Air University Review, July-August 1983

The People’s Republic of China
as a Western Security Asset

By the early 1980s, the notion that some kind of connection with the Communist regime on the Chinese mainland might provide the Western alliance with at least a partial solution to its security problems had won a fairly large constituency among Americans. A substantial part of the plausibility of such a contention was a consequence of the perception that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was tying down about fifty Soviet divisions along its borders.

By the late seventies, about 25 percent of Soviet conventional forces were deployed along the Sino-Soviet border. About thirty-eight motorized rifle divisions, seven or eight armored divisions, and two or more airborne divisions, supplemented by perhaps 2500 first-line combat aircraft, were arrayed along the border. Almost half a million troops were stationed there—and were thereby denied to the Soviet military command for employment elsewhere. That the Communist Chinese succeeded in denying the Soviet military these forces was understood to constitute an important strategic dividend for the West.¹

It was argued, moreover, that with the increased access to improved technology and specialized skills that would accrue as a consequence of the growing rapprochement with the industrialized West, Communist China would dramatically improve its strategic nuclear capabilities. Those improved capabilities would constitute a defense asset for the West and help offset some of the strategic advantages currently enjoyed by the Soviet Union. Beyond that, military strategists celebrated the prospect of acquiring Communist Chinese manpower assets. Gaining the support of the massive land army of Communist China would reduce the Soviet advantage in conventional capabilities. ". . . Only China [could] provide enough of an army," it was argued, "to assure the sustained pressure upon, and attrition of, Soviet forces to make . . . strikes against vital Soviet interests meaningful."²

In effect, by the turn of the decade a collection of arguments had been drawn together which suggested that the security disabilities of the Western alliance vis-à-vis the Soviet Union could be significantly rectified by a rapprochement with the People’s Republic of China. By implication, alienation of the PRC would deprive the West of those advantages. The United States, given these assessments, was enjoined to "prevent a Sino-Soviet rapprochement."³

Such an eventuality, it was reasoned, would release those Soviet forces now occupied in the East for involvements elsewhere. Furthermore, should the strategic missile and manpower assets of Communist China accrue to the Eastern bloc, the West’s prospects would be even further compromised than they were. What the situation required was a courtship of the People’s Republic of China in the effort to ensure its Western orientation.

The arguments made in support of Western courtship of the PRC enjoyed enhanced plausibility among those disillusioned by the Kissingerian efforts at détente with the Soviet Union. As the West pursued détente with almost childlike intensity, the Soviet Union had continued its military buildup and pressed its advantages in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Middle East. The arguments in support of a Chinese connection made sense among those equally disappointed by President Jimmy Carter’s assay into international morality.

The Carter administration had argued that the Soviet Union’s military buildup could be stopped, or its pace reduced, by unilateral actions of the United States. If the United States demonstrated its lack of offensive intent by reducing its own acquisition of weapons, restrained the sale and transfer of military wares to third parties, and qualified its support of real or fancied allies throughout the world, the Soviet Union could be expected to respond with an easing of tensions and a diminution of its own security commitments. Oblivious to all this, the Soviet Union continued assiduously to search out targets of opportunity made increasingly available by its newly developed capabilities. Only when Soviet forces occupied Afghanistan did the Carter administration finally admit the bankruptcy of a policy that predicated American and Western security on the likelihood of an international epidemic of conscience that would lead all countries to disarm as a consequence of an acknowledgment of the error of their previous ways.

Under these parlous circumstances—given the continuous enhancement of Soviet capabilities across an entire spectrum of weapon systems—the Chinese connection began to take on more and more of the appearance of a military "quick fix" in which the semblance of military balance with the Soviet Union might he purchased at minimal cost.⁴

In this context, then, it was argued that "the flow of Western technology made possible by the shift in U.S.-Chinese relations may strengthen PRC military capabilities to the point where the Soviet Union is increasingly forced to pursue a conservative, defensive, and détente oriented strategy."⁵ At the time the Carter administration proceeded to rush toward normalization of diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China, it was held that the strategic nuclear forces of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), although "relatively primitive," could be "expected to improve strikingly as a result of China’s new emphasis on orderly technological development, and .the flow of commercial and military technology which has been made possible." It was anticipated that the disabilities of the Communist Chinese strategic forces could be "overcome quickly and at relatively low cost" so that there would be an "almost explosive improvement. . . over the next five years."⁶ The United States and the West could thus purchase significant strategic nuclear advantage by coupling with the armed forces of the PRC.

