Defense policy still defensive

The Information Office of the State Council, China's Cabinet, published a white paper on the country's peaceful development on Sept 6 to make it clear that the goal of China's peaceful development is to achieve modernization and prosperity for its people.

China's defensive defense policy for peaceful development is manifested in three factors.

First, it combines safeguarding national interests with opposition to military expansionism, focusing on resisting aggression, safeguarding national unity and opposing separatism. A peaceful and stable security environment is a prerequisite for China's sustainable development. China is fully aware that military plunder and abuse of power are against the trend of the times. That's why it emphasizes mutual benefit, which helps achieve and maintain national security. It firmly opposes hegemony, abuse of military power, aggression and expansionism, and seeks no control beyond its territory.

Second, it combines peaceful settlement of disputes with maintenance of its core interests. Since the beginning of reform and opening-up, China has endeavored to create a peaceful international environment and favorable external conditions, and believes in resolving international disputes through dialogue or non-military means to prevent individual issues from intensifying and disturbing peace and the overall situation. This has been China's policy to maintain fast economic growth and peaceful development.

Third, China's defensive defense policy combines its endeavor to modernize its national defense by promoting regional security cooperation. That China has made economic construction the core of its basic national policy shows that there is coordinated development between its economic growth and military buildup, and no possibility of unjust military aggressions.

This is the first time that a government proclamation, in the form of a white paper, has defined China's core interests, which include sovereignty, territorial integrity, national reunification and national security, by maintaining its political system established by the Constitution and overall social stability, and ensuring sustainable economic and social development.

China's policy of developing good-neighborly relations ensures that to avoid being caught in a "security dilemma", it considers neighboring countries' security concerns, promotes common regional and cooperative security, values the enhancement of military mutual trust and cooperation with other countries, and does not engage in regional arms race or try to impose regional hegemony.

History has proved (and will continue to prove) that China's defensive national defense policy is not temporary but a determined choice for peaceful development and a firm foreign policy, which conforms to its historical and cultural traditions.

The white paper makes it clear that China is justified in modernizing its defense capabilities for its national security and to protect its peaceful development. China's overall security situation may be stable, but it faces multiple traditional and non-traditional security challenges, including the threat of separatism and terrorism.

China is one of the few countries facing a complicated geopolitical environment. It has a vast land and sea area with a land border of more than 22,000 kilometers and a coastline of over 18,000 km. Therefore, China's fundamental purpose of modernizing its armed forces is to safeguard the country's sovereignty, security, territorial integrity and national development. China is a responsible member of the international community, and it needs to modernize its military to fulfill its international responsibilities and obligations.

China's defense expenditures are moderate and in keeping with the need to safeguard its national security, and its military spending has increased in recent times because of a number of objective reasons.

First, from the 1980s to the mid-1990s, China tightened its military spending because it had to divert its financial resources toward economic construction. That resulted in many practical problems that need to be solved now. The low pay for military personnel is one such prominent problem. So the rising military spending in recent years is partly to compensate the military personnel.

Second, there is a new round of military innovations across the world. In contrast, China's defense modernization is still in the mechanization and semi-mechanization stages. If China doesn't put in more effort to promote information technology (IT) in its military, its defense capabilities will become less effective and its peaceful development will suffer. Promoting IT in its defense setup is a costly affair for China, a developing country starting from a relatively low level of defense modernization, and this has increased its military spending.

Third, China has not formed an alliance with any other country or group of countries, which means it cannot and does not get low-cost high-tech equipment from developed countries, unlike their allies. China can only rely on its own efforts, which naturally increases the cost of its defense modernization.

Fourth, the threat of separatist forces has prompted China to be prepared, which requires huge expenses.

Fifth, China needs funds to carry out non-military operations. The Chinese military needs to take on more non-military missions, including providing domestic and international disaster relief, and escorting ships in the Gulf of Aden and the waters off the Somali coast.

Sixth, because of rising oil prices in the international market and commodity prices at home, China's military spending cannot but go up. Although China's defense spending in recent years has increased, it is still relatively low as a percentage of its GDP when compared with that of the United States and Japan and some other countries.

As for so-called military transparency, no country in the world can be absolutely transparent. But China's military has become more transparent over the past 20 years, and its strategic intention is better known than many other major powers'. For example, China is the only nuclear power to have declared that it will not be the first to use nuclear weapons, and it will never use or threaten to use them against non-nuclear-weapon states or in nuclear-weapons-free zones. If other countries follow its policy, they would be contributing greatly to world peace, stability and development.

The anxiety of the international community that China will turn its growing economic strength into military might and thus dominate the world is unwarranted. The fundamental purpose of modernizing the Chinese military is to safeguard China's sovereignty, security, territorial integrity and people's peaceful life and development, rather than entering an arms race or pursuing hegemony and external expansion.

The author is a senior colonel and deputy director of the Institute for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University.

(China Daily 09/20/2011 page9)