’s policy moves in South-East Asia to demonstrate Japan’s intention of trying to outrun China. For instance, in 2002, when former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi proposed the idea of an ‘expanded East Asian community’, he had in mind a leading role for Japan, with support from ASEAN, to include extra-regional states such as Australia. China believed Koizumi’s plan was an obvious initiative to check growing Chinese influence in East Asia (Honghua 2008). Another example frequently mentioned in China is Japanese reaction to China’s signing of the TAC. Two months after China acceded to the ASEAN TAC, Japan decided to sign the treaty as well—a clear indication of a Japanese response to China’s proactive engagement in South-East Asia. Beijing maintains that Japan’s insistence on incorporating India, Australia and New Zealand in the East Asian Summit is simply another major Japanese step to restrain Chinese influence in East Asia (Zhilai 2006).

More recently, in 2006, Japan proposed an East Asian Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), envisioning concluding an economic partnership agreement among ASEAN countries: Japan, China, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand (Junhong 2006). This EPA proposal would far surpass a regional FTA to include arrangements for investment, services and human flows. Chinese reports claimed that the Japanese proposal was intended to put Japan in a leadership position in East Asian regionalism and to restrain the rise of China (‘Japan intends to promote “East Asia economic partnership agreement” to check China’s rise’, China News Service, viewed 7 August 2008, ). Since the second half of 2006, China and Japan have made many efforts to improve their strategic trust, but Japan’s intention to constrain China on political and security issues in the region has not dwindled (Honghua 2008). The Sino–Japanese competition for leadership in East Asian multilateralism, in particular the Chinese perception of an assertive Japan, is another factor that has contributed to China’s lack of confidence in a bright future of regional multilateralism.

China is also not sure how ASEAN is going to readjust its policy on East Asian multilateralism. China takes note of ASEAN’s volatile positions on the geographic boundary of regional integration. The chairman’s statement of the twelfth ASEAN Summit in January 2007 insisted that 10+3 should be the main approach to an East Asian community, but in the chairman’s statement from the thirteenth ASEAN summit, there was no mention of using 10+3 as the main channel; it instead emphasised the complementarities of 10+3 and EAS. At the third EAS, ASEAN Secretary-General, Ong Keng Yong, noted that ‘ASEAN has reached a consensus regarding Japan’s proposal of including Australia, New Zealand, and India into [an] East Asian community’ (‘East Asia community to accept New Zealand, Australia, and India’, Central News Agency, 20 November 2007). Beijing closely watches these subtle changes in ASEAN’s position and is likely to regard ASEAN’s vacillation as further evidence that continuing substantive growth of multilateralism in Asia is still inopportune. In the long run, China might not have confidence in ASEAN’s ability to lead multilateralism in East Asia. According to one Chinese observer (Xiaosong 2008), if multilateralism in this region is going to lead to further regional integration, the leadership role will have to be exercised by a three-power consortium: China, the United States and Japan. Given the above evidence of the relations among these three powers, however, such a consortium might not be feasible in the foreseeable future.

In response to all these challenges, China steadfastly insists on relying on the 10+3 as the main framework for regional economic cooperation, it supports ASEAN’s role in the driver’s seat and maintains a gradualist approach to East Asian regional multilateralism. China believes that the 10+6 should not replace the 10+3 and that conditions for an FTA among the 10+6 countries are not yet mature (Jianren 2008). In order not to appear obstructionist, China has tried to downplay the importance of the EAS instead of refusing to be part of it, arguing that the EAS should more properly serve as a strategic platform for the exchange of ideas and facilitation of cooperation (‘Premier Wen Jiabao’s speech at the second EAS’, Xinhua News Agency, 15 January 2007). In practice, Beijing still values 10+3 and 10+1 mechanisms for substantive cooperation.