The change in official relations between the United States and the PRC would thus afford the Western alliance a "counterweight to the Soviet and Warsaw Pact buildup."⁷ The PRC was understood to command sufficient strategic and conventional military power to make security collaboration a desirable policy objective for Western diplomats and strategists. "In the short run," it was argued in 1978, "the United States and China can cooperate to check any expansionist tendencies of the Soviet Union which . . . neither is presently able to contain itself."⁸ Association with the Peking regime—establishing an enduring Chinese connection—would deliver "a substantial benefit to the free world in terms of the strategic balance, the NATO-Warsaw Pact balance, and the balance in Asia."⁹

The costs involved in the purchase of all these benefits were understood to be modest. The United States and the Western allies could sell (at prevailing nonconcessional profit rates) military items necessary to enhance the military capabilities of the PLA, allow the transfer of military and dual-purpose technology (at prevailing international licensing rates), and demonstrate to the Soviet Union at the same time that the Western alliance maintained an active interest in the peace and stability of Asia.

Given such arguments, it becomes obvious why the political leadership of the PRC has been supremely confident in its negotiations with the representatives of the West. The West has convinced itself that a rapprochement with mainland China is essential to Western interests. Peking has done its best to exploit that appraisal and has insisted that the Western alliance, and not Communist China, is the principal object of Soviet strategic concern— and the West needs Communist China in order to blunt prevailing Soviet advantages.¹⁰ Western Europe, Japan, and the United States languish under direct threat from enhanced Soviet capabilities,¹¹ and while it is true that the Kremlin "has China in mind in pushing expansionism in Asia . . . its more important objective," according to Peking, "is to expand its sphere of influence and rid the continent of the United States, thereby threatening [the] peace and security of Japan and other Asian nations."¹²

The argument from Peking is that although the PRC welcomes rapprochement with the West, it is the West that needs the Chinese connection. As a consequence, the PRC has negotiated with the West from a position of perceived strength. As early as 1977, Teng Hsiao-p’ing maintained that the nations of the West had found it necessary to attempt to "lessen the Soviet threat toward themselves" and had consequently sought out rapprochement with Peking. Under such advantageous circumstances Teng advised that Communist China "must seize all opportunities to acquire things that we need [from the West] under conditions set forth by us... . Improvement in U.S.-China relations is inevitable," since Washington needs Peking more than Peking needs Washington, "and as this relationship develops the American imperialists will defer to our wishes." ¹³

The Sino-Soviet Dispute

Beneath all such arguments, whether advanced by Americans or the Communist Chinese, there is a collection of propositions whose credibility, individually and collectively, is rarely inspected. One of those propositions, central to the integrity of the remainder, avers that only a Communist China, friendly to the West, is capable of tying down a substantial portion of the military forces of the Soviet Union. Inversely, the implication is that any rapprochement of the PRC with the U.S.S.R. would release Soviet ground forces, missiles, and aircraft for deployment elsewhere, to the detriment of the security of the Western alliance. The security problems of that alliance, already critical because of overextension,¹⁴ would thereby become totally unmanageable.

Whatever the measure of plausibility that attends such an argument, there remain a number of considerations that merit reflection. For one thing, it is evident that the hostility that apparently led to the deployment of Soviet forces in strength along the Communist Chinese border had its origins in events that transpired long before there was the least intimation of Sino-American rapprochement. A Communist China, while unfriendly to the West, was equally and increasingly unfriendly to the Soviet Union. All of which suggests that there were and are reasons for the antagonism between the two Communist powers that had and have very little to do with any relationship either enjoys with the United States or the West. In fact, most analysts are convinced that the enmities that today characterize Sino-Soviet relations are deeply rooted and will persist with varying degrees of intensity for the foreseeable future whatever the relationship between Communist China and the Western alliance.¹⁵

Moreover, whatever the reduction of hostility between Moscow and Peking, it seems reasonably clear that the Soviet Union will never reduce its forces in Asia to the levels that obtained in the early fifties. The reason for this turns on developments in the Asian provinces of the U.S.S.R. that have very little to do with the bilateral relations between Communist China and the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Far East

For at least the past two decades, the Soviet Union has undertaken escalating commitments to the long-term development of energy resources in Siberia.¹⁶ The largest untapped reservoir of natural resources in the U.S.S.R., in large part energy-related, is to be found in the frozen reaches of the Kremlin’s Asian provinces. As such, the region constitutes the most valuable as well as the most vulnerable piece of real estate in the U.S.S.R.¹⁷ While approximately 80 percent of the energy consumed in the Soviet Union is employed in its heavily industrialized western provinces, about 80 percent of the primary explored energy resources of the U.S.S.R. are in the East, beyond the Urals. Whatever the current available supply (and estimates of that availability vary), it is clear that there has been a gradual eastern extension of the Soviet Union’s systematic search for recoverable energy. And oil, natural gas, and coal are abundant in the Soviet East. The Samotlor oil field in West Siberia has reserves estimated to be more than twice as large as those of Alaska’s North Slope. The Urengoy field is estimated to be the world’s largest natural gas reserve. The Kansk-Archansk coal deposits, in turn, are said to contain approximately 1.2 trillion tons of coal.

