The 2008 Report on China's Military

Great find Panzerkom.

Yeah, with a parade of US diplomats, generals, and admirals practically rotating through Bejing over the last couple years pleading with the PRC Government and the MND for "transparency", it does not surprise me that the tone of the report to Congress strikes one in the fashion that you describe. It seems that the U.S. may consider the PLA to have achieved or to be about to achieve a critical level of capability as a result of its modernization program.

Originally Posted by panzerkom

...encourage China’s...integration in the international system.

Meaning American hegemony and unipolar int'l system? I still prefer mulltipolarity.

well, i gave it a quick once over and the thing that surprised me the most is the part about constant cyber-attacks from china. somehow, i doubt that all those attacks were initiated / controlled / ordered by the chinese military.

what do you guys think?

Originally Posted by panzerkom

well, i gave it a quick once over and the thing that surprised me the most is the part about constant cyber-attacks from china. somehow, i doubt that all those attacks were initiated / controlled / ordered by the chinese military.

what do you guys think?

Its possible for a hacker to initiate attacks even when he or she is in the US and reroute the attacks from a router in China. The truth is, you will never know the real source of the attacks---they might even be right next door. The good hackers should be very clever and cover their tracks. Its more than possible that there will be attacks initiated from within China itself, but China itself is becoming a convenient cover for cyber attacks from everywhere.

Originally Posted by crobato

Its possible for a hacker to initiate attacks even when he or she is in the US and reroute the attacks from a router in China. The truth is, you will never know the real source of the attacks---they might even be right next door. The good hackers should be very clever and cover their tracks. Its more than possible that there will be attacks initiated from within China itself, but China itself is becoming a convenient cover for cyber attacks from everywhere.

That's a good point about the routing tactic, the movie Sneakers from what I remember presented an example of something like that.

US military admits 'limited' understanding of Chinese aims
Agence France-Presse Mar 13, 2008

Washington: A top US military leader on Tuesday admitted the United States has a limited understanding of Chinese military aims and is concerned about Beijing's lack of transparency.

"The growing PLA (People's Liberation Army) military capability remains a concern, and our understanding of PLA intentions is limited," said Admiral Timothy Keating of the US Pacific Command.

"The transparency that they profess is insufficient in our view," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee, a week after the release of a Pentagon report that said China had boosted total military spending in 2007 to more than twice its declared budget.

"They clearly want to expand their areas of influence and those strategic goals of theirs, if not exactly counter to ours, then they are at least of concern," the commander said.

Keating said that among US concerns were Chinese surface-to-air capabilities and Chinese electronic warfare development.

"We have state-of-the-art equipment that we can deploy if we need to," Keating said. "The electronic countermeasures we enjoy are in most cases sufficient and in some cases insufficient."

The Pentagon's annual assessment said Beijing's lack of transparency posed risks to stability and voiced concern over how it would use its expanding military power.

The report highlighted Chinese development of cruise and ballistic missiles capable of striking aircraft carriers and other warships at sea, anti-satellite weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles.

It also cited numerous cyber intrusions into US and other computer networks around the world over the past year, apparently from within China.

"We are concerned about Chinese electronic warfare development and it is a topic of discussion," Keating told the senators, specifying that "informationization" is a topic "they study ... in the war colleges."

"They acknowledge they are pursuing these subspecialties. They do not acknowledge if they are engaging in these activities. It is obvious to me that they are engaging in these activities," Keating said.

China dismissed the Pentagon report as an exaggeration, made in order to justify US sales of military hardware to Beijing's rival Taiwan.

With regard to China-Taiwan tensions, Keating said the United States is "cautiously optimistic that a little bit of steam will leave the kettle" following Taiwan's presidential election later this month.

"I have no indications today that there is increased concern with respect to likelihood of military activity in Taiwan," he added.

The Pentagon estimated China's total military spending in 2007 at between 97 and 139 billion dollars, more than double China's declared budget of 45 billion dollars, which rose by 17.8 percent in 2007 over the previous year.

Asked about the spike in Chinese military spending, Keating said US officials know "their spending is going way up" but only have estimates because "the Chinese will not discuss it ... they don't even bring it up anymore."

When the issue was discussed in the past, Keating said Chinese officials told him the extra funds were "all going to personnel and quality of life."

Keating acknowledged "it costs a lot of money to train and equip" a modern force of soldiers.

"That said, there is no question they are putting a significant amount of money" into research and development of their military arsenal, and "not all of their increased budget, I believe, is going to personnel."

The admiral said his attempts to gain a better understanding of China's plans are often ignored.

"When I ask them they choose not to answer the question," he said, referring to the Chinese military budget.

"They do not share with us their intentions ... beyond the overarching 'We seek to defend those things that are ours.' It's the same answer to nearly every question we ask them."

Every year the report is reporting the same things, never really anything new. China's military capabilities are growing, they are throwing more and more money into the budget, they have not told us what their intentions are, they need to be more transparent...blah blah blah. Kinda gets repetitive after hearing these same things for several years...

