China’s Dangerous Perception Error

Crisis and conflict can occur as much through misunderstanding and miscalculation as through conscious decision and calculation. If recent studies of the Chinese military mentality have got it right, then one unintended result of the patchwork diplomatic settlement for the Iraq standoff may be to reinforce Beijing’s instinct that America is soft, its will shaky and its military capabilities somehow less than advertised.

The U.S. record in the Persian Gulf in 1991 offers the Chinese the most recent major example of what this nation and its military can do when the mission is clear and the American people are united behind the president. But where much of the world saw a massive, well-organized use of superior force and technology, many in China’s military saw something less. That, at least, is the concern of China specialist and Rand consultant James Mulvenon, who recently studied the senior Chinese officer corps for Rand’s National Defense Research Institute. While he gives Beijing high marks for its efforts to improve the professionalism of its sprawling People’s Liberation Army, Mulvenon feels strongly that its understanding of the United States is still deficient: “There are people in the PLA that believe we could only kill all those Iraqi tanks because no one was in them. They think: ‘You use smart weapons too much, you have no stomach for fighting.’J”

If that’s the actual Chinese belief, then the gap between the reality of U.S. military capabilities and China’s perception of them is wide. Worse yet, Mulvenon’s informed melancholy is shared in Washington. A recent Pentagon study, “Dangerous Chinese Misperceptions,” agrees that, despite all the recent military-to-military contacts between Chinese officers and their U.S. counterparts, the true picture of America apparently is still fuzzy. Says the Pentagon report: “China’s leadership holds a number of dangerous misconceptions that may well cause serious political friction or even military conflict with the United States. The consequences of China consistently underestimating the military power of potential opponents complicates any effort to deter China.”

A widespread Chinese belief about U.S. weakness could trigger miscalculation by Beijing. One such error would be a wholly unilateral Chinese decision to intervene suddenly in North Korea, should that failing state disintegrate and refugees pour over the border into China. Or a decision to attack Taiwan, a nation of 21 million people which Beijing claims as its historic own. Of the latter, Mulvenon agrees: “Many Chinese officers think, ‘You would not risk the lives of American boys and girls over Taiwan.’J”

What can the U.S. do in the face of such apparent misunderstanding of who we are and what we can do if pushed to the wall? For starters, we need to continue to broaden and deepen U.S.- Chinese military-to-military relations in order to change, over time, the People’s Liberation Army’s inadequate sense of us. And there is hope, for as Beijing cleans the PLA’s house--forcing middle- and upper-echelon deadwood out, insisting on more and better training and buying new military technologies carefully and selectively--it is building a modern military more like America’s. Today, top officers of the People’s Liberation Army are better educated, more professional, less ideological and younger than in the past. If Chinese senior officers are in fact coming into the 21st century, as the Pentagon and Mulvenon say they are, then in time they may come to mirror many of the attitudes of their U.S. counterparts. With that, America should be able to develop better relationships at the military-to-military level, while continuing to work hard on the bilateral diplomatic and political.

Obviously, the Chinese people are entitled to capable military forces for their national security; the U.S. should have no quarrel with that. But it is not in the Chinese national interest if the People’s Liberation Army fails to understand, as potential foes have in the past to their great regret, the way America works. If, in the current crisis with Iraq, the Chinese mistake America’s preference for smart diplomacy over smart bombs as a lack of national resolve, and if indeed top Chinese military leaders were unmoved by the overwhelming U.S. showing in 1991, one can only worry. The Chinese must not mistake the Clinton administration’s hesitation to unleash massive carnage on Baghdad as wimpiness, or its misconceived but wholly well-intentioned Ohio State town meeting as the symptom of a nation divided rather than one that actually tends to practice the robust free political speech it preaches.

But if, in the end, U.N. diplomacy does not work and once again the world gets to see for itself the punishing effects of potent U.S. technologies in action, I will feel very sorry for the poor Iraqi people. And I will hope that perhaps this time the People’s Liberation Army will get the correct message.