Modernizing China’s Military: Opportunities and Constraints

Abstract

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Military Culture and Chinese Export Controls

“…Intersecting factors such as rapid economic growth, rising defense budgets, and the PLA's growing confidence in the industrial prowess of the Chinese defense sector reduce the incentive for firms to game the system. 114 These firms do not need external sources of income to the same degree they did during the austere times of the 1980s and early 1990s. Like so much in contemporary China, creating conditions conducive to export control compliance will depend on the country's ability to sustain its impressive economic performance of recent years.…”

The Slow Death of Japanese Techno-Nationalism? Emerging Comparative Lessons for China's Defense Production

“…However, even if China does not experience exactly the same problems as Japan in international collaboration, it may come to experience these to a certain degree. 72 China may find that licensed production opportunities become more expensive or even dry up as partners become less willing to share defense technology on the cheap. Russia's dissatisfaction with China's flagrant illegal reverse engineering may endanger one key source of technology, while at the same time the European Union arms embargo remains firmly in place and shuts off an alternative avenue for acquiring technology.…”

Demystifying China's Defence Spending: Less Mysterious in the Aggregate

“…Why these continued deployments?" 2 This article synthesizes and builds on previous scholarship on China's defence spending, including: Blasko 2012a; Chen and Feffer 2009;Blasko et al, n.d.;Wang 2006;Crane et al 2005;Bitzinger 2003;Shambaugh 2004, 184-224;Wang 1996. To be clear: to say that China's military trajectory is not as mysterious as is commonly believed is not to say that the PLA's growing capabilities should not be an issue of concern to other states or that China's military has achieved a sufficient level of transparency; nor is it to deny that some of China's recent rhetoric and behaviour toward its neighbours in East Asia has had a deleterious effect on regional stability.…”

“…See also Crane et al 2005;IISS 2006, 250-51;IISS 2010, 392-93. Yet it is important to note four conclusions from a recent study on China's military transparency by researchers at the US National Defense University: first, there is very little international consensus on an explicit definition of what the term "transparency" means, even among Western organizations.…”