Asia Times

1 August 1997

[for personal use only]

FEARS THE CHINA WILL BITE THE HAND THAT ARMS It

By Pavel Ivanov

Pavel Ivanov is a Russian affairs expert based in New York.

It has been more than a month now since the much-touted visit to Beijing of Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, but because several agreements discussed or entered into during that visit have vast implications for the future, it is still a hot topic among Moscow's political elite.

Chernomyrdin is credited with "reinforcing the strategic partnership" between Russia and China, primarily due to the announcement of new and important sales of Russian arms and equipment to China. Moscow is expected to sell additional Su-27SK jet fighters and the latest Sovremenny (Modern) class destroyers armed with supersonic cruise missiles.

Washington has already expressed intense displeasure over the cruise missile sale. The "Mosquito" missile (or "Sunburn" in NATO terminology) has a combat range of more than 480km, is capable of carrying a tactical nuclear payload and is remarkably resistant to existing United States air-defense systems. Its presence in China's Pacific fleet would seriously test the superiority of the US naval presence in the East China Sea and beyond.

But not everybody in Moscow views the developing Sino-Russian strategic partnership with admiration. Several Russian military experts view Chernomyrdin's "historic visit" to Beijing with a cynicism born of experience.

Just a few days after the prime minister returned home to praises for his "breakthrough accomplishments", the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) marched in force into Hong Kong to mark the formal return to China of the former-British colony. With Hong Kong safely back in the fold, analysts in Moscow and elsewhere expect that the PLA will target vigorously anti-communist Taiwan for reunification with a still more or less totaltarian and communist China.

But as a senior Russian military specialist observed: "To project force over the Taiwan Strait to press Taipei eventually into submission, Beijing needs greatly enhanced maritime and air power capabilities." And apparently Russia is able - and completely willing - to provide the Chinese military with the ultra-modern high tech equipment it desperately needs to modernize and provide itself with the capability to achieve military objectives beyond China's shores.

Forty years ago, when China and the Soviet Union were the closest of allies, China's entire conventional arms industry was built by the Soviets. Without modernization, China's arms manufacturing capabilities today are limited to the manufacture of cloned, old-fashioned, and outdated Soviet-style arms systems.

Almost every attempt by Beijing to modernize its defense industries during the 1980s and early 1990s met with little success. Moreover, after the notorious suppression of pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989, Western military transfers - and, generally speaking, China's entire program of military cooperation with the West - were put on hold.

According to some Russian and Western experts, immediately after the Tiananmen crackdown Russian arms dealers reappeared in China after an absence of nearly 30 years. Those Russian courtiers were soon welcomed in Beijing as "special guests". To cement their rekindled cooperation, Moscow accepted barter in the form of Chinese-made clothing, electronics and food. Three-quarters of the original contract to supply Su-27SK jet fighters and Kilo-class submarines was paid for by barter shipments from China.

But now things have changed. Few of the newer arms deals between Russia and China, especially those involving modern technology transfer and licensing agreements for indigenous manufacture, have any barter component. China's fast-growing trade surplus (especially with the US) has freed up the hard currency necessary to pay its Russian partners in cash.

Speaking privately, a senior Russian military expert said: "The greatest source of our success in military cooperation with China is Beijing's trade balance with the US. Practically speaking, Americans are paying for the arms we sell to China."

Military observers in Russia and the West believe that, although Beijing has invested plenty of money on the purchase of Russian arms, the main objective is to obtain lucrative licensing deals and the transfer of modern technology so that indigenous production within Chinese defense industries can be maximized. China's armed forces want to enter the next century with up-to-date and competitive armaments and equipment.

So, at a price of US$450 million, Beijing has finally obtained a licence for the complete technological processes to produce its own Su-27SK fighters. Russian military specialists believe that by the beginning of the next century, China will have up to 300 modern long-range fighter jets along with several warships armed with the Mosquito missile. They also believe that Beijing will surely deploy such weapons and equipment as part of the process of "convincing" Taiwan to reunify with the mainland.

But some observers go further. Who or what is going to be the next "priority" for a PLA upgraded with the latest Russian weaponry? Within a few years China will have the capability to effectively defend its interests and territorial claims in the South China Sea (the Paracel Islands, the Spratly Islands) and through the Sea of Japan to the Russian Far East. The time may not be far off when Chinese naval vessels laden with the most modern deadly weapons will steam off the coasts of Southeast Asia and South Asia to protect what Beijing believes to be its "natural national interests".

Those experienced skeptics in Moscow believe that Russia has learned few lessons from its bitter confrontation with China, which lasted nearly 20 years during the Cold War. Several times during that period, both countries teetered on the brink of full-scale military conflict. Pragmatists need very few reasons to believe the tables could again change what may now be a "strategic and close bilateral relationship" into a competitive struggle to protect individual spheres of influence.

Although the idea of a Moscow-Beijing partnership now seems popular, some strategists still feel that the brilliant allure of Chinese gold has blinded Russia to the realities of an economically powerful China that is armed to the teeth.

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Johnson's Russia List

#1108

1 August 1997

djohnson@cdi.org