Showdown: Why China Wants War With the United States

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE - THE NEXT WAR

AMERICA’S NEW PARTNER?

THE PRAVDA ABOUT THE BEIJING REGIME

WHAT CHINA IS SPENDING

THE VERDICT: CHINA MEANS WAR

CHAPTER TWO - THE WAR OF NATIONAL UNITY

Beijing, China

The White House

Beijing

The White House

Over the East China Sea

White House Situation Room

Beijing

White House Situation Room

New York City

White House Situation Room

Above the East China Sea and the Western Pacific Ocean

White House Situation Room

Beijing

White House Situation Room

CHAPTER THREE - THE SECOND KOREAN WAR

East China Sea

Pyongyang, North Korea

Aboard USS Ohio

PACOM Headquarters, Hawaii

PACOM Headquarters

Near Sokch’o, South Korea

Pyongyang

PACOM Headquarters

Pearl Harbor, Hawaii

CHAPTER FOUR - THE FIRST OIL WAR

Caracas, Venezuela

Caracas

Paradise Ranch, Nevada

Caracas

Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri

Caracas

Whiteman Air Force Base

Caracas

Langley Air Force Base, Virginia

50,000 Feet over the Golfo de Venezuela

Caracas

CHAPTER FIVE - THE SINO-JAPANESE WAR

The White House

Beijing

White House Cabinet Room

Beijing

The White House

Yokota Air Base, Japan

Beijing

The White House

Spratly Islands, between the Indian and Pacific Oceans near Taiwan

The White House

Beijing

The White House

The White House

Beijing

Yokota Air Base

White House Cabinet Room

Challenger Deep, Western Pacific Ocean

Above the Indian Ocean

CHAPTER SIX - WORLD WAR OIL

Beijing

Tehran Airport, Iran

Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada

Beijing

Outside Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Ten Miles off Ras Tannurah, Saudi Arabia

Beijing

White House Cabinet Room

Langley Air Force Base, Virginia

White House Cabinet Room

Beijing

White House Situation Room

Indian Ocean

Near Xi’an, China

Washington, D.C.

White House Cabinet Room

Diego Garcia

CHAPTER SEVEN - THE ASSASSIN’S MACE WAR

Guangdong Province, China

Ft. Meade, Maryland

National Security Agency

Beijing

National Security Agency

Near Ft. Bragg, North Carolina

The White House

Beijing

National Security Agency

The White House

Andersen Air Force Base, Guam

The White House

Andersen Air Force Base

National Security Agency

Over the Western Pacific

Outside Foshan, China

National Security Agency

Outside Foshan, China

National Security Agency

Approaching the Chinese Coast

Somewhere Underneath the Mountains of Southern Pennsylvania

CHAPTER EIGHT - CHINA, THE EUNUCHS, AND ARMS

CHAPTER NINE - CONTAINMENT, ENGAGEMENT, OR DETERRENCE: WORKING TO PREVENT A ...

JAPAN

INDIA

TAIWAN

SINGAPORE, THAILAND, VIETNAM, AND SOUTH KOREA

GLOSSARY

APPENDIX

Acknowledgments

NOTES

INDEX

Copyright Page

We dedicate this book to those who died in Tiananmen Square on

June 4, 1989. In the hope that their sacrifice was not in vain, we have

written this book to illuminate the challenge to freedom that the Pacific

Cold War, and the Beijing regime, pose for us and our children.

CHAPTER ONE

THE NEXT WAR

China? There lies a sleeping giant. Let him sleep! For when he wakes, he will move the world.

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

IT TOOK HALF A CENTURY FOR THE UNITED STATES to win the first—the European—Cold War. That it did so without having to resort to open warfare with the Soviet Union is a tribute to the fact that neither of the superpowers was compelled by ideology or politics to make that cold war a hot one. The fact that both nations emerged as superpowers at roughly the same time—with the horrors of World War II fresh in their minds—imposed a historic equilibrium that was later reinforced by the threat of mutually assured destruction. China, an emerging superpower, is not governed by that equilibrium. It is now engaged in a second cold war, the Pacific Cold War, with the United States. This war might last as long as the European Cold War—and it is much more likely to turn into a hot one.

