The modalities of China’s combinatory unrestrictive warfare strategy

Abstract

AbstractThis article analyses the modalities of China’s combinatory unrestricted warfare. After an investigation of the founding principles of Chinese military thought, the second part of the article is dedicated to the importance of technology in modern warfare and more specifically what Chinese military thinkers called “informatization,” which enables a combinatory unrestricted warfare strategy. Through a geopolitical analysis, the last part of this article specifies the modalities of Chinese combinatory unrestricted warfare applied to China’s security concerns: ensuring Chinese economic development and the preservation of China’s territoriality, including Taiwan and its territories in the SCS (South China Sea) and ECS (East China Sea). Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Frank G. Hoffman, Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars (Arlington VA: Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, 2007), 22.2 Sangkuk Lee, “China’s Three Warfares: Origins, Applications and Organizations,” Journal of Strategic Studies 37, no. 2 (2014), https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2013.8700713 James Mulvenon and Andrew N. D. Yang, eds., Seeking the Truth from Facts, A retrospective on Chinese Military Studies in the Post-Mao Era (Santa Monica: Rand, Centre for Asia-Pacific Policy, National Research Division, 2001).4 Ibid., 138.5 John F. Sullivan, “How Translators Choose to Render Sun Tzu,” academia.edu, https://usarmy.academia.edu/JohnSullivan (accessed May 4, 2023).6 William H. Mot and Jae Chang Kim, The Philosophy of Chinese Military Culture, Shih vs. Li (Palgrave MacMillan, 2006), 12.7 According to the Li approach “weapons” are only projectiles, or instruments of war used by “armies” themselves conceived as a collection of men in arms. Therefore, according to the Li approach, strategy is the simple use of a mean to achieve a goal, deprived from any intellectual consideration about the significance of men fighting together , or about what can make them fighting together, that said The meaning may vary depending on Tao or Confucianist thinkers. Mot and Kim, The Philosophy of Chinese Military Culture, Shih vs. Li, 32.8 President Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address (November 19, 1863), in This Fiery Trial: The Speeches and Writings of Abraham Lincoln, edited by W. E. Gienapp (Oxford University Press, 2002), 184.9 People's war also called protracted people's war, is a Maoist military strategy developed by the Chinese communist revolutionary leader Mao Zedong (1893–1976). The basic concept behind people's war is to maintain the support of the population and draw the enemy deep into the countryside (stretching their supply lines) where the population will bleed them dry through a mix of mobile warfare and guerrilla warfare. Mao Tse-tung, On Protracted War, Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung (Press: Peking, 1967), 113–94.10 Mot and Kim, The Philosophy of Chinese Military Culture, Shih vs. Li, 11.11 Hwy-Chang Moon, The Art of Strategy, Sun Tzu, Michael Porter and Beyond (Seoul University Press, 2018), 150.12 Taylor Fravel, Active Defense, China’s Military Strategy Since 1949 (Princeton University Press, 2019), 95.13 Ibid., 95.14 Paul H.B. Godwin, “Compensating for Deficiencies: Doctrinal Evolution in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army: 1978-1999,” in Seeking the Truth from Facts, A retrospective on Chinese Military Studies in the Post-Mao Era, edited by. J.C. Mulvenon and Andrew N.D. Yang. (Santa Monica: Rand, Centre for Asia-Pacific Policy, National Research Division, 2001), 101.15 Ibid.16 Fravel, Active Defense, China’s Military Strategy since 1949, 119.17 Ibid., 56.18 Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, Wake