China's Unthinkable Evolution

...The U.S...

...The present Communist Party leadership is seeking to strengthen its shaky domestic position, first of all, by emphasizing the primacy of economic improvement...

...The thirst for fossil fuels has also steered China to Siberia and Central Asia—or "Inner Asia," to use the Chinese term...

...For centuries China has not prevailed in wars against a slew of foes...

...The second episode was a 29-day incursion into Vietnam in 1979...

...is particularly concerned about China's hunger for American firms...

...Uzbekistan dictator Islam A. Karimov has kept up warmer relations with China by pursuing a hard line at home in the name of routing avowed Islamist extremists—a worry China shares in the largely Muslim northwest province of Xinjiang...

...At that point 2 million Nationalists fled to Taiwan, and over the years mostly ineffective attempts have been made to stir up nationalism on the mainland by denouncing the island...

...But China's phenomenal progress has been uneven...

...The vast majority of the island's population is ethnically Chinese, but most descend from immigrants of centuries ago and feel no strong loyalty to the mainland...

...Today North Korea, under the brutal rogue regime of Kim Jong II, is again a source of great anxiety...

...Hanoi was on the verge of controlling not only Laos but Cambodia, having crushed the murderous Khmer Rouge inspired by Chinese leaders not yet disabused of Maoism...

...Dreading another international embarrassment like Tiananmen Square, the government is striving to suppress popular dissent by legal and extralegal means...

...Little is known about how much real progress China has made in logistics, doctrine and command and control...

...But regional allegiances have prevented the drive from providing the decisive boost he hoped it would give him...

...The runaway economy is taking a toll in nearly every domestic sphere...

...None come from Taiwan, but booksellers agree it is well past time for Taiwanese publications to be allowed...

...The law enacted m March by the People's Congress authorized an attack if Taiwanese authorities declare the island an independent country—rather than an autonomous province of an idealized China...

...Capital smuggled out of China is reimported as "foreign direct investment," thereby enjoying the benefits extended to "new" investment...

...routing and construction of pipelines...

...New Chinese ships are being deployed as rapidly as possible in the 100-milewide, shallow, choppy Taiwan Strait, and the recalcitrant island is the target of 700 land-based missiles...

...In addition, large-scale corruption persists in government and business...

...With several countries already nibbling on the islands, they could be viewed by China as an arena for testing its naval might...

...Although the Internet is subject to stringent government surveillance and the Hu regime is striking hard against lawyers and journalists who air the people's grievances, public speaking and discussion are far more open today than at any time since the establishment of the People's Republic...

...But numerous challenges are involved in doing business with the socalled "stans": modernizing the extraction process...

...In the wake of its March 2004 presidential balloting, Hu declared that its general elections would never occur on the mainland—as they never have in China's five millennia of history...

...Foreign entities that have opened factories in China are very often undercut by local partners who launch competing companies...

...Purchases of Russian guided-missile destroyers and the massing of a submarine fleet—whose nuclear-powered vessels are equipped with 5,000-mile range missiles—reveal the regime's intentions to project its power with a blue-water Navy...

...Almost all are produced in the People's Republic or the Beijing-dominated "special administrative region" of Hong Kong...

...Dependent on foreign investors, technology, raw materials, and markets, China has achieved its advances by integration with the world economy and "peaceable cooperation" with the United States, its largest customer, competitor, and—to the tune of some $400 billion in Treasury bonds—debtor...

...The Army is still too large for rapid modernization across the board, but selected units are being mechanized, retrained and reindoctrinated, with assistance from several foreign sources...

...third, maintain credible deterrents...

...Furthermore, China must compete in the market for Central Asian oil with its greatest rival, lapan...

...Many editors and reporters do their jobs in what the Party labels "a capitalist way," little deterred by the state's admonishments...

...Including off-budget expenditures, hidden subsidies and spending on research and development, the defense budget is an estimated $90 billion a year...

...Chinese companies have further put in bids for the Maytag appliance giant and the Unocal oil corporation...

...The pronouncement has hardly helped stifle the broad expressions of discontent that have plagued his administration...

...The mere utterance of this previously unthinkable sentiment indicates that forces beyond Hu's control have taken root in China...

...The oil and gas fields there approach the potential of the Middle East's, and China's trade with the region has increased exponentially in the past five years...

...That such a change no longer seems impossible suggests that while China's economy and military might are surging ahead at a startling rate, Chinese society may be changing faster...

...With the earth's largest population—over 1.3 billion—providing cheap labor, China has become the greatest net importer of energy, raw materials and unfinished goods, as well as the biggest single exporter of consumer wares...

