Vasili KASHIN Senior researcher Institute of Far Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences Most analysts have traditionally been skeptical about the efforts of the People’s Republic of China to upgrade its Armed Forces. The predominant opinion among experts is that in military hardware the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China lags 20-30 years behind the armies of industrialized nations and that this lag will remain in the foreseeable future.   However, history has demonstrated that in certain conditions a country’s defense industry can be crucially upgraded and even built almost from scratch in a relatively short time. The most important of these conditions are: ·        The political will of the country’s leadership, ·        Rapid economic growth, ·        Vigorous borrowing of foreign technologies and purposeful efforts to create national schools of research and design.   The USSR in the late 1920s-early 1940s was a striking example of building a modern defense industry in an improbably short period time. In our opinion, present-day China has all the conditions that made rapid military upgrading possible in the Soviet Union in the 1930s.   Like the Soviet leadership during the Stalin era China’s leaders today have global political ambitions that require military might as backing. The same as the USSR 70 years ago China is now going through a period of brisk economic growth and all-round modernization of its economy. Qualitative technological advancement supplements the increase in production volumes. The advancing civilian industry is creating the necessary foundation for uplifting the defense industry to a qualitatively new level.   Like the USSR in the 1930s China today has ample possibilities for spying on industrialized nations (powerful Chinese communities aptly play the same role as Komintern agents used to) and it energetically uses them to collect scientific and technical data. In the 1920-1930s Germany that was slowly recovering from the crisis following its defeat in World War I was the most important source of technical know-how equipment for advancing the Soviet defense industry, and for China another weakened superpower – Russia – is the main partner in military-technical cooperation (MTC). To an importer of arms and military hardware the existence of a former superpower only beginning to recover from a disastrous defeat as the main partner in MTC creates unique chances of advancing the defense industry. Both the German defense industry of the 1920s and the Russian defense industry of the 1990-2000s wholly depended on the foreign market in their efforts to survive. China today has virtually no rivals as a partner for Russia the same as the Soviet Union for Germany in the 1920-1930s. Russia today like Germany after World War I is forced to intensify MTC almost disregarding the long-term political effects of the rearmament of its neighbors and possible adversaries. The complete loss of the national military-industrial potential is the only alternative to that.     As a result we witness an exceptional transfer of military-technical information from one country to another for the second time since the 1930s. The actual transfer volume is not restricted to bilateral MTC agreements. Close political and economic ties between Russia and China are creating important additional conditions for the transfer of the Russian potential to China such as personal contacts between scientists, exchanges of students and lecturers, the virtually unhindered and uncontrolled study of Russian civilian and dual-use technologies by the Chinese.     Like Germany for the Soviet Union, Russia for China is a major but not one and only partner in its efforts to upgrade its Armed Forces. MTC with the West was quite productive throughout the 1980s and continues on a smaller scale even though in most spheres it was frozen after the 1989 developments in Tiananmen square. Partnership with Israel and also the acquisition of dual-use technologies in cooperation with major American and European companies play an extremely important role for advancing the Chinese defense industry. For instance, the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee led by Rep. Christopher Cox discovered that in May 1997 U.S. Loral Space & Communications that launches its satellites with Chinese launch vehicles transferred technical information to China permitting PLA to significantly raise the reliability of its DF-5 (CSS-4) ICBM and DF-4 (CSS-3) long-range ballistic missiles. Until recently DF-5 was China’s only effective means of delivering missile strikes at U.S. territory.     Like the USSR in the 1930s China today is trying to combine technologies collected from different sources in one weapon. For instance, it is believed that the promising HQ-9 surface-to-air missile system design combines solutions applied by Russian S-300PMU (SA-10 Grumble) and U.S. Patriot surface-to-air missiles (in 1993 the White House accused Israel of transferring classified technical data related to the system but the charges were never proven).     In some spheres this approach is beginning to produce the first results. For instance, the Chinese Type 89 155-mm towed gun-howitzer and its self-propelled modification PLZ-45 are quite up-to-date artillery systems excelling Russian and certain Western analogs in a number of parameters. In 1997 PLZ-45 won a contest for the delivery of self-propelled howitzers to the Kuwaiti army leaving U.S. and European competitors behind. In 2001 Kuwait ordered an additional batch of PLZ-45 which evidently means that the client had been satisfied with the operation of the system.     Such weapons adopted by PLA as Type 95 series small arms for the specially developed 5.8 mm ammunition (consists of a bullpup assault rifle, machine gun and sniping rifle) can hardly be regarded as outdated or fully borrowed from some one foreign source. The Type 98 MBT in spite of its indisputable Russian influence boasts a number of original and quite advanced components, for instance, the JD-3 active laser self-defense system (it automatically locates enemy weapons’ optics, disables the optics and/or damages the eyesight of the enemy gunner with a laser beam). The new DF-31 (CSS-9) solid fuel ICBM that is believed to have been adopted by the PLA 2nd Artillery Department (the Chinese counterpart of the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces) in 2002 is approaching the missiles the United States and Russia have in its technical standard.     In other spheres Chinese progress has not been as evident. Chinese facilities are having great trouble launching the production of Su-27 fighters. The provision of the Air Force with the new J-10 fighter and the upgraded modification of the JH-7 bomber is dragging out. Projects of developing many naval armaments are skidding which growing procurements of individual systems and whole ships from Russia and other countries go to prove.     However, it would be premature to draw skeptical conclusions about the prospects of Chinese military programs because of these failures. In the first years of the Soviet defense industry even the simple replication of foreign weapons often proved an insurmountable task despite the existence of the necessary documentation. For instance, the USSR launched the production of automatic small caliber air-defense guns only in 1939-1940 even though it had access to German achievements in the sphere since the beginning of the 1930s. A slighting attitude to the Soviet military-industrial potential predominated in the West in the 1930s and remained unchanged until World War II that promptly crushed all earlier stereotypes about the armaments of the Soviet Red Army.     The time required to develop new types of military hardware has grown manifold compared to the 1930-1940s, and the very process of founding and advancing new industries has become more complicated and protracted. The Chinese defense industry is now evidently at a stage of its development comparable to the Soviet defense industry in the mid-1930s. This means that though quantity in upgrading the Chinese defense industry has not yet turned into quality, given the continuation of the current favorable economic and political conditions for the advancement of the Chinese defense industry, a qualitative leap is inevitable. Judging by the Chinese economy growth dynamics and the adoption of foreign technical achievements, we can assume that the leap will take place in 15-20 years and as a result China will join the group of leading military industrial powers along with the United States, Europe and Russia, if Russia manages to retain a significant part of its potential, of course.     In the past the failure to adequately estimate the Soviet military-industrial potential had extremely unfavorable geopolitical consequences for virtually all world powers. For some of them haughtiness proved fatal. It is important that Russia as a country directly bordering on China would not repeat this mistake or overlook the upcoming qualitative leap of the Chinese military potential.