Chinese National Security Strategy: Implications for a 21st Century Air Force

Examination of Chinese national security issues is incomplete without a frame of reference that includes Chinese dynastic history, culture, and thought. Additionally, such examination requires viewing through lenses created by modern China's economics and politics. When viewed in this holistic fashion, Chinese defense strategies and concerns, especially with respect to two extremely important and timely issues, modernization of the PLA and Taiwan, can be discerned in a clearer light, resulting in an better, if more complex, understanding of the potential for military action on behalf of China tempered by the realities and difficulties China faces in improving a military force under their worldview and, also, their political and economic restraints. Accordingly, as a part of a coordinated effort, the US Air Force can provide both significant deterrence for military action in the Pacific in the form of appropriate force deployment and employment, as well as dissuasion from a potentially perceived Chinese requirement for military action through taking a "longer view" in understanding the value of activities such as military- to-military engagement.