These crucial energy resources in the eastern provinces are supplemented by vast stands of timber, gold, copper, and nickel deposits, all of which earn the hard currency foreign exchange that has become critical in underwriting the expensive high-technology purchases that the Soviet Union now requires to sustain and enhance its economic productivity. Between 1972 and 1979, for example, the U.S.S.R. imported more than $3.1 billion in American oil extraction equipment alone—and like purchases will continue and probably increase in the future.

This Asian resource abundance, so critical to the future of the Soviet Union in terms of energy supplies and hard currency potential, is in a region with one of the lowest population densities in the world.¹⁸ It is a region of the Soviet Union that has, in the recent past, been threatened by anti-Communist interventionist forces on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution, by imperial Japan in the thirties and forties, and is now threatened by Communist China. Simple prudence would recommend the construction of an adequate defense.

In effect, and under almost any conceivable relationship between the Soviet Union and Communist China, the political and military leadership of the Kremlin must commit substantial general purpose and strategic forces east of the Urals to the Pacific coast.¹⁹

Whether the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China achieve some sort of accommodation or not, the Kremlin must and will maintain an adequate defense in the eastern provinces. Evidence in support of such a contention is found in the fact that the Soviet Union has embarked on a program of infrastructural development east of the Urals that is perhaps unparalleled in world history. The BaikalAmur Mainline Railway, running for 2000 miles from Ust-Kut on the Lena River to Komsomolsk on the Amur, is more than two-and-a-half times the length of the Alaska pipeline.

After completion, it will traverse seven mountain ranges, a series of broad rivers, and cover more than 1300 miles of permafrost. In the same region to be serviced by the railway, the Soviet Union has constructed a series of bases and airfields linked by a network of communication posts and hard surface roads capable of sustaining traffic in all weather conditions. Troop housing, headquarters, command posts, and prepositioned supply depots are fortified. Repair facilities, housing, rail spurs, and training fields have been established and give every evidence of a capacity to support protracted operations. These vast undertakings in fixed construction and operational ancillaries could only augur an intended permanent military presence.²⁰

Even if relations with Communist China had proceeded without friction, it seems evident that the Soviet Union would ultimately have created a logistics infrastructure throughout, and deployed forces adequate to defend, its resource-rich eastern territories. In fact, Soviet force enhancements in the East began about 1962, at a time when the Soviet Union was commencing its general program of sustained military expansion. Increased tension with Communist China may simply have been coincidental to a program recommended on its own intrinsic merits.

The deployment of Soviet troops, slow at first, accelerated after 1967 and peaked in 1972-73 with about forty-six Soviet divisions on station along the 4000-mile border with Communist China.²¹ Thereafter, the division strength of the Soviet forces remained fairly constant, augmented by steady qualitative improvement.

The most significant features of this massive military buildup include not only the fact that it commenced, and by-and-large was concluded, long before there was any suggestion of a Sino-American rapprochement but that it was accomplished without any depletion of forces available in Eastern Europe as well. Lieutenant General DeWitt C. Smith, Jr., has pointed out that the Soviet army in Siberia ". . . is an army that has been built without any reduction of Soviet forces in the West," and is, nonetheless, "nearly as modern as [those] in the West."²² In fact, not only were the Soviet forces in the eastern provinces built up without reducing force levels in Europe, the number of Soviet divisions facing the West actually increased during this period from twenty-six to thirty-one—with each division larger in absolute numbers than its earlier counterpart.²³

The intensity and magnitude of the Soviet buildup along its eastern borders were probably functions of increasing tension between the two Communist powers. Had the PRC proved to be a docile and compliant client state, the character of the Soviet military buildup probably would have been different, and forces would have been deployed to face alternative challenges. It seems evident, for all that, that the Soviet Union would have been compelled to provide for the adequate defense of the East under any conceivable set of circumstances. Even without Sino-Soviet hostility, the presence of American ground, naval, and air forces in the West Pacific and the general vulnerability of the area in question would have ensured the ultimate military buildup in the Soviet East.²⁴

Sino-Soviet Amity

Had the defenses of the East been undertaken in a climate of Sino-Soviet amity, the force levels attained and the rapidity of deployment might have been different, but under such circumstances the U.S.S.R. would have been largely responsible either for the defense of mainland China against any kind of sophisticated attack or for the modernization of the relatively primitive armed forces under the control of Peking. For a considerable length of time, in fact, Moscow would have to assume responsibility for both. We have some evidence suggesting that the Kremlin sought, and under almost any circumstances would seek, to avoid assuming those responsibilities.

