Has China Won?: The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy
The defining geopolitical contest of the twenty-first century is between China and the US. But is it avoidable? And if it happens, is the outcome already inevitable?
China and America are world powers without serious rivals. They eye each other warily across the Pacific; they communicate poorly; there seems little natural empathy. A massive geopolitical contest has begun.
America prizes freedom; China values freedom from chaos.
America values strategic decisiveness; China values patience.
America is becoming society of lasting inequality; China a meritocracy.
America has abandoned multilateralism; China welcomes it.
中国赢了吗？：中国挑战美国霸权
Zhōng-guó yíng-le ma?: Zhōng-guó tiǎo-zhàn měi-guó bà-quán
21 世纪决定性的地缘政治较量发生在中国和美国之间。但这场较量可以避免吗？如果发生了，结果是否已经不可避免？21 shìjì juédìngxìng dì dìyuán zhèngzhì jiàoliàng fāshēng zài zhōngguó hé měiguó zhī jiān. Dàn zhè chǎng jiàoliàng kěyǐ bìmiǎn ma? Rúguǒ fāshēngle, jiéguǒ shìfǒu yǐjīng bùkě bìmiǎn?
中国和美国都是没有严重对手的世界强国。他们在太平洋彼岸互相警惕地注视着对方；他们沟通不畅；似乎没有什么自然的同理心。一场大规模的地缘政治较量已经开始。Zhōngguó hé měiguó dū shì méiyǒu yánzhòng duìshǒu de shìjiè qiángguó. Tāmen zài tàipíngyáng bǐ'àn hùxiāng jǐngtì de zhùshìzhe duìfāng; tāmen gōutōng bù chàng; sìhū méiyǒu shé me zìrán de tóng lǐ xīn. Yī chǎng dà guīmó dì dìyuán zhèngzhì jiàoliàng yǐjīng kāishǐ.
美国珍视自由；中国珍视摆脱混乱的自由。Měiguó zhēnshì zìyóu; zhōngguó zhēnshì bǎituō hǔnluàn de zìyóu.
美国重视战略果断；中国重视耐心。Měiguó zhòngshì zhànlüè guǒduàn; zhōngguó zhòngshì nàixīn.
美国正在成为一个长期不平等的社会；中国是一个精英统治的社会。Měiguó zhèngzài chéngwéi yīgè chángqí bù píngděng de shèhuì; zhōngguó shì yīgè jīngyīng tǒngzhì de shèhuì.
美国已经放弃了多边主义；中国欢迎它。Měiguó yǐjīng fàngqìle duōbiān zhǔyì; zhōngguó huānyíng tā.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER 2 CHINA'S BIGGEST STRATEGIC MISTAKE 25
CHAPTER 3 AMERICA'S BIGGEST STRATEGIC MISTAKE 49
CHAPTER 4 IS CHINA
EXPANSIONIST? 79
CHAPTER 5 CAN AMERICA
MAKE U-TURNS? 105
CHAPTER 6 SHOULD CHINA
BECOME DEMOCRATIC? 133
CHAPTER 7 THE ASSUMPTION
OF VIRTUE 183
CHAPTER 8 HOW WILL OTHER COUNTRIES CHOOSE? 211
CHAPTER 9 A PARADOXICAL CONCLUSION 253
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 283
APPENDIX: THE MYTH OF
AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM 287
INDEX 297
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
ONE THING IS CERTAIN.
The geopolitical contest that has broken out between America and China will continue for the next decade or two. Although President Donald Trump launched the first round in 2018, it will outlast his administration. The president has divided America on all his policies, except one: his trade and technological war against China. Indeed, he has received strong bipartisan support for it, and a strong consensus is developing in the American body politic that China represents a threat to America. General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said that "China probably poses the greatest threat to our nation by about 2025." The summary of America's 2018 National Defense Strategy claims that China and Russia are "revisionist powers" seeking to "shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model gaining veto authority over other nations' economic, diplomatic, and security decisions."
* Ryan Browne, "Top US General: China Will Be 'Greatest Threat' to US by 2025," CNN, September 27, 2017, https://edition.cnn.com/2017/09/26/politics/dunford-us china-greatest-threat/index.html.
-1-
-2- HAS CHINA WON?
Christopher Wray, the FBI director, has said, "One of the things we're trying to do is view the China threat as not just a whole-of-government threat, but a whole-of-society threat and I think it's going to take a whole-of-society response by us." Even George Soros, who spent millions trying to prevent Trump from being elected, has praised Trump on China. He has said: "The greatest-and perhaps only-foreign policy accomplishment of the Trump administration has been the development of a coherent and genuinely bipartisan policy toward Xi Jinping's China.+ He also added that it was right for the Trump administration to declare China a strategic rival."
Yet, even though the American establishment has, by and large, enthusiastically supported Trump on China, it is curious that no one has pointed out that America is making a big strategic mistake by launching this contest with China without first developing a comprehensive and global strategy to deal with China.
The man who alerted me to this was one of America's greatest strategic thinkers, Dr. Henry Kissinger. I still remember vividly the one on-one lunch I had with him in a private room in his club in midtown Manhattan in mid-March 2018. On the day of the lunch, I was afraid that it would be canceled as a snowstorm was predicted. Despite the weather warning, he turned up. We had a wonderful conversation over two hours. To be fair to him, he didn't exactly say that America lacked a long-term strategy toward China, but that was the message he conveyed over lunch. This is also the big message of his own book, On China.
* Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America: Sharpening the American Military's Competitive Edge, https://dod.defense.gov/Portals /1/Documents/pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf.
