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- [00:01]
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- [01:16]
Martin DeCaro
Hey, did you know I've published more than 500 episodes since 2021? Subscribe today for 24. 7 access to my entire History As It Happens catalog and you'll get ad free listening and all my bonus content. Tap subscribe now in the show Notes or go to history as it happens.com and you'll never have to listen to a sales pitch again. History as it happens February 17, 2026 China's last war China has purged several generals.
- [01:49]
Historical Narrator
Beijing says they were corrupt.
- [01:51]
Martin DeCaro
A sweeping purge of China's top generals ahead of key Communist Party meetings in.
- [01:56]
David Finkelstein
Is raising fresh questions about the People's Liberation Army's strength. It is the biggest development in Chinese politics since Xi Jinping came to power. Zhang youh Sha, the second in command of the 2 million strong People's Liberation army, or PLA, is now under formal investigation for alleged corruption, along with the head of the PLA's Joint Staff Department, Liu Zhengli.
- [02:19]
Martin DeCaro
China's leader Xi Jinping is purging his military's leadership, raising doubts about the readiness of the People's Liberation Army. China has not fought a war since 1979. So how can anyone know whether the United States, number one rival can fight and win a conflict in Taiwan, the South China Sea or some other flashpoint? That's next as we report History As it happens. I'm Martin DeCaro, the Generalissimo here with.
- [02:46]
Historical Narrator
His wife, predicts that the Communists who control the mainland will not last long. Chiang Kai Shek reviews the armed forces of Nationalist China on his island stronghold for more. The people of the United States will maintain cultural, commercial and other unofficial relations with the people of Taiwan. In a Radio Hanoi broadcast tonight, Vietnam admitted Chinese troops are advancing.
- [03:08]
David Finkelstein
But until a military is actually deployed and employed, it's very difficult to assess whether it can bring all of the parts together, whether it can adjust to the unanticipated, whether it will be resilient in the face of losses, whether personnel systems or campaign plans, and still press on to achieve its assigned tactical, operational and strategic objectives. You won't know that until it happens.
- [03:38]
Martin DeCaro
February 1979. More than 200,000 Chinese troops invade Vietnam.
- [03:45]
Historical Narrator
Chinese troops are advancing. Several provincial capitals are threatened. Already two major Vietnamese towns are said to have been overrun, plus a string of villages along the 500 mile border as the two Communists.
- [03:57]
Martin DeCaro
A month later it was over and the invasion had accomplished very little. While something like 30,000 men were killed on each side the last 24 hours.
- [04:05]
Historical Narrator
China said its troops are now out of Vietnam. Its 26 day war to punish Vietnam for invading Cambodia is over. Vietnam said that's not so, that Chinese troops were still there killing people.
- [04:17]
Martin DeCaro
And China called it a self defensive counter strike against Vietnam. You see, in late 1978, Vietnam, the Soviet Union signed a mutual defense treaty and Beijing felt betrayed. Then Vietnam invaded Cambodia, a Chinese client state, and toppled the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime. So in 1979, China tried and failed to punish Vietnam.
- [04:41]
Historical Narrator
Chief Liz Wan had ordered one invasion. Clearly China was retaliating for his Cambodia defeat a month earlier. Clearly the street dugout showed that Vietnam expected the invasion. Clearly the Chinese were to be.