Up America! China’s Master Plan to Destroy America, Unrestricted Warfare (Shadow Lawn Press, 2020), 205.19 Ibid.20 David Kilcullen, “Countering the Global Jihad,” Journal of Strategic Studies 28, no. 4 (2005): 597–617.21 Liang and Xiangsui, Wake Up America! China’s Master Plan to Destroy America, Unrestricted Warfare, 138.22 Andrew Scobell, Edmund J. Burke, Cortez A. Cooper, III, Sale Lilly, Chad J.R. Ohlandt, Eric Warner, and J.D. Williams, China’s Grand Strategy, Trends, Trajectories and Long-Term Competition (Santa Monica: Rand Corporation, 2020), 11.23 Ibid.24 James Surowiecki, “The Frugal Republic,” The New Yorker, December 7, 2009, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/12/07/the-frugal-republic (accessed May 5, 2023).25 Helen Davidson, “China Growth Lags Asia Pacific for First Time in Decades as World Bank Cuts Outlook,” The Guardian, September 27, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/sep/27/china-growth-lags-asia-pacific-for-first-time-in-decades-as-world-bank-cuts-outlook (accessed May 5, 2023).26 Moon, The Art of Strategy, Sun Tzu, Michael Porter and Beyond, 146.27 Ibid.28 Andrew Erickson, “Comparative Grand Strategy, A Framework and Cases,” in Comparative Grand Strategy, A Framework and Cases, edited by Thierry Balzacq, Peter Dombrowski, and Simon Reich (Oxford University Press, 2019), 73–98.29 Ibid., 84.30 “Reason 1. Fertile and Trusted Free Market,” Jetro.go.jp, Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO), 2022, https://www.jetro.go.jp/en/invest/investment_environment/whyjapan/ch1.html (accessed May 4, 2023).31 Honsong Liu and Ahmed Bux Jamali, “India’s Indo Pacific Strategy: A Pragmatic Balancing between the United States and China,” Pacific Focus Inha Journal of International Studies 36, no 1 (April 2021): 21.32 Michael J. Green, Line of Advantage, Japan’s Grand Strategy in the Era of Abe Shinzo (Columbia University Press, 2022), 148.33 Ibid.34 Sanket Sudhir Kulkarni and Hippu Salk Kristle Nathan, “The Elephant and the Tiger: Energy Security, Geopolitics, and National Strategy in China and India’s Cross Border Gas Pipelines,” Energy Research and Social Science 11 (2016): 183.35 Ibid.36 Hoo Tiang Boon, “The Hedging Prong in India’s Evolving China Strategy,” Journal of Contemporary China 25 (2016): 798.37 Sameer P. Lalwani, Daniel Markey, and Vikram J. Singh, “Another Clash on the India-China Border Underscores Risks of Militarization,” USIP.org, United States Institute of Peace, December 20, 2022, https://www.usip.org/publications/2022/12/another-clash-india-china-border-underscores-risks-militarization (accessed May 8, 2023.)38 Liu and Jamali, “India’s Indo Pacific Strategy,” 24.39 Green, Line of Advantage, Japan’s Grand Strategy in the Era of Abe Shinzo, 65.40 David Uren, “The Australia-China Trade Profile,” Australia Strategic Policy Institute (2021), 12.41 “An Overview of New Zealand’s Trade in 2021,” mfat.govt.nz, New Zealand Foreign Affairs and Trade, 2022, https://www.mfat.govt.nz/en/trade/mfat-market-reports/market-reports-global/an-overview-of-new-zealands-trade-in-2021/ (accessed May 4, 2023).42 Michael Mazarr, “Mastering the Gray Zone : Understanding a Changing Era of Conflict,” Advancing Strategic Thought Series, Department of the Army, (2015), https://press.armywarcollege.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1427&context=monographs (accessed May 5, 2023).43 Dean Cheng, “Chinese Calculations of Security and the Korean Peninsula,” The Journal of East Asian Affairs , 32 (2018): 23–4, http://www.jstor.com/stable/4482553644 Bechtol Bruce, Jr., North Korean Military Proliferation in the Middle East and Africa, Enabling Violence and Instability (University Press of Kentucky, 2018), 55.45 Marc Lanteigne, Chinese Foreign Policy, an Introduction, 4th ed. (London: Routledge, 2020), 184.46 Peter Navarro, Crouching Tiger, What China’s Militarism