Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (101 page)

Military Cooperation with the United States

Deng never gave any indication that he ever considered forming a military alliance with the United States, for like Mao before him, he wanted China to remain completely independent on security matters. But he did seek U.S. cooperation in acquiring more modern military technology. Indeed, when Deng met President Carter in January 1979, he brought up the issue of the possible transfer of military technology from the United States. Although Carter did not welcome the idea while China was preparing to attack Vietnam or was actively involved in battle, after Deng withdrew Chinese forces from Vietnam, talks about such cooperation warmed. Deng did not display any urgency, but he raised the issue of sharing military technology at every opportunity. The Americans took notice: when Deng spoke to Vice President Mondale in late August 1979, he expressed his disappointment that the United States had decided not to supply China with high-speed computers, and Mondale replied that the United States was preparing lists of technology that could be transferred to China but not to the Soviet Union.
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Following Mondale's very successful visit, the United States decided to send Secretary of Defense Harold Brown to Beijing for discussions on security issues. Planning for this trip helped to advance the agenda for technology transfers, for although the United States would not sell weapons to China, it would consider on a case-by-case basis the transfer of military equipment—and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 lent support to those who wanted to intensify U.S. cooperation with China as a way of putting pressure on the Soviet Union. By the time Secretary Brown arrived in Beijing in January 1980, the Chinese had studied American procedures and learned the range of technology the United States was considering for transfer. They handed to the American side a list of the technology they sought, which permitted a business-like examination of concrete cases. To highlight the favorable consideration given to U.S. technology transfer to China, Brown gave the example of Landsat-D (a satellite that collected information on natural resources), which was then being supplied to China but not the Soviet Union. During this meeting, although there were advances in cooperation, the Chinese were reluctant to rely on the U.S. security umbrella. They still
rejected U.S. proposals for additional consultations or ship visits and did not accept a telephone hotline between the two countries.
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Secretary Brown explained to Deng that a number of Soviet actions during the previous year had been viewed negatively by the U.S. public and that the United States was now spending more on defense, strengthening its Pacific fleet and deploying more forces to the Middle East. Deng, who in May 1978 had complained to Brzezinski that the United States was not doing enough to counter Soviet moves, expressed approval to Secretary Brown in January 1980 that the United States was now responding more vigorously to the Soviet threat. But, Deng said, “It would have been better if this could have been done even earlier, . . . My personal judgment is that for a long time the West has not offered an effective response to actions of the Soviet Union.” He had no objections to treaties, he said, but they were of little value in restraining the Soviets: “There is only one way to cope with the Soviet Union.” What was required was a demonstration of force. During the meeting, Deng touched on other issues as well. He was pleased that the United States was now offering assistance to Pakistan, a move he had been advocating for some time. He believed that other nations should help turn Afghanistan into a quagmire for the Soviet Union, just as he had helped to bog down Vietnam along the border. And he coyly reminded Brown of China's interest in buying fighter planes, saying, “I will not mention the purchase of F-15 or F-16 aircraft any more,” but, he added, “the scope of technology transfer is too narrow.”
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Geng Biao, vice premier and secretary general of the CMC Standing Committee, was selected to make the return visit to Washington. Geng Biao had served in the Chinese military during the Jiangxi Soviet period, the Long March, World War II, and the civil war. He had served as an ambassador (in Scandinavia, Pakistan, and Myanmar) between 1950 and 1965, longer than any other Chinese diplomat. In Washington in May 1980, he met President Carter and Vance's replacement as secretary of state, Edmund Muskie, but his main host was Secretary Brown. He and Secretary Brown worked to devise ways in which the United States and China could respond effectively to the Soviet threat if it expanded in a southeast direction, from the Middle East to the Indian Ocean and to Southeast Asia. Reflecting the views of Deng and other Chinese leaders, Geng Biao reported that China had successfully tied down some 600,000 Vietnamese troops along the border, which had both weakened Vietnamese capacity to control Cambodia and prevented Vietnam from controlling the Straits of Malacca.