...Increasingly explicit, though, is a second thrust—the flatout pursuit of military might in support of the government's claims to being a global power—that might one day bring it into conflict with its neighbors and the U.S...

...Yes, it has concentrated on its ambitions abroad to bolster its faltering position at home...

...Resuming the role it played for the Japanese during World War II, Taiwan under Chinese control could serve as a base for policing the sea lanes that carry the overwhelming bulk of mainland trade— including vital fuel shipments...

...Soon, the 8,000-mile Dongfeng (East Wind)-41 will allow it to target the entire United States...

...Though long culturally dependent on China, which transmitted the Indian doctrine of Buddhism east, Japan has perennially been an aggressive enemy...

...Younger military leaders have replaced the old guard on the Chinese Military Commission...

...Its mid20th-century ideological campaigns, directed primarily at Thailand and Malaysia, did not require the PLA's mobilization...

...Newspapers, magazines and book publishers are more venturesome too...

...Beijing also appears to have been a go-between in North Korea's acquisition of nuclear technology from the death peddler A.Q...

...local demands for bribes as high as S300 million...

...Government sources, after admitting to only one-third of that sum, concede that spending goes up by more than 10 per cent annually...

...All this may lie behind its refusing to apply serious pressure on Pyongyang to suspend nuclear development or observe its limiting agreements with Tokyo and Washington...

...Southeast Asia has rarely been a theater of Chinese military activity...

...This "string of pearls" extends Chinese influence to the portals of the Persian Gulf— and into potential conflict with U.S...

...The Ground Forces of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) are also being streamlined, re-equipped and retrained to fight and win high-tech 21 st-century wars...

...For me, however, one of the most significant examples of China's gradual evolution came in a Shanghai teashop recently: I heard the son of a former lowranking Nationalist official openly praise his father's party in front ofhis colleagues and several other local customers...

...It also appears that political indoctrination, formerly at the heart of Chinese military training, is being significantly relaxed...

...But the people are no longer in awe of the Party's heavy hand...

...Beijing claims the island as an "integral province," although for many centuries the connection was either nonexistent or intermittent and uncivil...

...By 1979, three years after Mao's death, his successors saw Vietnam as an ideological and strategic threat...

...The most striking leaps in China's arsenal—not only technically, but as an indicator of Chinese strategy— involve missile technology...

...To protect its trade routes, China has made military cooperation agreements with Thailand, Cambodiaand Bangladesh, and has begun building a reconnaissance and staging base in Burma on the Bay of Bengal as well as a port ith Pakistan near the Iranian border...

...workers are growing restive, too, often violently...

...In fact, during the 20th century China committed a substantial number of troops to the south only twice...

...They offer the prospect, not yet proved, of plentiful natural gas reserves and would have additional strategic value as offshore bases...

...Allies in his native Shanghai did mount anti-Japanese demonstrations this spring that drew an estimated 10,000 protesters...

...its quest for regional dominance is driven by the issue of energy security...

...Some regions remain poor and backward...

...moves to decrease its military presence in Asia, there remains a vast disparity between the two countries' current capabilities...

...The latter bid was eventually dropped...

...The backdrop of the recent strident talk is the simultaneously competitive and collaborative Sino-U.S...

...China's immediate strategic goal is the capability to take Taiwan by force—before the U.S...

...Currently, the Spratly Islands—an archipelago in the South China Sea claimed partly or in toto by China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines— are contested...

...The impulse to upgrade the military dates back to Beijing's surprise at the swift U.S...

...For one thing, its exuberance has exposed a growth rate spinning out of control that the government tried to cap at 8.8 per cent last year through a series of laws, only to see it hit 9.5 per cent...

...Following Deng's instruction to "hide our capabilities and bide our time," the Armed Forces are intensely secretive...

...And it is suspected of colluding with North Korea in the sale of missiles and nuclear technology to a number of countries—among them some in the Middle East...

...China has already developed the Julang (Giant Wave)-2, capable of carrying independently targeted warheads and with a range of 5,000 miles...

...The newcomers seek to integrate the PLA's operational capabilities and— with scant success so far—to harness modern information technology...

...His failed effort to suppress news of the SARS outbreak in 2003 was a blow to his credibility and authority...

...That is not to suggest an actual confrontation between the most powerful and most populous nations is on the horizon...

...Robert Elegant, a longtime New Leader contributor, is a novelist and the author of numerous books on China...

...North Korea relies on China for food and fuel...

...And with the collapse of Maoism, the powers that be cannot invoke a shared ideology to buttress national cohesion...