In sum, in spite of active participation in all regional institutions and emphasis on 10+3 and 10+1, China believes that the prospect that various regional multilateral processes will lead to a discernable East Asian community is not good in the near future. Many factors are restraining the growth of such a community, including regional states’ reluctance to relinquish their sovereignty, cultural differences, historical problems and the still-dominant position of the United States (Hongsong 2006). Because of the United States’ hegemonic presence and the rivalry between China and Japan in East Asia, East Asia can develop only limited regionalism, an incomplete regional security architecture and security community (Zhongqi 2006). Due to these factors, China has not clearly defined its role and position in the East Asian community (Xintian 2008). In the meantime, China seems unconcerned by the pessimistic estimation of the prospect of East Asian multilateralism. What it intends to focus on now is pragmatic cooperation in areas of Chinese concern. Former Deputy Foreign Minister Wang Yi (2004) once noted that China pursued an open regionalism to carry out practical cooperation with regional states and at the same time did not exclude the United States and other external powers.
China’s super-activism in economic multilateralism

Despite the fact that China is not exceptionally sanguine about the prospect of East Asian integration, it has taken a proactive stance on bilateral and multilateral economic cooperation. China has worked hard to push for bilateral FTAs with various East Asian states—for example, South Korea and Japan—but at the same time has strenuously pushed for economic collaboration at the multilateral level. Some Chinese analysts believe that bilateral FTAs could be beneficial to parties in the bilateral frameworks, but bilateral agreements that work parallel to each other could bring about various costs—for instance, policymaking and administrative expenditure, industrial readjustment costs and increased trade transfers that could offset the benefits of comparative advantage (Ronglin 2005). Thus, Beijing favours liberal multilateral economic cooperation.

China’s early interest in economic multilateralism had its origin in political considerations. When the former Malaysian leader Mahathir bin Mohamad made the proposal to set up an East Asian economic group in December 1990 during a visit to Beijing, then Chinese Premier Li Peng immediately responded positively, indicating that China’s consent was largely a political decision instead of one made after careful deliberation of economic costs and benefits. Former Chinese Presidents Yang Shangkun and Jiang Zemin on different occasions between 1992 and 1994 expressed China’s support for such an idea, showing China’s enthusiasm for such a regional economic grouping (Jianren 2008). China’s early interest in economic multilateralism was related partly to its desire to end its diplomatic isolation in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square episode.

Over the years, China’s growing interest in multilateral economic regimes has been a reflection of a mixture of economic and political interests. In 2001, Beijing proposed the FTA with ASEAN together with some flexible measures such as the early harvest scheme. This move was seen widely as being driven partially by China’s political goal of reassuring ASEAN countries of its benevolence and further defusing the ‘China threat’ in the region. There are, of course, other multilateral projects in South-East Asia in which China plays an active role—for instance, the Greater Mekong River Basin project and the emerging pan-Tonkin Gulf regional economic zone. The Kunming Initiative, although supported by China, has, for various reasons, not made much progress.

In North-East Asia, China is also engaged in a number of multilateral economic projects, the largest of which is the Tumen River regional development, initiated by the UN Development Program (UNDP) in 1991. This project covers a wide range of areas, including investment, trade, transportation, environmental protection, tourism, human resources, communications and energy. Japan, however, has not participated fully, but has instead joined as an observer only (Guoping 2007). Chinese scholars have also been advocating the Bohai economic circle in order to further develop the economy in northern China and to revitalise the industrial base in north-eastern China. This subregional economic zone would require the participation of South Korea and Japan (Ziheng 2004).

China is also enthusiastic about a trilateral FTA between China, South Korea and Japan. In 2002, China made an informal proposal for such an FTA. A joint research group completed a feasibility study in 2003, concluding that a trilateral FTA would be very beneficial to the three economies. The group also conducted a feasibility study on possible modes of trilateral investment arrangements and concluded that such arrangements would contribute to economic growth in the three countries. At the informal meeting in Bali, Indonesia, in 2003, leaders of the three countries signed a joint statement on the promotion of trilateral cooperation on trade and investment facilitation. Since then, the three parties have made some progress in adopting facilitation measures in customs, networking of ports, communications and environmental protection.