Our adversary, China, is either an emerging capitalist colossus with peaceful intentions or the most powerful and dangerous enemy we have faced since the collapse of the Soviet Union. China exhibits two faces to the world. One can be seen in Major General Zhu Chenghu, a dean at China’s National Defense University. In July 2005, General Chenghu, speaking in the context of a conflict over Taiwan, said that if America interfered militarily in any conflict between Beijing and Taiwan, China would make a nuclear first strike on America. He also declared that China would be prepared to absorb the destruction of most of its cities in a nuclear exchange that would wipe out hundreds of American cities.¹ At the opposite pole are the endless professions of peaceful intent that come from China’s leaders, including its president, Hu Jintao.

With nations, as with people, actions are the best barometers of future behavior, and China’s actions demonstrate hostility toward the United States. The Pacific Cold War is being fought from the oil fields of the Middle East, Africa, South America, and the Far East—where China’s presence is growing—to the seas around Taiwan, in diplomatic battles at the United Nations, and in a public propaganda war. China faces no military threats, yet is engaged in a military buildup that is larger and more intense than anything the world has seen since Nazi Germany’s mad dash for arms in the 1930s. It implies a similar momentum toward war. China’s cold war against America will almost certainly become a shooting war within the next ten years.

China pursues war without provocation. America has welcomed China as a trading partner, but we can’t close our eyes to the military threat it poses. It is a threat we must deter if we can and defeat on the battlefield if we must.

What might a war with China look like? That’s what this book is about. Using a series of scenarios, told much like short stories in Chapters Two through Seven, we hope to illustrate how wars with China might break out and be fought based on China’s history, capabilities, and intentions. The crises we portray might happen singly or together, next year or five years from now. But they will, we believe, come to pass—not because they are inevitable, but because China’s chosen route to power leads inexorably to them. If we can explain in vivid terms how war is likely to occur, perhaps America and its allies can find ways to avoid it through diplomacy, containment, and deterrence.

If war does become reality, it will be because China has chosen, clearly and decisively, to make war on America, its allies, and its interests. It will not be an accident, the result of an economic clash or a misunderstanding—and our diplomatic efforts need to bear that in mind. We believe that China has already decided in favor of war. The challenge for American diplomacy is to reverse that choice, to convince China that a war against America, its allies, or its interests will not be won quickly or decisively by China.

Whatever the precipitating event that triggers war—be it China’s aggression against Taiwan, North Korean proliferation of nuclear weapons, or any one of a host of other possibilities—this war will not wait until the global war against Islamic terrorism is over, until America’s economy is protected from the use of oil as a weapon, or until we decide our own political future in a presidential election. This war will begin when China decides the time for it has come. And unless we are very lucky, very smart, and very resolute in our preparations, it will be as massive in loss of life and economic damage to America and the world as either of the two world wars of the last century.

AMERICA’S NEW PARTNER?

The Communist Chinese have gauged well how to liberalize the Chinese economy while maintaining Communist control of the government. To quote the Tiananmen Papers: So long as the[se] demands for acknowledging the Party’s mistakes during Tiananmen continue to be rejected, the Chinese regime is not the liberalizing, corporatist, consultative or ‘soft authoritarian’ system that many in the West make it out to be.... It has learned that many areas of freedom are unthreatening to the monopoly of political power. But the Party also believes it has learned from Tiananmen that democratization is not an irresistible force.

The New York Times and most of the mainstream media, however, continue to believe that China is liberalizing and intent on improving its ties with the United States. A November 2005 New York Times headline characterized China and America as Partners, if Not Friends. That would be news to totalitarian Beijing.

The British magazine the Economist reported, on November 19, 2005, that Hu Jintao, China’s president, has a favorite phrase these days: ‘harmonious world,’ where countries of different outlooks live together in peace. But the government-controlled Chinese media have made it clear that [Hu’s] harmonious world is part-rebuff to American ‘hegemonism’.... The implication is that China, as an emerging power at odds with American ideology, would be a beneficiary of a world order in which American power is constrained.²

Meanwhile, China is facing enormous challenges at home. These challenges are the flip side of its phenomenal economic growth, which began when it started liberalizing its economy in 1978. And there is no question about how China responds to unrest and instability: China is a police state; it is the world leader in executions; it is the world’s most successful blocker of the Internet; and its leader, Hu Jintao, came up through the Communist Party ranks and cut his teeth on suppressing Tibet (and supported the Tiananmen Square massacre).³

Nationalism is rapidly replacing Mao’s Little Red Book as the popular ideology of the Chinese, and the Beijing regime is inflaming it as a way to enhance the Communist Party’s power and prestige. Nationalism easily leads to war, especially when it is linked to material need—in China’s case, a need for oil.