...interests there, especially in Iraq and Iran...

...Beijing recently canceled an oil deal worth billions with Kazakhstan and its leader, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev...

...Khan of Pakistan...

...By swallowing IBM's personal computer manufacturing arm, for example, it has become the world's third-largest computer producer...

...Between them, the vulnerable, tumultuous peninsula of Korea has been the chief conduit of cultural exchange, as well as conflict...

...The regime of President and Communist Party General Secretary Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, installed inNovember2002, is the most fiercely imperiled since 1949, when Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government was defeated in civil war by the Communists...

...Beijing's overriding objective is redressing the humiliations suffered at the hands of outsiders during the past two centuries...

...defeat in 1991 of an Iraqi Army that closely resembled the PLA...

...relationship...

...Meanwhile, the Bank of America and Goldman Sachs have offered billions to prop up China's effectively bankrupt stateowned banking system...

...The collapse of the Kim regime, China fears, would tilt the balance unfavorably and destabilize the region...

...Eighty per cent of China's imports and exports flow through the Indian Ocean, the Straits of Malacca and the East China Sea, where China will deploy its blue-water Navy...

...Although Beijing has been making extensive deals in the Middle East, Africa and South America, it remains uneasy about the complex arrangements required to ensure delivery...

...This spring the National People's Congress raised the temperature by passing a law threatening Taiwan with attack, and Beijing leaned hard on the European Union to end the arms embargo adopted after the Tiananmen Square riots of 1989...

...Its uncertain nuclear capabilities make it immune to attack—to the frustration of Japan and the U.S...

...Consequently, China executes or imprisons more dissidents than any other country...

...The financial industry is rife with graft...

...While China's northern and eastern frontiers have traditionally been and will continue to be its main concerns, increasing attention is being paid to the south...

...The Chinese learned three lessons: first, modernize and professionalize...

...The result was a standoff as attrition set in, but today Beijing and New Delhi are at least talking to each other...

...The outcome in Vietnam was a spectacular, bloody defeat of the PLA that hugely embarrassed Beijing...

...Not surprisingly, the rest of the globe is pondering the merits of protectionism...

...In the ' 60s the messianic regime of Mao Zedong had assisted the North Vietnamese offensive against South Vietnam with Chinese- and Soviet-made weapons and equipment, as well as a heavily staffed planning mission in Hanoi...

...The PLA's advanced conventional and nuclear armaments and communications technology come from diverse suppliers, including Israel...

...To avoid mass armed reactions, where possible they act independently...

...Even when Hu has employed military units against rallies, violent face-offs have tended to result in a draw for him...

...second, target ahightech adversary's vulnerable points— command, information and logistics— while deploying missiles and submarines to keep the enemy from getting close...

...Yet China's activity in the international arms bazaar—its contracts with Russia alone are worth more than $2 billion a year— cannot be concealed entirely...

...Whatever, China seems to have embarked recklessly on perilous and not altogether compatible paths...

...Bookstores offer biographies of Chiang Kai-shek that are not entirely condemnatory and journals presenting views of contemporary China that are not uniformly laudatory...

...Chinese strategists and intellectuals have for a century been committed to making their nation mortally respected by building up an immense industrial base, and from there a world-class military machine...

...As part of a massive restructuring effort, the People's Liberation Army has had its Ground Forces cut back by 200,000, leaving 2 million, plus 300,000 in the Air Force and the Navy...

...The new PLA is to become less centralized now that maintaining "revolutionary discipline" among the masses is no longer its chief function...

...Greeted with harsh words from President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the provocations prompted some to warn of a new Cold War...

...For another, no effective systems have replaced the health care, pensions or education services state industries previously made available...

...But those two salient factors— weakness and ambition—make its bid for global power potentially destabilizing and gravely dangerous...

...and the sheer difficulty of dealing with the ruling former Communist Party leaders...

...At the same time, it needs to be noted, Hu's is the most enterprising government China has had in more than two centuries...

...Growing into a Global Power China's Unthinkable Evolution By Robert Elegant Beijing Little more than a decade after the late Deng Xiaoping's imperative to forge "Socialism with Chinese characteristics," the economy here has undergone breakneck development as chaotic as it was unpredictable...

...China's greatest requirements are oil and natural gas...

...Despite U.S...

...Moreover, China's foreign policy is impelled as much by domestic politics and internal crises as by events abroad...

...can intervene...

...The first time, in 1962, India seemed to be invading territory in the Himalayas claimed by China...

...Nor has Hu had great success fanning the flames of nationalism...

...Commanders who rose because of doctrinal orthodoxy and political agility are being relieved...