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- Strategic writings by China's military and party leaders
show that China is making plans for war, according to a new Pentagon study.
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- Some 600 translations of internal Chinese writings by
200 authors reveal China's strategy to defeat a superior foe, using both
military and nonmilitary means, such as propaganda, deception and covert
action.
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- They also reveal the extreme distrust of the United States
by China's military and party leaders. Chinese generals state that the
United States intentionally bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia,
last May as part of a long-term strategy to prompt an arms race that will
cause China's collapse.
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- The Chinese statements from the mid-1990s through last
year discuss issues normally couched in secrecy inside China.
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- They appear in the book "China Debates the Future
Security Environment," published last month for the Pentagon's Office
of Net Assessment, the unit in charge of long-range planning. The translations
were edited by Michael Pillsbury, a defense policy planner in the Reagan
administration who is fluent in Chinese.
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- The official Chinese views from Communist Party and military
officials contradict other claims by the Beijing government that China
poses no threat to the United States or other nations.
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- Chinese strategists plan to use a combination of Marxist-Leninist
doctrine and ancient Chinese tactics against the United States, which is
compared in Chinese military writings as a "hegemon" on a par
with Nazi Germany.
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- Gen. Li Jijun, described as one of China's most distinguished
military authors, states that the United States engineered the collapse
of the Soviet Union and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait as a "strategic
misdirection" or deception.
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- Other Chinese authors state the United States is working
covertly to "dismember" western China, namely Tibet and Xinjiang.
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- The report is a public document, but the Pentagon is
limiting its distribution, presumably because of its stark disclosures
of Chinese military thinking.
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- According to the book, the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping
set the current military strategy for dealing with the world's only superpower
in the slogan "bide our time and build up our capabilities."
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- A key debate among Chinese military and party writers
is how rapidly the United States will decline, a view based on the Marxist
ideas on the collapse of capitalism.
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- The book quotes Gen. Xiong Guankai, the Chinese deputy
chief of staff for intelligence, who finished three days of Pentagon meetings
last week, as one of China's hard-line theorists. "Any efforts for
seeking hegemony and world domination can only result in accumulating contradictions
and fermenting war," Gen. Xiong was quoted as saying in a speech at
Harvard University.
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- Chinese plans also discuss means of taking out U.S. aircraft-carrier
battle groups. Chinese writer Ying Nan says the groups have numerous vulnerabilities.
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- The United States sent two such groups to waters near
Taiwan in 1996 in response to Chinese military exercises aimed at the island.
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- Mr. Ying stated that weaker Chinese forces could defeat
the huge carriers because the groups are hard to conceal from radar, are
less effective in bad weather and are hampered by shallow water or when
operating close to the coast.
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- Carriers also are vulnerable to repeated attacks with
precision weapons fired from unmanned aircraft and to electronic warfare
from small ships, offshore islands and aerial balloons that can "create
confusion in the electromagnetic environment," he stated.
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- Carrier battle groups also can be defeated by advanced
submarines and by attacks on their support ships because the carriers'
anti-submarine capabilities are "relatively poor," Mr. Ying states.
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- Mr. Ying also cited the carriers' elevators, catapult
launchers and arrester wires as "extremely vulnerable" to precision
strikes that would make the ships useless.
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- Chinese military strategists also draw upon the 1991
Persian Gulf war. Chinese tactics - pre-emptive attacks before allied forces
had massed, covert attacks inside Saudi Arabia and operations to split
the U.S.-led coalition - could have won for Iraq, they wrote.
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- China now seeks to avoid head-on confrontation until
around 2030, when the Chinese expect U.S. power to decline significantly.
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- However, a war between China and the United States could
erupt over Taiwan, according to the Chinese authors. Strategist Gao Hen
wrote a U.S. defense of Taiwan would cause a major war of "global
and historic implications."
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- China also plans electronic attacks on computer networks.
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- "We can make the enemy's command centers not work
by changing their data system," wrote Maj. Gen. Pan Junfeng. "We
can cause the enemy's headquarters to make incorrect judgments by sending
disinformation."
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