In 1996, a Chinese academic paper pointed out that the new military revolution is bound to have a crucial impact on sea warfare and the naval establishment. The paper argued that information supremacy is the key to winning future naval wars.1
Chinese government and military leaders have continued to encourage a transition to a more “informatized” military. For example, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said, “We must actively promote the revolution in military affairs with Chinese characteristics and make efforts to achieve development by leaps and bounds in national defense and armed forces modernization.” He went on to say that the updating of the armed forces must be “dominated by informatization and based on mechanization.”2 According to China’s 2008 national-defense white paper, informatization is the “strategic priority” of the country’s navy-modernization drive.3
While some critics perceive the modernization of China’s navy as a threat, the Chinese publicly view it as a defensive measure. China’s economy has been growing at an average rate of 8 percent annually over the past two decades. To support this growth, China needs raw materials, such as oil and natural gas, metals, and plastics, which are transported via ship from countries all over the world. Because of piracy and instability in various regions, without proper security, the safety of these shipments could be at risk.
China also has been feeling pressure from neighboring countries building up their own ocean-going forces. Naval powers are distributed in key geopolitical regions surrounding China and throughout vital maritime routes. To the north lies Russia’s Pacific Fleet. To the east lies the Japanese navy. On the other side of the Malacca Strait is the Indian Navy, the fifth largest maritime force in the world.4 There is also the U.S. Navy, with its forward-deployed presence in the region through its 7th Fleet.
Some experts feel that China’s naval buildup is a way to keep Taiwan in check. Others see it as an attempt to expand the country’s influence and power well beyond its borders.5 Regardless of the reasons, one thing is apparent: China is making strides toward modernizing its navy.
From Mechanization to Informatization
In developed nations, the trend in maritime operations over the past century has changed from employing two-dimensional, mechanized systems to three-dimensional, informatized systems. During World War I, firepower played the leading role in maritime operations, which consisted primarily of surface vessels. Powerful navies were made up of of giant vessels and big guns, and opponents fought one another in a linear operation. During World War II, aircraft carriers, submarines, and naval air forces added new dimensions to the naval arena.
Today, the most modern navies have adopted an information-based system of operation. Information has taken the place of mechanization as the primary platform and today is the key player in maritime operations. Information systems guide the efforts in reconnaissance and monitoring, command-and-control, combat actions, combat support, and so on. Additionally, information warfare (IW) has become vitally important, while psychological operations and deception now have digital/information-related components.
China is no exception to this trend. Today, it too has placed information operations at the forefront of all its naval strategic developments. Chinese military scholars began realizing by the mid-1990s that IW would become the central technology of global military powers in the 21st century.
In 1996, navy officers Shen Zhongchang, Zhang Haiying, and Zhou Xinsheng wrote an article that discussed the “new military revolution.” According to the article, “Electronic and information technology will have the most far-reaching significance. As they raise the capability to collect, process, and transmit battlefield information, making the battlefield more transparent, command more in real time, and fire strikes more accurate and reliable, they speed up the course of naval warfare. So undoubtedly, in the course of this military revolution, combat theory and concepts are undergoing profound change.”6
The new millennium saw progress in China’s pursuit of informatizing the navy, with China striving to meet the challenges of adversarial navies in future conflict. People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) Rear Admiral Zhang Zhaozhong, director of the National Defense University Military Logistics and Equipment Department, once said that the greatest lesson learned from the Iraq War was the importance of IW. According to Zhang, IW should be conducted in the sphere of computer networks, and proceed in coordination with traditional mechanized modes of war.7
In 2003, Dai Qingmin, former Director of the General Staff Department’s Fourth Department (for electronic warfare), pointed out that the concept of information supremacy had emerged to join the concepts of sea supremacy and air supremacy. Dai went on to explain that in “high-tech warfare,” without information supremacy there can be no sea or air supremacy.8
China’s Growing Informatized Capabilities
In 1990, Chinese thinkers concluded that it would take time for information to truly dominate the battlefield. In 2000, the PLAN had approximately 60 destroyers and frigates in its inventory. Today it has approximately 80 destroyers and frigates.9 China has been slowly replacing its older surface combatants with newer vessels. China modernized its fleet of first-generation destroyers by retrofitting them with new technologies to improve their combat systems. Improvements were mostly in the ships’ electronics and combat-intelligence command systems.
