China’s military: Smaller, stronger

Their comments suggested the modernisation program might be on the brink of reaching one of its principal goals. For the last decade—at least since two US aircraft carrier battle groups steamed in to show resolve during a moment of high tension over Taiwan in 1996—Chinese leaders have sought to field enough modern weaponry to ensure that any US decision to intervene again would be painful and fraught with risk.

As far as is known, China’s military has not come up with a weapon system that suddenly changes the equation in the Taiwan Strait or surrounding waters where Japanese and US forces deploy, the specialists said. China has been trying to update its military for more than two decades, seeking to push the low-tech, manpower-heavy force it calls a People’s Army into the 21st-century world of computers, satellites and electronic weapons.

‘‘This is the harvest time,’’ said Lin Chong-pin, a former Taiwanese deputy defense minister and an expert on the Chinese military at the Foundation on International and Cross-Strait Studies in Taipei.

US and Taiwanese military officials pointed in particular to China’s rapid development of cruise and other anti-ship missiles designed to pierce the electronic defenses of US vessels that might be dispatched to the Taiwan Strait in case of conflict. The Chinese Navy has taken delivery of two Russian-built Sovremenny-class guided missile destroyers and has six more on order, equipped with Sunburn missiles able to skim 4 1/2 feet above the water at a speed of Mach 2.5 to evade radar. In addition, it has contracted with Russia to buy eight Kilo-class diesel submarines that carry Club anti-ship missiles with a range of 145 miles. ‘‘These systems will present significant challenges in the event of a US naval force response to a Taiwan crisis,’’ Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in a testimony on March 17.

Strategically, China’s military is also close to achieving an improved nuclear deterrent against the United States, according to foreign officials and specialists.

The Type 094 nuclear missile submarine, launched last July to replace a trouble-prone Xia-class vessel, can carry 16 intercontinental ballistic missiles. Married with the newly developed Julang-2 missile, which has a range of more than 5,000 miles and the ability to carry independently targeted warheads, the 094 will give China a survivable nuclear deterrent against the continental United States, according to ‘‘Modernising China’s Military,’’ a study by David Shambaugh of George Washington University.

In addition, the Dongfeng-31 solid-fuel mobile ballistic missile, a three-stage, land-based equivalent of the Julang-2, has been deployed in recent years to augment the approximately 20 Dongfeng-5 liquid-fuel missiles already in service, according to academic specialists citing US intelligence reports. It will be joined in coming years by an 8,000-mile Dongfeng-41, these reports said, putting the entire United States within range of land-based Chinese ICBMs as well.

‘‘The main purpose of that is not to attack the United States,’’ Lin said. ‘‘The main purpose is to throw a monkey wrench into the decision-making process in Washington, to make the Americans think, and think again, about intervening in Taiwan, and by then the Chinese have moved in.’’

A little-discussed but key facet of China’s military modernisation has been a reduction in personnel and an intensive effort to better train and equip the soldiers who remain, particularly those who operate high-technology weapons.

Dennis J. Blasko, a former US Military Attache in Beijing who is writing a book on the People’s Liberation Army, said that forming a core of skilled commissioned and non-commissioned officers and other specialists who can make the military run in a high-tech environment may be just as important in the long run as buying sophisticated weapons.

Striving for air superiority over the Taiwan Strait, the Chinese Air Force has acquired from Russia more than 250 Sukhoi Su-27 single-role and Su-30 all-weather, multi-role fighter planes, according to Richard D. Fisher, vice-president of the International Assessment and Strategy Center in Washington.

The Pentagon has forecast that, as the Sukhoi program continues to add to China’s aging inventory, the air force will field about 2,000 warplanes by 2020, of which about 150 will be fourth-generation craft equipped with sophisticated avionics. —LAT-WP