Xue Litai

Social Change and Political Reform in China: Meeting the Challenge of Success

This article discusses how two decades of economic reforms have intensified popular unrest and redefined the composition, interests and political attitudes of Chinas ever more complex social strata. It then analyses some of the fundamental domestic and international issues facing Beijing in the course of those reforms and the social problems that have accompanied economic growth. The Communist Party has responded to the challenges generated by these problems and been forced to undertake more active political reforms or face an even greater loss of its authority. The article explains how the Party under the slogan the “three represents” cast its lot with the emerging beneficiaries of its economic reforms in the belief that only continued rapid development can mitigate the most pressing social problems and ensure stability.

Beijing's Defense Establishment: Solving the Arms-Export Enigma

I T h e international traffic in modern arms is receiving renewed attention. The decline in U.S.-Soviet competition creates opportunities for cooperation among all nations to curb weapon sales. At the same time, the growing possibilities for regional conflicts increase the potential arms market. Although the United States and the Soviet Union are the world’s leading arms suppliers, other countries, particularly the People’s Republic of China (PRC), follow close behind. U.S. ignorance of how and why China exports weapons has hampered efforts to bring the PRC into an arms-export control regime. The success of any such efforts in the future will depend on understanding the how and why, and incorporating that understanding in U.S. policies.’ For many Americans, especially those who followed the Tiananmen drama in 1989, the People’s Republic of China seems to fit the stereotype of an authoritarian dictatorship controlled by a few old men at the top. These Americans imagine a rigidly unified hierarchy dominating all party and state affairs, including military operations. This view affects approaches to China’s arms sales: If Washington can convince senior officials within China’s hierarchy to curtail the sales of sensitive weapons to other countries, such sales will stop. This picture, though partially correct, is misleading. It leaves several questions unanswered: Where is the locus of China‘s decisionmaking on arms sales? Why did the political-military system create arms-exporting companies? How does the system coordinate the arms-sales policy? The answers to these questions, at least to a first approximation, must be found in an analysis of how China’s military high command operates and how it relates to the weapon-export corporations. We begin with this analysis. We then trace the development of the complex web of national, institutional, and personal incentives underlying China’s arms-sales policy. Our

China's Search for a Modern Air Force

For more than fortyeight years, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has sought to build a combat-ready air force.1 First in the Korean War (1950–53) and then again in 1979, Beijing’s leaders gave precedence to this quest, but it was the Gulf War in 1991 coupled with growing concern over Taiwan that most alerted them to the global revolution in air warfare and prompted an accelerated buildup. This study brieoy reviews the history of China’s recurrent efforts to create a modern air force and addresses two principal questions. Why did those efforts, which repeatedly enjoyed a high priority, fail? What have the Chinese learned from these failures and how do they deane and justify their current air force programs? The answers to the arst question highlight changing defense concerns in China’s national planning. Those to the second provide a more nuanced understanding of current security goals, interservice relations, and the evolution of national defense strategies. With respect to the arst question, newly available Chinese military writings and interviews with People’s Liberation Army (PLA) ofacers on the history of the air force suggest that the reasons for the recurrent failure varied markedly from period to period. That variation itself has prevented the military and political leaderships from forming a consensus about the lessons of the past and the policies that could work. In seeking to answer the second question, the article examines emerging air force and national defense policies and doctrines and sets forth Beijing’s rationale for the air force programs in light of new security challenges, particularly those in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea. In the 1990s, the air force has fashioned both a more realistic R&D (research and development) and procurement policy and a more comprehensive strategy for the PLA Air Force (PLAAF) in future warfare. We conclude that this strategy is recasting time-

China’s security agenda transcends the South China Sea

ABSTRACT In 2013, China’s president, Xi Jinping, launched a massive reclamation and construction campaign on seven reefs in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. Beijing insisted that its actions were responsible and in accord with international law, but foreign critics questioned Xi’s real intentions. Recently available internal documents involving China’s leader reveal his views about war, the importance of oceans in protecting and rejuvenating the nation, and the motives underlying his moves in the South China Sea. Central to those motives is China’s rivalry with the United States and the grand strategy needed to determine its outcome. To this end, Xi created five externally oriented and proactive military theater commands, one of which would protect newly built assets in the South China Sea and the sea lanes – sometimes referred to as the Maritime Silk Road – that pass through this sea to Eurasia and beyond. Simultaneously, China’s actions in the Spratlys complicated and worsened the US-China rivalry, and security communities in both countries recognized that these actions could erupt into armed crises – despite decades of engagement to prevent them. A permanent problem-solving mechanism may allow the two countries to move toward a positive shared future.

China Builds the Bomb

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