International attention is increasingly focusing on the modernization of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA). Discussions about the Chinese military have moved from intelligence circles and esoteric defence journals into the global media spotlight. Chinese moves in Burma and the South China Sea, continued nuclear testing, arms purchases and, exports, lack of budgetary transparency, increasing influence in elite politics and the political succession to Deng Xiaoping, and coercive pressure against Taiwan have all drawn attention to the PLA and have contributed to growing concerns about a muscular and assertive China.

It is axiomatic among observers that in the transition to the post-Deng era, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) will play a pivotal role. This is understandable. Until now, the army has been a central force in Chinese politics owing to the unique Party-army relationship that has existed since the founding of the Communist regime. Although this relationship will change in the near future, the importance of the military will not: they will remain indispensable backers of the new leadership. This is because they command the forces which may be used to determine the outcome of an elite power struggle, displace rebellious local figures, put down a mass uprising or even carry out a coup.

In early 1975, in a speech to the cadres of the headquarters of the General Staff Department of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), Deng Xiaoping delivered his blueprint for the military of the future. The radical restructuring of the military and its officer corps that it entailed was purportedly proposed by Mao Zedong himself. However, the fact that the speech was not made public until 1983, allegedly because it had been suppressed by the Gang of Four, makes it more likely that the architect of the reorganization, with its far-reaching implications for the PLA's officer corps, was Deng himself. Two decades later, at the close of the Deng era, it is important to examine the thrust of this document in assessing trends for the officer corps of the future.

In recent years, Western and Asian countries have been warning, and warned, against the so-called ”China threat.” These warnings reflect Beijing's military-related policies, primarily the consistent increase in China's defence expenditures since the early 1990s, its resumed acquisition of arms from the former Soviet Union, its continued nuclear tests, and its contribution to the proliferation of conventional, semi-conventional and, allegedly, non-conventional weapons. In their repeated attempts to refute the “China threat” syndrome, Chinese leaders stress, among other things, the 25 per cent cut of about one million troops in the size of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), announced in the mid-1980s. Reportedly slicing it from about 4.2 million to about 3.2 million, this massive demobilization is usually treated, not only byChina watchers but also by the Chinese themselves, as an essential aspect of their ongoing defence reform which goes hand-in-hand with military-tocivilian conversion.

China's rise as a major power constitutes one of the most significant strategic events of the post-Cold War period. Many policy-makers, strategists and scholars express significant concern over the implications of China's growing military and economic capabilities for the future security environment in Asia and beyond. Such concern derives in part from an anticipation of the systemic security problems that have historically accompanied the emergence of a new power. In the Chinese case, however, these anxieties are greatly compounded by the rapidity of internal change under way in China, the general lack of knowledge about Chinese strategic ambitions, the existence of many unresolved Chinese territorial claims, the intense suspicion and even hostility toward the West harboured by China's leadership, and China's internal political and social instabilities.

The fundamental questions are simple. Can the Chinese defence industries make what the People's Liberation Army (PLA) needs? Can they develop and produce systems to allow the PLA first to overcome its problem of “short arms and slow legs,” secondly to move from brownwater coastal defence to green-water offshore defence (and eventually blue-water power projection), and thirdly successfully to conduct “limited wars under high-tech conditions”? Indeed, in a larger sense, can the defence industry, under the conditions and pressures of economic reform, survive except by “converting”? The answers, however, are not as simple as might be thought.

Defence budgets have many components, and the way the various items in the budget are categorized differs from country to country.... The main reason for this is not the way the budget is drawn up, it is due to profound social, economic and political factors.

Defence doctrine is an important indicator of armed forces′ intentions and capabilities. Since the policy of defence modernization was introduced in China in 1973, the war-fighting doctrine and strategic principles of the People′s Liberation Army (PLA) have undergone two major changes. The first change came in the late 1970s. The Maoist doctrine of the “people′s war,” which had been prevalent in the late 1960s and 1970s, was replaced by a new doctrine of the “people′s war under modern conditions.”