Means for the World (New York: Prometheus Books, 2015), 222. Navarro explains that the “liberal school of International Relations” tends to assert that war is far less likely with China because the costs in lost trade to everyone would be far higher than any benefits that might be gained from war.47 David Shambaugh and Ren Xiao, China, “The Conflicted Rising power,” in Worldviews of Aspiring Powers, Domestic Foreign Policy Debates in China, India, Iran, Japan, and Russia, edited by Henry R. Nau and Deepa M. Ollapally (Oxford University Press), 44.48 Carolina Milhorance and Folashade Soule-Kohndou, “South-South Cooperation and Change in International Organizations,” Global Governance 23 (July–Sept. 2017): 461–81, https://www.jstor.org/stable/44861137. The South-South cooperation refers to the technical cooperation among developing countries in the Global South.49 Lanteigne, Chinese Foreign policy, an Introduction, 211.50 Ibid.51 “African Union Opens Chinese-Funded HQ in Ethiopia,” BBC News, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-16770932 (accessed June 7, 2023).52 Jo Inge Bekkevold, “China, Russia and the Great Power Contest in the Middle East,” in Sino-Russian Relations in the 21st Century, edited by Jo Ingo Bekkevold and Bobo Lo (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019): 148.53 Lanteigne, Chinese Foreign Policy, an Introduction, 212.54 Joshua Eisenman, “China’s Media Propaganda in Africa: A Strategic Assessment,” US Institute of Peace (2023), 11, https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep4850655 Ibid., 146.56 Mingjian Li and Angela Poh, “The Indispensable Partner: Russia in China’s Grand Strategy,” in Sino-Russian Relations in the 21st Century, edited by Jo Ingo Bekkevold and Bobo Lo (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 31.57 Bekkevold, “China, Russia and the Great Power Contest in the Middle East,” 148.58 Stephen M. Walt, Michael Miner, and Karen Eliott House, “Significance of the Iran-Saudi Arabia Agreement Brokered by China,” Belfer Center Org, March 14, 2023, https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/significance-iran-saudi-arabia-agreement-brokered-china (accessed April, 18, 2023).59 Peter Baker, “Chinese Brokered Deal Upends Mideast Diplomacy and Challenges US,” New York Times, March 11, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/11/us/politics/saudi-arabia-iran-china-biden.html (accessed April 18, 2023).60 Ibid.61 Lanteigne, Chinese Foreign Policy, an Introduction, 63–4.62 David Shamah, “China Firm to Build New Ashdod ‘Union Buster’ Port,” The Times of Israel, September 23, 2014, https://www.timesofisrael.com/china-firm-to-build-new-ashdod-union-buster-port/ (accessed March 22, 2023).63 Mohsen Solhdoost, “Iran’s Geo-Strategic Orientations toward China and India,” Journal on Indian Ocean Region 17, no. 1 (2021): 60–77, https://doi.org/10.1080/19480881.2021.187858364 Ibid., 66.65 Bekkevold, “China, Russia and the Great Power Contest in the Middle East,” 151.66 Ibid, 151–2.67 Joseph Nye, “Perspectives for the China strategy,” PRISM 8, no. 4 (2020): 129.68 Lanteigne, Chinese Foreign policy, an Introduction, 19.69 Ibid.70 Ibid.71 Kerry Brown, “Why China Cares about the Grexit Crisis,” thediplomat.com, July 13, 2015, https://thediplomat.com/2015/07/why-china-cares-about-the-grexit-crisis/ (accessed June 7, 2023).72 Lanteigne, Chinese Foreign Policy, an Introduction, 203.73 "Français pandas: Jean-Pierre Raffarin fait-il le jeu de la paix… ou celui de la Chine"?, ["French Pandas Jean-Pierre Raffarin, Is He Playing for Peace ….or for China’s Interests ?"], France Info, 25 February 2021, https://www.francetvinfo.fr/monde/chine/video-francais-pandas-jean-pierre-raffarin-fait-il-le-jeu-de-la-paix-ou-celui-de-la-chine_4308339.html (accessed June 7, 2023).74 Marcel H. Van Herpen, Putin’s Propaganda Machine, Soft Power and