Quite clearly, under any mutual security arrangement with Moscow, the Communist Chinese would expect the Soviet Union to assist them in refurbishing the PLA in an effort to make it a modern defense force. The strains that this might generate for the Soviet Union can only be the subject of speculation. But whatever the difficulties, if the People’s Republic of China were to serve as a buffer for the defense of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union would have to burden itself with such a responsibility. In the past, that seems to have been a task for which the Soviet Union had neither the disposition nor the wherewithal to undertake effectively.

This is suggested by the fact that when the Kremlin found itself obliged to underwrite the partial modernization of Communist Chinese forces during the Korean War, the military aid afforded was only cautiously, slowly, and grudgingly extended—a fact that rankled the leadership of the PLA.²⁵ During the initial stages of the Korean conflict, Chinese forces entered into combat with an array of obsolescent weapons, inferior to those of their opponents, and which, because of lack of standardization, produced an almost unmanageable resupply problem. The Communist Chinese command pressed the Soviets for the massive aid that would allow an attendant standardization of weapons and a modernization of the capabilities of the PLA. Stalin’s long hesitation in responding forced the Communist Chinese to make recourse to the "human wave" attack tactics, pitting massed infantrymen against the heavy firepower of their opponents, as the only alternative to defeat and withdrawal.²⁶

Only late in 1951, after the Communist Chinese had sustained the very heavy casualties of May and June, did Soviet infantry arms make their appearance in the ranks of the PLA in appreciable quantities.²⁷ Heavy equipment subsequently entered into the PLA inventory with the armistice. Irrespective of the fact that the equipment provided during this period, given the inferiority of the PLA, appreciably improved the quality of the Communist Chinese forces, its total value did not exceed a relatively modest $750 million.²⁸ In fact, the total Soviet military aid to Communist China between 1950 and 1960 did not exceed $1.5 billion.

The reluctance with which even this aid was provided is evidenced by the fact that the loans covering the costs involved were extended by the Soviets at much higher rates of interest, and for shorter periods, than were loans afforded for nonmilitary assistance.²⁹ The Soviet Union either lacked the capital or the quantities of arms required to modernize the military forces of Peking—or it was disinclined to arm combat troops with which it would be forced to share open and extended frontiers.

The unwillingness or inability of the Kremlin to arm the forces of Communist China adequately generated bitterness that was to contribute to the ultimate alienation between the two powers.³⁰ The net results of a decade of Soviet military aid to Communist China were to leave the PLA a force essentially composed of foot-mobile infantry equipped with substandard weaponry.³¹

In effect, there is every reason to believe that the Soviet Union would have provided for the adequate defense of its eastern territories irrespective of its relationship with its Chinese neighbor. Once its borders with the West in Europe had been secured—a security that was attained in Soviet judgment by the early sixties—it was evident that a fairly extensive military buildup was to be expected in the East. Had Communist China remained a friendly neighbor and served as an outlying buffer for the Soviet Union, Moscow would have been obliged to assume much of the debilitating burden of modernizing the PLA, a task that would have seriously strained the capital resources and/or the strategic prudence of the leadership in the Kremlin.

The Sources of Conflict

But it was unlikely that relations between the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China would have remained amicable indefinitely. Not only has there been a long history of territorial disputes along what is now the Sino-Soviet border but demographic trends in the region could only constitute danger signals to Soviet leadership. Despite its importance and the potential riches to be found in Siberia, the Soviet Union has been unable to sustain large-scale population movements into the region. After decades of almost constant effort, the Soviet population in the eastern provinces remains sparse. In the decade between 1970 and 1980 fewer than eight million people were resettled in the Soviet East.

If one compares the respective population densities on each side of the Sino-Soviet border, one finds that the average density on the one (Sinkiang, Inner Mongolia, and Manchuria) is approximately 33 persons per square kilometer, while on the other (the Soviet Amur and Khabarovsk regions, the Maritime Province, and Kazakhstan) the average density is only 4.7 persons per square kilometer. What emerges from such a comparison is a classic instance of potential conflict. The population of Soviet Central Asia, of the Mongolian People’s Republic, and Siberia is one of the least concentrated in the world— and the region is rich in natural resources and possessed of rich natural farming areas only marginally worked because of sparse occupancy.³² Across the border is a growing Chinese population—increasing at a rate of perhaps twenty million persons annually—that is essentially agrarian in terms of economic productivity. About 75 percent of Communist China’s work-force remains composed of peasant farmers over whom the farming lands of the Soviet eastern provinces and vast open regions of Mongolia, suitable for intensive livestock exploitation, could only exercise compelling attraction.

