Commission notes China’s offensive doctrine – and its political fragility

This morning, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission released its annual report. The 414-page study, the result of commission research trips, interviews, open hearings, and staff investigations, discusses China’s economy and its trade relationships, its foreign policy, and the development of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). This year’s report made note of China’s increasing assertiveness in East Asia and discussed a military doctrine that appears to emphasize offensive action and surprise. But the report also described a Chinese leadership struggling with deep economic imbalances, inflation, social instability, and perhaps declining political legitimacy.

Repeating a theme from its past annual reports, the Commission discussed China’s expanding use of cyber-warfare techniques for industrial espionage, intelligence-gathering, and disruption. The Commission noted that China is now one of the world’s top few space powers, with comprehensive space access and counter- access capabilities.

The Commission described an emerging Chinese military doctrine that remarkably resembles the doctrine developed by the Soviet Union. The report noted China’s work on “reconnaissance-strike” capabilities, which it seems to be integrating with its space/counter-space plans. The report discussed China’s potential to use cyber attacks to disrupt adversary C4ISR networks. The Commission asserted that “the PLA is acquiring capabilities that allow it to conduct surprise attacks aimed at degrading a superior military’s advantages” and that the PLA has a “heavy focus on offensive operations.” I will leave to readers to discuss in the comments whether this is an accurate description of a doctrine that descends from a long Chinese pedigree or whether it is a misperception by U.S. analysts who believe they have rediscovered their old Soviet nemesis. In any case, the Commission called on Congress to investigate whether the U.S. military can accomplish its missions with its C4ISR nets degraded and whether it adequately trains under conditions that simulate destroyed U.S. space assets.

While the PLA keeps itself busy, China’s leaders are struggling to maintain tight control over a country that may be cracking under pressure. To those who think the Federal Reserve has been reckless with the U.S. money supply, the report notes that China’s money supply has mushroomed by 434 percent over the past decade and is now ten times larger than the U.S. money supply, even while the Chinese economy is one-third the size. The result is accelerating inflation inside China, which has been especially painful for the rural poor and migrant workers. China has its own version of “Occupy Wall Street,” migrant workers and unemployed college graduates (called the “ant tribe”) who have been forced into slum-like communal quarters. They have migrated from city to city to seek work but many lack documentation, leaving them without social benefits, which many local governments cannot, in any case, pay for.

The challenge for Chinese leaders is to maintain political legitimacy and social control. Economic contradictions will make this increasingly difficult to pull off. China’s leaders have counted on rapid economic growth to provide jobs for the rural migrants and the college-educated “ant tribe.” But rapid growth is now stoking accelerating inflation, which has been a reliable spark for social rebellion. Added to this is a housing bubble ready to deflate, over-indebted local governments and state-owned enterprises, and a banking system stuffed with smelly loans. Caught between unemployed masses and inflation, the regime is resorting to repression to maintain control; indeed the report notes that the government is now spending more on domestic security than on the PLA.

The Soviet empire collapsed when the regime lost both its legitimacy and its will to forcibly repress the population. China is not there. But its leaders are riding a tiger and are straining to hold on.