Chinese build a high-tech army within an army
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Frigates, destroyers, and amphibious landing ships are all being built and designed with a new confidence, Mr. Yang says. Navy yards may employ a Russian hull design, but the ships' guts are designed to new Chinese specs.
"The destroyers and frigates, are getting bigger and bigger," Yang adds. "Six to seven tons. That is what you build for a long distance Navy...."
"There's been a sea change in the Pentagon's [view], a lot more respect for what Chinese industry can do," says Bates Gill, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
Taiwan especially is a place where China has succeeded in getting US attention. Despite Taiwan's 60 years of separate development, China views the island as its own territory. A conflict with Taiwan would be especially dangerous since, for internal political reasons, China can't start a war over Taiwan that it cannot win. A military loss over Taiwan could cause a collapse of the party in Beijing.
In order to win, China has designed a missile strike on Taiwan and a cruise missile attack on US ships that would be so colossal that US leaders will delay a decision to rescue, giving China time to take hold. China's nuclear threat this summer was a message to US forces that should a fight commence over Taiwan, the Pentagon may no longer be able to assume a conventional war over the island.
"They may be taking away US assumptions of a war that would escalate in stages," says Mr. Roy of APCSS in Honolulu.
In a conventional war, says Col. Michael Boera, a wing commander in Guam, his nightmare would be so many missiles or planes that even if his pilots could shoot them down, "they would keep coming.... I fear them numbers-wise. Where I am fighting too many planes, that's my concern."
"The PLA is getting in a position to considerably constrain our freedom of maneuver," says Roy. "We can't expect that we can completely protect a carrier battle group when it got into theater."
Pentagon officers are fond of saying that China is at a military crossroads. It must decide its size, capability, and whether it will begin to share its secrets with the US.
But the US is also at a crossroads in terms of its response and its relations with Asia. So far, the US has said it wants to work with China, keeping at bay those hawks who feel that China is a certain enemy.
Historically, in fact, China is not an aggressor. It rarely attacks. But then, what is called "China" has moved only in the late 20th century from a sprawling "civilization" to a nation in the modern sense. Moreover, the sense of national pride in China is powerful. As one rather liberal intellectual told the Monitor, "In our hearts, most of us want China to be great - we feel deeply a desire to help run Asia and the world."
What concerns some American China experts is that creating a modern army will also create the dynamic to use a modern army. Analysts like Mulvenon point to possible unintended consequences of a buildup.
"What I worry about is the military influencing foreign policy," he says, "[decisionmakers] using the military they have paid so much for like a tool in their kit ... as leverage in certain situations.... That can be how bad things get started."
