China, Perceived Power
89In 2013, China started to provoke its regional and, mainly,
international peers to pay attention to what is happening with it–in order to
understand what the political elite of China was preparing for the future.
In what concerns Strategy and Will, China had a sum of 0.9, the United
States received 0.7 and the USSR 1.2. This means that Cline paid a lot of
attention to issues like those of the integration of the society, the cultural
integration, territorial integration, governmental policy capability, and
level of social discipline as well as the relevance of national strategy to
national interest. In this perspective, it is not strange that Cline attributes
to Singapore 1.1 and to Israel 1.7, as they provide examples of significant
levels of political integration and a real capacity of the elites in power. It
also means that a unified political elite is more efficient in planning and
acting in international scenarios than pluralistic elites, who devote too
much time to discussions before acting, probably searching for vast
platforms of understanding but with little capacity in the making.
Cline Returns
In the 1990’s, Cline produced another book on Strategic Assessment,
published by the University Press of America, to forecast the 2000’s^13.
With a maximum of 100 points in Military Capacity, the USA was at
the top of the ranking concerning strength. The fall and implosion of the
USSR had the following effect in the Cline’s analysis:
Figure 6-7: Nuclear and Conventional Power^14
China, as Cline stressed, had a total army of 4 303 0000 men. Its
defense budget was 6.76 billion dollars, but he made some remarks calling
attention to the fact that Taiwan had a budget of 9.71 billion for only 360
000 men, and Japan (246,000 men) raises the stakes to 34.3 billion. It is
clear that while China chooses to enforce its huge army with weapons of
(^13) Cline, The Power of the Nations in the 1990s: A Strategic Assessment.
(^14) Cline.
Country Nuclear Conventional Total
Power Power
USA 50 50 100
Russia 50 50 100
China 20 50 70
France 20 50 70