In 2003, China launched a home-grown, quasi-Aegis destroyer in Shanghai. The ship reportedly is equipped with an advanced radar system, stealth design, a vertical-launch system, and long-range antiaircraft missiles.10 The PLAN’s Type 052B guided-missile destroyer integrates over-the-horizon sea-attack capabilities, maritime-formation operations-command capabilities, and area-air defense-operations capabilities into one.11
More recently, according to video images of various naval exercises conducted by the South Sea Fleet, China has been keeping pace with equipment change/replacement. In those exercises, a Type 052C destroyer served as the flagship. The maneuvers were joint operations intended to test the application of a data-link system fitted on the warships. Most of the surface vessels of the South Sea Fleet are equipped with a tactical data-link system that could upgrade the capability of the fleet and guarantee that the PLAN’s underwater systems can extend forward and launch attacks against an opponent under the command of the data link.
The exercises also tested the performance of the integrated IW systems and the sensor systems fitted on the Type 052B/C destroyers. These ships, equipped with new-generation shipboard weapon systems and electronic equipment, are critical to the PLAN’s overall maritime network-warfare strategy. The radar and weapon-control consoles employ sensor-control system-network monitors. The most important shipboard system is a large phased-array radar and guided-missile vertical-launch system, which is similar to the SPY-1D phased-array radar and Mk-41 guided-missile vertical-launch systems on U.S. vessels. Not only do they support a dual-redundancy 100-megabits-per-second network, but they can also display combat data at different levels through multiple channels. These shipboard systems and equipment have been called the “Holy Shields of China.”12
All new PLAN guided-missile destroyers and frigates are now being fitted with the Russian Mineral ME radar, with a data link that can detect and track multiple weapon targets passively at distances up to 155 miles or actively up to 280 miles. By 2007, the PLAN began establishing a multidimensional integrated-campaign/tactical-command system.13
The Yuanwang-class space-tracking ships are also undergoing informatization. China has six of these vessels, used to track satellite and missile launches. The first two appear to have started operations around 1980, in connection with the DF-5 missile test on 18 May 1980. These ships have traveled to the Sea of Japan, the West Pacific, the South Pacific, the Indian Ocean, and the South Atlantic to carry out their tasks. They are meant to compensate for inadequate land-tracking stations.14
Some experts suggest that the Yuanwang class could be used for intelligence-gathering. A report published in Taiwan pointed out that commercial satellites normally transmit unencrypted signals. Therefore, if a receiving station is within the area of signal bleed-over range, it can receive ambiguous images. As a result, China can receive random images and, through analysis, can determine their origins, which could provide valuable intelligence.15 Both China’s Xiang Yang Hong–class oceanographic-research ships and Yuanwang-class ships are often seen near Taiwan. According to Richard Fisher, author of China’s Military Modernization, the Yuanwangs potentially could be armed with lasers not only to track, but to dazzle satellites.16
These are just a few examples of the progress observed in the informatization and improved mechanization of the PLAN’s fleet. China reportedly is also developing systems to attack adversarial systems.