+ Michael Kranz, "The Director of the FBI Says the Whole of Chinese Society Is a Threat to the US-and That Americans Must Step Up to Defend Themselves," Business Insider, February 13, 2018, https://www.businessinsider.sg/china-threat-to-america-fbi-director -warns-2018-2.
+ George Soros, "Will Trump Sell Out the U.S. on Huawei?," Wall Street Journal, Sep tember 9, 2019.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/will-trump-sell-out-the-u-s-on-huawei-11568068495
Introduction -3-
By contrast, America thought hard and deep before it plunged into the Cold War against the Soviet Union. The master strategist who formulated America's successful containment strategy against the Soviet Union was George Kennan. The strategy was first publicly spelled out in the famous essay he wrote in Foreign Affairs under the pseudonym Mr. X, derived from his "long telegram" written in February 1946. Kennan wrote this when he was serving in the critical post of director of the Policy Planning Staff in the State Department, whose key mission is long-term strategic planning.
The director of policy planning in the State Department from September 2018 to August 2019 was Professor Kiron Skinner of Carnegie Mellon University. In a public panel discussion on April 29, 2019, she revealed that in response to the resurgence of China, her department was still trying to work out a comprehensive strategy to match the one spelled out by her predecessor, Kennan.
When I served in the Singapore Foreign Service, I was also assigned to write long-term strategy papers for the Singapore government. The big lesson I learned from Singapore's three exceptional geopolitical masters (Lee Kuan Yew, Goh Keng Swee, and S. Rajaratnam) was that the first step to formulate any long-term strategy is to frame the right questions. If one gets the questions wrong, the answers will be wrong. Most importantly, as Rajaratnam taught me, in formulating such questions, one must always "think the unthinkable."
In this spirit of "thinking the unthinkable," I would like to suggest ten areas that provoke questions that the policy planning staff should address. Having met George Kennan once in his office in the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, in the late 1990s, I believe that he would favor confronting head-on the toughest issues that lie ahead.
THE BIG TEN
1. With 4 percent of the world's population, America's share of the global GDP was close to 50 percent at the end of World War II. Throughout the Cold War, the GDP of the Soviet Union came close in size to that of America, reaching only 40 percent that of America's at its peak." Could America's GDP become smaller than China 's in the next thirty years? If so, what strategic changes will America have to make when it no longer is the world's dominant economic power?
2. Should America's primary goal be to improve the livelihood of its 330 million citizens or to preserve its primacy in the international system? If there are contradictions between the goals of preserving primacy and improving well-being, which should take priority?
3. In the Cold War, America's heavy defense expenditures proved prudent as they forced the Soviet Union, a country with a smaller economy, to match America's military expenses. In the end, this helped to bankrupt the Soviet Union. China learned a lesson from the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is restraining its defense expenditures while focusing on economic development. Is it wise for America to continue investing heavily in its defense budget? Or should it cut down its defense expenses and its involvement in expensive foreign wars and instead invest more in improving social services and rejuvenating national infrastructure? Does China want America to increase or reduce its defense expenditures?
4. America did not win the Cold War on its own. It formed solid alliances with its Western partners in NATO and cultivated key
* Robert O. Work and Greg Grant, Beating the Americans at Their Own Game: An Offset Strategy with Chinese Characteristics, Center for a New American Society, 2019, https:// s3.amazonaws.com/files.cnas.org/documents/CNAS-Report-Work-Offset-final-B.pdf ?mtime=20190531090041.
[ Beating the Americans at their Own Game
An Offset Strategy with Chinese Characteristics
Authors: Robert O. Work and Greg Grant
CNAS 1/2
About the Authors
ROBERT O. WORK is the Distinguished Senior Fellow for Defense and National Security at the Center for a New American Security and the owner of TeamWork, LLC, which specializes in national security affairs and future of warfare. Mr. Work. previously served as the Deputy Secretary of Defense, where he was responsible for overseeing the day-to-day business of the Pentagon and developing the department's $600 billion defense program. He is widely credited for his work with leaders in the department and the intelligence community on the "Third Offset Strategy," which aimed to restore U.S. conventional overmatch over its strategic rivals and adversaries. He was awarded DoD's Distinguished Public Service Award (twice), the National Intelligence Distinguished Public Service Award, and the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Joint Distinguished Civilian Service Award.
GREG GRANT is an Adjunct Senior Fellow for the Defense Program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). He brings eight years of experience working in the Department of Defense in addition to several years working as a journalist covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In his current role, he is a Senior Principal at MITRE's National Security Sector focused on the operational implications of emerging technologies and their impact on the changing character of warfare. Previously, he was Senior Director of Strategy at Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx). He also served as Special Assistant to Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work helping him develop the department's "Third Offset Strategy."
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to extend a special thanks to Susanna Blume for her tireless work in helping to get this report over the finish line. The authors would also like to thank Elbridge Colby, Loren DeJonge Schulman, Christopher Dougherty, Dr. Frank Hoffman, and anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback on portions of this report. They would also like to thank Adam Routh, Molly Parrish, and Yashar Parsie for editing and designing the report. The statements made and views expressed are solely those of the authors. Any errors of fact, omission, or interpretation are the author's alone. CNAS does not take institutional positions.
About the Defense Program
Over the past 10 years, CNAS has defined the future of U.S. defense strategy. Building on this legacy, the CNAS Defense team continues to develop high-level concepts and concrete recommendations to ensure U.S. military preeminence into the future and to reverse the erosion of U.S. military advantages vis-à-vis China, and to a lessera extent Russia. Specific areas of study include concentrating on great-power competition, developing a force structure and innovative operational concepts adapted this more challenging era, and making hard choices to effect necessary change.