In official Chinese planning, an FTA among the 10+3 countries should ultimately take shape. A Chinese study concluded that a 10+3 FTA would contribute economic growth of 1.96 per cent and 0.34 per cent to China and Japan respectively (Lijun 2007). At the 2004 ASEAN–China summit, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao called for an FTA in East Asia and an East Asian community based on such an FTA. This clearly shows China’s strong desire to push for broader economic multilateralism in East Asia. The incentive for such preference is derived increasingly from the inherent need of China’s domestic economic growth. China is increasingly becoming the trading and production centre of East Asia. According to some estimates, the volume of China’s foreign trade is likely to overtake that of Japan and be close to that of the United States by 2020. By then, more than half of China’s imports will come from other East Asian countries. In the coming 20 years, China is likely to maintain notable surpluses in its trade with the United States and Europe and large-scale deficits with East Asian countries. On the basis of the expected economic interdependence, Chinese analysts recommend that a future East Asian FTA could be formed on the basis of China–ASEAN, South Korea–ASEAN and Japan–ASEAN FTAs (Yunling 2006). Likewise, in Central Asia, China has exhibited much interest in multilateral economic cooperation. At the 2003 SCO summit, Premier Wen proposed setting up a free-trade area among member states of the organisation. China’s active involvement in Central Asia has stemmed largely from its need for secure and diversified energy supplies to safeguard its rapidly developing economy.
China’s enthusiasm for NTS multilateralism

In the past decade or so, China has demonstrated enthusiasm towards non-traditional security (NTS) cooperation in Asia. Chinese analysts believe that cooperation on NTS helps enhance mutual understanding and trust among regional states, cultivates the growth of regional identity and deepens and broadens regional cooperation mechanisms. All these are helpful for gradual integration in the region (Shengrong 2008). In recent years, many Chinese analysts have been proposing a larger role for the military in multilateral cooperation on NTS issues in East Asia. [2]

China has cooperated extensively on NTS issues with other countries in Asia. In 2000, bilaterally with ASEAN, China signed an action plan on countering drug trafficking. In the same year, China participated in the Chiang Mai initiative for East Asian cooperation on financial security. In 2001, China, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand held a ministerial-level meeting on fighting drug trafficking and published the ‘Beijing Declaration’. In 2002, China and ASEAN signed a joint declaration that specified issues of cooperation between the two sides in the NTS area: drug and human trafficking, piracy, terrorism, arms trafficking, money laundering, other international economic crimes and Internet crime. China pledged to cooperate with various parties concerned on marine environmental protection, search and rescue and anti-piracy. In 2003, China and ASEAN held a special summit meeting to tackle severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and initiated a cooperation mechanism on public health. In 2004, China signed a memorandum of understanding with ASEAN on NTS cooperation, which further emphasised the need for Sino–ASEAN cooperation on NTS matters.

In North-East Asia, China, South Korea and Japan have also taken some steps to strengthen their cooperation on NTS issues. These measures include environmental protection, earthquake relief and tackling transnational crime. Starting from 1999, the three countries launched a ministerial-level meeting on the environment and various concrete proposals on sandstorms and marine environmental protection were carried out. In 2004, the authorities monitoring earthquakes in the three countries agreed to share seismic information and technology. The immigration authorities of the three countries have also held workshops on countering terrorism, drug trafficking and human trafficking in North-East Asia.

In the larger context of East Asia, China’s posture towards NTS has also been quite positive. In 2004, ASEAN+3 held its first ministerial-level meeting on fighting transnational crime. In 2005, ASEAN+3 signed an agreement on cooperation among their capital police agencies to jointly fight various NTS challenges. China also has no problem working on NTS issues within the ARF. China did not lodge any opposition to the 2002 ARF joint statement that called for enhanced cooperation on fighting drug trafficking, illegal immigration, money laundering and piracy at sea. The 2005 ARF joint declaration stressed regional coordination and cooperation on disaster relief and other measures for emergencies.

