Every morning at 6 a.m., more than two dozen of the world's leading submarine watchers, aviation experts, government specialists, imagery analysts, cryptanalysts, and linguists gather at the headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Fleet in Hawaii. Their job is to probe the overnight intelligence reports to guide the activities and strategies of the five aircraft carrier groups, 180 ships, and nearly 2,000 aircraft that constantly patrol the Pacific and Indian oceans. The morning meetings are convened by the fleet's top intelligence officer, Capt. James Fanell, and cover activities emanating anywhere "from Hollywood to Bollywood," as the head of U.S. Pacific Command, Adm. Samuel Locklear, likes to put it. But the group never takes long before zeroing in on the country driving the United States' military and diplomatic "pivot" to Asia. "Every day it's about China; it's about a China who's at the center of virtually every activity and dispute in the maritime domain in the East Asian region," said Fanell, reading from prepared remarks at a U.S. Naval Institute conference in San Diego on Jan. 31.
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Fanell, in comments that went largely unnoticed outside the small circle of China military specialists, spelled out in rare detail the reasons the United States is shifting 60 percent of its naval assets -- including its most advanced capabilities -- to the Pacific. He was blunt: The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy is focused on war, and it is expanding into the "blue waters" explicitly to counter the U.S. Pacific Fleet. "I can tell you, as the fleet intelligence officer, the PLA Navy is going to sea to learn how to do naval warfare," he said. "My assessment is the PLA Navy has become a very capable fighting force."
Some were shocked to hear the extent and intensity of China's carefully orchestrated maritime provocations, especially coming from an officer whose job may make him more of an expert on Beijing's naval maneuverings than anyone outside China. Others wondered whether the Pacific Fleet was simply playing the Washington game, perhaps lobbying for a greater share of the U.S. military budget or wider authority to act by magnifying the threat.
But it may well be that the most contestable of Fanell's assertions were about the Chinese military's capabilities, not its provocations. For the question on many minds, both in Washington and Beijing, is this: Can China actually fight? And the person most anxious to find an answer happens to be the man who just became China's fifth leader since Mao: Xi Jinping.
FOR XI, this is no idle question. The 59-year-old new president is himself a veteran who launched his career in 1979 as personal assistant to Geng Biao, then secretary-general in charge of daily affairs at the Central Military Commission, the 11-member panel that runs the Chinese armed forces. And Xi has stated clearly that the military is central to his vision for China. "We must ensure there is unison between a prosperous country and strong military," he said in a pep talk to sailors on board a guided-missile destroyer in December. But his ambition to have a strong, professional fighting force is greatly complicated by an even bigger question that has occupied every Communist Party leader since Mao uttered his famous dictum that "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." Can Xi be sure that the PLA will always be loyal to the party, and specifically to him?
"The people's army is not merely an organ for fighting; it is also an organ for the political advancement of the party," Mao once said, in another statement whose truth has been confirmed by all his successors. Xi may be able to build a military that is either modern and capable or loyal and political. But many in China now believe he can't have both.
It won't be for lack of trying. In the West, Xi's assumption of power has largely been covered as an economic and political drama: Can he keep China's booming markets on track? Will he tame the country's toxic levels of official corruption before demands for political reform derail him? Is he a reformer at all? What these accounts often miss are Xi's very deliberate moves to build a military power base for his presidency.
Even before formally taking office, Xi launched a wide-ranging program of inspecting troops, cementing key military relationships, and muscling up against Japan, his associates say. On Nov. 15, his preparatory work was rewarded by his appointment as not only general secretary of the Communist Party but also chairman of the Central Military Commission. The latter was a title that had eluded his predecessor, the lackluster Hu Jintao, for two years after Hu became party secretary, a symbolism lost on no one. Almost immediately after Xi's elevation, he announced a high-profile austerity campaign, attacking the military's culture of banquets, ceremony, and pomp. He demanded that his soldiers focus on their mission. "We must ensure that our troops are ready when called upon, that they are fully capable of fighting, and that they must win every war," Xi said during a tour of military forces in southern Guangdong province in December.
The People's Liberation Army was founded as an arm of the Chinese Communist Party on Aug. 1, 1927, when it began a quarter-century of nonstop warfare. Today it occupies a central place in party history and mythology for helping to defeat the occupying Japanese, drive the Kuomintang nationalists to Taiwan, and push U.S.-led forces back to the 38th parallel in the Korean War. It added an air force and navy shortly after the 1949 founding of the People's Republic.
Politics have always played a key role, and the PLA retains a Soviet-style dual command structure. A powerful political department sits at the center of the organization, while political minders shadow commanders at every level of the enormous hierarchy. With its crucial role at home as well as internationally, the PLA today boasts 2.3 million active-duty personnel, and its capabilities have been greatly strengthened by two decades of double-digit budget increases, enabling it to invest in everything from its first aircraft carrier and stealth fighter jets to the world's only anti-ship ballistic missile.
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