IMO, the most important question the Pentagon should be trying to answer in depth is: WHY China needs these increases in military power? And WHY does Chinese govt see this need in such high priority?
Of course as always, the report skips all these and jumps straight onto Taiwan...

These kinds of reports get really boring after a while.

Here is what you do to become a Chinese threat military analyst.

Write paper with

1. Mention XXX number of missiles aimed at Taiwan. Add 100 or 200 every year. Mention about growing nuclear arsenal and missiles (DF-31, DF-41 ad nauseum) and that little tidbit about the PLA general quipping about nuking LA, a quote now made nearly 10 years ago.

2. Mention double digit increases of PLA military budget. Multiply by two or three times. Make Excel chart. Don't mention the fact that the PLA had very little increases prior to the year 2000.

3. Every year, mention China buying Su-27s, Su-30s, Kilos, Sovremanny and other boat loads of Russian equipment, even though China bought these all years ago. No need to mention that since 2004, China's purchases of Russian arms have seriously dropped to almost zero.

4. Mention China's modernizing airforce with J-10s copied from Isreali Lavi and using Russian engines. Do not skip the opportunity to make it look like the Israelis were traitorous back stabbers as allies.

5. Do not skip the opportunity to point out that the Europeans are traitorous back stabbers as allies too by pointing out things like the various French derived missiles, radars and sonars that end up in modernizing PLAN ships, that German engines power Chinese tanks and ships, that the Italians sold missiles to China, or the fact that even the British sold out on you by shipping Spey engines for China's strike bombers.

6. Always point out the incident where the J-8II collided with the EP-3, even though that took place in 2001.

7. Always point how the PLA fired missiles across the Straits during 1996 Taiwan election.

8. Point out that China is building new nuclear sub fleet (always in future tense) with the help of the Russians, since Chinese is too incompetent in designing their own ships and subs, and must rely on others. When mentioning this, don't forget to point out how Han shadowed the Kitty Hawk once in 1994, and how one circled Guam in 2004.

9. Now always add how a Song submarine surfaced near the Kitty Hawk. Never forget to mention "within torpedo range".

10. Never forget to mention China's "asymmetrical warfare".

11. Point out Chinese industrial espionage.

12. Point out Chinese cyberhacking of networks.

13. Now China threatens space and the future of peace loving mankind by conducting ASAT test. Don't leave out the part how space debris from the test threatens the safety of other satellites.

14. Complain about the lack of transparency of China's military. Heck, you don't read Chinese and browse Chinese military magazines and journals, but complain anyway.

To be fair though Crobato, there were some good snippets, but they were in last couple of chapters and you had to wade through a lot of waffle to reach them.

Most of the report seemed to consist of

"They are up to something, but we don't know what it is and they wont tell us (with implication added: plus we don't believe them whenever they do tell us anything)

Obviously though they have economised on proof readers as after spending pages asking why they need to spend so much and increase the budge so much, Chapter 5 offers this revaluation.

The PLA’s force projection capabilities will remain limited over the next decade as the PLA replaces
outdated aircraft and maritime vessels and adjusts operational doctrine to encompass new capabilities.
These changes will require tailored logistics equipment and training which will take time and money to
develop proficiency.

Could be an answer I suppose

That's called covering all the bets. They pretend that the Chinese military is such a mystery that nobody knows anything about them. But they actually know the answers to all their supposed questions but hide them in little places. This way, they satisfy the political need of the moment by bashing China, while still retain the flexibility of go back later to point out these tidbits and able to say, we knew they weren't going to do anything from the very beginning.

For the peace of the world, China did not spend enough money on military. China needs to give more money to the military budget, at least to match the US military spending of the GDP, 4%.

China should spend more money in 08 and 09 keep US nervous a little bit longer.

The Americans recognizes the rise of the Chinese military budget and the threats associated with it due to the rapid growing Chinese economy.

Although the Chinese increase is nothing compared to the American budget, however it is played up to request increased funding for the US military.

Crobato is right here... the report is indeed completely redundant crap, predictably reiterating the same old obsolete pseudo analysis.

Nevertheless after reading the pages of all reports since 2000 (...not that this would take you longer than checking all pages of sinodefence.com!) I'm increasingly not sure whether this report is an indication of colossal ineptness of the US intelligence community or simply a very cunning example of disinformation aimed at manipulating Beijing into an albeit utmost unclear direction. (Perhaps Sun Tzu would be amused by this kind of obfuscation.)


In fact after reading recently some of the good old glossy issues of ´Soviet Military Power´ in a dusty basement chamber of our institute library I got indeed an overdose of reaganite Pentagon propaganda but I also got a (biased) message about the USSR and inversely about the US. In contrast after trying to comprehend the infinitely more crudely illustrated and clumsily written reports on China's Military I got only confused since there was simply no comprehensive message about the PRC and the US in global strategy.

(May be that is the intention of the whole exercise...!)