China to Turn to Military Posture of Striking First

One party to take note in General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Jiang Zemin`s report in the opening ceremony of the 16th Chinese Communist Party`s Congress is `national defense and military build-up`. For it reflects the changed military strategy of the Chinese army to respond to a state-of-the-art science war in the 21th century.

▽Official adoption of new military strategy

Jiang said in his report that the nation should conduct a new military strategy based on high technology and science in order to keep up with the global military trend which is going through rapid changes and to proactively defend the nation on the basis of high technology.

His remarks take on special significance in that he declared the official adoption of a military strategy that has been studied in depth inside the Chinese military since the 1991 Gulf War. The strategy is about waging a war with the help of high technology.

Righ after the Gulf War, China`s central military committee instructed the military to study the lessons from the Gulf War from various perspectives.

The result of the in-depth study is to gain the upper hand in a war by striking first with cutting-edge weapons at the initial stage of the war.

Challenges ahead are improving the quality of weapons, establishing the system for an information war and setting up a special military unit for quick responses.

The findings were reported in a state-owned military magazine between 1995 and 1997.

Based on the findings, Jiang instructed the central military committee to shift the military discipline to a war under high-tech conditions and to reform the military into technology-intensive one.

But Jiang only reported that the nations should adopt a proactive defense strategy and to create small elite military force with Chinese characteristic in the 15th CCP Congress.

In the 16th CCP Congress, however, he declared a new military strategy seemingly because he was motivated by the 1999 war in Kosovo, which was regarded a science war, and the Sep. 11 terrorist attack against the US.

In the report, he also urged the nation to step up the Revolution of Military Affairs (RMA), which has been actively carried out by advanced nations including the US since the late 1990s. RMA is aimed to reform the military as a whole ranging from strategies, military policies to the military structure and to weapons and equipment in response to future wars through organic combination of science technology and war.

▽Changes in China`s military strategy

The military strategy that has long been adopted by the Chinese military was Mao Zedong`s strategy of people`s war. This strategy adopted in the 1920s and the 1930s leaned toward defense and was devised to lure the enemy into the inland and kill them with the power of the people.

But Mao`s strategy was revised by Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s. Deng believed that as weapons and equipment advanced, the way of fighting battles should be changed as well.

Deng officially abolished Mao`s strategy by introducing a strategy of waging a war under modern conditions in 1985. It constituted a sea change in the military discipline of the Chinese military. Deng`s strategy has changed again into waging a war under high-tech conditions by Jiang.

yshwang@donga.com