China Maritime Report No. 14: Chinese Views of the Military Balance in the Western Pacific

This report examines Chinese views about the military balance of power between China and the United States in the Western Pacific. It argues that while there is no single “Chinese” view on this topic, Chinese analysts tend to agree that 1) the gap between the two militaries has narrowed significantly in recent years, 2) the Chinese military still lags in important ways, and 3) Chinese military inferiority vis-à-vis the U.S. increases the further away it operates from the Mainland. In terms of specific areas of relative strength, the Chinese military has shown the greatest improvements in military hardware, but has farther to go in the area of jointness, training, and other military “software.” Nevertheless, despite continued criticism from senior civilian leaders, training quality has likely improved due to a greater focus on realism, and recent military reforms have, to a degree, improved the prospects for jointness.https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-maritime-reports/1013/thumbnail.jp

Divided militaries and politics in East Asia

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2004.Includes bibliographical references (p. [519]-550).(cont.) Domestic politics, then, frequently have a decisive impact on strategic planning and produces policies that the consideration of external threats alone would not suggest.This dissertation proposes that militaries in developing states are usually deeply divided internally on domestic social, economic, and political issues. Contrary to the way the military is often portrayed, there is no single "military mind." Neither, however, are internal military divisions primarily idiosyncratic. Differences in composition and sociology endow different military services and branches with distinct domestic preferences. High-tech military organizations are more likely to support liberal socio-economic positions, while troop-oriented ones often embrace integral nationalism--a statist vision of development aimed at unifying the state by reducing economic and social differences. These propositions are tested against the history of armies and navies in Thailand, China, and Indonesia since 1945, as well as additional evidence from Latin American, European, and other Asian states. The case studies examine coups, counter-coups, military-sponsored "mass" movements, and legislative battles involving uniformed officers. The historical evidence confirms the theory. Military services often take opposite sides in domestic disputes, with naval officers consistently backing more liberal socio-economic positions than their army colleagues, especially those from the infantry branch. The balance of power between contending military actors frequently determines national political trajectories for decades at a stretch. These patterns of divided military involvement in politics carry critical implications for international security. The political leaders who emerge victorious from domestic battles often secure their military flank by giving substantial control over strategy and force planning to uniformed allies.by Eric Heginbotham.Ph.D

Japanese Foreign Policy

The MIT Japan Program was founded in 1981 to create a new generation of technologically sophisticated "Japan-aware " scientists, engineers, and managers in the United States. The Program's corporate sponsors, as well as support from the government and from private foundations, have made it the largest, most comprehensive, and most widely emulated center of applied Japanese studies in the world. The intellectual focus of the Program is to integrate the research methodologies of the social sciences, the humanities, and technology to approach issues confronting the United States and Japan in their relations involving science and technology. The Program is uniquely positioned to make use of MIT's extensive network of Japan-related resources, which include faculty, researchers, and library collections, as well as a Tokyo-based office. Through its three core activities, namely, education, research, and public awareness, the Program disseminates both to its sponsors and to the interested public its expertise on Japanes

Of Bombs and Bureaucrats: Internal Drivers of Nuclear Force Building in China and the United States

The article of record as published may be found at https://doi.org/10.1080/10670564.2018.1557945This article examines the domestic influences on US and Chinese nuclear forces. While strategic factors largely drive each side’s, underappreciated domestic and organizational factors also influence outcomes. Partisan politics shape US policies regarding arms control, missile defense, and the roles of nuclear forces. China has its own— more opaque—politics. Organizational factors have affected the status and role of the Chinese Rocket Forces. Constituencies for nuclear weapons have gained ground, and the military services appear to be competing for nuclear missions. The absence of organizational firewalls within the Rocket Forces suggests that assertive operational practices might bleed across different parts of the organization. These domestic influences on US and Chinese nuclear policy- making are likely to have interactive and accelerating effects. Both sides will assume measures taken by the other are driven by strategic intent, when the actual drivers may be mixed. To the extent that domestic factors are responsible, the resulting spirals of suspicion and conflict will be inadvertent—but may nevertheless take on a life of their own. While strategic nuclear interactions are not currently at the center of the bilateral relationship, they may come to be so in the future for all the wrong reasons

Active Denial: Redesigning Japan's Response to China's Military Challenge

The growth of Chinese military power poses significant challenges to Japan. China's military spending, which was half that of Japan's in 1996, is now three and a half times as large. Japan has taken a range of measures to buttress its military forces and loosen the restrictions on their operations, but much remains to be done. Most important, Tokyo needs to reexamine its strategy to maximize Japan's deterrent leverage. Of the three general approaches to conventional deterrence—punishment, forward defense, and denial—Japan's best option is to shift to a denial strategy. Such a strategy, built around a resilient force that can survive attack and attrite an encroaching adversary, can make the risks to a potential attacker unacceptably high. In Japan's case, such a strategy would leverage the inherent dangers that Beijing would face in contemplating a prolonged war against Japan and its U.S. ally. The strategy, updated to reflect the imperatives of air and maritime warfare in the precision strike era, would require a high level of dispersion and mobility and might therefore be labeled “active denial.” Adopting an active denial strategy would buttress Japan's defense and deterrent capability while reducing first-strike incentives and improving crisis stability

Estimating China’s Defense Spending: How to Get It Wrong (and Right) (Summer 2024)

China’s defense spending is opaque, and China spends more on defense than its official 2024 defense budget of 1.67 trillion yuan ($232 billion) indicates. Some analysts claim China’s defense spending is equivalent to$700 billion, approaching the level of the U.S. defense budget. These estimates mistakenly exaggerate China’s spending. They rely on unbalanced accounting for so-called off-budget expenditures and employ flawed purchasing power parity methods. We explain these flaws and offer a novel method for a more accurate assessment. According to our calculation, China will spend an estimated $471 billion on defense in 2024, or around 36 percent of comparable U.S. defense spending of about$1.3 trillion in 2024. A better understanding of Chinese defense spending enables U.S. policymakers and military planners to make more informed resourcing and allocation decisions while reducing the likelihood of overreaction and miscalculation.LBJ School of Public Affair

Domestic Factors Could Accelerate the Evolution of China's Nuclear Posture

This research brief describes work done for RAND Project AIR FORCE documented in China’s Evolving Nuclear Deterrent: Major Drivers and Issues for the United States, by Eric Heginbotham, Michael S. Chase, Jacob L. Heim, Bonny Lin, Mark R. Cozad, Lyle J. Morris, Christopher P. Twomey, Forrest E. Morgan, Michael Nixon, Cristina L. Garafola, and Samuel K. Berkowitz, RR-1628-AF, 2017The article of record as published may be found at https://www.rand.org/t/RB995