Introduction
During the Cold War, the U.S. military relied on technological superiority to "offset" the Soviet Union's advantages in time, space, and force size. Our military-technical edge allowed the U.S. Joint Force to adopt force postures and operational concepts that largely compensated for the Soviet military's numerical conventional advantage without needing to match it man-for-man or tank-for-tank. After the Cold War ended, this same military-technical advantage provided the U.S. military a decisive conventional overmatch against regional adversaries for over two decades.
Now, however, the "rogue" regional powers that have preoccupied U.S. attention for so long have been replaced by two great powers with substantially greater capabilities. A resurgent and revanchist Russia and a rising, increasingly more powerful China are taking aggressive actions that threaten regional security and stability and challenge the existing international order. Without question, of these two great-power competitors, China poses the greater challenge over the long term. Since about 1885, the United States never has faced a competitor or even group of competitors with a combined Gross Domestic Product (GDP) larger than its own. China surpassed the United States in purchasing power parity in 2014 and is on track to have the world's largest GDP in absolute terms by 2030. In comparison, our Cold War adversary, the Soviet Union, was hobbled by unsustainable economic contradictions that ultimately crumbled under pressure. At the height of its power, its GDP was roughly 40 percent the size of the United States'.¹
GDP (current US$ in trillions)¹
United States = USD$19 trillions
China = USD$12 trillions
The United States has not faced a competitor with a GDP greater than 40 percent of its own since 1885.² According to 2017 figures, China's economy measured roughly 63 percent of the U.S. economy when comparing GDP.³
If that is not concerning enough for U.S. strategic planners, Chinese technological capabilities are growing as rapidly as its economic power. The Soviets were never able to match, much less overcome, America's technological superiority. The same may not be true for China-certainly not for lack of trying. Indeed, China is keenly focused on blunting the U.S. military's technological superiority, even as it strives to achieve technological parity, and eventually technological dominance.
Chinese strategists do not explicitly describe their aims in this manner. Nevertheless, after considering what the Chinese military has accomplished technologically in little more than two decades and what they plan to do in the decades to come, any objective assessment must at least consider the possibility that the U.S. Joint Force is close to becoming the victim of a deliberate, patient, and robustly resourced military-technical offset strategy. The purpose of this paper is to describe this strategy and outline its key lines of effort.
Chinese technological capabilities are growing as rapidly as its economic power. The Soviets were never able to match, much less overcome, America's technological superiority. The same may not be true for China.
U.S. Cold War Offset Strategies
Since World War II, the United States has relied on a decisive edge in the military-technical balance to offset the numerical advantage in conventional forces often enjoyed by its adversaries and competitors. This preference grew out if its experience fighting the Axis powers. Dwight Eisenhower put it well, saying shortly after World War II, "While some of our Allies were compelled to throw up a wall of flesh and blood as their chief defense against the aggressors' onslaught, we were able to use machines and technology to save lives."⁴ With respect to state-on-state warfare, a military-technical advantage contributes to a comfortable conventional military overmatch at the tactical and operational levels of war. And the stronger the perceived conventional overmatch, the stronger one's conventional deterrence posture. Having a decisive overmatch is especially important when confronting nuclear-armed great powers, where a weakened conventional deterrence coulda prompt more aggressive strategic probing that might lead to an overt confrontation, with the attendant risks of nuclear escalation.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union pursued a deterrent approach reliant on overwhelming numbers in conventional forces, embodied in the old military adage that "quantity has a quality all of its own." But from the outset of the Cold War, President Eisenhower refused to pay the economic penalty associated with trying to match the Soviet Union man-for-man or tank-for-tank. Instead, Ike* (the given name or nickname for Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969) leaned on his World War II experience-as well as the early U.S. nuclear monopoly-to confront Soviet conventional numerical superiority with a smaller military armed with missiles, rockets, and artillery shells tipped with low-yield atomic warheads. In other words, Eisenhower turned to battlefield atomic weapons to deter a Warsaw Pact conventional attack.⁵ This was America's first Cold War Offset Strategy.
By the early 1970s, the deterrent power of the First Offset Strategy was being undermined by two developments. The first was that the Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal was every bit as powerful as that of the United States. Under these circumstances, early use of tactical nuclear weapons was no longer a credible threat; the danger of nuclear escalation was simply too great. Second, during the 1960s and 1970s the Soviets modernized their already numerically superior conventional assault forces arrayed along the inter-German border, adding thousands of new tanks, armored personnel carriers, air-defense missiles, aircraft, and artillery that were qualitatively equal to their NATO counterparts.
The late Secretary of Defense Harold Brown (pictured here), together with Director for Defense Research and Engineering William Perry, recognized in the 1970s the need for a Second Offset Strategy, which centered around the revolution in precision-guided conventional munitions. (Department of Defense)
Secretary of Defense Harold Brown and William Perry, his Director for Defense Research and Engineering, therefore concluded NATO's deterrent posture eroding, and drastic action was needed to restore it. One idea was to attack and reduce the massed Warsaw Pact tank armies before they reached NATO's front-line defenses, making it more likely those defenses could hold. Brown and Perry thus looked to several emerging technologies then under development to give the U.S. Joint Force and its NATO allies the ability to "look deep and shoot deep." The result of these efforts is now referred to as the Second Offset Strategy.⁶
The Second Offset Strategy was the offspring of the Pentagon's Long-Range Research and Development Planning Program (LRRDPP). After considering and rejecting a new family of nuclear weapons and studying the use of conventional guided munitions in Vietnam and the Middle East, the members of the LRRDPP concluded that the United States should pursue conventional weapons capable of "near zero miss." Their report was complemented by a 1976 Defense Science Board study that proposed developing a "deep strike system" able to target and attack Warsaw Pact forces still far from NATO front lines with conventional guided munitions dispensing tank killing sub-munitions.⁷
U.S. AIR FORCE
Airborne targeting radar, such as that provided by the E-8 Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System, underwrote the Second Offset Strategy's deep strike kill chain. (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) 1991 . Details here .