By the time Geng Biao had completed his visit to the United States, technical exchanges were under way and there was a broader basis for cooperation on strategic issues. As a result of these discussions, later arrangements were made to send to the United States delegations of Chinese officers from the military academies as well as specialists in military logistics. In return, high-level U.S. army and navy officers would visit China.
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During the 1980s there was rapid growth in military-to-military contacts, including exchanges of visits between the U.S. secretary of defense and the Chinese minister of defense, service chief visits, technology transfers and arms sales to China, and exchanges of academic specialists and training delegations. Although these interactions did not compare to the level of military exchanges that the United States had with Japan and South Korea, the two sides did develop very good working relations. The exchanges ended abruptly following the Tiananmen tragedy of 1989, however, and in the decades afterward were not fully restored.

Postponing Military Modernization

When Deng believed that the likelihood of war with the Soviet Union was reduced, he directed China's resources not toward military modernization but toward the other three modernizations, and, in particular, toward the priorities Chen Yun advocated—agriculture and light industry. Modernizing the military could wait. As he explained on March 19, 1979, three days after Chinese troops returned from Vietnam, to a meeting of the Military Commission on Science and Technology
(Kexue jishu zhuangbei weiyuanhui)
, “It appears that at least for ten years there will not be a large-scale war in the world. We don't need to be in such a hurry. Now the number of troops is too large. We have to cut back. . . . We don't need to prepare all things. We need to pick a small number of projects and focus on them.”
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Deng took a long-term perspective, but perhaps he underestimated how long it would take China, despite its rapid growth, to modernize. He spoke of achieving modernization by 2000.

High-level military officials were less patient. Many had been waiting since the 1950s to acquire modern military equipment, and had been frustrated first by the Great Leap and the Cultural Revolution, and now because of Deng's new focus on the civilian economy. Deng had to explain over and over again to disappointed officers why it was in the national interest first to develop the civilian economy and then to modernize the military. Given his
extensive military background, Deng was probably the only leader of his time with the authority, determination, and political skill to keep these officers from launching serious protests against this policy.

During the critical period in 1979 and early 1980, Deng remained chief-of-staff, surrounded by generals unhappy with the prospect of early retirement and with the news that the development of new weapons systems would be postponed. Yang Dezhi, who succeeded Deng as chief-of-staff, inherited responsibility for explaining why military modernization had to take a back seat to improvements in the civilian economy. As Yang acknowledged, “The broad masses of commanders and soldiers . . . are longing for rapidly changing our economic backwardness and the backwardness of our military technique and equipment. . . . Such feelings are completely understandable. However, it will . . . not be possible to achieve very great progress in the modernization of our national defense.”
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Geng Biao, who served briefly as defense minister, and Zhang Aiping, whom Deng appointed as defense minister in 1982 (and who had directed military science and technology policy since 1975), also had to explain Deng's strategy to disgruntled officers. In March 1983 Zhang put it very directly: “The military has to take the needs of other sectors into account and to carry out . . . strict budgeting within the scope allowed by the limited amount of funds.”
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Throughout the 1980s, then, the Chinese government decreased the proportion of the budget going to the military. Although China's data are incomplete because income from military enterprises or extra-budgetary income is not included, according to official figures, Chinese military expenditures were 4.6 percent of GNP in 1979 when the reforms began, but declined continuously to 1.4 percent of GNP by 1991.
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During the 1980s China's purchase of foreign arms was one-sixth the amount of Vietnam's purchases and one-half the amount of Taiwan's purchases, even though China's population was roughly twenty times that of Vietnam and fifty times that of Taiwan.
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Moreover, given the inflation rate of nearly 100 percent from 1980 to 1989, U.S. analysts estimate that the nominal increase in the defense budget of about 30 percent translated into a decrease in actual funds available for the military during the decade.
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Deng's Military Team

Chinese Communist leaders have all repeated that the party commands the gun, but in a crucial power struggle, as Mao and Deng understood, allegiances
among key military leaders would be critical. Deng sought both formal institutional and personal control over the military. He did not strenuously object to not being named premier, but it was important to gain institutional control over the military. After Hua was pushed aside in December 1980, Deng became chairman of the party's CMC; the post gave him unrivaled institutional control over military affairs. In 1987 Deng gave up his positions as vice chairman of the party and vice premier, but he remained chairman of the CMC until the fall of 1989, when he passed the position on to Jiang Zemin.

