Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (102 page)

By the time Deng came to power, Soviet advances in long-range aircraft and rocketry made the “third front” factories that Mao had moved inland, away from China's borders, vulnerable to attack. But Deng, like Mao before him, believed that the threat of a People's War as well as nuclear weapons reduced the likelihood that China would be attacked, even by an enemy with far superior military technology.
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Yet China needed to adapt to Soviet technical advances. Deng directed that the Chinese military should begin making preparations to fight a “People's War under modern conditions,” a concept that Su Yu, hero of the Huai Hai campaign and then in charge of planning for advanced weaponry, had begun to develop in 1977. At a conference in the fall of 1980, Chinese military leaders began to develop a consensus around strategic guidelines that would provide a more active defense than passively luring the enemy deep into Chinese territory.
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In June 1981 Song Shilun, commandant of the Chinese Academy of Military Science, spelled out in some detail the meaning of “under modern conditions.” In the case of a full-scale military invasion, the Chinese would respond, as in the Mao era, with a People's War, wearing down the enemy. But Song explained that additional responses were needed because China could not abandon its cities, and because modern technology required longer supply lines, defense of industrial sites, more coordination between ground and air forces, and more specialization. Therefore, (1) the PLA would use positional warfare to stop the enemy before it penetrated deeply into China, (2) China would use not only infantry but also combined arms, including planes, to resist the enemy, (3) China would prepare to protect longer logistic lines than those in the immediate locality of the fighting, and (4) the army would turn over its political tasks—which in Mao's day had been handled by military political commissars—to civilians so it could concentrate on military tasks. Deng did not formulate this analysis, but he supported these efforts by the PLA to reorient its existing doctrine, structure, and training, as well as its recruitment programs, to fit these “modern conditions.”
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When the reform and opening began, China had not yet taken part in the complex discussions and calculations about how to prevent nuclear war that had preoccupied specialists in the United States and Soviet Union. By the mid-1980s, however, Chinese graduate students and young research scholars who went abroad to study strategic thinking in the West were returning home and beginning to introduce these new more sophisticated calculations. After developing nuclear weapons, the Chinese had always planned on retaining a second-strike capacity. But now the discussions widened. Instead of focusing
only on People's War and nuclear attack, the Chinese began to consider the possibility of limited nuclear attacks and tactical nuclear weapons, which might prevent a war from escalating into an all-out nuclear conflict.
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Deng inherited from the Mao era a navy that was small and completely outdated. In 1975 when Deng was at the helm under Mao, the navy under Su Zhenhua's command had submitted a new development plan. After 1978, as foreign trade, and especially as imports of oil, hard coal, and iron ore began to pick up, Chinese planners became more concerned with ensuring the safety of China's sea lanes. China also began to expand energy exploration in the South China Sea as well as in the Bohai Gulf, thus necessitating protection of exploration in disputed territories.
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But as China began to consider developing capacities to respond to these new challenges, Deng urged restraint. In a talk to naval officers in July 1979, Deng still placed limits on naval development plans, explaining that the navy's role was defensive, to protect the waters near China, and that China did not have any ambitions to become a dominant power.
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Even in high-priority military sectors—missiles, satellites, and submarines—the emphasis remained on developing technology rather than large-scale production, with the hope that if the need arose, China could produce more weaponry quickly. China tested its first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in 1980 and began deployment shortly thereafter. Work had begun on a nuclear-powered submarine in 1958, and in 1982 China successfully tested its first submarine-launched ballistic missile.
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Deployment of such systems continued on a modest scale during Deng's era.
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Research and production developed much more rapidly after Deng's era, in response to President Lee Teng-hui's 1995 efforts to bring about Taiwan's independence.

After 1984, as the Soviet Union became increasingly bogged down in Afghanistan and overstretched in its attempts to keep up with U.S. military advances, the CMC formally concluded what Deng had personally determined much earlier, that the risk of an all-out war with the Soviet Union was low. In a speech to the CMC in 1985 Deng summed up his views on global threats saying, “We have changed our view that the danger of war is imminent.” He said only the two superpowers could launch a major war, and they were not a concern; because both have “suffered setbacks and met with failures, neither dares to start a war.”
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It followed that Deng could continue to keep down military expenditures to channel resources to advance the civilian economy.

While the risks of all-out war with the superpowers had decreased, Deng and his colleagues judged that the risk of small-scale wars had increased as the
bipolar world was being replaced by a multipolar world. Japan, India, Vietnam, South Korea, and Europe had strengthened their economic and military presence on the world stage. The PLA, therefore, should focus its planning and training efforts on the possibility of small local wars on China's periphery, which were more within China's military capacity than fighting an all-out war with a superpower. Each of China's military regions, which with the downsizing of military forces had by then been consolidated from eleven to seven, was to adapt its planning and preparations to the nature of the potential adversary, as well as to the geography and climate of their border areas. The military in turn appealed for more funds to develop key technologies required for local wars, such as tanks, artillery, aircraft avionics, and command and control systems. As they made their plans, the strategists had in mind Deng's penchant for rapid, decisive strikes. Strategists studied carefully other nations' experiences using such strategies, particularly Britain's operations during the Falklands War and Israel's invasion of Lebanon. By responding quickly, other nations and world opinion would not have time to influence the outcome.
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Toward a Smaller, Better-Trained Force