Watch video here
In 1978, Perry directed the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to integrate the various deep strike technologies and demonstrate their battlefield potential. The resulting "Assault Breaker" program combined the Pave Mover airborne targeting radar, missiles, and air-delivered bombs with guided anti-armor submunitions, and a ground-based data processing station that linked the two. The data processing or "attack coordination center" was derived from the joint services' developmental Battlefield Exploitation and Target Acquisition (BETA) project-an early attempt to demonstrate the feasibility of processing tactical battlefield information, fusing it into actionable intelligence, and passing accurate targeting information in near-real time to Army missile attack units.⁸
All these components came together in 1982, when Assault Breaker demonstrated on a small scale what U.S. force designers now refer to as an operational battle network employing conventional guided munitions. And, as historian Norman Friedman noted, Assault Breaker was nothing less than a disaster for Soviet strategists who now "believed that their American rivals were scientific magicians; what they said they could do, they could do." The Soviet General Staff concluded the appearance of operational battle networks that employed guided munitions- what they called reconnaissance-strike complexes-had triggered a new military-technical revolution. In this new warfighting regime, accurately directed conventional guided munitions could achieve battlefield effects comparable with tactical nuclear weapons. Its emergence thus helped strengthen NATO's conventional deterrence and end the Cold War without the need for a major NATO force buildup. As Brown put it: "[the U.S.] is better at technology than we are at mass."¹⁰
Thankfully, the U.S. military never had to test this proposition in an all-out battle against Soviet forces in Europe. But it did demonstrate the potential power of a guided munitions battle network against a capable Iraqi Army equipped with Russian and Chinese weapons and trained in Soviet doctrine. During Operation Desert Storm in 1991, Iraqi heavy formations were virtually reduced to an array of targets and aim-points waiting to be serviced. The 100-hour ground war that followed five weeks of aerial bombardment with both guided and unguided munitions was a rout. And even though only 8 percent of all conventional weapons employed in battle by the United States were guided, armies the world over immediately grasped that a new military paradigm had emerged-and the U.S. Joint Force had a powerful conventional warfighting advantage that would be hard to duplicate, much less match in scope and scale.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Second Offset Strategy served the U.S. military well; it afforded the Joint Force a dominant conventional overmatch over any potential regional opponent for more than two decades. But the nature of strategic competitions is that serious competitors do not simply cede military advantage to their rivals. This is especially true of emerging and great powers, which understood if they were to compete against U.S. operational battle networks they would have to develop a counter to them first, and then develop reconnaissance-strike complexes of their own. That is exactly what China, determined to break from its status as a second-rate military power, set out to accomplish.
A U.S. F-14A Tomcat aircraft flies over an oil well fire set by retreating Iraqi troops during Operation Desert Storm. The brief ground war demonstrated the might of U.S. operational battle networks to both the U.S. Joint Force and its adversaries. (Lt. Steve Gozzo, Department of Defense)
A PLA parade commemorates the force's 90th anniversary in September 2017. The PLA's massive modernization programs seek to counter U.S. technological advantages. (Defense Intelligence Agency) Watch video here . [The 2017 PLA Day parade was a military parade at Zhurihe Training Base in Inner Mongolia, on 1 August 2017 to celebrate the 90th anniversary of founding of the People's Liberation Army and the Nanchang uprising that caused its founding. ]
An Offset Strategy with Chinese Characteristics
Although China was a de facto strategic partner of the United States during the latter two decades of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union automatically made the United States the pacing strategic threat for Chinese military planners. Soon thereafter, in 1993, with America's impressive demonstration of military might in Desert Storm fresh in mind, President Jiang Zemin directed the People's Liberation Army (PLA) to prepare to fight "local wars under high technology conditions."" He did not have to name the country that represented the most likely potential adversary; the recent stunning results of Desert Storm made that plain.
Planning for local wars under high technology conditions would be shaped by two key assumptions, First, the wars would be limited in geographic scope, duration, and objectives. Second, the wars would be dominated by high-technology weaponry, particularly by guided weapon attacks like those demonstrated during Desert Storm. The implications of these two assumptions focused the subsequent development of PLA strategy and doctrine on short, intense, highly destructive wars. And a key lesson China took from the 1991 Desert Storm campaign was to strike hard and fast during war's earliest stages, as initiative once lost would be all but impossible to regain against an opponent capable of 24-hour, all weather guided munitions bombardment.²
From the very beginning, then, although not referred to in such a way, the Chinese decided to develop an offset strategy with Chinese characteristics. Instead of pursuing an offset to counter U.S. numerical advantages, it would instead aim to offset the American technological advantage in some way. These plans were given new urgency due to American actions early in the post Cold War era. In 1996, in response to Chinese missile tests over and into the waters surrounding Taiwan, the United States assembled the biggest naval show of force in the Western Pacific since Vietnam. It sent two carrier battle groups steaming through the Taiwan Strait, demonstrating in vivid fashion that the Chinese were incapable of even tracking U.S. naval surface groups, let alone possessing the means to stop a U.S. intervention to defend Taiwan.³ Then, on 7 May 1999, during the NATO bombing campaign against Serbia, the US. forces dropped five guided bombs on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese citizens and wounding another 20. The United States apologized for the incident, saying it had provided the bombs with incorrect coordinates. The Chinese rejected the apology, believing U.S. joint battle networks incapable of making such a mistake.¹⁴
Both national humiliation and anger caused Chinese leaders to accelerate their plans to offset the U.S. military-technical advantage. But the events in the Taiwan Strait and over Yugoslavia underscored to Chinese military planners just how far they had to go before they could hope to face the U.S. Joint Force on equal footing. Their sensor grids were incapable of long-range targeting; their command, control, communications, and intelligence (C3I) grids were incapable of sensor fusion and directing effects-based operations; and their effects grids relied almost entirely on unguided or unsophisticated guided weapons.¹⁵ Fixing all these problems would take time.
