China’s Military Power: Assessing Current and Future Capabilities, by Roger Cliff. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. xvi+362 pp. US$99.99 (cloth), US$32.99 (paper), US26.00 (eBook).
Former RAND political scientist Roger Cliff performs yeoman’s service in China’s Military Power: Assessing Current and Future Capabilities. Cliff compares the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the US military according to their doctrines, organizational structures, weaponry, personnel, training, logistics, and organizational culture in the years 2000 and 2010 and extrapolates forward up to the year 2020. He follows with analyses of two worst-case war-fighting scenarios in which the United States and China square off over an invasion of Taiwan and a major war in the South China Sea.
Cliff concludes that “the Chinese military has made progress in all seven dimensions” (244), but advances have been significantly greater in some elements than others. Accordingly, “China will not be the dominant military power in East Asia by 2020 or anytime shortly thereafter”; but US military dominance in the region will no longer be unquestioned, which likely will “usher in an era of tensions and uncertainty.” Moreover, as China’s military power grows, “Beijing might begin to challenge” (245) regional norms, including those directly involving the United States. He sees the 2020s as “a time of power transition in East Asia” in which China, at a minimum, has the capability to “contest control of the seas and airspace” (246), and any opposition to Chinese use of force will be dangerous and costly for any country. These conclusions already are evident.
One of Cliff’s major themes is that “combat capability is not simply a function of the numbers and capabilities of major weapons platforms” (248). Thus, while advanced technologies and weapons are important, such “hardware” factors are dependent on the “software” aspects of force structure, personnel, doctrine, training, and logistics. These issues are often overlooked or are paid lip service in the foreign media coverage of Chinese military developments. However, Cliff affords them the detailed attention they deserve, often referencing analyses from conferences and studies produced and/or sponsored by RAND, the US Army and Navy War Colleges, the Center for Naval Analyses, and the National Bureau of Asian Research, among others, that have investigated exactly these “software” dimensions.
Cliff’s assessment is that by 2020 the quality of PLA “doctrine, equipment, personnel, and training will likely be approaching, to varying degrees, those of the U.S. and other Western militaries” (244). However, “critical weaknesses” will remain in organizational structure, logistics, and organizational culture. Cliff has been proven correct in his assessment of major PLA shortcomings, as China’s current round of military reforms is focused on organizational structure, particularly command of joint operations. Furthermore, the 2015 Chinese white paper on strategy announced that the “traditional mentality that land outweighs sea must be abandoned.” This will require a shift in organizational culture that breaks the army’s hammerlock on senior leadership billets and better balances personnel ratios among the services, so that the army no longer constitutes roughly 70 percent of all PLA personnel.
On the other hand, on the basis of China’s own assessments of PLA capabilities, Cliff may have overstated to some degree the amount of progress made in doctrine, personnel, and training. PLA literature frequently states that “technology determines tactics” (jishu jueding zhanshu 技术决定战术), implying that China’s military doctrine must constantly adapt to new technologies. Xi Jinping underscored the continuing need to make adjustments to doctrine during a March 2016 visit to the National Defense University.
Part of the PLA’s challenge in developing modern doctrine is that China has not engaged in medium to large-scale conflict with a foreign enemy since 1979. Cliff repeatedly identifies the PLA’s lack of combat experience as a problem and contrasts it with the US military, which has “nearly thirty years of experience … in conducting joint combat operations using modern weaponry” (36). Not surprisingly, the PLA sees shortfalls in the ability of “some” officers to perform combat leadership functions and is concentrating on improving the training of commanders and staff officers. Specifically, in the last two years PLA literature has highlighted the problem of the “five inabilities” among “some” commanders: the inability to (1) analyze the situation, (2) understand the intentions of higher echelons, (3) make a decision on a course of action, (4) deploy forces, or (5) handle unexpected situations.
Cliff also notes many problems in PLA training, including lack of realism and inadequate joint training, which the Chinese leadership also acknowledges. Though some improvements are under way, Cliff concludes that in 2020 US training “will remain superior to that of the PLA” (191).
These assessments (and many others) of PLA capabilities suggest that in a head-to-head conflict, experienced US officers and noncommissioned officers, on the whole, would likely be able to adapt to changing battlefield conditions much quicker than their PLA counterparts—a conclusion not lost on senior Chinese or US generals. For example, in February 2016, the commander of US Pacific Air Forces noted that although the technology gap is closing, the training that US aircrews receive and their ability to work with each other give them an “unbelievably huge” advantage over the Chinese.
Despite the difficulties Cliff identifies, in his scenarios he assumes that the “superior training and command of U.S. aircraft” (215) would result in their Chinese counterparts being only 80 percent as effective as US forces. Perhaps he is too generous in that judgment.
Cliff ends by saying he offers a “prototype tool for measuring military power” (253). It is likely that somewhere in the Chinese and American governments similar comparative assessments have been conducted for years by teams and agencies, but that work is not available to the public. As a recommendation, instead of specific scenarios based on myriad assumptions, future efforts might assess the PLA’s progress in key functions that the United States has had decades of experience in, often in combat, such as carrier operations, antisubmarine warfare, close air support, large-scale helicopter operations, unmanned aerial vehicle reconnaissance, surveillance, attack capabilities, and long-distance logistics support.
