Bigger, better, faster, smarter and more of them… That’s the feeling in the Chinese arms industry these days. To say it’s having a golden period is an understatement.
After a couple of decades down in the Doldrums, overshadowed by the more reliable Russian arms industry, the Chinese government is now opening up its purse strings to Chinese companies that can help defend its newly stated ‘core interests.’
The Chinese defense industry is booming as illustrated by the Global Times headline recently - Revelation shows China's 'military transparency, New missile 'ready by 2015' The fact that the article doesn’t state precisely what the missiles are for, how they would work, or on who, is irrelevant. What matters, is that China is making new missiles that can do anything and beat anyone. The propaganda machine is in full over drive militarizing the nation’s consciousnesses. Don’t believe me? Well, what about considering China Daily’s Top 10 military exercises of 2010 article?
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010topten/2010-12/14/content_11666739.ht
The entire article is beyond absurd, unless of course you’re an authoritarian government attempting to militarize your population, then it makes complete sense. In the past two decades TV shows about great engineering achievements were commonplace on prime time TV. Glorifying the engineering achievements of the Motherland, led in most part by the country being run by engineers. As the huge engineering projects dry up and people are now accustomed to roads, rail, dams and skyscrapers on epic scale, there is now a shift to the military. The Chinese government is pushing a military wave that will sweep the nation. Everyone is expected to catch it and rejoice in the fact that it’s home grown and will make China great.
No doubt about it, China is experiencing a ‘Great Leap Forward’ in weapons manufacturing and will soon over take many established military powers across the world.
But hold on a minute….
The original Great Leap Forward, by anyone’s measure, was a total disaster. From 1958 to 1961 Chairmen Mao came up with the wildly unrealistic notion that China could surpass long, established industrial nations like Britain in steel and crop production. What proceeded was a wave of hysteria as anything metal was melted down in backyard furnaces to make useless steel. In the countryside fields were left unattended while people tended their furnaces, which resulted in millions starving when the harvests failed. In newly formed communes, paddy fields were crammed full of crops and made to look like they were yielding way above their capacity. The crops died, leading to even more deaths. The resulting famine was the greatest human loss of life ever on planet earth. Up to 30million people died, and all because CCP leaders demanded that China, jump and leap-frog through history and pull miracles out of the air in order to be bigger and better than the west. Characteristically, official CCP history takes hardly any blame for the mess and blames American sanctions and disasters for the absurd folly.
As we can clearly see from history, directives from up on high in China can have the ability to cause hysteria, that without reasonable democratic checks, can run rampant and create all kinds of ridiculous claims.
Now, I’m not saying that the Chinese weapon manufacturers are involved in anything like the madness that was witnessed in the original Great Leap Forward, but consider this…
The Chinese government is flush with cash and willing to fund companies that can create weapon systems that add to its intended lofty, global projection. The technical hurdles needed to achieve these weapons are large and take numerous generations to achieve. China intends to do all this in just decades, namely by reverse engineering and leap-frogging.
Despite the hurdles being large, if you were a Chinese arms company, faced with the prospect of multi-million dollar investments if you can achieve these goals are you going to;
a) Be realistic and risk losing the investment to competitor
b) Clearly state that it’s achievable and worry about the technical details once the money is in the bank
Now, the more scrupulous of us, may choose A, but don’t forget, China is a country where even baby’s milk is fair game to exploit financially, so why would we expect high moral standards from arms manufacturers who are currently in the middle of a boom-time funding period?
On top of this there is funding competition between the different branches of the armed services. This is not unique to China. Every country’s military has to balance the funding expectations of their armed services. However in China, there is a significant difference. As stated previously, it’s boom time for military investment in the Middle Kingdom. With the CCP’s coffers full to bursting with hard cash any project that can boost the nation’s national interest is in the running for big bucks. This kind of inter-service rivalry can get way out of hand if unchecked.
Consider…
- The PLA Navy wants funds for new ships to keep those pesky Americans out of the Chinese seas.
- The 2nd Artillery thinks it can do a job better shooing away the yanks with missiles.
- The PLAAF needs funds for its Stealth bomber fleet
- Leaving the backbone of the force, the poor old army needing to come up with some ‘cool’ futuristic plan to show that it can contribute to the nations defense and not get left behind with its dull, old tanks, trucks and boots on the ground
Everyone is shouting for funds. Everyone’s idea is better than the other’s, serves the national interest better and will help make China great. Cadre’s are going to want kick-backs on all this and help their guanxi circles. With all the money sloshing around the service that can shout the loudest, promise the most is more than likely going to reap the rewards, financially.
Through all this noise they’re expected to create some of the most sophisticated weapons on the planet.
Now, I’m not saying it’s not achievable. Some good stuff is probably getting made, but just like every other big idea the CCP comes up with there’s going to be a whole lot of promises broken, money wasted and ideas forgotten and who will be the loser here?
The Chinese people.
Due to the fact that the CCP, yes, those same guys who brought you the Great Leap Forward, the Third Front and the Cultural Revolution, have no ability to create checks and balances on ridiculous ideas, we can say with a fair amount of certainty that a lot of the hype really is just… well, hype.
And in wartime, the people of China will cry, "where are our stealth bombers, our carrier killer missiles and advanced navy?"
And true to form the CCP will not be accountable for all the money it wasted, funding projects that were clearly overstated or never even possible.
So, should China militarize? Of course it should.
Should it have military that it can be proud of? Certainly.
Should we believe the hype? No, not at all.
If it sounds too good to be true it probably is. As was clearly demonstrated by the Great Leap Forward, things in life have a tendency to move in tiny incremental steps and not great leaps.
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