More than that, much of this area remains contested. The borders between Communist China and the Soviet Union are studded with disputed territorial claims. As much as half a million square miles of land surface may be in dispute.³³ In a series of treaties negotiated with the all-but-impotent Ch’ing government of nineteenth-century China, imperial Russia acceded to vast territories north and east of the Amur and Ussuri rivers. After the First World War, the Bolshevik Revolution swept Lenin into power, and he proceeded to renounce all the territorial acquisitions of his "imperialist" predecessors. In 1919, Lenin’s Acting Commissar for Foreign Affairs, L. M. Karakhan, accordingly renounced all claims to Chinese territory that had been "ravenously taken from her by the Tsar’s Government and by the Russian Bourgeoisie."³⁴

For all that, none of this territory, wrung from China through the so-called "unequal treaties," has been returned. Moreover, in 1924, long after Lenin had abjured such acquisitions, the Soviet Union conspired to excise Outer Mongolia from Republican China—to create its satellite Mongolian People’s Republic. The fact remains that the Soviet Union, to this day, has continued to show sustained interest in the territories immediately adjacent to its eastern borders. The Soviet Union not only shares the longest common boundary in the world with the People’s Republic of China but it also continues to demonstrate an abiding interest in Communist China’s northern territories.

Even before the end of the Second World War, when it had become clear that the Japanese would be forced to withdraw from the region after the conflict, Moscow began negotiations that would ensure the participation of the Soviet Union in any economic activity on the Chinese side of their mutual border. The Soviet Union arranged to have Soviet citizens dominate the joint commission that was organized to direct the postwar activities at the naval facility at Port Arthur. Soviet directors were to dominate the board of the Chinese Eastern Railroad, and Soviet technicians were to run the rail lines as well. After 1950, through negotiations with Mao Tse-tung, Sino-Soviet joint stock companies were organized that would permit the Soviet Union to participate in the uranium and nonferrous metal exploration and exploitation in Sinkiang. The Soviets were equally active in oil exploration in the same province. By 1951 they had become involved in a civil airline with routes between China and Mongolia, and they participated in a joint undertaking in ship construction in Dairen. These joint-stock ventures have been described as a "bold instrument of economic penetration," and it is clear that the Soviet Union employed them to ensure a steady income from the areas affected as well as to secure priority shipment of goods to the U.S.S.R.³⁵ It seems reasonably clear that the Soviet Union attempted to penetrate the areas immediately adjacent to its eastern provinces in order to exercise political influence as well as to extract economic advantage.³⁶

Even after Sino-Soviet relations had begun to cool and Soviet personnel were withdrawn, the Kremlin apparently continued to evince interest in Sinkiang, Inner Mongolia, and Manchuria. To this day, the Communist Chinese press continues to report instances of Soviet sabotage and subversion throughout Sinkiang, and at one time Nikita Khrushchev pointedly reminded the mainland Chinese that imperial China had conquered the indigenous Uigur, Kazakh, Kirghiz populations of these regions and had "deprived them of their independence."³⁷ The clear implication is that the Soviet Union has an interest, and perhaps an investment, in the "national liberation" of the "oppressed peoples" of the border territories.

Recently, Victor Louis, long considered a spokesman for Soviet officialdom, insisted on the fact that the outlying regions of the People’s Republic of China, including the vast territories of Sinkiang, Inner Mongolia, and Manchuria, were today populated by those who had been conquered by the oppressive might of "feudal China." He anticipated their imminent uprising "against sinofication and for their self-determination and independence." Hundreds of thousands of Uigurs, Kirghiz, and Kazakhs have crossed the borders into Soviet Central Asia, according to Louis, there to receive military training that will equip them to "fight for independence" against a Communist Chinese regime more oppressive than any that preceded it.

A reasonably well-trained guerrilla army of 60,000, Louis has maintained, "should be quite enough to tie down. . . as many as 1.5 million Chinese troops. If we add to those 60,000 [who will cross over the border from Soviet Asia] the hundreds of thousands of insurgents who are usually carried away by the wave of an uprising, it will be easy to imagine the scale of the new Vietnam that China is very likely to get into." The ultimate result, in Louis’s judgment, would be the creation of an "entire chain of independent state entities" that would arise between the Soviet Union and a residual China vastly reduced in size and economic viability. A successful "national liberation struggle" that would detach Manchuria from Communist China would immediately reduce its electric power generation by half, cost it 70 percent of its iron ore, and 30 percent of its coal deposits. A similar success in Sinkiang would cost Communist China 20 percent of its total land surface and substantial reserves of oil and coal.³⁸

In effect, the leadership in Peking has good reason to entertain serious misgivings about the ultimate intentions of the Soviet Union whatever mainland China’s relationship with the United States or the Western powers might be. Not only has Moscow shown obdurate interest in the economic penetration of the regions along the Sino-Soviet border but the Kremlin has regularly alluded to the legitimacy of "national liberation" struggles in the region, intimating that it was prepared to support such undertakings, to the detriment of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the PRC.

