Colloquium Brief

U.S. Army War College,

 The National Bureau of Asian Research, 

 and

The Bush School of Government and Public Service 

at Texas A & M University

PLA MISSIONS BEYOND TAIWAN

Compiled by

Marc Miller

The National Bureau of Asian Research

KEY INSIGHTS:

	 • The PLA is being assigned and training for an increasing variety of missions, including nontraditional

battlefields such as outer space and cyber space, as well as nontraditional functions, such as United Nations peacekeeping operations.

	 •These new PLA missions have created a large gap and resulted in tension vis-à-vis PLA capabilities and

traditional missions such as internal security, as well as major questions about operational and doctrinal

integration.

	 • Clearly, China’s neighbors are watching the modernization of the PLA and the expansion and redefinition

of its missions very closely, especially those affecting Chinese border regions.

	 On September 26, 2008, more than 70 leading experts on China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA)

convened at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, for a 2-day discussion on “PLA Missions Beyond Taiwan.” The 2008 PLA Conference, conducted by The National Bureau of Asian Research, the Strategic

Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College, and the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, sought to look beyond the PLA’s primary focus on Taiwan to explore

China’s other military missions and objectives.

	 Analysis of China’s armed forces tends to focus on its role in a potential Taiwan scenario, which is

understandable, given that the PLA retains a central mission in the reunification of Taiwan or prevention of its de jure independence. However, it is also becoming clear that China’s interests and foreign

policy objectives are growing in number and complexity in tandem with its increasing power and

international stature. As a result, it is reasonable to expect the PLA to be asked to perform a wider variety of missions in support of Chinese interests and objectives than it has traditionally, from disaster

and humanitarian relief and United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations (PKO); to counterterrorism and border defense; to outer space and cyber space security; and extending even to the protection

of ethnic Chinese abroad.

	 With this in mind, the conference participants’ core objectives were to examine the interplay between China’s armed forces and its complex foreign policy and international security environment

in order to understand the requirements of several newly emerging PLA missions, and to consider

how these specific interactions affect policy towards Taiwan and the wider Asia-Pacific region. They
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approached these issues from both geographical and functional perspectives, seeking to identify potential policy tradeoffs resulting from the

evolution in China’s security policy. Are PLA

missions beyond Taiwan becoming central to

the military’s training and capabilities development? Does this mean that the PLA is moving away from traditional missions of internal

security? Does the PLA see new missions as an

opportunity or as a distraction, and how might

China’s neighbors and the international community react to the PLA’s expanded missions?

New Missions, New Battlefields. 

	 Events over the past year, including winter

snowstorms, the Sichuan earthquake, unrest in

Tibet and Xinjiang, the Beijing Olympics, and

continued conflict in Sudan, have seen the Chinese armed forces involved in a wide variety of

missions. While not all of these missions are new,

the depth of PLA involvement in so many different kinds of activities, including frontier security, peacekeeping and humanitarian relief efforts,

as well as traditional internal security roles, has

brought into stark relief the gaps between PLA

missions, current capabilities, and existing operational doctrines.

	 In the realm of PKO, it is clear that China

has made a conscious effort to participate much

more deeply in UN PKO around the world, increasing its contribution of peacekeepers 20-fold

since the 1990s. As a result, the People’s Republic

of China (PRC) is now the 12th largest contributor of peacekeeping personnel overall and the

second largest contributor of civilian police. Although Chinese peacekeepers serve in UN PKO

around the world, three-quarters of them are

concentrated in Africa, and the majority of those

in Liberia and Sudan. The four main drivers of

China’s increased PKO efforts include, first, the

desire to gain international stature and reassure

uneasy neighbors about its peaceful rise; second,

to contribute to the stabilization of areas of conflict, especially those affecting Chinese national

interests; third, to use its PKO efforts to balance

what it sees as overly strong U.S. and Western

influence in international security organizations;

and fourth, to gain benefits for its own modernization efforts through increased operational

and cultural experience. In some cases, China

also seeks specific diplomatic gains vis-à-vis international recognition of Taiwan and economic

benefits, especially access to energy resources

and raw materials.

	 However, China remains constrained in its

PKO efforts philosophically by its principle of

nonintervention in other states’ sovereign affairs,

and geographically by its wariness to become involved in PKO operations close to home or outside a UN mandate. Also PKO operations can

become dangerous and messy, and the question

remains how China would react to a major fatality incident involving Chinese peacekeepers. To

date China has been less involved in humanitarian relief missions than in peacekeeping ones, in

part because of a lack of necessary capabilities

such as heavy-lift. However, China has taken

note of the goodwill accumulating to the United

States in the wake of its tsunami relief efforts in

the region and is currently pursuing relevant capabilities such as a hospital ship.

	 In addition to new functional missions, the

PLA is also putting increasing resources into

new fields of battle such as outer space and cyberspace. China is already a space power with

the ability to design and produce its own satellites and launch systems. Several recent firsts,

such as its downing of a defunct satellite and

first manned space walk, have emphasized this

fact as well as raised questions about China’s

strategic goals in space and willingness to follow

existing international norms. As early as 2002,

space was already being described in Chinese

sources as becoming part of the global battlefield, and in 2004 Chinese President Hu Jintao

underlined the importance of space to the future

of the PLA. In Chinese thinking, the concept of

space dominance is closely tied to information

dominance, which it sees as key to operational

success against more conventionally powerful foes. Space is potentially unique from more

traditional battlefields in other ways as well, including that whoever moves first would seem

to have the advantage, and that there are both

“hard kill” (i.e., destroying hardware) and “soft

kill” (i.e., electronic jamming) options available.

