How have Chinese anti-access/area denial capabilities changed over time?
By Jacek Bartosiak
Chinese conceptualization of its anti-access/area denial, or A2/AD, capabilities can be traced back to the 1990s, a time when the post-Cold War international system was being formed and new conflicts and crises emerged that attracted the attention of Chinese strategists and planners.
The collapse of the Soviet Union removed the key security question for China that had been emanating from Eurasia. It also threatened to undermine the implicit U.S.-China alliance, rooted in the geopolitics of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger’s time.
Alarm Bells Ring in Beijing
The defeat of Saddam Hussein in 1991 – particularly the manner in which the seemingly formidable Iraqi army was routed – rang alarm bells in Beijing. The Chinese saw that, in the new world order, the Americans were able to unilaterally (or with a coalition of the willing) conduct military operations against an enemy with considerable military forces far away from the continental U.S.
The conflict revealed the United States’ military dominance in all combat domains. It demonstrated that new technologies would play a decisive role in future conflicts. The Chinese believed, therefore, that they needed to prepare for “local wars under high-technology conditions.”
This coincided with the emergence in the U.S. of a concept called Revolution in Military Affairs propagated by the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment and foreign policy strategist Andrew Marshall.
In March 1996, after months of rising tensions, China launched several unarmed ballistic missiles into the waters off the coast of Taiwan.
This was a show of force aimed at Taipei, where a debate was raging over the question of independence.
The United States responded by sending two aircraft carrier battle groups into the Taiwan Strait.
This crisis was resolved peacefully, but ever since, the Americans and the Chinese have had to consider the possibility of armed conflict in the littoral waters of the Western Pacific.
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The crisis motivated the Chinese to work on a set of operational tasks, the purpose of which would be to prevent American power projection around Taiwan and across the littorals of the Western Pacific.
Decisions made in China on military procurement, research and development have reflected this objective ever since.
Preparations for War
The war in Kosovo in 1999 only validated China’s fears relating to America’s military power, and a few years later, the Americans made further advances in military technology in Iraq.
These two conflicts cemented the conviction among Chinese analysts that peace and growth in international affairs were far from guaranteed.
China was then forced to start preparations for war with the United States. At the turn of the century, military theorists and planners reached a consensus on what a Chinese operational concept ought to look like.
It seemed as if the Americans were on the way to developing what Soviet military theorists had dubbed the reconnaissance-strike complex, or RSC, in the early 1980s.
To counter these capabilities, the Chinese would have to develop their own RSC, only with Chinese characteristics.
RSC was designed to locate the enemy, its weapons systems and other martial assets and enablers and to neutralize them by using non-kinetic weapons (cyber-attacks and electromagnetic impulse) as well as long-range precision kinetic strikes. RSC would paralyze the enemy and prevent any further strikes being launched.
The Chinese believed they would have to face an opponent that was better armed but that technology would not play a decisive role. Indeed, the Chinese thought that they would be aided by “geopolitical, diplomatic advantages, geography and logistical conditions,” according to Chinese military publications.
The Chinese also understood that the Americans would have to try to project power over the vast Pacific Ocean, which would time-consuming and expensive and be fundamentally dependent on access to allied bases and ports in the region.
Even with the support of allies, the United States’ forces would be operating with enormously extended lines of communication and logistics.
According to the Chinese, some contentious issues such as Taiwan would not be as essential to U.S. security as they would be to China’s. This was deemed the American weakness to exploit.
The assessment of military capabilities, technological trends, geographical constants and geopolitical conditions led to four operational demands that were set for China’s People’s Liberation Army: information and informatic dominance resulting from a victory in a modern scouting battle (battle for situational awareness); the achievement of precise strike capabilities, including those aimed at the enemy’s situational awareness systems; strengthening its own defensive capabilities; and developing pre-emptive strike capabilities.
Without mentioning the A2/AD concept, Chinese military literature since then has described operations and tactics that closely resemble A2/AD. The phrase used by the Chinese instead of A2/AD is Active Strategic Counterattacks on Exterior Lines.
The thinking behind ASCEL was laid out in a 2001 article by Gen. Peng Guangqian, an experienced theoretician at China’s Academy of Military Science, and was incorporated that same year into “Knowledge of Military Strategy,” the Academy of Military Science’s guiding handbook.
