China’s Emerging War Concepts

Gurmeet Kanwal
Visiting Fellow, VIF

The doctrine of high-tech local wars under conditions of informationisation is still evolving. In the absence of active operational experience, the PLA may take another decade or so to fully implement all the ingredients of the new doctrine. According to Chinese scholars writing in the Science of Military Strategy, the switch to fighting high-tech local wars is a “historic leap in the development of current wars”; it is the “reflection of the historic logic of war development at (the) present time”; it is “an important linkage in the chain of war development”; and, it is the reflection of change from industrial-era production mode to information-era production mode in the military field.” Chinese scholars emhasise the high-tech feature of modern wars. In their view, “the aim, range, tools of war and time and space of engagements are all limited.”

Compared with China’s historically reactive stance of luring the enemy in deep and destroying him through strategic defence, the present doctrine is essentially pro-active and seeks to take the battle into enemy territory. It also strives to achieve surprise in a pro-active manner that is demonstrated by new “quick-strike” tactics. The aim is to catch the enemy unprepared in order to inflict substantial damage on strategic targets and disrupt logistics to gain psychological ascendancy. While the land frontier is expected to continue to generate some local tensions, the Central Military Commission (CMC) has identified space and the oceans as the new areas where future conflict might take place.

The People’s Liberation Army has launched a rapid modernisation drive to prepare for 21st century warfare and to enable China to project military power well away from its land borders and territorial waters. The new type of war that is now being envisaged by the PLA represents a revolutionary change from the traditional Chinese concept of People’s War against an invading enemy seeking to occupy and destroy the PRC. People’s War was expected to be an all-out or total war fought primarily by ground forces supported by a motivated population that was fully mobilised for a long-drawn struggle. The concept that was evolved by Mao was characterised by protracted, large-scale land warfare where the aim was to exploit China’s strategic depth by luring the enemy deep inside, extending his lines of communications and logistics and eventually destroying him through prolonged attrition.

Underpinning the new professionalism of the PLA is the basic doctrine of “active defence” (jiji fangyu) that seeks to conduct “people’s war under modern conditions” (better understood as “local wars under hi-tech conditions” – gaojishu tiaojian xia de jubu zhanzheng). The ‘active defence’ doctrine calls for integrated, deep strikes – a concentration of superior firepower that is to be utilised to destroy the opponent’s retaliatory capabilities through pre-emptive strikes employing long-range artillery, short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) and precision guided munitions. David Shambaugh, a well known China scholar has written: “Rather than conducting a ‘people’s war’ (a strategy to ‘lure the enemy in deep’ into one’s own territory), the PLA doctrine of ‘active defence’ calls for forward positioning, frontier defence, engagement of the enemy at or over the border and potential engagement in conflict beyond China’s immediate periphery… this doctrine is essentially pro-active and seeks to take the battle into enemy territory.” Beijing has defined the following five likely limited war scenarios: military conflict with neighbouring countries in a limited region; military conflict on territorial waters; undeclared air attack by enemy countries; territorial defence in a limited military operation; and, punitive offensive with a minor incursion into a neighbouring country.

The new doctrine and the strategy and tactics associated with it have been influenced by the lessons of Gulf War I in 1991 and the Iraq War of 2003, both of which have been extensively studied by Chinese scholars. The doctrine requires the creation of a capability to project force across China’s borders through rapid deployment, conventional SRBMs and cruise missiles, information warfare, electronic warfare, precision-guided munitions, night fighting capabilities and other advanced military technologies. The building of these capabilities, in turn, drives procurement and defence production policies, the command and control structures and training. According to a US DoD report to Congress, victory is to be achieved through ”strategic strikes” by gaining the initiative by striking first, achieving victory with one strike and concentrating China’s strength to attack the core of enemy defence.

Major General Shen Xuezai, former head of the Military Systems Department of the Academy of Military Sciences (AMS), has written: “Only by controlling the entire battlespace and striking at key points so as to paralyse the enemy’s entire operational system and immobilize its forces, will it be possible to win a war.” Commenting on the PLA’s evolving doctrine, Major Mark A. Stokes has stated: “This strategic attack doctrine, one aspect of the PLA’s ‘limited war under high-tech conditions’ (jubu zhanzheng zai gaojishu tiaojian xia)… continues to adhere to the traditional strategy of ‘pitting the inferior against the superior’ (yilie shengyou), which recognises technological inferiority for an indefinite period of time.” Much the same point was made in the Pentagon’s 2007 annual report on the Military Power of China: “Once hostilities have begun, according to the PLA text, Science of Campaigns (Zhanyixue) (2000), ‘the essence of (active defence) is to take the initiative and annihilate the enemy… While strategically the guideline is active defence, (in military campaigns) the emphasis is placed on taking the initiative in active offence. Only in this way can the strategic objective of active defence be realised” (emphasis added).

China also follows ‘anti-access’ strategies to deny access to the adversary to his planned launch pads in an endeavour to prevent build-up of forces for a war against China. Planning for anti-access strategies flows from the apprehension that if superior, well-equipped forces (read the US and its allies) are allowed to arrive in the war zone with the force levels and in the time frame planned by them, they are bound to prevail. According to a RAND paper of 2007, the Chinese calculate that “by mounting a credible threat to do so, they will be able to deter the United States from intervening in the first place, or at least limit the scale and scope of that intervention.” The PLA’s aim is clearly to deter a conflict or at least delay the opponent’s preparation till the PLA is better prepared to react. The PLA seeks to achieve this aim through attacks against air bases and ports and other elements of the logistics chain and against information systems so as to disrupt command and control during build-up. While anti-access strategies are unlikely to succeed in preventing conflict completely, these could impose considerable delay and caution during build-up.