In APEC, in which China has quite vehemently opposed any inclusion of discussions of security matters, Beijing has not blocked multilateral efforts on fighting NTS issues. The APEC summits in 2001 and 2002 published two statements on counter-terrorism. The 2003 and 2004 declarations further emphasised multilateral cooperation to fight terrorism and other transnational crimes. China also agreed to the APEC initiative to deal jointly with various transnational health epidemics, such as HIV/AIDS, SARS and avian influenza.

In Central Asia, China has an impressive record of working with other SCO members to meet various NTS challenges—primarily the so-called ‘three evil forces’: separatism, religious extremism and terrorism. The SCO has set up various institutions and signed many legal documents on all sorts of NTS threats.
China’s different approaches to preventive measures on security

China’s policy stance on traditional security issues is in sharp contrast with its attitude towards economic and NTS cooperation. Overall, China is still reluctant to work multilaterally on sources of potential interstate military conflicts. In particular, China has been opposing quite strongly any preventive measure that would impinge on domestic issues. There are, however, some notable differences in China’s stance across various regions. In South-East Asia, China has been quite adamant in opposing the further institutionalisation of preventive measures on traditional security issues. In North-East Asia, China has taken an active role in helping solve the North Korean nuclear crisis. China is also open to the discussion of a security framework in North-East Asia. [3] In Central Asia, China has been more willing to engage member states of the SCO on preventive measures to deal with traditional and non-traditional security issues.

Overall, China’s reluctance to agree to more substantive multilateral preventive measures is a reflection of its concerns about US predominance and what it perceives as the United States’ hostile security policy towards China in East Asia. The most alarming assessment of American intention in East Asia is that Washington plans to establish and consolidate a strategic encirclement of China from East Asia, South-East Asia, South Asia and extending to Central Asia. China believes that various military exercises that the United States conducts with China’s neighbouring states are intended to put pressure on China and provide more leverage to states in China’s neighbourhood (Deqi 2006). For many years, China did not participate in the Shangri-la security dialogue, the primary reason being its belief that the dialogue was influenced too excessively by Washington from behind the scenes. The forum was perceived as a mechanism to constrain China strategically. [4]

In the first years of China’s participation in the ARF, China was afraid that the United States and its allies would use the forum as a tool to harm China’s security interests. Beijing understood that one of the original goals of setting up the ARF was to restrain and socialise China. In 1995, at the second ARF meeting, China expressed its reservations with regard to the norms and principles on regional security proposed by other participating countries. At the 1996 ARF meeting, former Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen elaborated China’s ‘new security concept’, urging states to solve security problems through dialogue and consultation. China hoped to expand confidence among major powers in the Asia-Pacific, strengthen ASEAN’s understanding of China and thus reduce the influence of the perception of the ‘China threat’. China also found out that the ARF could be a good forum in which to fight the Cold War mentality of some external powers (Yanbing 2000). All these demonstrate China’s pragmatism in security cooperation.

For China, participation in the ARF has been both an opportunity and a challenge. China can utilise the forum to explain its policies and stances so as to reduce misunderstanding and influence the perceptions of other states towards it. Participation also means, however, that China will have to face up to the collective pressures of ASEAN and other countries. Chinese analysts list China’s concessions on the South China Sea issue as examples of the negative consequences of China’s participation. Some of the major concessions include agreeing to multilateralism as a means to deal with the dispute instead of the previous bilateral approach, China’s agreement to use international law as a basis for a solution to the problem and the signing of the declaration of cooperation (Changsen 2000).

In 1997, China sent a delegation to various Asian countries to lobby for the abrogation of bilateral and multilateral security alliances. The focus was of course on persuading various countries in East Asia to forgo their bilateral security ties with the United States. That effort was not successful. ASEAN countries indicated their disapproval of the Chinese suggestion. China, in return, understood better the concerns of ASEAN countries and has not since openly pursued this issue. It was a turning point for China to accept at least implicitly US military presence as a balancing force in East Asia (Xiaopeng 2006).

