[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 29 (Thursday, March 14, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E355-E356]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       CHINA'S MILITARY EXPANSION

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. BOB SCHAFFER

                              of colorado

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, March 14, 2002

  Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to discuss an issue of utmost 
importance to our national security. On Tuesday, March 5th, the 
Washington Post reported the People's Republic of China has increased 
its military spending by over 17% for the second consecutive year.
  As I have pointed out many times on the House Floor, China's desire 
is for complete dominance and hegemony in the Asian-Pacific region.
  Communist China's attempts to build a nuclear arsenal capable of 
defeating the United States are undeniable. In that regard, the 
addition of multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicles is the 
PRC's most significant threat to the United States. This targeted 
spending increase is clearly designed to close the nuclear gap that 
exists between the United States and China.
  China's military buildup is especially disconcerting considering its 
much publicized goal of controlling Taiwan. Mr. Speaker, as you know, 
China has said it will take back Taiwan by whatever means necessary. 
Along these lines, Chinese military leaders have openly questioned 
whether the United States would be willing to sacrifice Los Angeles in 
our attempts to protect Taipei. We must be prepared to defend ourselves 
against this type of overt aggression.
  Mr. Speaker, this is why I have been so vehement in articulating the 
need to act decisively to build a ballistic missile defense. The fact 
that our country remains completely vulnerable to a ballistic missile 
attack is a reflection of our lack of political will to build an 
adequate defense. The technology for a ballistic missile defense is 
available, and has been for years and even decades. It is obvious China 
will neither lay aside its obsessive quest to build and maintain an 
offensive nuclear missile program, nor cut its massive military 
spending. There is only one acceptable response to this threat. We need 
to fully fund a robust ballistic missile defense program, encompassing 
a variety of technologies and defenses, and we must accomplish this 
without delay.
  Mr. Speaker, at this point in the Record I submit the text of the 
March 5th article to which I have been referring. I commend this 
article to our colleagues and all observers of these proceedings.

        [From the Washington Post Foreign Service, Mar. 5, 2002]

                   China Raises Defense Budget Again

                           (By John Pomfret)

       Beijing.--China will announce another 17 percent rise in 
     defense spending this week, completing a one-third increase 
     in acknowledged military expenditures over the last

[[Page E356]]