Russian Foreign Policy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), 255.75 In this study revisionist states are defined as states which seek to alter the repartition of power to their advantage, non-conformance to international norms and values based on a contestation of a set of neoliberal practices in the post-World War Two international order and that manifests mainly in a specific evolution of human rights as a universal value that legitimizes intervention in the domestic affairs of a sovereign state.76 Paul N. Schwartz, “The Military Dimension in Sino-Russian Relations,” in Sino-Russian Relations in the 21st Century, edited by Jo Ingo Bekkevold and Bobo Lo (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 87.77 Li and Poh, “The Indispensable Partner: Russia in China’s Grand Strategy,” 30.78 Russia is also a key component of the “Silk Road Economic Belt” (Silu Jingjidai) (. .) by 2017, discussions on Arctic cooperation, and the opportunities to develop energy and infrastructure projects in Siberia and the Russian Far East (RFE) ha[d] further bolstered Sino-Russian cooperation. Lanteigne, Chinese Foreign Policy, an Introduction, 207.79 Li and Poh, “The Indispensable Partner: Russia in China’s Grand Strategy,” 31.80 Ibid.81 Alexander Gabuev, “Unwanted but Inevitable: Russia’s Deepening Partnership with China Post-Ukraine,” in Sino-Russian Relations in the 21st Century, edited by Jo Ingo Bekkevold and Bobo Lo (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 60.82 Lawrence Freedman, “Who Wants to Be a Great Power,” PRISM, no. 4 (2020): 9.83 Neither country, despite the recent upgrade in military relations has demonstrated any interest in forming a true military alliance, first neither wants to become entrapped in a dispute involving a third party, especially the United States, second both countries are capable of defending themselves. Schwartz, “The Military Dimension in Sino-Russian Relations, in Sino-Russian Relations in the 21st Century, 105.84 James R Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara studied the influence on Mahan’s writing on Chinese military commentators and underlined the fact that the Chinese Military Digest interprets Mahan’s doctrine as “Who controls the Sea, controls the world (. .).” James R. Holmes and Toshi Yoshibara, “The Influence of Mahan upon China’s Maritime Strategy,” Comparative Strategy 24, no. 1, 23–51, DOI: 10.1080/0149593059092966385 Kamphausen and Liang, “PLA Power Projection; Current Realities and Emerging Trends,” 111–50.86 Ibid., 116.87 Ibid.88 Ibid.89 Ibid., 131.90 Green, Line of Advantage, Japan’s Grand Strategy in the Era of Abe Shinzo, 54.91 Waltz, “International Structure, National Force, and the Balance of Power,” 223.92 Richard K. Betts, “The Lost Logic of Deterrence: What the Strategy That Won the Cold War Can—and Can't—Do Now,” Foreign Affairs 92, no. 2 (2013): 96. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2352745993 Barrington M. Barrett, “Information Warfare: China’s Response to US Technological Advantages,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 4 (2005): 697. DOI: 10.1080/0885060050017713594 Kerry K. Gershaneck, Political Warfare: Strategies for Combating China's Plan to "Win without Fighting" (Quantico, VA: Marine Corps University Press, 2020), 15.95 Ibid., 144.96 Beijing has concentrated great efforts on depriving Taiwan of this international space by coercing or bribing foreign governments to break diplomatic relations with Taiwan. In the spring of 2018, the Dominican Republic and Burkina Faso established ties with the PRC, and that August, El Salvador cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Panama, São Tomé and Príncipe, the Solomon Islands, and Kiribati have also severed ties with Taipei, leaving just 15 countries that maintain official diplomatic allegiance with the island