●Year — Military expenditure (current USD in billions)
●1990 — $15 b
●1995 —$ 20 b
●2000 —$ 30 b
●2005 —$ 50 b
●2010 —$ 120 b
●2015 —$ 222 b
●2017 —$ 235 b
PRC Defense Expenditures¹⁶
Annual Chinese defense spending jumped by at least 620 percent in real terms between 1996 and 2015 - an average annual increase of 11 percent.
With the benefit of hindsight, then, it seems evident a critical aspect of China's offset strategy was the recognition in the mid-1990s by PLA senior leadership that they were engaged in a long-term military-technical competition with the United States, and their strategic aims would necessarily be achieved through a series of distinct temporal phases:
■ Phase One would see the Chinese military compete with the United States from a position of technological inferiority. Chinese military writings in the late 1990s and early 2000s explored and emphasized ways to defeat a more technologically advanced adversary, until such time that their modernization efforts were able to narrow the advantages enjoyed by the U.S. military. In particular, the PLA would have to accommodate some period of time in which it lacked "deep and multi- directional strike capabilities" comparable to those of the U.S. military.¹⁷
■ Phase Two would occur when the Chinese achieved a position of rough technological parity in guided munitions and battle network warfare, making it far more likely China might be able to deter a U.S. military intervention in the East Asian littoral.
■And Phase Three would represent the desired end state, when the Chinese military would establish a position of outright technological superiority over U.S. military forces, enabling the PLA to confidently move out of its first island chain bastion and push U.S. forces out to the second island chain and even beyond.
The temporal phasing of China's military-technical offset strategy would be supported by a sustained, robust increase in Chinese military spending. Annual Chinese defense spending jumped by at least 620 percent in real terms between 1996 and 2015 - an average annual increase of 11 percent.¹⁸ Such a massive increase in military spending was bound to translate into real improvements in military capability and capacity. But these improvements proved strikingly more effective because the PLA's prioritization of approaches, systems and forces were shaped and guided by a disciplined and coherent military-technical offset strategy. The focus of that strategy was to dramatically raise the costs to the United States of intervening in Chinese military operations in the Western Pacific so that Washington would deem such action prohibitive. In this regard, an analysis of the precise investments made by the PLA since 1996 suggests China's offset strategy has five reinforcing lines of effort. These are:
■ Industrial and technical espionage and civil-military fusion to rapidly acquire comparable military capabilities to those developed over decades by the United States so that the PLA could compete operationally on something approaching an even footing.
■ Developing the capabilities and concepts to conduct "systems destruction warfare," -the crippling of the U.S. battle network's command, control, communication, and intelligence systems.
■ Attacking effectively first by amassing an arsenal of long-range precision missiles and advanced targeting systems that provide a high probability of penetrating U.S. battle network defenses in the opening stages of a conflict.
■ Developing "Assassin's Mace" capabilities-what DoD terms "black capabilities"-that are held in reserve until unveiled in the event of war, to surprise the adversary with attacks from unexpected vectors.
Becoming the world leader in artificial intelligence and then deploying that technology for military superiority.
The following sections address each of these lines of effort in turn.
Industrial and Technical Espionage and Civil-Military Fusion
The central aim of the Chinese offset strategy was to catch up with the United States in the technological competition as quickly as possible. This goal established the foundation for all Chinese offset efforts: industrial and technical espionage.
As a recent report on Chinese industrial espionage stated, this leg of the Chinese offset strategy would be a "deliberate, state-sponsored [effort] to circumvent the costs of research, overcome cultural disadvantages and 'leapfrog' to the forefront by leveraging the creativity of other nations.¹⁹ Senior U.S. government officials recently reported that the Chinese penetrated the network of a U.S. defense contractor and recovered a trove of sensitive data on U.S. Navy undersea warfare capabilities.²º This is just the latest instance of one of the most widespread, relentless, and successful industrial and technological espionage programs in history. Espionage efforts are both supported and exploited by a process identified in Chinese writings as "civil-military fusion," whereby Chinese officials work to routinize licit and illicit transfers of technology for military applications through academic and commercial interactions with the United States and other technologically advanced Western states. As the U.S. State Department reported, since 2009, this effort has accelerated and is now a "whole-of-nation, national-level strategy to 'fuse' the Chinese military and civilian industrial complexes, from top to bottom."²¹
Chinese leaders are forthright about the aims of these efforts. Speaking to China's civil-military fusion, a State Department official recently said:
Driving this enormous effort is an acute Chinese perception that their country's 19th century downfall resulted from falling behind along the technology and doctrinal curves that defined the "revolutions in military affairs" (RMA) that dominated and shaped warfare across the 20th century . China is determined not to be left behind in the next RMA, which Chinese officials believe to be already under way.²²
In other words, Chinese leaders see industrial and technical espionage and civil-military fusion as the key means to jump-start Chinese technical advancements, without having to invest in costly R&D of new technologies. In this regard, studies have concluded that the time to move from a prototype to a fielded system takes about the same time in both China and the United States. For equivalent systems, however, industrial and technical espionage has helped the Chinese military reduce the time and money spent going from concept to research and development and prototyping. As a result, illicit transfers of cutting-edge technology, reverse engineering, and civil-military fusion have enabled the Chinese to field advanced technical capabilities much faster than U.S. intelligence agencies originally expected.²³ It's no coincidence that the PLA's newest front-line fighters mimic design features of the U.S. built F-22 Raptor or F-35 Lightning II, or that some of their unmanned aerial vehicles are the spitting image of the Predator and Reaper drones. In effect, by stealing and exploiting U.S. and Western technical secrets, they have been able to level the technological playing field with the U.S. Joint Force, in some key military capabilities, in little less than two decades-a relative blink of an eye in a peacetime, long-term strategic competition.²⁴
Illicit technology transfers and civil-military fusion have enabled China's rapid technological advances, including in fifth generation aircraft such as the Chengdu J-20. (Sino Defence)
Chengdu J-20 Vs. F-35 Lightning II Comparison, BVR & Dogfight (Who Wins) here
Is China's Stealthy J-20
Superior to the US F-35
and F-22?