In this, as in other PLA missions beyond Taiwan,

it is less clear whether China has a specific military space doctrine to go along with its rapidly

developing capabilities, though there is some
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evidence that there may be greater willingness

to use space deterrence capabilities compared to

traditional deterrence because of the perceived

lower risks.

	 Computer network operations (CNO) is another expanding mission for the PLA that has

received a lot of attention in recent years with

the rise in reports of Chinese hacking incidents.

However, one thing that has become clear is that

from the perspective of the Chinese government,

“patriotic hacking” by Chinese civilians is not entirely good, as the “noise” from large-scale cyber

attacks can actually undermine military objectives such as signaling and strategic pausing. In

recent years the Chinese government has sought

to guide such “patriotic hackers” through opinion pieces in government news outlets. Nonetheless, it remains unclear to what degree the PLA

operates its own hacking capability and where

within the PLA the cyber attack “actor” is located. Also opaque is whether CNO has been fully

integrated into the PLA operationally and doctrinally.

Portable Capabilities, Stationary Doctrine.

	 As the PLA retools for these new missions

and battlefields, one constraint is the continuing

lag between the development of new capabilities and the attendant military doctrines to guide

their use and integration. Thus, some suggest the

PLA might be investing in cyber or space assets

before they have necessarily thought through

how to use or integrate these capabilities into

the larger force or PLA strategy. It is clear from

the arrival of previous PLA capabilities, such as

short-range ballistic missiles, that operational

doctrine often substantially lags (and certainly

does not inhibit) the development and deployment of a new military capability.

	 The lack of clear doctrinal guidance is exacerbated by the concern that many of the capabilities

under development are potentially “portable,”

meaning that while created for use under one

scenario or mission, they might easily be used

in service of another. For example, amphibious

landing craft originally acquired for a Taiwan

contingency might be used in any number of

other maritime scenarios; space and cyberspace

assets developed for civilian needs could be used

to disrupt an enemy’s command and control capabilities during the opening phases of a military

conflict. The lack of clear strategic guidelines for

when and how such “portable” PLA capabilities

would be employed leads to increased concern

over PLA modernization efforts more generally.

	 A final critical piece of the nexus between PLA

capabilities and doctrine in considering missions

beyond Taiwan is the poorly understood relationship between China’s civilian and military

leadership, and how the PLA itself views new

missions. Does the PLA primarily view missions

such as UN peacekeeping operations as an opportunity to gain access, assets, and operational

experience, or as a distraction from its core national security mission? This question is complicated by the fact that different services within the

PLA might benefit from the inclusion of different

missions and capabilities; likewise, itremains unclear to what degree PLA elites are shaping PLA

modernization priorities and strategic thinking

vis-à-vis their civilian counterparts.

The Frontier Dilemma.

	 Many of the PLA’s missions and fields of battle other than Taiwan involve China’s frontiers,

broadly understood. This is important because

the areas of instability of greatest concern to China are often found along its own borders, from

weak Central Asian states, to rogue regimes in

Burma and North Korea, to contentious areas in

the East and South China Seas. The challenges

of maintaining security and stability in its frontier regions pose several difficult issues for the

Chinese government and the PLA. Not least of

these is that China seeks ways to encourage stability and economic development on its doorstep, while still adhering to its central doctrine

of nonintervention in the affairs of other sovereign states. The PLA is particularly challenged

by states that exercise less than full sovereignty

over their own territory and people, as well as

by nontraditional spaces in which the concept of

sovereignty is less fully developed (air, space, cyber). Another frontier dilemma confronting the

PLA is that the very same activities in which it

engages in pursuit of stability and security, such

as infrastructure development and a heavy security presence, are also those that can contribute

to increasing problems on its borders such as illicit trade and public discontent among minority

populations.
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	 Finally, there remains great reticence to use

the PLA in matters of border or internal security, despite its many and increasingly relevant

capabilities. This is partly as a result of the scars

of Tiananmen, as well as China’s desire to develop a more professional force able to focus on

power projection and warfighting contingencies.

This shift in doctrine over the last decade was

illustrated by the relatively minor and surreptitious role played by the PLA during the unrest in

Tibet. For example, the shortages of manpower

and leadership during the crisis were partly a result of this change in mindset and the continued

strategic ambiguity about the use of the PLA in

cases of domestic unrest. The resolution of this

paradox surrounding the minimal use of the

PLA in support of what is supposedly its most

central mission, and its differing employment in

the southeast and western frontier of China, remains critical to any understanding of potential

PLA missions beyond Taiwan.

Conclusion.

	 The PLA is being assigned an increasing number and variety of missions at home and abroad

in addition to contingencies in the Taiwan Strait.

This does not mean that reunification is no longer the central issue in PLA and the Chinese government’s planning, but rather that the PLA’s

capabilities are increasing in accordance with

China’s rising power and expanding national

interests. The modernization of PLA capabilities

often leapfrogs the modernization of its strategic

doctrines. This raises troubling questions about

to what ends these capabilities are being developed, under what contingencies they might be

employed, and the potential “portability” of assets between different PLA missions.

	 However, there remain many constraints to

PLA missions beyond Taiwan, first and foremost the continued dedication of resources to

the Taiwan issue itself. Additionally, the PLA

is constrained by its relationship with the civilian leadership, concern over regional and international perceptions, gaps between capabilities

and strategic doctrine including the principle of

nonintervention, and a continued lack of coherent command and control integration. The ability of the PLA and the Chinese government to address and mitigate these tensions and constraints

will help determine future PLA missions beyond

Taiwan.

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The views expressed in this brief are those of the author

and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, the Department of

Defense, or the U.S. Government. This colloquium brief is

cleared for public release; distribution is unlimited.

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