Transcript
Sushant: Hello, and welcome to India Speak, a podcast by the Center for Policy Research.
I am Sushant Singh, senior fellow at CPR.
This is the second episode of our series featuring leading experts and academics, on the many facets of Sino-India relations. Some of them will be looking at the historical side of things, while others will focus on the strategic facets. Today, we will be discussing the military aspects, looking at the China’s People Liberation Army, and what it means for India and to do that our guest today is Dennis Blasko, an independent analyst, and former senior Military fellow at the National Defense University in Washington DC, a retired Lieutenant Colonel of the US Army with 23 years of service as a Military Intelligence Officer, and foreign area officer specializing in China. He has served at the Defense Intelligence Agency and office of Special Operations. From 1992 to 1996 he was an Army Attache in Beijing and Hong Kong. Dennis has written numerous articles, and book chapters on the Chinese Military, including his book “The Chinese Army Today, Tradition and Transformation for the 21st century”, which remains an essential reading even after more than 15 years.
Dennis, welcome to India Speak.
Dennis: Thank you very much for the invitation.
Sushant: Let me begin with your book Dennis where you explained who forms the PLA, what it is, what it is not, where exactly is the People's Liberation Army, how will it fight, what its doctrine is, what equipment it uses, how it trains, and how it interacts with the larger society. Essentially your book argues that the PLA is an Army of the revolution, it owes its loyalty to the party, and political guidance plays an important part in the professional character of the Chinese Military. What is the best way to explain the uniqueness of the PLA and the differences that it has vis-a- a-vis militaries from other democratic states, like the United States, United Kingdom, France, and even India for that matter?
Dennis: Well, Thank you. The PLA is definitely a political Army. However, I would say for the past 30-40 years it’s been less and less of a revolutionary Army, and becoming much more professional as it has modernised since its last war, last major conflict in 1979. But the main point is that it remains an arm of the Chinese Communist Party, and they have huge infrastructure and personnel to maintain that party control over the Army. However, over the past four decades of modernisation, it has become much more professional and modernised in terms of its equipment and doctrine.
Sushant: So, would it be fair to say that PLA is an untested army? Having fought the last war against Vietnam in 1979, four decades ago. I ask this because many people consider this as the weakness of the PLA, especially after the recent theaterisation under the tenure of President Xi, about 7-8 years ago, pointing out that this military has not been tested at all.
Dennis:Right. It hasn’t been tested in actual combat, since the 1979 war, but it is important to understand the situation in Ladakh, in Aksai Chin, that for most of the 80s, there was a low-level border conflict simmering on the Sino-Vietnamese border. During that time, they rotated its troops in and out for many years from all over the country to get some experience getting shot at. What is happening today at Aksai Chin, South China Sea, East China Sea is similar to that, but without as much gunfire and actual conflict. The whole point of these deployments and activities is to pursue national objectives, given to the PLA from the Chinese Communist Party and the government. While it hasn't been a part of a major conflict, it is trying its best to remain relevant through various deployments and training. It continues to constantly improve training over the last couple decades with the type training it undertakes. It’s not tested in actual conflict, but some of the things that we often think may be a problem such as the relationship of the commander to the political commissars or instructors might have been worked out as the situation seems to be in place for decades. I think they look at the political relationship between the Army to the party and between commanders and the political system, as a strength.
Sushant:With this theaterisation model and this restructuring that has taken place, can training or various exercises replicate something that you may face in real combat? Because theaterisation is a very different kind of structure of the PLA.
Dennis: Yeah actually, this is what we can see today in Aksai Chin. Their actual deployments look a lot different when they are training, down on the border & near the Line of Actual Control; they are deployed much differently than what we see them doing on television and in photographs. They look like they are taking this seriously – digging in, spacing themselves out and they are deployed in much wider areas than they would be normally. I think they have learnt some lessons on what happens if someone starts shooting at you. It is quite different, even the training they do, even the force on force, the red versus blue with the laser identifiers, the pop-up smoke when people get hit, we do the same thing at our national training center. It looks very similar but a lot of what I see with respect to their training away from the border training looks quite different from what I see them deployed on the ground in the very difficult terrain in the Himalayas.