The PLA’s new doctrine is also more assertive than previously thought and is not bound by any restrictions to confine and limit future conflict to within China’s national boundaries. China claims that it has only peaceful intentions and does not believe in launching aggression and that it fights wars only to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity. According to China’s White Papers on national defence, active defence is a defensive military strategy. However, it is clear from Chinese writings that the major characteristics of active defence are distinctly offensive in nature. The PLA publication The Study of Campaigns (Zhanyixue) (2000) highlights this offensive approach: “While strategically the guideline is active defence, in military campaigns, though, the emphasis is placed on taking the initiative in ‘active offense’. Only in this way the strategic objectives of “active defence” can be realised.”

China’s Cyberwar Doctrine: Implications for India

Gurmeet Kanwal
Visiting Fellow, VIF

In alarming front page news reports published by several Indian newspapers in 2009 and 2010, Chinese cyber spies were reported to have hacked into computers and stolen documents from hundreds of government and private offices around the world, including those of the National Security Adviser and the Indian embassy in the US. Earlier it had been reported that the Chinese army uses more than 10,000 cyber warriors with degrees in information technology to maintain an e-vigil over China’s borders. “Chinese soldiers now swipe cards and work on laptops as they monitor the border with great efficiency… electronic sentinels functioning 24 hours a day.” This number will soon go up to one million laptop warriors.

While information about the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) cyber warriors has begun to appear in the public domain only recently, PLA watchers across the world have known for long about China’s well conceived doctrine on information operations and cyberwar. China’s cyberwar doctrine is designed to level the playing field in a future war with better equipped Western armed forces that rely on Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) technologies and enjoy immense superiority in terms of weapons platforms and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and command and control networks.

Early in the first decade of the new century, China’s Central Military Commission (CMC) had called for a detailed study of the concept of “people’s war under conditions of informationisation”, implying increasing attention to the application of information technology to the conduct of conventional conflict. Since then the scope of the cyber war doctrine has been expanded to develop the capabilities necessary to take control of all the major networks that drive the world’s economic engines such as banking, stock exchanges and telecommunications if it becomes necessary.

Analysts of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) have called the ongoing Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) an informationised military revolution with Chinese characteristics. Informationisation relates to the PLA’s ability to adopt information technologies to command, intelligence, training and weapon systems. The PLA is seeking to contest the information battle space with its space-based, airborne, naval and ground-based surveillance and intelligence gathering systems and its new anti-satellite, anti-radar, electronic warfare and information warfare systems. According to China’s White Paper on National Defence issued in 2004, “In its modernisation drive, the PLA takes informationalisation as its orientation and strategic focus.”

The denial of information, strategic deception and the achievement of psychological surprise have for long been an integral part of Chinese military doctrine. The Chinese find information warfare (IW) extremely attractive as they view it as an asymmetric tool that will enable them to overcome their relative backwardness in military hardware. The Chinese are devoting considerable time and energy to perfecting the techniques of IW to target the rapidly modernizing Western armed forces that are becoming increasingly more dependent on the software that runs computer networks and modern communications. In Chinese thinking, IW presents a level playing field for projecting power and prevailing upon the adversary in future wars.

Information warfare includes intelligence operations; command and control operations to disrupt enemy information flow; electronic warfare by seizing the electromagnetic initiative through electronic attack, electronic protection and electronic warfare support; targeting enemy computer systems and networks to damage and destroy critical machines and networks and the data stored on them; and, the physical destruction of enemy information infrastructure through the application of kinetic firepower. The Chinese call their pursuit of information warfare and other hi-tech means to counter the overwhelmingly superior conventional military capabilities of the Western Alliance “acupuncture warfare”. Acupuncture warfare (also called “paralysis warfare”) is described as “Paralysing the enemy by attacking the weak link of his command, control, communications and information as if hitting his acupuncture point in kung fu combat.”

In another five to 10 years China will develop much greater depth and sophistication in its understanding and handling of information warfare techniques and information operations. With Indian society becoming increasingly dependent on automated data processing and vast computer networks, India will also become extremely vulnerable to such information warfare techniques. The fact that it can be practiced from virtually any place on the earth even during peacetime makes acupuncture or paralysis warfare even more diabolical. India can ill-afford to ignore this new challenge to its security.

India should adopt a comprehensive inter-ministerial, inter-departmental, inter-Services, multi-agency approach to dealing with emerging cyber warfare threats and must develop appropriate responses. No single agency in India is charged with ensuring cyber and IT security. A nodal agency must be created to spearhead India’s cyberwar efforts under a national cyber security advisor who should report directly to the NSA. The armed forces must be part of the overall national effort from the very beginning so that emerging tactics, techniques and procedures can be incorporated into doctrine and training.

On June 23, 2009, Robert Gates, then US Secretary of Defence, authorised the creation of a new military command that will develop offensive cyber-weapons and defend command and control networks against computer attacks. India too needs a Cyber Command to lead efforts within the military to safeguard computer networks from hackers and cyber attacks.

India’s strategy must be defensive to guard the country’s vulnerable assets, such as military command and control networks and civilian infrastructure dependent on the use of cyber space, as well as offensive to disrupt the adversary’s C4I2SR systems and develop leverages that can be exploited at the appropriate time. With some of the finest software brains in the world available to India, it should not prove to be an insurmountable challenge.

This is too important a field to allow the traditional Indian approach – digging heads into the sand while waiting for the threat to go away – to hold sway and react only when the enemy has reached Panipat and is knocking on the gates of Delhi. In this case, the nothingness of cyberspace connects China’s one million laptop warriors directly with Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad and other Indian cities, as also India’s strategic establishments.