In the late spring of 1985, shortly after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the former USSR, the Central Military Commission of the Chinese Communist Party (CMC) directed a radical change in the armed forces′ training and preparation for war. The Chinese People′s Liberation Army (PLA-as all the military services and branches are collectively designated) was instructed that it was no longer necessary to prepare for an “early, major and nuclear war” with the Soviet Union. Henceforth, the PLA′s doctrine, strategy and operational concepts would be focused on preparing for the most probable form of future conflict: local, limited war (jubu zhanzheng) around China′s periphery.1 The decade following the CMC′s directive has seen the Chinese armed forces begin the transition towards a more modern, flexible military force as they′changed their organizational structure, command and control, and training to focus on possibly unexpected, potentially intensive military conflict along China′s borders and maritime territories. These changes paralleled the end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, which eliminated any significant military threat to China′s northern borders for at least another decade. Nevertheless, and even as Beijing′s security analysts were publicly acknowledging that China′s military security was more assured than it had been for the past 50 years, the defence expenditures of the People′s Republic entered a period of rapid growth that continues to this day.

Since the summer of 1995, Chinese military training opposite Taiwan has received unusual prominence in both the Chinese and foreign media. The senior leadership in Beijing was able to flex its military muscle because of a training programme begun years ago. This limited use of force has sent unmistakable political signals to Taiwan and the world. But, should the Chinese leadership decide to employ the People′s Liberation Army (PLA) in pursuit of its political objectives, is it well trained enough to conduct successful modern military operations?

A single spark can light a prairie fire, Mao Zedong once proclaimed, and China today is as dry as a tinder-box. Rapid economic and social change is undermining the country′s stability. The authorities are struggling to cope with soaring crime, mass rural migration, rising urban unemployment, simmering ethnic discontent and numerous other problems. At the same time, the Communist Party′s legitimacy and organization is crumbling and the ruling elite waits nervously for ailing paramount leader Deng Xiaoping′s death.

In this article I argue that China currently has the technical capacity to increase the size of its nuclear forces by about two to three times and to improve its operational flexibility.1 Whether it does so or not will depend primarily on four variables or constraints: trends in thinking about nuclear doctrine that justify these sorts of changes; the economic and technological resources available; China′s commitment to nuclear arms-related arms control conventions; and strategic and arms control decisions by the United States. I suggest that for the foreseeable future the variables relating to doctrine, economics/technology and Chinese arms control preferences are all relatively fixed or constant. That is, present trends in all three suggest a continuing will and ability to modernize Chinese nuclear forces. The last variable is somewhat less fixed, and thus may be the one that is most amenable to external manipulation.

The 1994 book The Intercalary August 1995, a fictional account of a surgical-strike invasion of Taiwan by China, sold a record 200,000 copies between August and December 1994. The huge sales volume reflected a growing sense of insecurity among Taiwan′s residents, despite a visitor′s observation months earlier that the two sides had “rarely been more peaceful.” In the latter half of 1994, China staged its largest military exercise in years and Taiwan followed suit as if in response. Concurrently, Taiwanese emigration reached a six-year peak, which many perceived to have resulted from residents fleeing in fear. By early 1995, some U.S. officials admitted publicly that one had to take seriously the threat that “the mainland could invade” Taiwan. This statement represents a shifting post-Cold War perception from marginalizing China′s attack on Taiwan almost as a non-issue to reckoning such conflict as a possibility bordering on probability. Beginning in late July 1995, China reinforced this shift by testing missiles and artilleries in waters with unprecedented proximity to Taiwan, imposing in effect a series of temporary blockades on the island.

Because this volume focuses on the People′s Liberation Army (PLA), only those threat perceptions directly relevant to the presence of Chinese military force are addressed in this article. The problems of ideological unity, legitimacy of the regime, and other political or economic threats to the People′s Republic are excluded insofar as they do not call on the PLA. Nor are general foreign policy stratagems for dealing with Moscow, Tokyo, New Delhi and Washington under review, let alone regions beyond China′s capacity to project military power.