     two years, Chinese and other Asian sources said today.
       The increase reflects Beijing's ambition to build a 
     powerful military to complement its robust economy and 
     underpin its strategic position in Asia. But despite more 
     than a decade of big jumps in the defense budget, Asian and 
     Western military officers and Chinese sources said the 2.5-
     million-member People's Liberation Army, the largest standing 
     fighting force in the world, is struggling with its 
     modernization program, handicapped by low pay, poor morale 
     and difficulty absorbing new weapons.
       Finance Minister Xiang Huaicheng will announce an increase 
     of around 17.6 percent in defense spending when he details 
     China's budget on Wednesday during a meeting of the 
     legislature, Chinese sources, Asian diplomats and Chinese-
     language media reports said. China increased defense spending 
     by 17.7 percent last year; the jump this year will bring its 
     publicly acknowledged defense budget to $20 billion.
       China's real defense spending, including funds expended but 
     not reported, is considered the highest in Asia, considerably 
     more than the $45 billion spent annually by Japan. By 
     comparison, the Bush administration has proposed a $379 
     billion defense budget for the next fiscal year.
       Beijing explained its increase last year as a response to 
     ``drastic changes'' in the military situation around the 
     world, a reference to the U.S.-led war in Kosovo in 1999. 
     This year, sources said, Beijing needs more money to bolster 
     its nuclear forces following the Bush administration's 
     decision to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty 
     and continue work on a missile defense system.
       China has often voiced concern that, if the United States 
     builds a missile shield, the Chinese nuclear force would lose 
     its strategic deterrent without more and better warheads and 
     delivery vehicles.
       China's main modernization efforts, however focus on 
     turning the People's Liberation Army from an army of farmers 
     into a modern, streamlined fighting force and to abandon the 
     People's War doctrine, which involves basic guerrilla tactics 
     in favor of more traditional doctrines used by world powers.
       The goal, according to Pentagon reports, is to become a 
     ``regional hegemon,'' project Chinese power into any corner 
     of Asia, protect sea lanes for Chinese oil, replace the 
     United States as the preeminent power in the region and use 
     Chinese power to guarantee reunification with Taiwan.
       To do so, China has embarked on a shopping spree for 
     weapons from Russia, Israel and South Africa and a worldwide 
     hunt for technology to improve its nuclear weapons and 
     rocketry programs. China was the world's biggest arms 
     importer in 2000, according to the Stockholm International 
     Peace Research Institute. It will probably be so again in 
     2001 and 2002, analysts say.
       Starting in 1997, China shed 500,000 troops from the army, 
     transferring them to the People's Armed Police, which deals 
     with internal security. It has also launched an ambitious 
     program to enhance training, education and living standards 
     for the men and women currently in uniform.
       Chinese analysts consider morale a major problem for the 
     army. One Western military attache who has had links with the 
     Chinese military since the 1980s described the army as facing 
     a ``spiritual crisis.''
       ``It has lost its revolutionary elan,'' he said. ``It is no 
     longer a tough, ragtag force of creative and motivated 
     guerrilla fighters. It has become rigid, bureaucratized and 
     slow.''
       Morale problems are reflected regularly in the People's 
     Liberation Army Daily, the army's newspaper, where complaints 
     about bad pay, lack of vacation time and poor training are 
     routine. Last week, the military, responding to years of 
     complaints, promised to increase its rations budget by 20 
     percent, the newspaper reported.
       Once a route out of the countryside for smart young men, 
     the army no longer can attract the talent it needs, Chinese 
     sources said, because other opportunities have arisen with 
     economic reforms. Among the upper levels of society, an army 
     career is almost a joke. Practically no students from Beijing 
     or Qinghua universities, China's most prestigious, consider a 
     career in the military, which pays a colonel less than $350 a 
     month.
       Reform-minded senior Chinese military officers regularly 
     compare the army to a state-owned enterprise burdened by 
     aging, untrainable workers. ``What can you do with someone 
     who is 45 and has grown up in the old PLA?'' said one Chinese 
     major general. ``There are thousands of people like this. 
     Many are officers, and because we can't do anything with 
     them, our younger officers are angry and leaving the 
     service.''
       A good percentage of training, up to 30 percent in some 
     cases, is taken up with political indoctrination, Chinese 
     sources said. ``Political reform is not just necessary for 
     the economy to grow faster,'' said one former officer who 
     recently left the army because it lacked opportunities. 
     ``It's a prerequisite for military modernization, too.''
       As a result, Chinese soldiering suffers. Western military 
     officers in Beijing said one reason China is so reticent 
     about participating in U.N. peacekeeping is that its units 
     are incapable of operating independently.
       In peacekeeping, the basic unit is a platoon, about 10 to 
     20 troops. ``But they cannot function as a platoon,'' said a 
     Western officer. ``Once they are detached from the mother 
     ship, they freeze up. In peacekeeping, if you don't have 
     smart people commanding your small units, the situation can 
     turn catastrophic very fast.''
       More broadly, the PLA's reputation still has not recovered 
     from the killings around Tianamen Square during the pro-
     democracy demonstrations of 1989. The PLA's efforts to save 
     people during floods in the summer of 1999 helped for a 
     while. But, simultaneously, many stories arose of local 
     military leaders leading smuggling rings.
       Jokes about corruption in the military and its obsession 
     with politics are now routine. When Japanese Self-Defense 
     Forces sank an intruding vessel, believed by Tokyo to be a 
     North Korean spy boat, inside China's 200-mile exclusive 
     economic zone in December, China's navy did not dispatch a 
     ship to monitor the incident. ``They must have been busy,'' 
     the punch line went, ``studying the `Three Represents' [the 
     latest political philosophy of President Jiang Zemin] or 
     smuggling.''
       China's military acquisitions have been substantial. Recent 
     Russian weapon and equipment sales have included 72 Su-27 
     fighter-ground attack aircraft; 100 S-300 surface-to-air 
     missiles; 10 II-76 transport aircraft; four Kilo-class 
     submarines and two Sovremenny-class destroyers. China has 
     also signed a contract to assemble at least 200 more Su-27s 
     at the Shenyang Aircraft Corp. in northeastern China.
       But an Asian military officer estimated that 60 percent of 
     the Su-27s cannot fly, either because they are broken or 
     because the pilots lack the skill to fly them. ``Their men 
     are 20 years behind ours in terms of their skill at handling 
     and repairing these sophisticated machines,'' he said. ``This 
     gap in personnel is not easily closed.''
       China's purchases of the Sovremenny-class destroyers were 
     touted as another sign of Beijing's new ability to project 
     force and challenge U.S. influence in Asia. But attempts to 
     purchase an early warning radar system failed in July 2000 
     when the United States blocked Israel from selling China an 
     II-76 aircraft equipped with AWACS-style radar, a system 
     Israel calls the Phalcon.
       ``Without the Phalcon,'' said a Western attache', ``the 
     Sovremenny is a sitting duck.''

  Mr. Speaker, while China's military expansion poses a real threat to 
the United States, we have the technology to build a real missile 
defense shield, and should be directing the necessary funds to build 
and deploy such a system without delay.

                          ____________________