How Much of China’s New Defense White Paper is Propaganda?

On the morning of July 24th, Chinese state media Xinhua released its defense white paper, “China’s National Defense in the New Era.” The White Paper, which highlights the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) perspective of its military power in the context of security situations in the world, generally outlined regional security priorities as well as the status of People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) organization, reforms, and technological advances. At first sight, the paper is filled with classic Chinese nationalist rhetoric such as “national rejuvenation,” “peaceful reunification,” and “never seeking hegemony,” typical for PLA publications. While the paper does contain new information and meaningful insight into the workings of the PLA, just how much of it is propaganda and distorted fact aimed at sending politicized messages?

Useful: organizational structures and goals

2020, 2035, and 2049 are years the PLA has bookmarked as important to its military development. By 2020, the Communist Party hopes to fully mechanize its military. By 2035, full modernization. And by 2049, building a “world class” military, capable of projecting power around the world.

To complete these goals, the paper outlined organizational and command restructuring. With restructuring of organs under the Central Military Commission (CMC), CCP’s highest level of military command chaired by Xi Jinping himself, the CCP has made its command and control structure less bureaucratic and more centralized. The theaters of operation were reduced from seven to five. The practice of running businesses under the PLA, which gave room for corruption, was also abolished. Xi’s anti-corruption campaign has extended into the army, giving him the opportunity to purge not only his opponents in the political arena but also within the PLA. 

On the composition of its forces, the paper outlined how the PLA will be scaling down the size of its army, maintaining its air force, and scaling up its navy. This likely goes hand-in-hand with CCP’s claim over South China Sea, East China Sea, and Taiwan, places where maritime military presence will be necessary project power and coerce militarily weaker states. For example, the Scarborough Shoal incident in 2012 was an example of how overwhelming Chinese military capacity in the region have allowed it to successfully score a victory against The Philippines and claimed control over some territory, when the US did not intervene despite the existence of a mutual-defense treaty. On Maritimes Interest, it also highlighted its operations in Djibouti, where countries such as Japan and the US has also set up bases to project power at the strategic junction at the Gulf of Aden.

In general, reading these changes one can see how the CCP’s military objectives reflects upon its authoritarian political structure. Most of the internal restructuring has a strong implication for power centralization around Xi himself. By making the military bureaucracy flatter, power is centered around the CMC, which Xi tightly controls. These reforms are more necessary in an authoritarian system such as China’s than in a democracy like the US, since the PLA pledges allegiance not to the state, nor constitution, nor its people, but rather to the CCP itself and by extension its supreme leader. China’s political environment is also far less transparent, giving political intrigues much more potential to meddle in the military for destabilization.

Externally, the language used in the paper also signals potential conflict with the interests of Japan and the US, both of which have vowed to keep the Indo-pacific region free and open. Most significantly, Japan is being pointed out by name as attempting to “circumvent the post-war mechanism,” article 9 of its constitution, which gave up all use of forces as a method to resolve conflict. 

The emphasis on technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), and other IT technologies also signals China’s ambition to incorporate cutting-edge technologies into its military to match current US advantage.

Misleading: PLA accomplishments and military spending figures

Less useful within the white paper is the fluff aimed to send political signals or serve as propaganda. The paper lauds PLA’s own effort in participating in humanitarian assistance/ disaster relief (HA/DR), but a United States Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) report points otherwise, alleging that the PLA has mostly used HA/DR as opportunities to collect information about co-participating US military forces. When conducting humanitarian missions, the PLA reportedly “treated their sector like sovereign territory, rather than an area where they would lead the coordination of response.“

China’s military figure is almost deliberately presented to be a trap for readers taking in CCP’s narrative genuinely. Using official military spending as a percent of its GDP as an indicator and comparing these percentages to countries such as the US, the CCP is essentially arguing that it remains peaceful relative to the US.

However, the CCP also does not disclose all of its military budget, which according to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is estimated to value at around a third or a half times more than its declared budget. China’s military-civil fusion (軍民融合), executed through means such as absorbing civilian technologies into its military, supplying academic studies to its military, blurs the line between civilian and military spending. Whereas the US at least striving for transparency with its own military budget, China’s has not. Though the numbers presented by the white paper was the first of its kind that included statistics, the numbers remain nonrepresentative of China’s true military capability. 