Sushant: Before I get to Aksai Chin I wanted to go back to something which you said about the strength and weaknesses of the PLA, you spoke about the training, the deployment, the logistics. How would you compare the modern PLA of the 21st century or of 2022 with the US military or with the Indian armed forces? I hear a lot from my former colleagues in the Indian Military about the quality of Chinese infrastructure, the pace of structure construction, the pace at which they construct roads, tracks, bridges, habitat is something to be seen. The induction of modern equipment into the PLA, their mobilisation time, the pace of their mobilisation, their logistic support. While they are not quite sure about the quality of the PLA soldiers who are roughing it out in the winters, they are also not sure about their relationship with the political commissars or the military commanders. How will you characterise these strengths and weaknesses of the PLA as they exist today?
Dennis: One of the things that I try to emphasise is not to mirror image. I know, I hope I know, I may not know the United States military as well as I did when I retired a long time ago. But, it's a mistake to look at what the PLA is doing and say “well, if we do something like that therefore it must be just as good as us” and can operate on the battlefield in the same way that we would or would even want to operate in the same way as we would. The PLA is actually constructed much differently than the United States military. Even though reforms have come up with some aspects that are sort of like the United States, the more I look at the PLA and the entire Chinese Armed Forces, the more differences I see. Perhaps one of the biggest differences obviously is the funding. The PLA budget, no matter how you calculate it, is a fraction, maybe a third of the United States defense budget now. Yet the PLA, the people's armed police and the militia are many many times larger than the United States military. One of the things that they are constantly talking about is trying to conserve money and spend their money wisely. This leads to another element that is consistent even today when its reform started years ago, in that PLA modernisation is subordinate to but coordinated with economic development. One of the things they learned from the Soviet Union during the late ’80s and ’90s when the Soviets spent themselves to death & they didn't have an economy that could support their population. The Chinese have learnt from that, the defense spending in China does not interfere with the civilian economy. They also look to the civilian economy to support PLA modernisation and we can see that happening everywhere. So, despite everything that is going on they are trying to do it on a shoestring budget.
Sushant: Dennis, if you are comparing it with the US Military and that's why you're talking about a shoestring budget but when compared to a country like India which is economically much weaker the PLA man to man spends far greater than what India spends. So, in that sense India would be in bigger trouble.
Dennis: Yes and as I said, I haven't studied Indian Military so I am not this familiar with it, but from your perspective, it is much different.
Sushant: Yes, because from our perspective the Chinese economy is five times Indian economy, their defense budget is four to five times our defence budget, they are spending man to man more than we are spending, they are producing many more military platforms within that country while we are not producing that much equipment within our country, we are the biggest importer of military platforms globally. The advantage that the United States Military has over PLA, perhaps the PLA has over the Indian Military to some extent.
Dennis: Yes perhaps that’s a good reason why we should all be happy that the Himalayas are between the two countries. Because it is such difficult terrain. But, I am not quite sure what the Indian reserves are like. If you have got a system of the reserve units.
Sushant: We do have a system for reserve Units but we don't need to use reserves, reserves are not called into service. I don’t remember in the last many decades reserves being called into service at any point of time.
Dennis: Right. For example, here in the United States, especially over the last two wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq, we used our reserves almost interchangeably with our active-duty forces. The PLA reserves are much less advanced and really would not contribute in the same way as the United States reserves. The PLA reserves may be a little more advanced in development than the Indian but they are quite different from the United States.
Sushant: Dennis, getting back to what everybody is talking about, the Sino-India border crises in Aksai Chin or Ladakh in the high Himalayas. Based on your extensive reading of the Chinese Military media and studying publicly available satellite imagery. Do you now have some understanding of what happened on the disputed border starting in the summer of 2020 and more importantly, why did it happen? Firstly, what happened & why did it happen?
