China’s Emergence as a Defense Technological Power ed. by Tai Ming Cheung (review)

The essays in this volume were prepared for a conference held in 2010, sponsored by a grant from the U.S. Defense Department. Written by many of the leading names in the field, the collection first appeared as a special issue of the Journal of Strategic Studies. Although individual chapters explore different aspects of the Chinese defense technological base, the common theme, which is not universally accepted, is that although the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has made impressive progress over the last three decades, it continues to lag behind the United States in key areas.

Thomas Mahnken points to the need for careful reading of a country’s military and engineering journals to discern its intentions. China’s anti-access strategy, he believes, has the potential to become disruptive. Stating that Taiwan is the driver of the PRC’s military innovation, he does not mention the wider implications of China’s recent actions in disputed areas of the East China and South China Seas.

Editor Tai Ming Cheung’s contribution notes that China’s access to external sources of military and dual-use technologies appears to be improving, especially with the resumption of a more cooperative engagement with Russia and the deepening integration of the PRC’s civilian technology sectors with global innovation networks. Nonetheless, Cheung believes that the sort of radical innovation that could enable major technological breakthroughs is unlikely until well into the 2020s unless the country’s leadership considers regime survival to be at risk.

Dennis Blasko observes that, whereas doctrine drives technology in the United States, in China, technology determines tactics—but not strategy. Blasko’s examination of Chinese military literature finds many references to commanders and staff, especially at battalion level, who are inadequately prepared to plan for and control operations that incorporate new equipment and capabilities; equipment that arrives without operation or maintenance manuals; personnel who are not trained to operate and maintain the new equipment that has been assigned to their units; and lack of simulators and training areas for the new equipment. The total suggests systemic shortcomings at the level of the military’s four general departments and the General Armaments Department in particular. The People’s Liberation Army is focused on learning to maintain and operate its newly acquired arsenal.

Kevin Pollpeter’s analysis of the PRC’s space industry notes that the multiple large projects it has taken on run the risk of overreaching and losing focus. Although Beijing repeatedly states that it will not participate in a space race, its actions demonstrate that it regards space activities as an area of competition.

Richard Bitzinger provides an instructive assessment of India’s, Japan’s, and South Korea’s efforts to become self-sufficient in arms in terms of lessons China might learn in its efforts to become so as well. Bitzinger finds that the efforts of all three have fallen well short of their proponents’ hopes. Unmentioned in the case of Japan, however, is that many of its defense industry’s problems stem from the country’s self-imposed ban on exports of weapons or the component parts thereof. Freed from these constraints, the country’s formidable industrial production system might well be able to overcome the limitations imposed by small production runs that result in high per-unit costs.

Bitzinger, an internationally recognized authority on the PRC’s defense industry, judges its military hardware to be as good as most products of the three other countries. However, like them, the PRC faces a long-term challenge of making technonationalism work at the later stages of innovation. The ability to do so will be critical as China’s defense industry moves from primarily platform-centric to increasingly network-centric technological industrial processes.

A general conclusion from the essays might be that, if the current momentum of the PRC’s defense economy can be sustained, it will be able to narrow considerably the still wide gap with the...