For its part, Moscow apparently conceives Communist China’s insistent allusions to the "unequal treaties"—that transferred the vast territories that stretch from the outer Khingan mountains to the banks of the Amur and Ussuri rivers from the sovereignty of Ch’ing China to that of the Russia of the Tsars—as a potential threat to the integrity of Vladivostok, the industrial center of Khabarovsk, Sakhalin Island, and the Maritime Province. Although Peking has regularly affirmed that it is prepared to accept the boundaries established by the "unequal treaties" as the border between the two countries, there is an equally clear insistence that the Soviets must restore to mainland Chinese sovereignty those territories presently occupied in excess of those provided in the unequal transfers.³⁹

But even the relatively minor adjustments of the border on which Peking currently insists could pose a threat to Soviet control of the region. Satisfaction of a claim on Bear Island opposite Khabarovsk, for example, would put a critical railway bridge over the Amur River within range of Communist Chinese medium artillery.⁴⁰ More than that, it seems that any alteration of the boundaries might set precedents that could later haunt Moscow.

Sino-Soviet Rapprochement

There are, in effect, substantial reasons why it is unlikely that the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China will ever return to the relative amity that marked the period following the end of the Second World War. For the foreseeable future a significant measure of mutual suspicion will characterize their relations. For a variety of reasons that need not detain us, it is unlikely that the level of hostility will increase appreciably, and the probability of major frontal conflict is remote. But the likelihood that the Soviet Union will significantly reduce force levels in its eastern provinces in order to purchase Communist Chinese amicability is equally remote. The contingencies that the political and military leadership of the Soviet Union must anticipate cover a sufficiently wide range of options to recommend the continued maintenance of current force levels—whatever the nature of the relationship between the Western powers and the People’s Republic of China, and the relations of the PRC and the U.S.S.R., might be.

That mainland China’s relations with the Soviet Union in the future would be anything other than cautiously proper—and backed by as effective a defense capability as possible—is evidenced by the fact that the Communist Chinese have learned through sad experience that the Kremlin’s plans have always involved an effort to reduce Chinese economic and military independence to a level that would never threaten the U.S.S.R. Even during the period when the Soviet Union extended military and economic aid to the PRC, that aid was forthcoming with the clear intention of "integrating" China into a "socialist commonwealth" that would assure political and economic primacy to the Soviet Union. In pursuit of those ends, the Soviet Union sought to establish an international division of labor among the "commonwealth’s" participants that would have ensured the commanding dominance of the Kremlin. The Communist Chinese program, on the other hand, predicated on "relying mainly on one’s own efforts" in economic growth and industrial development, was designed to thwart just such an eventuality.⁴¹

It is hard to imagine that in the future any of these considerations will be far from the calculations of political and strategic planners in either Moscow or Peking, regardless of how the United States or the Western powers manage their relationships with either. The Soviets will have to maintain a proper defense of the eastern territories—the future source of the primary energy resources of the U.S.S.R. and the basis for its claim as an Asiatic and a world power. The Communist Chinese will forever remain suspicious of a military power that occupies vast regions long identified by Peking as national territories—a power that has given evidence of a disposition to support the "national liberation" of ethnic minorities now resident in the political confines of the PRC. Without unforeseen changes of staggering magnitude, it is hard to imagine that the two Communist powers might resolve their disagreements to mount a military alliance against the Western powers. A reduction of present levels of Sino-Soviet hostility might well occur, but that would do little to alter the present constellation of military power.

The fact is that the Soviet Union has succeeded in augmenting its military capabilities over the past three decades to the point where relations with the Communist Chinese regime can only be of marginal importance in its strategic deliberations. The Soviet Union has deployed about fifty divisions along the Sino-Soviet border while quantitatively and qualitatively improving its forces in Europe. At the same time it retains about forty divisions in ready reserve for suitable employment on any new front.⁴²

All this considered, there is every reason to believe that the Soviet Union would have mounted an adequate defense in its eastern territories irrespective of its relationship with Communist China. Conversely, there is little reason to believe that the People’s Republic of China is effectively "tying down" Soviet troops that otherwise would be elsewhere. In any event, whatever strategic dividends might have accrued to the West because of the Sino-Soviet tensions, they were realized in the early seven ties when the Soviet Union made its major investments in the East. Since that time the costly military infrastructure has been emplaced, and if in the future the Soviet Union perceives the Communist Chinese threat as declining, Moscow will enjoy only fractional savings and the West only inconsequential costs.

As Lawrence Freedman has pointed out, it can hardly be assumed that

the Soviet Union wants China back. It was a difficult ally in the l950s and there would be substantial risks in exposing the critical Siberian resources by withdrawing the Far Eastern military forces as the price of Chinese friendship. Moreover, China brings with it weakness, not strength, an inability to defend itself against direct superpower attack, and a major requirement for economic assistance.⁴³

In this sense, Communist China does not constitute a strategic asset for either the Soviet Union or the West.