The narrative the CCP is trying to push here, if the rhetoric has not made it obvious enough in the paper, is that China is a peaceful, defensive, non-expansionist, non-hegemon seeking nation. The CCP uses the term “major country competition” to refer to the US as a source of rivalry in the region. Other nations defending themselves against an increasingly ambitious CCP leadership, as it turns out, is apparently a move that stirs conflict.

Propaganda: China’s territorial claim

China’s claim over several disputed territories in the region have been the focus of security experts. The new white paper made a point to reiterate “The South China Sea islands and Diaoyu Islands are inalienable parts of the Chinese territory.” But despite China’s claims over these areas, most of them remain in de facto control of other governments, and the legitimacy of Chinese claims often rely on ancient, arbitrary literature that says little more than “we had it on a map.”

The Diaoyutai/Senkaku islands remain in the control of the Japanese government, though the PLA Navy has frequently been present in the region. The CCP cites establishments of South China Sea Declaration of Conduct (DOC) as a precursor to Code of Conduct as progress, though in reality negotiation is slow as consensus is difficult amongst the numerous member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). 

Also must be kept in mind is US and Japanese interest in keeping the region free and open. Though ASEAN nations are able to leverage their geographic location in their negotiations, East Asian nations such as South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan do not have any representation in these negotiations. These economies stand to be disrupted if South China Sea lanes are disrupted by Chinese militarization. The paper, claiming the maritime area around South China Sea as “inalienable territory,” ignores criticism that aggressive PLA militarization of the islands has drawn. Former Acting US Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan has called it “excessive.” 

What to watch out for 

The CCP has stated its interest in keeping up its military combat readiness, just as the US is keeping up the combat readiness of its stationed and allied forces in the region, according to the Indo Pacific Strategy report. Despite such declarations, both sides would likely be careful of provoking military conflict, given high level of economic entanglement and mutual investments. A Cold War-style security competition is unlikely to occur given this, a key difference with the US-Soviet relations during the Cold War era.

The CCP continues to stick to its standard narratives in the face of instability. “China continues to enjoy political stability, ethnic unity and social stability,” the paper claims as civil disobedience in Hong Kong continue into its third month, and as it continues to operate digital totalitarian social experiments on Uighurs in Xinjiang. 

One should probably rethink what the term “stability” means to China. Is it the stability of CCP rule? Is it the maintenance of Xi’s power after purging of many political opponents? Is it the firm control over all aspects of the party, society, state, and military forces by Xi? Is it the successful influence operations that have been going on abroad convincing the world that China remains peaceful? Or is it just what the CCP says when it faces mounting pressure as the US continues to fight unfair economic practices?

China watchers know to not take the CCP’s words at their face value. Labeling itself as “never seeking hegemony,” the CCP seems to have forgotten that just a month ago its Defense Minister Wei Fenghe announced to the world at the Shangri La Dialogue that it will “fight until the end” over trade dispute with the US. “A talk? Welcome. A fight? Ready. Bully us? No way,” does not exactly sound peaceful, coming from a PLA general.

And though the CCP says “never expansionist,” it seems to define territories it does not currently controlled pretty liberally. At the Shangri-la Dialogue, General Wei also declared that China will “not let others prey on or divide us.” If “dividing” China is as simple as calling the CCP out on its unrealistic, expansionist claims over land, people, and maritime territory controlled by foreign governments, then it’s certainly easy to anger the CCP. 

China watchers and journalists will need to be careful to take note that much CCP rhetorics on its territory is mere propaganda. They not only exist to convince foreigners that it is entitled to the right of aggressively take land that has not been under de-facto Chinese control for centuries, but also convince its own people that China is the middle kingdom and the greatest civilization that has ever existed. 

It is important for us to acknowledge, but not recognize and proliferate, unreasonable claims made by the CCP, as doing so can legitimize the party’s attempt at undermining democracies in the region. Make no mistake: China is clearly taking action to displace the US as the top dog in the Indo-pacific region, and it will continue to press on an expansionist agenda while trying to convince its own people and influencers abroad that it is peaceful.

(Part 2 will focus extensively on what the white paper tells about its stances on Taiwan and what signal the CCP is trying to send.)