J-20 vs. F-35
The Chinese government-backed
Global Times newspaper describes
an incident wherein the J-20 and
F-35 flew in close proximity to one
another as part of routine People’s
Liberation Army exercises in the
region.
The paper quotes comments from
Air Force Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach,
Commander of US Pacific Air
Forces, saying the US pilots were
“impressed” with the J-20. The
US general’s quote reportedly
came from an online event
broadcast on youtube, the paper
says.
“We got relatively close to the J-20s
along with our F-35s in the East
China Sea, and we’re relatively
impressed with the command and
control that was associated with
the J-20,” Wilsbach reportedly said,
according to the Chinese paper.
Wilsbach also reportedly said the
Chinese pilots were “flying the
J-20s pretty well,” according to
the paper.
However, when placed in a more
complete context, Wilsbach’s
comments are by no means
unusual, as senior Air Force and
Pentagon leaders often point out
the technological abilities of
Chinese weapons systems as part
of a vital need to ensure continued
US modernization.
F-35s
However, this by no means indicates
that the Chinese 5th-generation
aircraft actually outperforms or even
rivals an F-35. Apart from the J-20s
visible external configuration, and
many Chinese press reports about
its improved domestically-built
engine and fast-improving
performance, there may be little
known information about the PLA
aircraft’s mission systems,
computing, sensors or weapons
interfaces.
Clearly its stealth exterior would
suggest it may be an F-35 and F-22
“copycat” in terms of its blended
wing-body and rounded fuselage.
However, apart from its apparent
stealth properties, any true margin of
difference between the two aircraft
would likely reside in less visible
technological variables such as
sensor range and fidelity, on board
data processing and weapons
targeting precision, among other
things.
Two J-20 fighters breaking formation
Should Wilsbach’s comment about
the J-20s command and control be
accurate, that does introduce an
interesting and rare window of
observation into perhaps previously
unknown elements of the J-20. If in
fact the Chinese aircraft appeared to
maneuver with an effective
command and control system, that
would indicate that perhaps at least
some of the J-20s mission systems
and computing are effective.
At the same time, it seems important
to point out that regardless of
potentially being “impressed” with
the J-20 and its flying, Wilsbach
offered no input or comment
regarding the question as to whether
he thinks the Chinese 5th-generation
aircraft in anyway resembles the
F-35.
Nonetheless, China claims its
fifth-generation, stealthy J-20 fighter
jet is now taking yet another
massive step toward war
preparedness by flying in what
could be referred to as “full stealth”
mode.
A report from the Chinese-
government backed Global Times
says the J-20 was “spotted” flying
without a Luneburg lens, a small
device used to intentionally expose a
stealth aircraft to others in
situations like training or
non-combat flights.
Does this mean the aircraft has
taken new steps toward combat and
operational “readiness?”
Furthermore, just how stealthy is it?
J-20 & F-22: Wingspan, Speed &
Weapons
The Chinese J-20 certainly appears
slightly larger than an F-22 or F-35
stealth jet fighter, given its dual wing
configuration, an engineering
method employed to optimize air
flow and achieve improved
aerodynamic performance.
While the wing configurations of a
J-20 and F-22 are decidedly
different, the J-20 fuselage itself
appears to resemble that of an F-22
with two engine exhaust and
blended, curved or rounded main
body exterior.
What would it mean to truly rival or
surpass the F-22 stealth fighter?
Now that the J-20 has been flow in
full stealth capacity and modified
slightly with the integration of a new
engine, some might wonder if the
Chinese aircraft could achieve any
kind of “supercruise” capability that
has—so far—been unique to the F-22.
The F-22 has a forty-four-foot wing
span and is, at certain high altitudes,
able to hit speeds as fast as Mach
2.25. Various data spec sheets and
articles cite that, by comparison, a
J-20 is several meters longer but
built with a similar 44-ft wingspan.
The articles, in Air Force Technology
and The National Interest say the
J-20 can reach speeds of Mach 2.55.
It is unsure if this is confirmed per se
and speed metrics don’t necessarily
translate into maneuverability or
sustained speed.
Video Above: Air War 2050:
5th & 6th Gen Stealth Fighter
Attacks to Continue
Regardless of a J-20’s speed, a key
F-22 advantage is that it not only
can reach supercruise speeds but
also sustain them as well without
needing afterburners, a major
technical enhancement. Also, a
slightly shorter, sleeker, and more
streamlined fuselage, coupled with
potentially unmatched levels of
propulsion, thrust, and high-speed
maneuverability, could very well give
the F-22 a decisive advantage.
