Gunners Shot

Published in News 9 live @ https://www.news9live.com/world/is-xi-jinping-ready-to-go-to-war-2509613

A calculated risk taker , he won’t audaciously enter into a conflict in which China can lose.

Xi Jinping’s China Dream is to rejuvenate the great Chinese nation as he prepares China  to deal with worst-case scenarios, withstand high winds, choppy waters, and even dangerous storms. He also wants to increase China’s international standing and influence and enable it to play a greater role in global governance. He has laid high premium on national security. Accordingly he is building the People’s Liberation Army to  world-class standards by increasing military budgets and inducting new weapons at a frenetic pace. He has intensified training to enhance  combat preparedness so that the PLA can fight  and win. He has been priming PLA, his instrument for victory, for war for the past ten years.  

As this may be, China is currently locked in a dangerous face off with India in the high Himalayas. Every other day in the South China Sea, the Coast Guards vessels of China and Philippines are bumping each other dangerously. Elsewhere in the region Chinese air and maritime forces carry out belligerent moves almost daily. All commentators – military or otherwise predict that China will invade Taiwan sooner than later to annex it since the political option of reunification has receded. To achieve this China must checkmate/ force the US military out of this region. The Japanese and South Koreans are upping their defense capabilities to ward off a belligerent China, which eyes to grab all the territories disputed with them. All these situations portend a war involving China on one side and one or more of these countries on the other.

Recently China published a new standard map which encompasses territories which lie beyond those very areas in which the PLA is involved in territorial/ maritime faceoffs. Usurping the areas notified in the map is part of Xi Jinping’s  ‘China dream and rejuvenation’. In addition he wants China to be the pole of  ‘Global Governance’. To attain any of these objectives he will have to take China to war.  The priority objective  being Taiwan. The common expectation is that he will do so. Will he do that?  

Another significant issue is that  Xi Jinping wants to go down in history as the greatest Chinese leader. There is a lot of personal ambition at stake. Hence, before going to war,  Xi Jinping must consider two things . Will a war achieve the desired political outcomes for China? What will be his place in Chinese history ? That is a double burden on Xi Jinping’s decision making system. He has been described as a calculated risk taker by Kevin Rudd, the former Australian PM. Hence he will not enter a war audaciously in which he or China can lose. After all,  war is a risky and unpredictable business whose outcomes are unknown at the best of times. Worse, there are always unintended consequences of any war. What if one of those consequences is China losing, Xi Jinping being vilified or worse still, the CCP being dismantled and left on the scrap heap of Chinese history? 

Xi Jinping must also be weighed down heavily by the PLA and its (in)capability to ‘fight and win’. If the sackings of two successive defence ministers and countless PLA generals including those from his vaunted Rocket Force and reports of substandard equipment is any guide, two issues emerge.  Xi Jinping trusts his generals very little ( and vice versa). Further,  so many sackings also translate into poor morale in the rank and file and an apparent lack of effective military leadership in PLA.  Not a good condition to either prepare for or prosecute a war. This is compounded by the lack of combat experience of PLA (which last fought a war in 1979). The situation is even worse when one considers the single child conscript soldiers of the PLA who might not be prepared to lay their lives on the line. Their parents might not also be prepared to lose their ‘only child’ for the China Dream when their own old age dreams are at stake. More than that the PLA has been conferred new roles in new battlefields and has been equipped with new weapons at break neck speed. New leaders, new soldiers, new structures, new roles, new weapons,  and new battle fields combined with lack of experience doesn’t make PLA a sharp instrument of war . Can it  guarantee the grand kind of victory which Xi Jinping wants? The PLA will ‘fight’ when ordered. Whether it will ‘win’ specially against a determined adversary is another matter. 

The idea that was being propagated that technology driven wars will be short and surgical where ‘comprehensive national power’ will prevail is now a proven fallacy. Wars remain long, violent and bloody human endeavours.  It will do well to realise that ‘GDP’ does not win wars but militaries do. Further, the overall size of your force counts very little. It is what you can put on ground, in that theatre, in that time , which is more important. How that force fights is most important. The ongoing Russia-Ukraine war and Israel-Gaza conflict indicate that it is easy to start a war. However it is the exit which counts as Putin and Netanyahu would vouch for. This will find resonance in Xi Jinping’s mind. He started a conflict with India four years back. It has not given him victory. On the other hand it has ‘rejuvenated’ India which has found new strategic confidence in itself. In fact it has turned the current generation youth into being against China. In the entire business of war if the political goals are not attained and if unintended outcomes occur, then Xi Jinping would be staring at a strategic defeat.

A major determinant in any conflict that China undertakes is how to keep the USA out of the equation? Despite all its bluster, the PLA will have to do something significant to keep USA out. That ‘something’ itself might lead to widening the conflict which will be beyond the capability of PLA. China could start a war with one nation and end up fighting with more. The poor military geography of China forces it into the probability of fighting on multiple fronts. A ‘chain reaction war’ is something Xi Jinping and China want to avoid at all costs.

A  factor which must be occupying Xi Jinping’s mental space is China’s declining demographics and stagnating economy. Can China afford a war under these conditions?  For instance, a long drawn blockade of Taiwan Straits by the PLA Navy will force convergence of other maritime forces against it. This could well result in actually choking all the commercial maritime movement along China’s east coast. The threat of the ‘Malacca Dilemma’ could become a reality. The whole endeavour could be a long term economic self-goal. Such a  Chinese dream will definitely be sour for people in the PRC. An honest appraisal by  Xi Jinping and his wolf warriors will also make them realise that China has very little trust or diplomatic goodwill with the international community. This will be needed in ample measure during war. It has no allies or friends barring Pakistan and North Korea.  

If one considers all factors, the balance  of power (military, economic and diplomatic) is not in Xi Jinping’s favour at present. That dampens Xi Jinping’s propensity to go to ‘war by design’ any time soon. Will Xi Jinping go to ‘war by accident ‘? Possible and most likely if certain redlines are crossed. However even that will be dictated by his priorities and the opportunity which presents itself. Even in that opportunity he will have to weigh in the national sentiment, his sense of sovereignty, history and culture and the likely outcomes. He will also factor in how the world will respond. Hence it is imperative that all affected parties get together and put in place an integrated deterrence system which has the capability to dent China’s redlines without provoking war. It must be based on mutual cooperation and aid. The dragon has to be pinned down as a pack and not let any individual nation fall. The principle is ‘one for all and all for one’ in the credo of the four musketeers.