ASCEL suggests that China’s objective will be to strike “pre-emptively, deep and hard” at the oncoming enemy. Chinese strategists claim that the first shot in a war is not the same at the political-strategic level as it is at the tactical. Once its sovereignty has been violated – which could involve political support for separatists and other “secessionists” – a country is entitled to a pre-emptive strike at a tactical level.
ASCEL dictates that China would try to launch a pre-emptive strike at the greatest possible distance, rather than waiting passively for the Americans to strike from their sanctuaries. In the age of modern scouting battle, the Chinese must establish a defensive line or perimeter as far away as possible.
The targets are the enemy’s combat systems but also bases and other assets necessary for the enemy to conduct operations and sustain logistics. Although China has not publicly indicated what is to be understood as “exterior lines,” other sources suggest that they refer to the first island chain in the Western Pacific.
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Chinese military expenditures were allotted primarily in accordance with principles corresponding to the ASCEL concept.
For example, China is said to have had 100 military and observation satellites tracking enemy targets. At the same time, new kinds of unmanned aerial vehicles and radars monitoring space over the horizon are entering service at a rapid pace.
Together, these elements enable all data to be linked into one combat situational awareness picture, facilitating the conduct of a modern scouting battle and the targeting and even destruction of locations at very long range.
Over the past decade, much progress has been made in this last field, and new capabilities permit commanders to make decisions in real or near real time and shorten the time needed to carry them out, which is an immeasurably vital element of A2/AD.
Along with long-distance recognition capabilities, China also has the ability to destroy bases belonging to the United States and its allies as far as northeastern Japan and even the island of Guam. In case of a U.S. attack,
China also has significant defensive capabilities in the form of disrupting the enemy’s systems, combatting the United States’ military and observation satellites, cyberwarfare, electromagnetic countermeasures and kinetic defense against aircraft and missiles trying to penetrate China’s air defenses.
To this end, China has modernized its air defense system by introducing its own airborne warning and control system and creating an integrated air defense system.
According to recent reports, devices have been developed that have the capability, under certain conditions, to detect even stealth aircraft. At the same time, realizing that some aircraft and missiles will penetrate air defenses,
China has made huge outlays on passive defensive resources, such as underground bunkers, caves and underground tunnels for command centers to disperse the most valuable combat and observation systems.
Key U.S. Challenges
All of this combines to pose four connected operational challenges for the United States.
First, the dynamic development of Chinese A2/AD capabilities significantly raises the level of risk to American power projection in the Asian littorals; aircraft carriers could be sunk and bases in the region destroyed. Second, that China has such A2/AD capabilities in itself raises doubts among U.S. allies about the credibility of American guarantees, which might undermine the durability of their alliance with the United States.
A credible military strategy, based on the concept of operational capabilities through which the strategy can be implemented, is essential for reassuring allies and deterring the opponent.
America’s allies are already considering whether bases in the region are capable of surviving a Chinese attack and whether the United States is prepared to come to their aid in the event of a conflict with China.
A negative answer to these questions may lead to a reassessment of the policies of these countries and a possible reorientation to a more pro-Chinese stance. In a strategic sense, Beijing, by strengthening its A2/AD capabilities, is already creating a divergence of interests (known as decoupling) between the United States and its allies.
The third challenge is that the United States has found itself on the wrong side of a costly confrontation. China has achieved its goals, eliminating America’s power projection capabilities with the use of relatively inexpensive systems, while the United States attempts to maintain those capabilities at much a higher cost, trying at the same time to cut expenditures and find a more competitive method.
It is possible that China's asymmetrical plan could make the U.S., in the long term, fail to find a solution to the problem, which might compel the United States to “surrender” the Western Pacific because of its inability to finance the maintenance of the balance of power structure.
The fourth challenge is that the Chinese development and effectiveness of A2/AD capabilities has continued to increase, as proved by maneuvers and exercises already carried out by the Chinese.
The sense of power among the leaders in Beijing is growing. This could evolve into an armed conflict as a result of a misjudgement of a developing situation, a misperception of the intentions, capabilities, interests and viewpoint of the opponent, or an accident.
Ultimately, developments over the past couple of years may signal that Chinese A2/AD could inflict real pain on U.S. contingency plans for the Western Pacific.
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