On March 12, 1980, shortly after launching his administration, Deng presented an overview of military issues to the Standing Committee of the CMC. He said that the military was confronted with four issues: (1) reducing “bloatedness,” (2) reforming the organizational structure, (3) improving training, and (4) strengthening political and ideological initiatives. “Unless we reduce ‘bloatedness,’ we won't be able to raise the army's combat effectiveness and work efficiency. . . . Our policy is to reduce manpower and use the money thus saved to renew equipment. If some of the savings can be used for economic construction, so much the better. . . . The main purpose of our streamlining is to reduce the number of unnecessary non-combatants and of personnel in leading and commanding organs—mainly officials.”
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Party leaders had long considered establishing a mandatory retirement age for high-level party and military leaders, but it had not yet been established. Deng continued, “We must have a retirement system. . . . Since the army has to fight, the retirement age for military officials should be lower than for civilians.”
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Retirement was a sticky issue. Officers had no term limits and because of their “contributions to the revolution,” they felt a sense of entitlement. Although Deng gave final approval for all important military decisions,
no military issue would take more of his personal time and energy than the downsizing of the senior military leadership. As Deng explained, “Most armies around the world don't spend much on personnel. They spend most of their funds on equipment. We have a very bad situation. We spend too much on personnel. We have too many people directing things and not many people to fight.”
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The issue of retirement would come up in virtually all his meetings with military officers during his years as paramount leader.

Throughout the 1980s, Deng continued the efforts he began in 1975 to get officials to draw up new tables of organization with reduced numbers, then to implement the policies and plug all the loopholes that creative officers would invent to evade the policy. He encouraged civilian units to find places for both senior retirees and ordinary enlisted men completing their terms of service. To make retirement more appealing, he allowed high officials to retain many of the perquisites they had in the military—housing, the use of cars, access to medical treatment, and even substantial income. After he established the Central Advisory Commission in 1982, many of the senior military leaders were honored with membership, and retired.

At an enlarged June 1985 meeting of the CMC assembled to promote a reduction in the size of the PLA by one million, some had argued that such a reduction would shrink military capacity, leaving China vulnerable in a conflict. Deng answered them by saying that in the event of war it was important to reduce the size of the military to engage in efficient military operations.
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Deng would, however, retain a large reserve force of veterans who could be called on in case of conflict. The large-scale troop reduction began in 1985, and it was basically completed in 1988. From 1980 to 1989 local civilian institutions were pressed to find civilian positions for some 1,540,000 military officers who retired.
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But the end of rural collectivization in 1982 had eliminated many positions that typically had provided opportunities for demobilized servicemen.
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To help with post-mobilization employment, Deng suggested that the army should do more to train people for jobs that would enable them later to play a role in the civilian economy.
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To find employment opportunities for soldiers being discharged, Deng proposed special training courses. In March 1980 he told the Standing Committee of the CMC, “I suggest that training courses of various kinds be run for those officials whose posts are eliminated. What kind of training? To prepare them for the professions and trades they will enter.”
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Deng also continued the work he had begun in 1975 of reopening and expanding military academies and military training institutes. At the pinnacle stood the National
Defense University, opened in September 1985 to train promising officers. In his address to the enlarged meeting of the CMC in March 1980, Deng reminded his audience that he considered training so essential that it should be considered of strategic importance. “In the absence of war,” he said, “training is the only way to improve the army's quality.” Still, by comparison with the U.S. and USSR militaries, Chinese training programs for preparing troops for high-tech war remained at an early stage of development.
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Commercializing Military Production and Services

When Deng became preeminent leader, he was acutely aware that both the civilian defense industries that produced most of the equipment used by the military, and the military enterprises that were directly under military control, were drains on the government budget, inefficient, and incapable of producing weapons and equipment that could match those produced by the advanced military powers. Deng therefore worked to close down inefficient plants and to improve supervision at others to increase efficiency.

To achieve these goals, Deng encouraged both the civilian defense industries and the military's own factories to produce more civilian goods that could compete in open markets. He began promoting this strategy even before the Third Plenum when he declared that China should depart from the inefficient Soviet model of strictly separating military and civilian production.
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The new policy helped to satisfy the pent-up consumer demand for basic consumer goods, reduce burdens on the state budget, and provide continued employment for personnel who might otherwise have been laid off.

The competitive pressures on these factories were reflected in factory closings: from 1979 to 1982, nearly half of the factories in the civilian defense sector either closed down or operated at greatly reduced capacity.
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Those that remained open during the late 1980s were successful in expanding into civilian production, especially consumer electronics but also products as diverse as pianos, refrigerators, washing machines, baby carriages, hunting rifles, and even passenger aircraft.
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To enable the defense industries to better respond to the markets, many companies were allowed to become profit-seeking corporations independent of ministry control.
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In 1978, 92 percent of the value of the goods in civilian state enterprises in the defense sector was produced for the military and 8 percent for the civilian economy. By 1982, military production in these factories had dropped to 66 percent and by 1992, when Deng stepped down, it had dropped to 20 percent.
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