The F-22 is also armed with
massively upgraded weapons such
as the now software-enhanced
AIM-120D and AIM-9X air-to-air and
air-to-ground or surface weapons.
Ultimately, the F-22’s advantage may
reside in its often discussed role as
an “aerial quarterback,” described by
innovators as an ability to exchange
real-time, two-way information amid
warfare with both fourth-generation
and fifth-generation American and
allied warplanes
The Chinese People’s Liberation
Army Air Force plans to continually
modify the engine of their J-20 5th
Gen stealth fighter to the point
wherein it can match, rival, or
potentially out-perform the U.S. F-22.
J-20 & F-22 Engines
Many U.S. engineers and military
leaders maintain that the speed,
maneuverability, technological
sophistication and performance
specs of the F-22 are simply
unparalleled, yet many of course are
acutely familiar with China’s fast-
growing technological sophistication.
A report months ago in the South
China Morning Post quotes an
unspecified “military insider” (seems
to indicate a Chinese military insider)
explaining that the Chinese military
will no longer use the Russian
AL-31F engine in its J-20 but rather
replace it with the WS-10C, a
modified version of its domestically-
built WS-10 engine.
“It’s impossible for China to rely on
the Russian engine, because Russia
asked China to purchase more Su-35
fighter jets in exchange for the
AL-31F engine deals,” the insider,
who requested anonymity, said in the
paper. “The key problem is – except
for its longer combat range
advantage – the radar, navigation
system and other electronic
components on the Su-35s are
inferior to Chinese aircraft like the
J-16 strike fighter.”
Interestingly, the modifications to the
Chinese WS--10 do not, according to
the insider, go far enough.
“The air force (presumably Chinese)
is not happy with the final results,
demanding that engine technicians
modify it until it meets all standards,
for example matching the F119
engine used by the Americans’
F-22 Raptor,” the South China Sea
Morning Post writes.
What would it mean to truly rival or
surpass the F-22? Does this indicate
that the emerging, or soon to
emerge, modified Chinese engine
would achieve an F-22-like
“supercruise” ability to sustain Mach
speeds for long periods of time
without afterburners? Does it mean
it can vector and maneuver in a
manner somewhat analogous to
an F-22?
J-20 & F-35 Fuselage
Well that may not be fully known, yet
it seems there are a few things that
can be observed; the J-20 fuselage,
with its double-wing configuration,
may be somewhat stealthy, yet it
does appear larger and somewhat
less maneuverable than a more
streamlined F-22 fuselage.
The F-22 has a 44-ft wingspan and
is, at certain high altitudes, able to
hit speeds as fast as Mach 2.25.
Various media reports cite that, by
comparison, a J-20 is several meters
longer but built with a similar 44-ft
wingspan; the reports, from Air Force
Technology and The National Interest
say the J-20 can reach speeds of
Mach 2.55.
Not sure if this can be or is
confirmed per se, and speed metrics
don’t necessarily translate into
maneuverability or sustained speed.
A key F-22 advantage is that it not
only can reach those speeds but can
sustain them as well. Also, a slightly
shorter, sleeker, and more
streamlined fuselage, coupled with
potentially unmatched levels of
propulsion, thrust, and high-speed
maneuverability, could very well give
the F-22 a decisive advantage.
Weapons integration, sensor range,
EW, and targeting are perhaps the
most defining attributes likely to help
distinguish which aircraft, the J-20 or
F-22, would prevail in an air-to-air
engagement or out-perform the
other in combat.
An ability to see, attack, out-
maneuver, and destroy an enemy
aircraft at further ranges and with
more targeting precision and sensor
fidelity would likely prove to perhaps
be the most decisive factor in any
combat engagement.
The F-22’s ongoing 3.2b software
upgrade has produced
now-operational weapons upgrades
to the AIM-120D and AIM-9X air-fired
weapons. The enhancements greatly
improve targeting precision,
accuracy, guidance systems, and
range for the weapons, potentially
bringing as-of-yet unseen combat
advantages. Some of the
enhancements to the weapons,
perhaps of greatest significance,
include anti-jamming RF
technologies built to adjust
frequency to sustain weapon
targeting and thwart attempted
jamming.
The real question then, is despite
China’s known propensity for rapid
technological advancements, does
the J-20 have any kind of air-to-air
thrust and maneuverability,
supercruise sustained acceleration,
or advanced sensors and weapons
systems sufficient to rival an F-22?
J-20 Combat Threat
Regardless of its comparative status
related to the F-22, the J-20 presents
a wide-array of threats. Could the
Chinese J-20 5th generation stealth
fighter succeed in destroying crucial
U.S. tankers, surveillance planes or
airborne command posts?
The interesting question was posed
by a London-based analyst cited in
an article from Forbes magazine,
raising the idea of whether such a
prospect would, in fact, be true. The
Forbes article makes the point that
U.S. and allied air assets, at a deficit
in terms of actual numbers, would
rely heavily upon less stealthy
surveillance assets such as an E-2D
Hawkeye, Triton maritime drone or
KC-46 tanker.
“In wartime, the People’s Liberation
Army Air Force likely would sortie
J-20s to fly through the clutter of
raging air battles along the Chinese
coast, in the hope that the Mighty
Dragons might punch through to the
open air space of the western Pacific
Ocean,” the Forbes article states.
However, could this actually be
possible? Most likely not for a
range of possible reasons.
The analyst cited in the article,
Justin Bronk with the London-based
Royal United Service Institute,
makes the point that J-20s would be
outmatched in the air by U.S. F-22s
deployed to challenge them.
Bronk writes that the J-20 “is a
heavier, less agile aircraft that will be
more expensive to build and operate.