Dennis: The why is much more difficult but first it’s important to start with, the PLA army is broken down for this purposes into two major elements, one is the border defense forces which are deployed along China’s border and Coastal Defense forces and I estimate there are at least a hundred thousand, maybe up to two hundred thousand border defense troops whose main job is to monitor the border, do some initial reporting, fighting delay any invasion that comes on, but the bulk of the PLA army is in the mobile operational forces- the divisions, and the brigades, the group armies that are stationed further back from the border. In the Aksai chin, I see two permanently deployed border defense regiments through that area. One regiment in the Hotanprefecture in the military sub-district and another regiment in the Nagari or Ali military sub-district prefecture, Tibet. And, an interesting anomaly is that the Nagari sector of Tibet is actually under the command of the Nanjiang Southern Xinjiangmilitary district, and there is a big dip into Tibet, it's a big bite chunk that’s cut out that is under command of the Xinjiangmilitary district and Nanjiang military district. I believe that what initially happened is that the border defense forces, especially up in theGalwan valley, were involved in the June 15th conflict. It was specifically one regiment and I think one battalion that was patrolling in theGalwan valley. Honestly, I credit both sides for the discipline that they showed because both sides were carrying weapons. They got into a major scuffle, but no shots were fired, which I think says something about the discipline on both sides. At the time, there was talk that there was change over between the units, between the battalions with that regiment. But, for some reason, I don't believe, based on no evidence, but I don't believe that there was an order from Beijing or Xinjiang or Nanjiangto go out and kill people. I believe it was units, a lot of people in very close proximity that started pushing and shoving each other that got out of hand, but eventually both sides were disciplined enough to pull back and withdraw. At the same time or just before that happened, there had been exercises in the area but not in the Galwan valley, because that's a terrible place to do military exercises, but to the north up in the Dapsong plains and beyond and perhaps to the south east in Nagari, there were out of area units coming in and doing exercises. At the same time, there were some of these out of area units, and I believe they were the initial forces that came from Xinjian, Nanjiang, the Sixth (what is now combined armed division) started moving forces into the sector south of Galwan. Eventually, they went into Galwan, but they started going into Kongka (the hotspring region), then the north of Pangong Lake. I am not sure when they went south of Pangong lake but they eventually showed up at the south of the Pangong lake. Anyway, they started moving in these divisional elements from Xinjiang and over the next six months poured in what I would consider probably an entire division. Some 10,000 people spread through these four/ five sectors from Galwan to hot spring to Pangong Lake to Spanggur Lake & set up these encampments. The most important thing is and one of the things that is very useful for identification is that the encampments are generally far apart, the sectors often are 35 miles apart. So that you can’t move troops back and forth between the sectors but they have come in with artillery, and artillery can often support each other from the sectors and it is by seeing the artillery that I can make an estimate of what size units are there. But after looking at the available Google Earth images from October to January and early February of last year, I estimated that a full division had been deployed there, but it was deployed to stay, not to go south or East or West. It was deployed to hold territory and as they say create facts on the ground. The important thing is that they were dug in by engineers and probably reinforced by engineers to do the digging. Perhaps, some civilian engineers came in to dig out these camps, that were all in defensive positions spread out for miles and miles in the Galwan valley. There is a regiment, I estimate that is 23 miles from the Line of Actual Control and in Pangong Lake, they have two regiments, combined arms regiment supported by firepower or artillery regiment. It's spread for almost 15 miles along the Pangong lake. So, those are defensive positions meant to hold territory.
Sushant: You know Dennis couple of questions you said this is a defensive formation, you spoke about the border defense forces, so what is the significance of the border defense forces? Are they as well trained as the regular operational troops? Are they poorly trained, poorly equipped, less equipped, are they paramilitary, gendarmerie, what are they? And the second question is, were there any offensive formations there which could have gone and taken some territory on the Indian side, if the need arose.