China is the world’s second-largest consumer and third-largest importer of oil. (It imports about 40 percent of its fossil fuels.)⁴ As the 2005 Defense Department report on China says:

This dependence on overseas resources and energy supplies, especially oil and natural gas, is playing a role in shaping China’s strategy and policy. Such concerns factor heavily in Beijing’s relations with Angola, Central Asia, Indonesia, the Middle East (including Iran), Russia, Sudan, and Venezuela—to pursue long-term supply agreements—as well as its relations with countries that sit astride key geostrategic chokepoints—to secure passage. Beijing’s belief that it requires such special relationships in order to assure its energy access could shape its defense strategy and force planning in the future. Indicators of such a shift would include increased investment in a blue-water capable fleet and, potentially, a more activist military presence abroad.⁵

THE PRAVDA ABOUT THE BEIJING REGIME

⁶

Today’s China is not the China of classical history. It retains many of ancient China’s characteristics: inventiveness, insular nationalism, and enormous strength. But, unlike the China of the past three thousand years, Hu Jintao’s Communist China is a very modern despotism. Because its government rules by force and not by the consent of the governed, China shares a principal characteristic of every modern dictatorship: it is unstable. It is unstable at the top because it is ruled by a small group that believes its grip on power is always tenuous, regardless of how weak its internal enemies may be or how little threatens them from abroad. It is unstable at the bottom because glimpses of freedom reaching even the remotest villagers sow discontent with the Beijing regime’s oppressions. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is only slightly smaller geographically than the United States but has more than four times America’s population. Since October 1949, it has been a Communist totalitarian state. And since about 1978, it has been working hard to do what the former Soviet Union couldn’t: make its economy grow (for the benefit of the military) without increasing democracy. China has learned how a totalitarian state can survive—even thrive—in the modern world. Two principal events—the Cultural Revolution of 1966—76 and the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989—have shaped the Beijing regime’s understanding of politics. In the mid-1960s, fearing a capitalist reformation, Mao launched the Cultural Revolution. Its Socialist Education Movement forced intellectuals and scholars to perform manual labor on farms and in factories.⁷ By 1966, Mao’s socialist offensive turned violent, with party purges and a student army (the Red Guard) that was Maoist the way Hitler’s Brownshirts were fascist. But, unlike the Brownshirts, the Red Guard numbered in the millions. They sought to enforce Mao’s will by intimidation and violence. By 1967, several leaders thought to be disloyal to Mao—including such future regime leaders as Deng Xiaoping—had been purged from public life.⁸ When Mao died in 1976, so did the Cultural Revolution. But its effect lingers. Deng Xiaoping, having been rehabilitated, was—with Mao’s approval—brought back to public life and reinstated as vice premier in April 1973. Deng had evidently learned the lesson Mao’s Cultural Revolution taught: while economic success is essential to national power, the freedom that comes with capitalism cannot be tolerated.

China’s gross domestic product has quadrupled in the last twenty-seven years, but at an enormous environmental cost. China uses coal to produce electricity, so much of its urban environments suffer from high levels of pollution. According to the CIA, China has lost one-fifth of its arable land since 1949 and suffers water shortages, water pollution from dumping untreated wastes, and deforestation.⁹

China’s leaders, reverting to Communist formula, have slowed the pace of economic reform over the last two years. Facing continued crises in labor, agriculture, and heavy industries, the government of Hu Jintao has stopped privatizing industries and has imposed new controls on foreign investment in the retail markets. In addition, Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao have, according to the Heritage Foundation’s 2004 Index of Economic Freedom, ordered the government to bail out state-owned banks burdened with cumbersome non-performing loans.¹⁰ Unemployment in China is steady at almost 10 percent.

Just as before Mao’s Cultural Revolution, China’s experiments with economic freedom have led to political unrest and increasing demands for personal freedom. China blocks freedom of speech on the Internet, but the profusion of cell phones has enabled the Chinese people—even villagers in remote areas—to communicate relatively freely with one another and to learn about protests against the Beijing regime.

The Chinese Communists do not intend to go the way of the Soviet Union. By early 1989, the Soviet regime was crumbling, and the Berlin Wall came crashing down. As the Beijing Politburo watched its Soviet counterpart begin to topple, it faced an internal crisis of its own. The Tiananmen Square massacre of June 4, 1989, was the culmination of weeks of student demonstrations. The demonstrations began as a tribute to reformer Hu Yaobang, who had died on April 15. Hu had been a protégé of Deng Xiaoping and had risen to power before being purged in 1987. His crime was his sympathy for pro-democracy student protests.¹¹ When he died, thousands of students gathered in Tiananmen Square and tried to send representatives to meet with the regime in the Great Hall of the People. They were turned away, but the crowds grew and international news coverage generated a crisis that the Beijing regime believed was a threat to its existence.