The contention that the People’s Republic of China "ties down" Soviet forces in the East is singularly suspect. It seems reasonably clear that those forces, at very much like their current levels, would remain deployed there whatever the relationship between Moscow and Peking. That the nations of the Western alliance, and the United States foremost among them, further mortgage relations with other East Asian powers in order to obtain from Peking security benefits which under whatever circumstances Peking cannot withhold, is not particularly cost efficient. The fact of the matter is that Peking does not have within its power either to "tie down" or not tie down Soviet forces in the Soviet East. For its part, it is clear that Moscow would prefer a reduction of hostility along the Sino-Soviet border for a variety of reasons, mostly having to do with its international image, but it seems equally evident that that reduction of hostility would not lead to a substantial drawdown of forces in the Soviet East. Whatever the formal relations between the two Communist powers, enough has transpired to make anything other than suspicious tolerance most unlikely.

The United States may well continue to court Peking. But the West has already obtained everything in terms of its security interests it could reasonably expect from its relationship with the People’s Republic of China. At present and for the foreseeable future, the armed forces of the People’s Republic are so manifestly inferior to those of the Soviet Union and so incapable of enhancement by any efforts mounted by the West that the suggestion that any further rapprochement with Peking would deliver more security advantages to the anti-Soviet nations is unconvincing.

In East Asia, the United States must still deal with formidable Soviet capabilities that are but little hampered by the presence of millions of Communist Chinese foot soldiers arrayed against them in a defensive mode. In the immediate and perhaps ultimate future, the non-Communist states of littoral and insular Asia might very well be of more importance to the West and to the United States than to the PRC in terms of the provision of basing and support facilities—in any confrontation with the Soviet Union. The alienation of these communities, in pursuit of more intimate relations with the People’s Republic of China, is a strategic policy unlikely to serve the best interests of the West in general—or of the United States in particular.

I wish to acknowledge the assistance of the Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley, and the Pacific Cultural Foundation in the preparation of this account.

A.J.G.

Notes

1. Justin Galen, "US’ Toughest Message to the USSR," Armed Forces Journal International, February 1979, pp. 30-36.

2. Kenneth R. McGruther, "Two Anchors in the Pacific: A Strategy Proposal for the U.S. Pacific Fleet," United States Naval Institute Proceedings, May 1979, p. 128.

3. Ibid., p. 134; see Peter W. Soverel, "Problems of Sea Power in the Western Pacific as We Approach the Twenty-First Century," in J. L. George, editor, Problems of Sea Power as We Approach the Twenty-First Century (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1978), pp. 164-66.

4. See Edward N. Luttwak, "Against the China Card," Commentary, October 1978, pp. 37-43.

5. Galen, p. 30.

6. Ibid., pp. 30, 32.

7. Ibid., p. 30.

8. Steven I. Levine, "The Soviet Factor in Sino-American Relations," in Michel Oksenberg and Robert B. Oxnam, Dragon and Eagle, United States-China Relations: Past and Future (New York: Basic Books, 1978), p. 255. For the entire collection of arguments favoring rapprochement with the People’s Republic of China, see Roger Glenn Brown, "Chinese Politics and American Policy: A New Look at the Triangle," Foreign Policy, Summer 1976; Jerome Cohen, "A China Policy for the Next Administration," Foreign Affairs, October 1976; A. Doak Barnett, "Military-Security Relations between China and the United States," Foreign Affairs, April l977; Ross Terrill, "China and the World: Self-Reliance or Interdependence," Foreign Affairs, January 1977; Michael Pillsbury, "U.S.-Chinese Military Ties?" Foreign Affairs, October 1975; and Thomas M. Gottlieb, Chinese Foreign Policy Factionalism and the Origins of the Strategic Triangle (Santa Monica: Rand, November 1977).

9. Galen, p. 30.

10. "Critical Choice," Renmin Ribao, 19 June 1980, p. 6, in Foreign Broadcast Information Service, People’s Republic of China (hereafter FBIS-PRC), 20 June 1980, p. C1.

11. FBIS-PRC, 12 June 1980, p. B1.

12. "The Social-Imperialist Strategy in Asia," Renmin Ribao, 30 December 1978, FBIS-PRC, 2 January 1979, p. Al3.

13. "Teng Hsiao-p’ingTalkson ‘US-China Relations’," Inside China Mainland, January 1979, p. 1.

14. For a discussion of the "overextension" in American security efforts, see the discussion by Thomas H. Etzold, "From Far East to Middle East: Overextension in American Strategy since War II," United States Naval Institute Proceedings, May 1981, pp. 66-67.

15. For a characteristic expression of such views, see Robert Scalapino, Asia and the Road Ahead (Berkeley: University of California, 1975), pp. 67-82; Harold C. Hinton, "Sino-Soviet Relations: Background and Overview," and Jonathan D. Pollack, "Sino-Soviet Relations in Strategic Perspective," in Douglas T. Stuart and William T. Tow, editors, China, the Soviet Union, and the West (Boulder, Colorado: Wesiview Press, 1982), pp. 9-23, 276.