Dennis: The border defense forces are generally much lighter than the mobile operational units. They are mostly infantry, they may have some heavy machine guns, they might have some mortars. Few regiments have older armed personnel carriers. In some places, coastal defense will have artillery but generally, they are spread out in company-size positions miles and miles apart. Their mission is to patrol the border and man outposts and observe things. So they would be observing what the Indian side is doing and they might be reacting to that, and as you know you, have over the past decades established protocols for how to patrol, where to patrol, how to identify yourselves, how to carry your weapons and things like that. But these people, the border defense units, I would estimate probably throughout that entire region the two prefectures probably are two regiments amounting to some four thousand forty-five hundred troops. That would include the patrol bulks on thePangong lake. So you have got about forty-five hundred of those troops to spread out over the border of two hundred and fifty miles, a very long border, and then superimposed upon that are these outside units from Nanjiang (the division). So, what has happened is in many places, the out of area units came in, reinforced and built camps around existing border defense units. Now, could any of those forces cross the LAC, attempt an offensive to take land well into what is established Indian territory – yes certainly, they could have tried, but as you know, this is a terrible terrain for mechanised movements. It will be very difficult to make those kinds of movements. If there were any sort of opposition with modern artillery or anti-tank weapons or air support – any sort of thrust into the other side's territory would be very vulnerable.
Sushant: Dennis, based on your study of the Chinese military media, could you ascertain the reasons for the PLA doing what it did? Have you been able to see any analysis of that, any reasoning is given out anywhere?
Dennis: I have not seen exactly why they have done that, and that would be a much higher-level party decision. You are familiar with the concept of the chicken and egg, which came first. The Indian side says the Chinese have been building their infrastructure along the border. The Chinese side says the Indians have been building their infrastructure along the border. So, who did it first? Both sides are improving their infrastructure and we are seeing now with this bridge that's been built across the Pangong lake.
Sushant: Based on your assessment so what are the number of PLA troops including the border guarding forces, and the combined operational division. What is the approximate number of troops you would assess based on the encampments etc that the PLA has deployed in Aksai chin?
Dennis:I look back to maybe 20 miles, 25 miles from the LAC back into Chinese territory and I see five sectors that I have mentioned before. I don't see the very the northern sectors of Depsang and I don't see the very southern sector of Demchok, but the five sectors that I see which is about 200 miles and then 20 -25 miles back when you include border defense, the division which I would estimate to be about ten thousand personnel, and then there are certainly non-divisional forces, engineers coming in. I have seen further back in Rutog, what I think is a long-range multiple rocket launcher battalion. I think there is artillery and there are probably some special operation forces. There are definitely some communications forces. There are a lot of transportation and support forces both from the region and then from the army and from the joint logistic support force. So, I would say there are probably about twenty thousand in total when you include the border defense, the division combined arms division, and the supporting forces.
Sushant: But, Denis based on the military formations, areas, districts which are involved in the PLA side of the crisis. Do we have any knowledge of the commanders and their personalities who are involved. And has the recent restructuring made a difference to the way these things operate now and also how these commanders now operate?
Dennis: At the operational level, you know the regimental commanders, the division commanders, we may know the names but, I don't know if we may know much about them. The Major General who is in charge of the Nanjiang military districts is the one who meets with your...
Sushant: Core commander...
Dennis: Yes. I would imagine you know him very well and I don't follow personalities that close. But, I believe that if I remember correctly he has been there for some sometime. Therefore, he has got a lot of experience in Xinjiang. There has been a lot of talk about the western theater, change of commands, having four commanders in a couple of years, and all that kind of stuff. The first change of command, a new guy came in without much experience in the region and he replaced somebody who had been in the region for a long time, and I think medical problems led to him leaving which brought in a third person who also didn’t stay but a couple of months, and now finally, a fourth commander who has come in, who also has extensive experience. One of the problems with PLA changes of commands is that you never really know if the medical reasons are the real reasons for their departure, and there could be other reasons too. Right now, I believe that they do have in the chain of command people with extensive experience operating in Xinjiang because it is an anomaly, it’s much different. Xinjiang forces did not undergo some kind of reforms that the vast majority of the rest of the PLA undertook. In Xinjiang, there are no group armies. The rest of the PLA is pretty much group armies, except for the Tibet Military district. So, there has been change and modernisation in Xinjiang but they still have both the border defense chain of command and the chain of command for the divisions and other supporting units, as they did before reform. I believe they have done that because of the unique situation, the huge expanses of land, and the harsh terrain throughout that area.
