Asia Looks Seaward

and the 2007 budget slated to receive a nearly 18 percent increase in this, the

second year of the current five-year spending plan. Spending is focused on engen-

dering a revolution in military affairs, to include ‘‘informationalization’’ and

communications; on force projection;and on the ability to conduct precision

strikes to defeat enemy command, control, communications, and computer

capabilities in short order. These military modernization programs were

prompted and reinforced by a sequence of international developments, including

the rapid U.S. victory in the first Gulf War, the 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis, during

which the PRC realized it could not compete with the United States in an opera-

tional sense, and the errant U.S. bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in

1999.^35 The impact on procurement has been dramatic. To highlight only some
of the naval and related purchases, Beijing has invested in second-generation
nuclear and conventional submarines, frigates, destroyers with deadly antiship
missiles, various platforms for amphibious force projection, army attack helicop-
ters, and even aircraft carriers. By 2010 the naval inventory will total up to
forty-three destroyers, fifty-five frigates, and sixty-two submarines. Fourth- and
fifth-generation strike fighters, fighter bombers, AWACS-like early-warning
aircraft, close air support, and criticalsupport aircraft are being developed,
purchased, or upgraded.^36
The transformation of the PLAN (People’s Liberation Army Navy) is aimed at
exerting greater control over contiguous waters while deterring larger foes in con-
flict scenarios. Operationally, the 2006 Defense White Paper claims the navy’s
strategy is to attain ‘‘gradual extension of strategic depth for offshore defensive
operations and enhancing its capabilities in integrated maritime operations and
nuclear counterattacks.’’ According to Timothy Hu, central to this is ‘‘the estab-
lishment of a sea denial capability to prevent the U.S. Navy from being able to
deploy into waters that cover what Chinese naval strategists call the Second
Island Chain,’’ stretching from the Japanese islands to Guam and the Marshall
Islands. The PLAN’s ambitious program of acquiring new classes of submarines
will go far toward accomplishing these goals.^37
While the motivations are many, conflict scenarios over Taiwan and North
Korea must be foremost in the minds of those responsible for the modernization
program. However, much of the new weaponry provides capabilities and
presence that will be relevant to a ‘‘post-Korea’’ and ‘‘post-Taiwan’’ world. The
planned development and purchase of tanker aircraft, for example, will afford a
new PLA Air Force presence over the SCS. Put another way, if the central goal
of the buildup has been to defeat Taiwan and deter the United States in a Taiwan
conflict scenario, the effect is that by the end of this decade the PRC will have the
ability, in the words of the U.S. Department of Defense, to defeat ‘‘a moderate-
size adversary.’’ These contradict such theses as David Shambaugh’s that ‘‘there
is scant evidence of the PLA developing capabilities to project power beyond
China’s immediate periphery.’’^38

182 Asia Looks Seaward