2022-07-22-CSBA-中国的选择_评估解放军现代化的新方法（英）-战略与预算评估中心_94页_1mb

China's Choices: Assessing PLA Modernization Using a Strategic Choices Tool

China's military modernization presents significant resource tradeoffs, and understanding these is crucial for U.S. and allied policymakers engaged in long-term competition with Beijing. CSBA developed the China Strategic Choices Tool to address this gap, focusing on relative costs between PLA platforms (e.g., J-20 fighters and Type 052D destroyers) rather than absolute budget figures, due to China's opaque defense spending.

Key Findings

• Force Structure Feasibility: The PLA can continue modernizing over the 2020s, maintaining regional forces like short-range missiles and frigates while expanding global power projection capabilities, such as aircraft carriers.
• Resource Constraints: O&M costs for large platforms (e.g., carriers) will strain the Navy, but this is manageable within the projected budget growth.
• Force Structure Trends: PLA modernization prioritizes near-seas capabilities (e.g., Taiwan reunification) before global projection. Ground forces are likely to further reduce, freeing funds for air and naval platforms.
• Nuclear Forces Underestimated: Western analyses often overlook China's potential expansion of theater-range nuclear weapons, which could undermine U.S. deterrence.

Allied Strategy Implications

• Cost Imposition: Allies should employ cost-imposition strategies (e.g., limiting PLA funding through technology restrictions) to counter China's modernization.
• Raise Continental Threats: Highlighting India-U.S. tensions or Korean Peninsula instability could deter PLA Army downsizing.
• Technological Limitation: Allies can restrict China's dual-use tech advancements to hinder missile defense, hypersonics, and aerospace capabilities.

Future Applications

• Exercises and Wargames: The tool can be integrated into interactive exercises to simulate PLA-China strategic competition, exploring budget variations and strategic shifts.
• Broader Analysis: Iterative use of the tool will refine understanding of PLA trajectories, informing robust U.S. and allied competitive strategies.

Summary

The China Strategic Choices Tool provides a structured framework to analyze PLA force structure tradeoffs under budget constraints, offering policy insights to enhance long-term competition strategies with China. Further exercises and refinements will deepen these analyses, addressing both military and non-military dimensions of Sino-U.S. rivalry.