- [04:55]
Martin DeCaro
As Miles Yu writes for the Hoover Institution, the war exposed the People's Liberation Army's humiliating ineptitude and shocking backwardness. In comparison with the battle hardened Vietnamese troops. Many PLA commanders did not know how to read military maps. Despite superior artillery, firepower and strike capability, the PLA high commanders inexplicably preferred close hand to hand combat, which was Vietnam's strength, sending many PLA soldiers to brutal and unnecessary deaths. And you says the PLA's combat communications turned out to be highly ineffective. So why are we talking about this short war that most Americans have totally forgotten about? Because it was the last time China went to war 47 years ago. Not a single Chinese infantryman today has combat experience. But this does not mean China has been entirely peaceful either. As we know it routinely harasses Taiwan with military exercises. And in the South China Sea, China's Navy and Coast Guard use aggressive naval maneuvers against the Philippines, Vietnam and other countries such as ship ramming, engaging civilian and naval ships with water hoses and creating man made islands for military purposes. But now there are new questions about Chinese military readiness because President Xi Jinping is purging top generals. According to the New York Times, Xi has now removed all but one of the six generals he appointed to the Central Military Commission in 2020, leaving a leadership vacuum at the top of the world's largest military. And of the 30 generals and admirals who ran theater commands or specialized operations at the start of 2023, almost all have been expelled or have disappeared. So what is going on here? David Finkelstein may know. He is a top expert on Chinese military and security affairs at cna, the center for Naval Analyses. He's been studying China for 40 years as an officer, academic and think tanker. CNA is an independent research institute in Arlington, Virginia. Our conversation next Tap. Subscribe now in the show Notes to Skip ads. David Finkelstein, welcome to the show.
- [07:07]
David Finkelstein
Great to be here, Martin.
- [07:08]
Martin DeCaro
This is your first time on, so let's familiarize our listeners with your background a bit. You're a military man or you were a military man, or maybe you're always a military man, right? But you're a scholar today, but you were in China, stationed in China, a much different China than the one today, way back in 1983. Tell us a little bit about that.
- [07:30]
David Finkelstein
Well, I, I wouldn't call it being stationed in China, but I was certainly in China in 1983. I was an army captain at the time. I was in the China Foreign Area Officer Training Program, which the army has. The army has a terrific program for training people to specialize in Chinese military and security affairs. So I was sent for 3, 4 months to Nankai University in Tianjin to get my Chinese language up to snuff. I was in graduate school at the time, so I was there. It was a remarkable experience. It was only a couple of years after normalization. China was a very different China back then. It was not the economic powerhouse that it is today. It was quite poor. It was very poor. You rarely saw a car on the street. Everybody got around by bicycles, which you had to register with the Ministry of Public Security, by the way, to make sure you didn't sell it to another Chinese. People were just getting out of the Cultural Revolution. Deng Xiaoping was establishing his power. They had made the fundamental and strategic decision that they were going to focus on their economic problems. So, you know, the rest is history. As they say, here we are 40 years later and you don't recognize the place.
- [08:50]
Martin DeCaro
Yeah, US soldiers, thank you for correcting me. Are not stationed in China. They might be stationed in Japan or.
- [08:56]
David Finkelstein
Guam at the embassy. There were people stationed, stationed at the embassy in the defense Statist office.
- [09:00]
Martin DeCaro
Station means like a base. So thank you for that. Yeah, but you were there. And as you say, the country was still recovering from the ravages of the Mao era. Deng Xiaoping is beginning his economic reforms. Relations with the United States at this point, how would you describe them? I mean, they were okay, right? Reagan wanted to have a better relationship with China.
- [09:21]
David Finkelstein
Well, this is a really a great thing to go back and talk about for a moment. You know, most people may have forgotten that the impetus for U. S. China rapprochement in the 1970s and ultimately formal diplomatic relations in 1979 had nothing to do with economics because China had no economy worthy of the name at the time. This was about geostrategic issues. This was a moment in time when the United States and the People's Republic of China both had a common enemy in the Soviet Union. The Sino Soviet break, which became complete by 1969. In 1969, the Soviets and Chinese were fighting each other. The militaries were fighting up on the northern border. The Soviets had over 1 million troops on China's northern border, threatening to invade south. This was the great concern of the Chinese at the time. And so this was a marriage of strategic convenience because we were also concerned about the Soviets, of course. And in the early 1970s, Nixon was looking for a way to get out of Vietnam. So it was a. A relationship that was aspirational. It was mostly strategic. It was not very economic, although that would come later as the Dong Xiaoping economic reforms took hold. And these were two very wary powers in their own right who had been at odds ideologically for decades. And remember, we fought a war with China against China in Korea in 1950-1953. This was a leap of faith at.