One Step Forward: Attack
The Chinese navy can increase its information dominance through countermeasures that paralyze an adversary’s information systems. According to Fisher, several sources disclosed to him the PLA’s ambition to deploy a new, non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) warhead on a short-range ballistic missile. Fisher wrote that the PLA is developing a family of radio-frequency (RF) weapons as key elements of its future IW arsenal. Such weapons seek to use a form of “radiation to degrade or destroy microcircuits, computers, radar, and other sensors, communications networks, and other electronic systems.”17 According to Chinese military analyst Ye Jian, such bombs create a strong magnetic field and EMP that can paralyze the radar and telecommunication systems of an aircraft carrier and nearby vessels, ship-mounted missiles, and aircraft located within dozens of kilometers of the point of detonation. Some analysts believe China will have RF weapons by 2015.18
In October 2010, a regiment of the PLAN South Sea Fleet showed off its electronic-countermeasures capability by demonstrating an “invisible killer” on the electromagnetic battlefield during an area-wide joint tactical exercise. Using an integrated command-and-control platform, the regiment successfully eliminated strong jamming signals preventing their aviation arm from being able to lock on to select targets. Then, through aerial intelligence and synchronized data transmitted by surface vessels, they locked on to targets and guided the aviation arm to destroy them.19
China’s deep-sea research submersibles also could offer IW potential. The Jiaolong, China’s first manned submersible, is being touted as a breakthrough in technology. According to information published by the China Ocean Institute, the vessel is capable of “taking samples of sediment and plankton at fixed points, sampling mineral cores, measuring seawater temperature, drawing high precision topography maps, still and video photography of sunken ships and maintenance and inspection of deep sea pipelines and electrical cables.”20 However, some China-watchers believe that the submersibles could one day be used for military purposes, such as cutting or bugging underwater communication cables. Among its many technological capabilities, the Jiaolong can hover over a fixed position while the pilot uses a mechanical arm to perform certain operations.21
Determining the extent of China’s current attack capabilities is difficult. A study prepared for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission concluded that “there may be covert activity in the development of space weaponry and space warfare plans which is not represented in open source literature.”22 According to the study, Chinese Colonels Li Daguang, Jia Junming, and Yuan Zelu advocated covert deployment of a sophisticated antisatellite weapon system to be used against the United States in a surprise manner.
Proof of Progress
Modernizing systems and networks increases the PLAN’s need for technical training and educated personnel. Over the past decade, China has realized a significant increase in higher-educated navy commanders. In 2001, only one navy captain had a doctorate. By 2011, more than 100 captains had either a master’s degree or a Ph.D. In the past five years, more than 20,000 university graduates enlisted in the navy.23
Since 2001, the Naval Command Academy has incorporated military joint operations into its curriculum and set up training courses in key areas such as naval IW and “training under a complex electromagnetic environment.” It also has added a course on “command of naval information operations” to its graduate curriculum.24
During a 2004 seminar held by the Electronic Engineering Academy, Qian Junsheng, a brigade commander in the Second Artillery Corps, urged all levels of commanders to foster a strong awareness on ways to gain information dominance, intensify IT-based military construction and IT-oriented operational training, and strive to gain the ability to engage in IW. During that same seminar, Jiang Yong, leader of a destroyer squadron, said that in future high-tech naval battles, commanders should be able to maintain defense against threats from multidimensional space. To do this, he said they need to have a good grasp of sea-warfare tactics and also to gain specialized technical knowledge on electronic, networked, and information warfare.25
According to China’s 2010 national-defense white paper, “The complement of new-mode and high-caliber military personnel who can meet the needs of informatization has been steadily enlarged.” Because of its new large warships, submarines, and aircraft being put into service, “the Navy has been intensifying the training of professionals who are supposed to fill the key posts,” said Xia Ping, director of personnel in the PLAN’s Political Department.26
Chinese troops have been training in complex electromagnetic environments. Exercises frequently begin with enemy electronic jamming and cyber attacks on friendly units. Today, the Academy of Military Sciences is China’s main research center for “informatized warfare.” However, China has at least eight naval educational institutions. Most have a heavy emphasis on IW and information operations in their curriculum. At least half of them conduct applied and basic research of various IW and information operations applications.27
‘The Greatest Potential to Compete’
According to the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review Report, “China has the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States and field disruptive military technologies that could over time offset traditional U.S. military advantages absent U.S. counter strategies.”28 China’s goal is to develop forces equipped with the skills and weapon systems to win, at the very least, a local war under informatized conditions.
Whether or not the PLAN will one day successfully meet all its goals of achieving superiority—through informatization, mechanization, and a fleet of fully capable sailors who can operate these systems—remains to be seen. In the meantime, however, it appears that China’s propellers are in motion as the country pushes forward with its modernization efforts.
1. Shen Zhongchang, et al, “The Impact of the New Military Revolution on Naval Warfare and the Naval Establishment,” China Military Science, 20 February 1996.
