China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the world’s largest military by headcount, is modernizing. Powered by rapid economic development that has lasted for more than two decades, the new PLA is getting bigger guns and more missiles. A stronger military will eventually allow Beijing to demand greater accommodation from the United States, creating the need for better informed and more proactive policies by the current world leader.
David Shambaugh’s latest work (Modernizing China’s Military: Progress, Problems, and Prospects, University of California Press, 2003) has made an impressive effort to capture the nature, pace, and impact of China’s military modernization. The book is filled with rich data on the status of the PLA at the beginning of the 21st century. For those who are interested in the PLA’s recent history, structure, doctrine, deployment, equipment, and training, the book is both informative and authoritative. As a long-time observer of the PLA, Shambaugh demonstrates a strong grasp of the subject and a remarkable familiarity with the literature, including materials that are not readily available to the public. Moreover, his use of extensive interviews of Chinese officials, officers, and scholars greatly enhances the value of the book.
The book’s findings and presentations are very well substantiated. Students of China’s military and foreign policy will readily accept Shambaugh’s main finding that the PLA is “justifiably” pushing for an ambitious and sustained modernization of its hardware and training but is severely restricted by the lack of funding and the limited access to Western military technologies. Beijing’s political preference has indeed kept its military spending modest for some time. Shambaugh’s description of the PLA’s strategic thinking and threat perception in chapter seven is right on the mark. He argues that a changing and more professional PLA is working with a “comprehensive concept of security” that has a “paramount” emphasis on “domestic stability.” The PLA’s position on the Taiwan issue is described exhaustively and informatively. Furthermore, Shambaugh argues that China’s military modernization can hardly close the widening gap of military technology and capability between the PLA and Western militaries, with the possible exception of nuclear-capable land- and sea-based ballistic missiles.
Although one may question the validity of Shambaugh’s portrayal of a “three way struggle … among the army, party, government”—the Chinese Communist Party and the PRC government are hardly in a “two way” struggle—his analysis of the civil-military relations and the command-and-control structure of the PLA in chapters two and four is certainly among the best and clearest in English writings on the subject. Shambaugh’s presentation of the PLA’s current equipment and deployment is easy to follow and very comprehensive, despite some minor factual errors that are indeed inevitable in a study of this type and scope.
Shambaugh makes a conscious effort to analyze the impact of China’s military modernization in the context of US policy-making. Given his close association with the policy community in Washington, Shambaugh’s work has offered well-constructed guidelines for the US government, especially the Pentagon. He thoughtfully suggests that the United States should have a “military exchange relationship limited essentially to dialogue and interchange, without any exchange of material or training” as long as there are divergent or even conflicting strategic interests between the two countries. Although the book does not discuss the much-altered strategic landscape in the post-September 11 world, especially the new Sino-US “united front” in the war on terrorism and the somewhat relaxed Chinese perception of US “hegemonism,” its analysis supports the recent efforts of resuming military-to-military dialogue and exchanges between Beijing and Washington.
Shambaugh presents strong evidence that although the PLA is getting bigger guns, that is, better conventional weapons, it is still increasingly falling behind the United States and its allies. The PLA is also getting more and bigger missiles, which seems to be a leading concern in Washington and perhaps one “rationale” for the controversial missile defense programs of US President George Bush’s administration. Striving for absolute security and freedom of action through sheer technology vis-à-vis a large and fast-growing state like China may be missing the point. China’s modernizing military is rapidly changing in less tangible ways: a new generation of men in uniform, in sync with the rapidly transforming Chinese society at large, is emerging. Not all PLA planners now “believe China lives in a dangerous neighborhood.”
The PLA is already a formidable force and is likely to become more so. With only about 6 to 12 percent of the US military budget, China is now fully capable of producing and using a complete range of modern weapons, including the much-dreaded “weapons of mass destruction,” though it still lacks some of the more state-of-the-art systems, such as far-range power projection capabilities. The growing Chinese economy and a new spending priority caused by, for example, a nationalistic urge to “solve” the Taiwan issue, may create a military force that will render futile any US effort at absolute security. The challenge, it seems, is not how much more of a lead the United States should strive to build against the PLA. Rather, the question should be how much and in what way the new PLA should be politically pressured and accommodated so that the bigger Chinese guns and missiles are not necessarily a threat to the United States. As Shambaugh asks at the end of the book: “Will the United States and its allies in the Asia-Pacific region be able to coexist peacefully with a stronger China and more modern Chinese military?”
Proactive initiatives by the United States such as seeking to work and co-exist with the modernizing PLA, instead of pursuing unattainable absolute security and superiority, are in order. This idea is not new: the Pentagon abandoned the idea of fighting a ground war in China decades ago, when the PLA had much smaller guns and no missiles. A good knowledge of China’s modernizing military, especially in comparison with China’s neighbors, including India, Japan, and Russia, should allow for a sound policy that may neutralize China’s new guns and missiles by maintaining a dynamic balance between accommodating the new PLA and its demands and protecting the vital interests of the United States and its allies. As the great military strategists Sun Zi and Karl von Clausewitz both argued long ago, military matters are ultimately just an extension of politics. 