- [10:58]
Martin DeCaro
The time, just a few years after China had fought what is still to this day its last war, a short war, a punitive expedition into Vietnam. We'll get to that in a little bit. You talked about China's economy being basically nothing. There was so little trade, meaningful trade between the US And China relative to today, the trade between the two countries. The economic interconnections are vital to the health of the world's economy. So let's leap now to the present moment before we return to some more history. The reason why I wanted to have you on here is because Xi Jinping looks pretty paranoid these days. He's been purging his top generals. Why do you think that's happening? And how might that hurt or maybe help China's military readiness?
- [11:48]
David Finkelstein
Some people would argue that this is a sign of Xi Jinping's power, not necessarily his paranoia. Be that as it may, I think the starting point of wisdom on this topic is that we need to accept that the Chinese system is extremely opaque on elite leadership issues. And this is especially the case for the pla, and doubly true under Xi Jinping. It's very hard to understand what's going on inside the black box as a result. We cannot state, certainly I cannot state with high levels of confidence what is behind each and every one of the cases of the fallen generals and admirals that we've seen over the past few years. There are a few factors at work, and if you're interested, I can tick a couple of them off.
- [12:32]
Martin DeCaro
Yeah, please.
- [12:33]
David Finkelstein
Okay, so first, corruption. A ubiquitous situation in the PLA over the years that Xi Jinping is dedicated to eradicating kickbacks on defense contracts, the selling of promotions or assignments that's been the case in the past, or the illegal selling or renting of PLA properties or services, and even colluding with corrupt local civilian party officials. So there's been a good deal of corruption in the PLA for many, many years. We can go talk about why that is later on. But second, there may have been some forms of what I call systemic offenses that put these generals and admirals into trouble, such as lukewarm enforcement of regulations and policies, or even resisting some of the significant reforms the PLA has undergone over the past decade. Third, abuses of authorities that do not meet the ideal standards set for Chinese Communist Party officials. And by the way, PLA officers are also Chinese Communist Party members and subject to party discipline. So that's been an issue. Fourth, and this is strictly speculation on my part, Martin, the possibility of operational shortcomings or false readiness reporting, for example, you don't execute as many large scale exercises as the PLA has in the past couple of years without things going wrong. Again, just speculating. And of course, some analysts have raised the possibility of the formulations of cliques or factions, although the evidence for this is very anecdotal. Almost all of these five factors have been raised in one way or another by observers commenting on these. But of course, we also need to keep in mind that anti corruption purges are also a very handy tool for accumulating power, denying it to others, keeping the system off balance and dealing with potential rivals. So what we can say with some certainty, and I know this is a long response for you, is that Xi Jinping is demonstrating a lack of confidence in some members of his high command. Now, Xi Jinping has asked his military leaders to do three things. One, be able to fight and win wars. Second, hold themselves to a high standard of conduct, which in the parlance of the PLA is, to quote, have a fine work style, I. E. Don't be corrupt. And three, ensure that there is no daylight between the party and the military. So clearly, any and all of these flag officers have not hit 1, 2, or all 3 of these requirements. It's a sign of lack of confidence on Xi's part.
- [15:10]
Martin DeCaro
So the PLA is an enormous institution. Two million soldiers in it. The Chinese military is large. The Chinese Communist Party is enormous. So the fact that there's corruption and money, that just goes into a black hole somewhere, that's not too surprising. I heard similar stories from experts on Russia about the Russian military buildup. So much money was poured into modernizing Russia's military in recent years under Putin that it was inevitable that some of it was going to disappear and that tanks, for instance, weren't going to be built correctly. So when I saw the charges of corruption come out when some of these Chinese generals were purged, I wondered, is that just propaganda or was there an actual problem there? I found out recently that there was a scandal concerning rockets, that instead of having rocket fuel, there was water inside them.
