Some South Korean analysts suspect that senior Chinese military leaders have welcomed--and perhaps even encouraged--North Korean threats to attack Japan, even though the bellicose statements are likely to spur a major Japanese military buildup, including, possibly, nuclear weapons development.
The People's Liberation Army (PLA), according to these experts, assumes it is only a matter of time before Japan upgrades its offensive military capabilities because of Tokyo's alliance with the United States, which, in the PLA's view, is committed to an anti-Chinese policy of encirclement and containment.
The analysis contradicts conventional wisdom, which holds that a militarily stronger, nuclear armed Japan is China's worst nightmare.
"Not true," says a Seoul-based China expert. "The Chinese military has no fear of Japan. In fact, the military sees benefits in Japan building itself up sooner rather than later."
A key "benefit," this expert contends, would be political: creation of an enemy that would clearly justify continued Chinese military modernization and expansion, effectively answering U.S. defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld's rhetorical question: "Who threatens China?"
On the domestic front, a Japanese military buildup would also fuel Chinese nationalism--an increasingly potent and useful force for a regime that has based its entire claim to legitimacy on continued material progress.
Chinese nationalism and anti-Americanism go hand in hand. In their 1999 book Unrestricted Warfare, two PLA political commissars, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, actually praised the tactics of Al Qaeda leader Osama Binladen, arguing that his tactics are as legitimate as those used by U.S. General Norman Schwartzkopf in the Gulf War. Focusing on alternative means of warfare, including, in addition to terrorism, economic warfare, the book argues China can only defeat a technologically superior opponent such as the United States by using these methods and avoiding the need for direct military action.
More recently, an archived article initially published on the English-language PLA Daily website on June 8, titled, "Widening the View on the United States," accuses the US of "ceaselessly looking for enemies, ceaselessly playing up crises, and ceaselessly sending out troops for military actions ... in order to build a unipolar world and to ... create a parity situation among different regions so that different regions will hold up and restrict each other."
The "U.S.-Japan alliance," according to the article, which is bylined by Li Bingyan and apparently based on an interview with "America issue expert" Dr. Lu Dehong, "is an alliance by which the US holds Japan in its arms."
The article predicts that "the future that lies before us is a coexistence of opportunities and crises, and crises will generate from opportunities."
Urging the Chinese people to "bravely rise to challenges," the article concludes: "In order to build a unipolar world, the U.S. has hit out everywhere, resulting in its ever-growing battlefront and accumulating more and more contradictions. If things go on like this, the U.S. will eventually prove to be true (to) an old Chinese saying: Big ones have their own troubles. Biting off more than one can chew, and the old will certainly decline."
Copyright Andre Pachter. Published with permission.
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