nation. Gershaneck, Political Warfare: Strategies for Combating China's Plan to "Win without Fighting”, 143.97 Paul Haenle and Nathaniel Sher, “How Pelosi’s Taiwan Visit Has Set a New Status Quo for U.S-China Tensions,” carnegieendowment.org, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, August 17, 2022, https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/08/17/how-pelosi-s-taiwan-visit-has-set-new-status-quo-for-u.s-china-tensions-pub-87696 (accessed May 5, 2023).98 Scott W. Harold, Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga, and Jeffrey W. Hornung, Chinese Disinformation Efforts on Social Media, Combating Foreign Disinformation on Social Media Series (Rand Corporation, 2021), 38.99 Brandon Valeriano, Benjamin Jensen, and Ryan C. Maness, Cyber Strategy: The Evolving Character of Power and Coercion (Oxford University Press, 2018), 150.100 Desmond Ball, “China Cyber Warfare Capabilities,” Security Challenges 7, no. 2 (2011): 81, https://www.jstor.com/stable/26461991101 Ibid., 147.102 Gershaneck, Political Warfare: Strategies for Combating China's Plan to "Win without Fighting", 137.103 Chinese consideration about Internet Governance is its desire to restrict the online voice of the authorities in Taipei, to ensure that they have no more prospect of international support in cyberspace than they do in the current political environment. Fabio Rugge, ed., Confronting an Axis of Cyber? China, Iran, North Korea, Russia in Cyberspace, ISPI (Milano: Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, 2018), 68, https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/23931 (accessed May 5, 2023).104 Harold et al., Chinese Disinformation Efforts on Social Media, 21.105 Ibid., 22.106 Ibid., 24.107 These pro-PRC academics have incurred the derogatory name “pan-Red professors,” (. .) have in effect become agents of influence for the “Red” CCP. (. .) Some pan-Reds openly denigrate Taiwan’s democracy and extoll the PRC’s totalitarian regime to students who will become tomorrow’s teachers, professors, diplomats, judges, attorneys, legislators, military officers, and policy makers. Gershaneck, Political Warfare: Strategies for Combating China's Plan to "Win without Fighting", 140.108 Jeffrey Friedman, “Is US Grand Strategy Dead?,” International Affairs, no. 4 (2022): 1290.109 Miranda Priebe, Bryan Rooney, Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga, Jeffrey Martini, and Stephanie Pezard, Implementing Restraint, Changes in US Regional Security Policy to Operationalize a Realist Grand Strategy (Rand Corporation, 2021), 11. According to Rand Experts, “Under a grand strategy of restraint, the United States would have a much narrower conception of its interests, reduce its forward military presence, renegotiate or end many of its existing security commitments, resolve conflicts of interest and cooperate more with other great powers, and have a higher threshold for the use of military force.”110 Ibid., 50.111 Ibid., 55–6.112 Green, Line of Advantage, Japan’s Grand Strategy in the Era of Abe Shinzo, 103.113 Ibid.114 Michael O’Hanlon, The Art of War in an Age of Peace, US Grand Strategy and Resolute Restraint (Yale University Press, 2021), 109. see also Manjeet S. Pardesi, “India’s China Strategy under Modi Continuity in the Management of an Asymmetric Rivalry,” International Politics (2022).115 Philippe Le Corre, “This Is China’s Plan to Dominate Southern Europe,” https://carnegieendowment.org, last modified October 30, 2018, https://carnegieendowment.org/2018/10/30/this-is-china-s-plan-to-dominate-southern-europe-pub-77621 (accessed May 1, 2023).Additional informationNotes on contributorsNelly AtlanNelly Atlan (nelly.atlan@protonmail.com) holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of Saint Andrews (Scotland -UK) and is conducting research on hybrid warfare, ­military conflicts and strategy.