16. Allen S. Whiting, Siberian Development and East Asia: Threat or Promise? (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1981).

17. For a discussion of the implications, see Drew Middleton, The Duel of the Giants: China and Russia in Asia (New York: Scribners, 1978), chapter 6.

18. See Harrison E. Salisbury, War between Russia and China (New York: Norton, 1969), pp. 146-48.

19. Lawrence Freedman, "Economic and Technological Factors in the Sino-Soviet Dispute," and Thomas W. Robinson, "Sino-Soviet Competition in Asia," in Stuart and Tow, pp. 82, 180.

20. Edward N. Luttwak, "The PRC in Soviet Grand Strategy," pp. 268-69.

21. See Harold C. Hinton, Communist China in World Politics (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966), pp. 323-28; Harry G. Gelber, Technology, Defense and External Relations in China, 1975-1978 (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1979), p. 64.

22. As quoted in Middleton, p. 152.

23. Karl Kaiser, Winston Lord, Thierry de Montbrial, and David Watt, Western Security: What Has Changed? What Should Be Done? (Stanford, California: Hoover Institution, 1981), p. 26; see also Committee on the Present Danger, Is America Becoming Number 2? (Washington, D.C.: Committee on the Present Danger, 1978), p. 26.

24. Gelber, p. 65.

25. See Harlan Jencks, From Muskets to Missiles: Politics and Professionalism in the Chinese Army, 1945-1981 (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1982), p. 53.

26. See Alexander L. George, The Chinese Communist Army in Action: The Korean War and Its Aftermath (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), pp. 3, 5, 9.

27. Ibid., pp. 185-86.

28. Robert Dernberger, "The International Trade of Communist China" in C. F. Remer, editor, Three Essays on the International Economics of Communist China (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1959), p. 151.

29. Chu-yuan Cheng, Economic Relations between Peking and Moscow (New York: Praeger, 1964), p. 83.

30. See Peking Review, May 8, 1964, p. 14.

31. Cheng Mieh-chin, "The Organization and Equipment of the Chinese Communist Infantry," Issues and Studies, July 1967, p. 20.

32. See the discussion in Victor Louis, The Coming Decline of the Chinese Empire (New York: Times Books, 1979), p. 165; and Salisbury, pp. 147-48.

33. Dennis J. Doolin, Territorial Claims in the Sino-Soviet Conflict (Stanford, California: Hoover Institution, 1977) and Maud Russell, The Sino-Soviet Ussuri River Border Clash: The Historical Background and Current Implications (New York: Far East Reporter, n.d.).

34. For the text of the Soviet "Karakhan Declaration," see Allen S. Whiting, Soviet Policies in China 1917-1924 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1954), pp. 272-75; quotation from p. 273.

35. Marshall Goldman, Soviet Foreign Aid (New York: Praeger, 1967), p. 21.

36. See Roy F. Grow, "Soviet Economic Penetration of China, 1945-1960: ‘Imperialism’ as a Level of Analysis Problems," in Steven J. Rosen and James R. Kurth, editors, Testing Theories of Economic Imperialism (Lexington, Massachusetts: Heath, 1974), pp. 261-81.

37. N. Khrushchev, "Statement to a Japanese Parliamentary Delegation," Tass International Service, September 1964, as quoted in Doolin, pp. 70-71. See also "Ili’s Ten Fruitful Years," Peking Review, September 11, 1964, pp. 5, 26.

38. Louis, p. 187; see pp. 15, 16, 64-65, 92.

39. See Vernon V. Aspaturian, "The Domestic Sources of Soviet Policy Toward China," in Stuart and Tow, p. 45; and Li Huichuan, "The Crux of the Soviet Border Question," in Zhou Guo, editor, China and the World (Peking: Foreign Affairs Series, 1982), pp. 46-73.

40. William V. Kennedy, "The Perceived Threat to China’s Future," in Ray Bonds, editor, The Chinese War Machine (New York: Crescent Books, 1979), pp. 170-71.

41. See Alexander Eckstein, China’s Economic Revolution (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 121-22.

42. See Edward N. Luttwak, "Why We Need More ‘Waste, Fraud and Mismanagement’ in the Pentagon," Commentary, February 1982, p. 17.

43. Freedman, in Stuart and Tow, p. 85.

A. James Gregor (B.A., M.A., Ph.D., Columbia University) is Professor of Political Science and a principal Investigator for the Pacific Basin Project of the Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley. He serves on the editorial boards of World Politics and The Journal of Strategic Studies. Dr. Gregor is author of The Taiwan Relations Act and the Defense of the Republic of China.

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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