2. Zhou Xiaozheng, “China Plans to Increase National Defense Spending by 11.6 Percent this Year,” Xinhua, 6 March 2004.
3. Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, China’s National Defense in 2008.
4. “Navy, Japan,” Jane’s: Defence & Security Intelligence & Analysis, 22 October 2010; “Navy, India,” Jane’s: Defence & Security Intelligence & Analysis, 25 January 2011.
5. Andrew N. D. Yang, “PLA Goes High-Tech in Global Power Game,” Taiwan Today, 17 April 2008, http://taiwantoday.tw/ct.asp?xItem=36504&CtNode=450.
6. Shen et al, “The Impact. . .”
7. “PRC Military Specialists Review Outcome of Iraq War,” Renmin Wang, 15 April 2003.
8. Dai Qingmin, “On Seizing Information Supremacy,” Zhongguo Junshi Kexue, 20 April 2003.
9. U.S. Department of Defense, “Annual Report on the Military Power of the People’s Republic of China,” 2000. “Navy, China,” Jane’s Sentinel Security Assessment – China and Northeast Asia, 9 December 2010.
10. “China’s Homemade ‘Aegis’ Destroyer Launched in Shanghai Days Ago,” Hong Kong Tai Yang Pao, 1 May 2003.
11. Qin Qian, “South Sea Fleet Builds a New Combatant/Vessel Combat Group,” Tzu Ching, May 2011.
12. “Kanwa: Recent Nanhai Fleet Exercises,” Toronto Kanwa, February 2007. Qin Qian, “South Sea Fleet Builds. . .”
13. Richard Fisher, email to author, 19 July 2011. “Kanwa: Recent Nanhai. . .”
14. Wang Ch’ang-he, “Current Status and Development of the PLA Space Army,” Chueh-Chi Tung-ya: Chu-chuao Hsin-shih-chi Chieg-fang-chun, 1 September 2009.
15. Kuo Nai-jih, Kan-pu-chien-te Tai-hai Chan-cheng (Invisible War in Taiwan Strait), 1 May 2005.
16. Fisher email.
17. Richard Fisher, China’s Military Modernization (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2008), 83.
18. Ye Jian, “Armchair Strategy: Using a Bomb to Deal with Aircraft Carrier,” Jiefang Ribao, 12 February 2000. Narender Kumar, “Unpredictable China: Are We Prepared?” Indian Defence Review, vol. 25, no. 2 (April 2010), 105–108.
19. “A regiment of SSF Shows Off Invisible Killer on Electromagnetic Battlefield,” CCTV Broadcast, 17 October 2010.
20. Zhang Shengbo, Lin Yaming, and Zhao Wei, “Deep Sea Dragon: First Manned Deep Submersible in China,” Nanfang Ribao, 15 August 2011.
21. Fisher email. Zhang, Lin, and Zhao, “Deep Sea Dragon. . .”
22. Michael P. Pillsbury, “An Assessment of China’s Anti-Satellite and Space Warfare Programs, Policies and Doctrines,” U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, 19 January 2007.
23. Zhao Lei, “Navy Puts Training Initiatives Afloat,” China Daily, 11 May 2011, www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2011-05/11/content_12485430.htm.
24. Shi Xingchun and Qin Ruoyun, “Through Joint Teaching and Joint Training, the Command Academy of the People’s Liberation Army Navy Breaks New Paths to Cultivate Qualified Personnel Capable of Working on ‘Short Term Goals and also Long Term Objectives,’” Renmin Haijun, 22 December 2008.
25. “PLA Commanders Commenting on Winning Future Information Warfare,” Jiefangjun Bao, 7 January 2004.
26. Zhao, “Navy Puts Training. . .”
27. Dennis J. Blasko, “Chinese Strategic Thinking: People’s War in the 21st Century, Jamestown Foundation – China Brief, 18 May 2010, 7. Huang Ming-chun, “Current Situation, Prospects of China’s Defense Industry,” Cheuh-chi Tung-ya, 1 September 2009. PRC Information Office, China’s National Defense in 2008.
28. U.S. Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report (2006), 29.