As the crowds in the square grew, Li Peng signed an order declaring martial law, citing an outbreak of grave turmoil in Beijing [that] has disrupted social stability, normal life and public order on May 20.¹² The regime reached a state of near panic when the demonstrators erected their own Statue of Liberty (which they called Goddess of Liberty—later renamed Goddess of Democracy).¹³ Party apparatchiks in the State Security Ministry, in a report to the Party Central Committee on June 1, blamed American interference in China’s affairs, singling out the Voice of America radio.¹⁴ Demonstrations near Tiananmen Square led to clashes with police. On June 2, China’s leaders decided to clear the square by force. Troops, having been heavily indoctrinated for two weeks to prepare them to kill the students, were ordered in,¹⁵ and on June 4 they attacked, killing more than two thousand students and wounding thousands more.¹⁶

The day after the massacre, Deng Xiaoping said of the demonstrators, Even if they’re functioning out of ignorance, they are still participating and must be suppressed. In China, even one million people can be considered a small sum.¹⁷ Deng is dead, but his legacy is not. Both his immediate successor, Jiang Zemin, and the current president, Hu Jintao, were rising in the Party hierarchy at the time. Neither was of sufficient rank to play a role in ordering the Tiananmen Square massacre,¹⁸ but there is no reason to believe that China’s current rulers will react differently than Deng did.

This is especially true of Hu Jintao. Hu is another protégé of Deng Xiaoping. At the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre, Hu Jintao was the Chinese Party secretary—effectively the colonial ruler—of Tibet. He may not have been responsible for the Tiananmen Square massacre, but he was one of the three provincial leaders who announced support for the Party Center—for Deng—immediately after the massacre.¹⁹

In Tibet, Hu acted brutally in putting down demonstrations. On February 20, 1989, he ordered 1,700 armed police into the Tibetan capital of Lhasa. On March 5, the police opened fire on civilian rioters, killing at least forty. Martial law was declared and China’s armed forces kept the area quiet through the summer of 1989.²⁰

The lessons Beijing learned in Tiananmen Square and Tibet were the same as those taught by Mao in the Cultural Revolution and in Quotations from Chairman Mao, the famous Little Red Book the Red Guards carried as their totem: democracy is not an irresistible force, and power grows from the barrel of a gun. But China’s leaders are worried about the increasing level of unrest in their country.

In July 2005, Public Security Minister Zhou Yongkang said that the number of mass incidents—protests and even riots—was rising fast across China.²¹ As the Washington Post reported, In 2004, Zhou said, 3.76 million of China’s 1.3 billion people took part in 74,000 such protests, which he said represented a dramatic increase.²² The Communist regime fears that these protests could threaten its existence.

The regime has other problems as well. The Financial Times reported in September 2005, citing an Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) study, that corruption in China is so severe and widespread that it threatens the country’s economic development and is becoming a major source of social discontent and poses a threat to the legitimacy of the country’s leaders.²³

According to some experts in the United States government, China’s protests are more than local flare-ups. The cell phone revolution has meant that more and more protests are organized across geographic borders. Recent protests about water pollution and the SARS virus were organized by village elders in different provinces. The question for the Beijing regime is whether such protests are a greater threat than were the protests at Tiananmen Square.

Many China policy experts believe the threat to the Beijing regime is substantial, but the Communist Party is so well entrenched, and its power to crush protests so well organized and brutal, that a national revolution has to be considered extremely unlikely. Beijing’s strategy for defusing protests includes protest villages outside the center city where protesters can present their petitions to the government, coupled with prison camps for recalcitrant political activists. Beijing outlawed torture in 1996 but, according to a December 2005 report by Manfred Nowak, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on torture, Beijing’s use of it is still widespread in Chinese detention centers.²⁴ Nowak’s report cited the use of electric shock batons, cigarette burns and submersion in pits of water or sewage. He also raised the problem of psychological torture, which he said was designed to alter the personality of detainees.²⁵

Still, there is one growing social problem—a demographic imbalance—that could explode the regime’s grip on power. The Chinese call it guang gun,