In selecting high officials for party and government posts, Deng sought the best person for the job, regardless of where they were from, whom they knew, or who recommended them. For high military positions, he wanted able people, but personal loyalty was also critical. In the military, the strongest bonds of loyalty were among those who had served in the same field army during the civil war. Just as Lin Biao had chosen for the highest military positions many officers from his Fourth Field Army, in 1980, when Deng was able to select his own officials in various military sectors, five of the eleven military-region commanders were comrades from his Second Field Army, including Qin Jiwei in the critical Beijing region.
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Deng continued to rely on his former underlings throughout his tenure as China's top military leader. Of the six military members on the CMC in the late 1980s, half were from the Second Field Army. These included Defense Minister Qin Jiwei and director of the General Political Department Yang Baibing. Of the other three military positions on the CMC, one seat each went to someone who had served in the third or fourth field armies.
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Of the seventeen full generals that Deng commissioned in 1988, ten were from the Second Field Army.

For key military positions, others chosen who had not served in the Second Field Army still had personal ties of loyalty to Deng. After Hua was finally removed as head of the CMC (in December 1980), Deng appointed Yang Shangkun as secretary general of the CMC. Yang, also from Sichuan and only three years younger than Deng, had worked closely with Deng from 1956 to 1966 when Yang was head of the party General Office and Deng was party general secretary. Yang had the ready confidence to communicate easily with Deng. In September 1982 Yang was promoted to first vice chairman of the CMC, in charge of daily work. He was a good manager and in effect became an extension of Deng on the CMC, representing Deng's views and reporting to Deng the views of other CMC members. Deng's confidence
that Yang could manage military matters freed him to concentrate on other issues.

In February 1980, after Deng had completed the transition and named his own people, he resigned as chief-of-staff and passed the job of managing the PLA's daily affairs to Yang Dezhi, who had commanded the forces of the Kunming Military Region during the attack on Vietnam and had proved very loyal to Deng. In 1982 Deng appointed Zhang Aiping as minister of defense, and because the ministry had been reduced in power after Lin Biao's plane crash in 1971, he also named him to the critical position of deputy secretary general of the CMC. While serving under Deng in 1975, Zhang had been very effective in organizing plans for the modernization of military technology. His strategic sense of high-tech military weapons development and strong management skills made him the right person to help China sort out its priorities and lay the groundwork for the development of high technology.

Expanding the Range of Defense Strategies

The defense strategy that Deng inherited from Chairman Mao rested heavily on a combination of two extremes: “People's War” and nuclear weapons. The “People's War,” whereby local people were mobilized to harass and wear down a better-equipped occupying army, had been well-adapted to the long-term Japanese occupation during World War II. It had also helped discourage the Soviets from long-term occupation when they had thrust into China in 1969, and indeed it was still a way of discouraging another Soviet assault, making the low likelihood of such an attack even lower. Lacking a broad economic base, Mao could not hope to modernize the military in all areas, so he concentrated his resources on those he considered to be the most critical: rockets and nuclear weapons (China first exploded an atomic bomb in 1964 and a thermonuclear device in 1967).
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He would leave his successors with a small nuclear arsenal that could not compare in number or sophistication with that of the U.S. or Soviet nuclear arsenals, as well as a modest rocket and satellite capacity (China launched its first satellite in 1970).
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Research on missiles, satellites, and submarines generally had been protected during the Cultural Revolution.
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Even so, during the Cultural Revolution China made only modest progress in military technology, and it fell far behind the United States and the Soviet Union, each of which had invested heavily to keep pace with the other.