Why is China so cagey about it’s military capability?
Isn’t the fact that Beijing keeps the world and it’s neighbors guessing destabilizing; and couldn’t it lead to a dangerous proliferation of arms in the region if others end up over-arming on the better-safe-than-sorry principle? Surely that outcome isn’t in Beijing’s best interest, so what explains the opacity?
Oriana Skylar Mastro, from the Georgetown University – Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service (SFS) writing in the journal Asian Security believes he has an answer. He rejects the conventional wisdom that the stance is the “..result of an insufficient appreciation of the costs and benefits of different degrees of military transparency.”
From an analysis of authoritative military journals and other high level military pronouncements in the last five years he has pieced together a ‘vulnerability hypothesis’.
Liberal theories on conflict mostly conclude transparency is a good thing but practitioners, notably Bonaparte and Sun Zi, fail to concur. The paper argues, through the vulnerability hypothesis, there’s a third way of looking at this. A rising power that feels it may be able to eclipse a dominant power will find it in their interest to be sneaky on the rise but when the process is complete will likely change tack and only then want to advertise their competence.
China’s only serious regional rival is the United States, whom it presently lags in terms capability. It therefore sees no reason to share information with this power despite formal and informal requests. It does occasionally show off new kit but this is only in areas where it feels capability may be equal to or better then the U.S.
The paper concludes with three practical implications from its contents:
- Pressure and persuasion will not convince China to open up a more open capability dialogue.
- If the U.S. is going to persist with this policy it should focus on capability rather than intent transparency.
- Moves toward greater transparency may foreshadow conflict, not greater cooperation.
No news from China then, at least for the time being, may be the best news.
The paper can be accessed in full via the following link China’s Low Military Transparency.
Happy Sunday