Assabah Khan Yousufzai
According to the Pentagon’s 2008 China report, internal debates among Chinese strategists ‘highlight China’s interest in non-kinetic means of warfare and the increased role of economic, financial, information, legal, and psychological instruments in PLA theory and war planning’. The report takes pains to let Chinese doctrine speak for itself: Underscoring a comprehensive, multidimensional view of warfare, the PLA Academy of Military Science text, the Science of Military Strategy, notes that ‘war is not only a military struggle, but also a comprehensive contest on fronts of politics, economy, diplomacy and law’. China has formally institutionalised this paradigm in state policy to at least some degree. The Pentagon report notes that in 2003, the top political and military executive committees approved the concept of ‘Three Warfares’ (san zhong zhanfa), highlighting the relevance of non-kinetic options (i.e. not physically violent options) as a guiding strategic precept. •Psychological warfare: the use of propaganda, deception, threats, and coercion to degrade the enemy’s ability to comprehend the objective situation and to make appropriate, effective decisions. •Media warfare: the dissemination of information to sway public opinion and obtain support from domestic and foreign audiences for China’s military actions. •Legal warfare: the use of international and domestic laws and legal systems (e.g. the United Nations) to gain international support for and manage possible political repercussions of China’s military actions. •. Chinese forces will likely employ a modern and unique irregular warfare concept, focused on information and influence, tightly integrated with conventional capabilities. A return to great power competition does not portend a shift away from irregular warfare to conventional warfare, but rather an amalgamation of the two. Examination of Chinese military writings reveals how Beijing might leverage three of the five types of irregular warfare in a contemporary conflict. The term “irregular warfare” does not itself appear frequently in Chinese military writing. Ironically, this is a sign of its centrality. Irregular warfare activities are so fully integrated with conventional tactics and operations that they are not identified as “irregular.” The leadership of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) no longer sees utility in the conventional “people’s war” approach, which involved human-wave attacks in land-centric battles. The PLA is now preparing to fight concurrently across multiple domains, is focused on winning what it calls “informationized wars,” and takes information superiority as the driver of operational planning. Many elements of irregular warfare, such as psychological warfare, legal warfare, and cyberwarfare, are central to the PLA’s concept of information warfare and its theory of victory in a conventional conflict. In Chinese military writing and current operations, we find three principal elements of irregular warfare: the “three warfares,” special operations forces, and paramilitary forces. The three warfares are the coordinated use of public opinion, psychological, and legal warfare methods to “stifle criticism of the Chinese Communist Party, spread positive views of China,” and influence foreign governments “in ways favorable to China,” according to the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission. China is employing lawfare to achieve strategic aims. On the one hand, irregular warfare activities in the space below armed conflict have proven effective and stymied US policymakers. On the other hand, they provide US forces with many opportunities to watch and learn as they prepare to counter irregular operations in a conventional war. US strategic documents such as the National Defense Strategy and new Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, as well as distributed operations concepts, emphasize the importance of allies and partners. Our review of Chinese irregular warfare shows that Chinese forces are focused on influencing local populations in ways that could easily be shifted to break those relationships. The conventional wisdom regarding China’s asymmetric war doctrine is that it is “aimed at finding key vulnerabilities . One has to keep in mind Chang Mengxiong’s concept of “assassin’s mace” (“shashou jian”). Using the analogy of acupuncture for fighting asymmetric wars, this concept argues that even a superpower has a great number of points of vulnerabilities. If the focus of asymmetric attack is on those points, then the military giant can be brought down by a power like China. •In addition Confucius Concepts of Lee & Fa are the guiding principles of Chinese Asymmetrical Doctrine of Warfare. •China is on the rise and will emerge as a Superpower in future geopolitics.
(-Author is the Global Peace Fellow of Rotary International. She is trained in Ceasefire Negotiations by UNDPPA. She remained a Senior bureaucrat of J&K serving various Departments)