It also cannot compete with the
extreme performance or agility of
the F-22.”
Bronk makes what appears to be a
valid point, as the J-20 does not
appear by any estimation to operate
with an ability to rival the U.S. F-22.
However, what if there are not
enough F-22s? Or they are not
deployed in the right place at the
right time? While the U.S. Air Force
does have more than 180 F-22s, the
F-22 production lines were
truncated prematurely according to
many observers and they certainly
might not be in the right places at
sufficient numbers in the event of
war with China.
However, many Navy and Air Force
war planners are exploring the idea
of using F-22s to defend surface
assets such as carriers, and Bronk’s
point is strongly reinforced by the
existence of the Navy’s emerging
MQ-25 Stingray carrier launched
re-fueler. Not only would this
decrease the need for potentially
vulnerable larger KC-46 tankers, but
they could also massively extend the
operational reach, and therefore
dwell time, of F-22s looking to cover
the seemingly endless expanse of
the Pacific. The widely discussed
“tyranny of distance” known to
characterize the Pacific, making it
essential to refuel assets such as an
F-35C or F-22 needing to sustain
operations well beyond ranges
reachable without refueling in the air.
In the event that F-22 and F-35
combat, attack, and defensive
maneuvers were better enabled by
sleek, fast, carrier-launched
re-fuelers operating at sea in closer
proximity to ongoing airwar, J-20s
would be quite challenged to
perform the missions envisioned by
Bronk. Also, the Pentagon already
operates some very stealthy drones
and of course plans to operate even
stealthier drones in the future,
making forward surveillance more
possible in hostile environments in
which Chinese J-20s would try to
attack reconnaissance drones.
J-20 & F-35 Design
Last year, an overhead satellite
picture showed an interesting and
significant view of the Chinese J-20
stealth multi-role fifth-generation
fighter, offering an informative view
of the top of the fuselage.
The images can be seen in an
overhead satellite picture
published by The Aviationist.
The first thing that jumps out is the
dual-wing configuration, meaning
the aircraft has a short set of
sloped, horizontal wings followed
by larger structures aligning across
the back end of the body. Perhaps
this represents an effort to break
up or smooth out the airflow
passing on either side of the
fuselage; airflow at high speeds
can generate heat signatures
potentially vulnerable to detection
from enemy air defenses.
The F-35 and F-22, by contrast, have
singular gradually sloped-horizontal
wings. A shorter protruding, yet
aligned or sloped wing, followed by
longer wings, might represent an
attempt to improve stealth
performance.
A dual-wing formation could, it
seems, interrupt the speed of the
aerodynamic airflow on each side, potentially better managing
temperature. Stealth properties can
be optimized if temperatures
emitting from or surrounding the
aircraft align with or somewhat
match the surrounding temperature,
thereby concealing or removing
thermal signature.
The structure also includes the kind
of conformal, blended wing-body
shape of many fifth-generation
fighters, complete with rounded
back end exhaust emissions.
Interestingly, the J-20 reveals a dual
-engine configuration, something
which mirrors an F-22 as opposed
to an F-35.
This may indicate an attempt to
achieve an F-22-like supercruise
technology that enables sustained
speeds without needing an
afterburner, something that helps
expand mission time and improve
aerial performance.
Also, the top of the J-20 has dual
rounded “humps” that look nearly
identical to the top of an F-22. In
contrast, the F-35 has a single
rounded parabola like fuselage on
top, whereas the J-20 and F-22
reveal a flat upper fuselage blended
into two separate rounded engine
pathways. This kind of engineering
might also be an effort to maximize
maneuvering, vectoring and aerial
dogfighting capabilities similar to
those known to be possible with an
F-22.
All of this raises significant questions
about various characteristics of the
J-20, such as its speed, stealth
performance and maneuverability.
While much of the specifics of the
J-20 could simply remain a mystery,
the aircraft may not truly rival the
F-22 or F-35, despite the apparent
external similarities. After all, while
a stealth fighter’s ultimate success
is related to stealth configuration,
its true margin of superiority may lie
in its sensors, weapons, avionics,
temperature management and
internal construction.
Of course it is not yet clear just how
many J-20s China will build, or how
fast they plan to build them.
Nonetheless, slower or smaller
scale J-20 production by no means
erases or largely minimizes the
growing threat presented by
China’s Air Force.
J-20 & F-35 Quantity
While debates and uncertainties
continue to swirl around how agile,
lethal, stealthy and advanced
China’s J-20 stealth fighter may be,
the country may simply have
another challenge crippling its
ability to rival the F-22 and F-35:
There simply may not be enough
J-20s.
Several interesting reports from last
year cited production problems and
delays with J-20 manufacturing,
particularly centered around the
J-20’s “high-thrust turbofan WS-15
engine.” A report from the South
China Morning Post says J-20
engine work has “fallen behind
schedule,” and that China was
“thought to have built about 50
J-20s by the end of 2019, but
problems with the jets engines
delayed production plans.”
If China has in fact produced 50 or
100 its highly touted J-20, that still
falls way short of the U.S.’ current
fleet of ready armed 5th Gen
fighters. Lockheed statements
given to The National Interest report
that the firm has built and delivered
195 F-22s, with 186 of them combat
ready. Made by Lockheed Martin
and Boeing, the F-22 uses two Pratt
& Whitney F119-PW-100 turbofan
engines with afterburners and two-
dimensional thrust vectoring
nozzles, an Air Force statement said.
It is 16-feet tall, 62-feet long and
weighs 43,340 pounds. Its
maximum take-off weight is 83,500;
there is much interesting
discussion comparing F-35 and
F-22 engine thrust to China’s J-2
engine.
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