Sushant: Dennis, just stepping back a bit, what is the political direction to the PLA now, particularly on Taiwan and on the South China Sea. I ask this because there is definitely a connection between what the PLA does on Taiwan or what the political direction in Taiwan is to what PLA does vis-a-vis India, because you know, if nothing happens to Taiwan then doing something to India allows the communist party to showcase itself as doing something for PLA. So, do we know something about the political direction the PLA has now on Taiwan and on the South China Sea?
Dennis: I would say what we have seen in Aksai Chin is the army equivalent of what we have seen in the South China Sea, and opposite Taiwan. In the South China Sea, we primarily see a naval operation, a single service naval operation with the building of structures on the reefs and all that. Then against Taiwan, we see a more joint operation, both naval and airforce, heavy air force presence with all the flights mostly south of the island. But, both of these or all three of these different sectors or fronts as you might want to call them are being undertaken at the direction of the central military commission and the Chinese communist party. The PLA, in that regard is obeying the orders of the party, in their mind with Taiwan, it is to prevent further steps towards independence by Taiwan – in other words deterrence of Taiwan’s independence. In the South China Sea, in many ways, it's similar to what's going on in Aksai chin. It’s establishing realities on the surface and establishing military patrols in that region to reinforce their claims to the disputed areas. I don't see any of them building up an offensive deployment that would be necessary for a real war. For example, if you were to look at what's going on opposite Ukraine, you see concentrations of forces that are much different than what you see the PLA doing.
Sushant: Dennis, one final question and then let me put you on the spot. Are there any signs of China and India going to war? Based on whatever you see, whatever you hear, whatever you analyse, or are we going to see something on the India border,as you just said earlier, what we saw of China from the Vietnam border, but with lesser kinetics may be less artillery shelling and fewer casualties than what we saw in 1979 and 1987 on the Vietnam border. My final question to you is, do you see a war or not?
Dennis: No, I don't see a decision to go to war. The problem is the more all sides increase the tension, hype their soldiers up, and then send them out to do small unit patrols, I see the potential for escalation – something like what happened in June of 2020, where perhaps a platoon or a complete battalion size element clashes with the other side. There may not be immediate command and control withhigher headquarters, and things could spiral out of control and that's what worries me in all of these places – that a miscalculation, a mistake or misidentification could cause something much bigger. But if that does not happen, what I do see is the PLA digging in to stay in these encampments, in the sectors that I have described – they look like they are to stay for quite some time. Now, it's not infrastructure, it’s not as expensive doing all of that as it is building facilities. So the good thing that I see between the Indian and Chinese sides is that at least they are having meetings. They may not amount to much, but at least you are talking. Talking is better than not talking. And, it is possible, the Generals who meet aren’t going to make these decisions but if they are told by Delhi or Beijing to come to some sort of agreement, there could be a political way out of this. In all of these, both sides are going to have to make some concessions in some ways. I do see the Chinese, if there is no political resolution through negotiations, they are prepared to stay for a long time and rotate units in. To the best of my knowledge, I have only seen units coming from Xinjiangbut if they stay there for years on end, they may bring units from other places if it goes on that long. This to me is a very important test, not so much tactically about how they can fight, but about how they can actually live in such austere conditions, and support them with such large deployments of forces for such extended periods of time. This is a very difficult logistics operation to keep that many people in the field, healthy and prepared to fight if necessary.
Sushant: Dennis, that's something we look forward to about how the PLA behaves. I am happy to end on a very hopeful note, that things would probably look up and there would be a political solution to this crisis between two of Asia's biggest countries, two of Asia’s biggest powers.
Thank you so much Dennis for coming onto the podcast. Thank you once again.
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