Worth reading, from the New York Times:
nytimes.com
War Talk Is Cheap. War Isn't. Keep Talking.
By CRAIG S. SMITH
SHANGHAI -- There's been plenty of talk of war between China and Taiwan recently, but the oratory obscures a more concrete calculus -- one based not on missile throw-weight but on dollars and cents. By that calculus, preparations on both sides of the Taiwan Strait remain modest and, according to the experts, will most likely stay that way.
While China has been modestly beefing up its arsenal against Taiwan in hopes of eventually forcing the island to negotiate reunification with the mainland, there has been no dramatic increase in spending that would signal a shift toward a war economy.
One part of the calculus is that in the long run, China can much better afford a future arms race than Taiwan, but is not yet willing to risk the cost to its economic growth. That casts some light on why China has been willing to raise the decibel level of its threats against Taiwan, without dramatically increasing its preparations for a shooting war.
Of course China is modernizing its army, as can be expected of a country its size. But that has been known for some time, and the pace of that modernization remains slow. There is no concerted attempt, for example, to build the kind of amphibious fleet that would be needed to transport an invasion force across the narrow strait -- a project that could take a decade to complete. And China's military spending is still only about a tenth of what the United States spends, or less than 2 percent of the country's gross domestic product. The Soviet Union, by contrast, spent more than 20 percent of its G.D.P. on defense at the height of the cold war.
China has preferred instead to put general economic development ahead of military development, following Deng Xiaoping's maxim that national strength derives from the economy rather than the barrel of a gun. The strategy has served the country well recently as the government ramped up infrastructure spending to slow a slide in economic growth,
something it might not have been as free to do had military spending commanded a larger share of the national budget.
China's military spending has been increasing in recent years -- a sizable ship costs several billion dollars -- but the country is reluctant to allow its army to grow overly dependent on any outside supplier, least of all a historically unstable ally such as Russia, its main source of foreign arms today.
At the same time, stepping up domestic arms production would present problems of its own. China's domestic arms industry has proven abysmal by most measures in areas other than missile, tank and artillery production. The country has been working since the early 1980's to develop a high-tech fighter, the F-10, but has only recently got prototypes into the air.
That's not to say that China isn't seeking to create a genuine military threat with which to scare Taiwan into serious talks. Toward this end, the country has bought from Russia two Sovremenny guided missile destroyers and four diesel electric Kilo-class submarines. It has bought 48 SU-27 advanced fighter jets and has begun assembling kits for 200 more. And it has agreed to buy still more advanced SU-30's.
"Our preparation for war against Taiwan's independence will not stop, regardless of what happens in Taiwan, because we have to prepare for the worst situation," says Shen Dingli, an arms control expert at Fudan University here. "If the U.S. gives Taiwan more weapons," he adds, "this will fan an arms race, but it is an arms race China can afford."
On that count, Mr. Shen appears to be right. China could easily double domestic defense spending without putting an undue strain on its economy. And its fat foreign reserves, which at $155 billion are the largest in the world after Japan's, could pay for much of what China needs from abroad if it wanted to decisively shift the cross-strait balance
of power in its favor.
But that is not something China appears ready to do just yet. Drawing down reserves would increase the country's cost of foreign capital, weaken its currency and further delay economic reforms that depend on eventual convertibility of the yuan. And domestic weapons spending would widen the country's budget deficit and divert resources needed to
keep the overall economy plugging along.
There are other constraints on accelerating the buildup as well.
Both armies, for example, are already struggling to absorb sophisticated arms they can't yet use. This means, on both sides of the strait, that any commitment to new systems stretches out the time frame for an arms race -- and for investing in it.
"Even if China did begin a crash program on some systems, which they haven't begun in my view, it will take at least four to six years for the new systems to enter the inventory," says David Shambaugh, a specialist on the Chinese military at George Washington University. He says it will be several years before China can confidently wield the recently purchased Russian destroyers in a conflict.
In fact, experts say, China is likely to opt for a far cheaper and more focused buildup, one that Taiwan will find itself hard pressed to outrun. Already, the mainland possesses enough short-range ballistic missiles to
overwhelm Taiwan's defenses. That raises the possibility that the United States might develop a broader missile defense system and apply it to Taiwan. But then China could just build more missiles, which cost a fraction of what it costs to shoot them down.
In the face of the threat of a missile attack, Taiwan has requested more powerful arms from the United States -- most recently destroyers equipped with Aegis anti-missile systems and Tomahawk cruise missiles with a striking range well beyond the width of the narrow strait. But here the United States may well think twice, because increasing the weaponry
in the strait could increase the risk of accidental conflict.
"Today, neither side has an air-to-air or cruise missile with a range of more than 40 miles and that creates a buffer, it gives them time to think," says Larry Wortzel, a retired United States Army colonel and former military attach‚ in Beijing who is now at the Heritage Foundation.
And given the economic calculus, pushing China into an arms race is likely only to erode the considerable potential for constructive political dialogue. That potential is also better understood by following economic logic, with Taiwanese businesses having invested more than $40 billion in the mainland and showing interest in investing more.
"In the end, weapons are not going to solve this problem for either side," says Bates Gill, an expert on Chinese weapons at the Brookings Institution. "The attention of all sides needs to focus like a laser beam on the difficult choices of a political answer, not the easy choices of more weapons and more bluster." |