Still, the biggest challenge for China is how to cope with the security environment in East Asia. On one hand, there is the reality of the US-centred bilateral security arrangements that still serve as the backbone for security in the region. On the other hand, the bilateral arrangements seem to be expanding at the expense of Chinese security interests. For instance, in the past few years, there has been growing interest among the neo-conservative thinkers in Washington in constructing an Asian version of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). In March 2007, Japan and Australia signed a joint declaration on security cooperation in which the two countries pledged to enhance cooperation and consultation on issues of common strategic interest including regularly holding the ‘2+2’ defence and foreign ministers’ talks. In the past few years, efforts have also been made to bring India in to form some sort of quadrilateral security mechanism in East Asia. Although leadership changes in Japan and Australia made the possibility of forming a quadrilateral security mechanism less likely, to Chinese decision makers, all these efforts reinforced their perception that other regional powers had the intention, no matter how volatile, to gang up on China.

These perceptions and beliefs explain why, in the ARF, China, together with ASEAN countries, belongs to the group of ‘reluctant’ countries that has not been enthusiastic about preventive diplomacy. China’s unwillingness to move towards preventive diplomacy in the ARF is a reflection of its concern that any problem in the South China Sea or the Taiwan Strait would allow international interference (Yuzawa 2006). Beijing maintains that there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to enhance confidence-building measures in the region, which are at their most primitive stage in East Asia. Pushing to enter a stage of preventive diplomacy would not be good for the development of the ARF (Kuisong 1998).

China realises that Asia-Pacific is an area in which major powers have significant interests. The primary goal for China’s security strategy in the region is to maintain at least normal and functioning relations with all other major powers so that China is not isolated by other powers. China’s second goal is to try its best to maintain friendly relations with other regional states to forestall the possibility of any containment alliance supported by other major powers. China increasingly realises that economic interdependence creates common interests and is conducive to the prevention of conflicts. Beijing believes that the best strategy is to become the provider of markets, investment and technology for regional states to transform China into the engine of regional economic growth (Shiping and Yunling 2004).

One area in which China has been trying to play a role is its proposal of a ‘new security concept’. Official rhetoric in Beijing constantly emphasises ‘mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality and coordination’ as the principles of practising a new security mode. According to the Chinese interpretation, the gist of a new security concept is to pursue cooperative security. China’s preference for cooperative security is perhaps one of necessity. In today’s East Asia, there are three primary modes of security arrangements: US hegemony, the traditional balance of power and various loose multilateral security forums. China pushes strongly for cooperative security simply because the first two security modes work against its security interests. Advocating cooperative security serves many Chinese security goals. First, it helps alleviate the China threat. Second, it conforms to China’s interest in maintaining a stable regional environment. Third, it serves as a check to the first two security modes, thus improving China’s strategic security position in East Asia. The challenge for the future is for China to come up with concrete proposals to make cooperative security really work in East Asia.

China’s security policy and practice in Central Asia are notably different from those in East Asia. China demonstrates much more confidence in dealing with security issues in Central Asia, as shown in the high level of institutionalisation of the SCO and its willingness to embrace preventive measures.

According to Chinese analysts, China’s security policy in the SCO is intended as a contrast to US security policy in East Asia, which is underpinned by bilateral alliances and ‘forward deployment’. Chinese analysts argue that in the SCO, China and Russia have been working on cooperation and dialogue as the main means for security building and reducing the military presence in border areas (Kuisong 1998). Confidence-building measures have been and appear to continue to be a key area for the SCO, as evidenced in the two treaties regarding border security signed in 1996 and 1997, and the recently signed treaty among SCO member states on good neighbourly relations, friendship and cooperation.

The SCO has, however, gradually taken on the concept of preventive diplomacy. Currently, preventive diplomacy in the SCO is essentially carried out in areas of NTS by a wide range of agencies, including the military. There are, however, signs that the SCO is increasingly moving towards a more substantive practice of preventive diplomacy. The SCO is likely to meaningfully discuss preventive diplomacy in tackling traditional security issues, including dealing with domestic crises. A few recent SCO official documents clearly refer to this possible development.

The ‘Declaration on the Fifth Anniversary of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’ mentions that the SCO has the potential to play an independent role in safeguarding stability and security in this region. The document points out that in case of emergencies that threaten regional peace, stability and security, SCO member states will have immediate consultation on responding effectively to fully protect the interests of the SCO and its member states. The paper calls for member states to study the possibility of establishing a regional conflict-prevention mechanism within the SCO framework. The 2007 Joint Communiqué of the Meeting of the Council of Heads of SCO Member States proclaims that it is vital to implement preventive measures against the processes and phenomena causing instability in SCO territory. The document calls for the process of creating a mechanism of joint responses to situations threatening peace, stability and security in the region to be expedited. In the recently concluded SCO summit in Dushanbe, the member states once again proclaimed that the SCO would conduct preventive diplomacy to safeguard peace and security in the region. [5]

A few scholars at various Chinese government-sponsored institutions have conducted studies on the need for and feasibility of some formal preventive diplomacy measures in the SCO. They justify the establishment of such formal mechanisms on the grounds that the SCO will not be able to grow further without preventive diplomacy given the fact that the Euro-Asian region is so complicated in cultural, ethnic and geo-strategic contentions, and because of potential conflicts among those Central Asian states in terms of territorial borders, water and other resources and internal socio-political instability in the smaller members of the SCO. They conclude that all these contentions and internal instability have the potential to not only hamper the further progress of the SCO but to derail the SCO process.
Conclusion

China’s policy towards Asian multilateralism pretty much reflects the overall ‘low-profile’ foreign policy line that was set by the late leader Deng Xiaoping. Deng, back in the early 1990s, advised that China should not act aggressively as a leader in international politics to avoid too much international attention while it was rising. At the same time, he admonished other leaders that China had to play a role (‘you suo zuo wei’). Playing a role is particularly important in issues of concern to China and relevant to Chinese interests. Deng’s foreign policy line was deeply rooted in pragmatism. Chinese policy on various multilateral processes reflects that pragmatic consideration.

In addition to the perceived attitudes of other major players, part of the reason why China lacks a grand vision of regional multilateralism has to do with the fear that any Chinese effort to lay out a blueprint for regional integration will only invite suspicion on the part of other major powers, further complicating China’s strategic position in East Asia and the world. China has not openly or strongly opposed matters that it does not favour. Instead, Beijing has made its reservations known and has worked subtly to reduce the negative impact on its interests. This is clearly the case with regard to the EAS. Chinese officials now recognise that it is unwise for China to openly obstruct the EAS. Instead, they maintain that China could go along with any policy proposal that works to the benefit of all participants. [6]

Emphasising multilateral cooperation on economic and NTS issues is also a clear demonstration of Chinese pragmatism in practice. It helps build a better image of China in the region—a more benign and cooperative China. It helps create a friendlier environment for China’s rise in the long run. Economic multilateralism is also necessary for the sustained growth of the Chinese economy. Cooperating on NTS issues is highly desirable simply because all these non-traditional challenges have transnational roots and impacts. China stands to benefit from all these multilateral mechanisms in dealing with NTS threats.

Beijing’s different positions on preventive measures in East and Central Asia also have to do with its pragmatic response to the different regional political and strategic contexts. In East Asia, the strategic rivalry is much higher than other areas; China’s position has to be largely defensive. In Central Asia, however, China enjoys much stronger political power and less strategic competition. As long as China can accommodate Russia’s core interests, Beijing will find much room to be flexible in embracing preventive measures.