- [16:01]
David Finkelstein
That was in the news. But again, it's hard to know with any precision the veracity of some of the stuff that's coming out. But it was clear that the leadership of the rocket force, and mind you, these are the people responsible for the nukes and the conventional missiles. It was pretty clear that something was going terribly wrong in the contractual system of the PLA rocket force.
- [16:23]
Martin DeCaro
So how does this complicate your work when everything is so opaque? It's not like you can call up the press office for the PLA and. Well, I mean, I always say never trust the Pentagon either, but go ahead.
- [16:33]
David Finkelstein
Well, actually, you know, if. If you can breach China's first line of national defense, which is Mandarin, there's really a lot that they put out that you can read, you can study, you can look at a military that is modernizing as much as China's. Has to write about things. They have professional journals, they have their own website that you can go on to the PLA's website and read the news about what they want you to know that they're doing. And of course there's a certain art form involved in this also. You, you have to have a sense for how that system operates and you have to know how to read between the lines. In fact, there was a really great article in the Economist recently called Pekingology is back in fashion. The information coming out of the black box is, is so limited in certain ways that you really have to have a gut sense for how to read the pictures, how to read between the lines of the commentaries, etc.
- [17:28]
Martin DeCaro
We used to have Sovietologists in this country, so we need some Peking ologists now.
- [17:35]
David Finkelstein
This was actually an art that was perfected during the Cold War. It just has to be passed down to another generation of analysts.
- [17:41]
Martin DeCaro
I think you mentioned how during Nixon's era he wanted help in Vietnam from China. He also sought help from Moscow. Didn't really get it. Kissinger, Nixon, they thought they had a pretty good read on the people they were dealing with in China. I mean, what's your take on that historically? Did Kissinger really know what he was dealing with? I forgot his interlocutor.
- [18:03]
David Finkelstein
Yeah, Joe Enlai was one of his key.
- [18:06]
Martin DeCaro
Exactly, yeah. He would speak in, he would speak in metaphors and mysterious statements.
- [18:12]
David Finkelstein
Well, I think they understood very well what each wanted to get out of the relationship at that time. And again, just to reiterate what I mentioned earlier, both the US and China were absolutely concerned about the Soviets. It was 1970, 72, the early 70s, the height of the Cold War. The Soviets were running rampant across the various regions of the world. China was directly threatened by Moscow, subject to what the Chinese called their nuclear blackmail. And again, 1 million Russian troops on the Mongolian northern borders up there. So I think they knew exactly what they wanted at that moment in time from each other. China needed, for lack of a better term, not an ally but a partner to face down the Soviets, who by the way, the Vietnamese were our client state of the Soviets by then. And then by 1979, the Soviets have invaded Afghanistan. So now they're on China's western border. So the Chinese need a partner and the US needed to find a way not just to extricate itself from Vietnam, but to present what Communists would call a united front against the Soviets. So it was a transactional relationship.
- [19:25]
Martin DeCaro
He said transaction. That is the word. That is the word of the Trump administration today. How would you assess how the Trump administration has done? You can even talk about the Biden administration as well in dealing with China recently.
- [19:39]
David Finkelstein
I think we'll be able to answer that with a lot more fidelity after the summit between President Trump and President Xi Jinping, which has now been announced for, I think, April. So President Trump is going to go to Beijing. They're going to have a summit, a state visit. They'll be talking about a whole range of issues, I suspect, and we'll see what comes out of that. My concerns are that the Chinese will have a much more, much longer timeframe for what it is they want to accomplish. And as usual, we Americans, because of the nature of our political system, are looking for quick wins. Trade will be a big factor for President Trump and his negotiating team. It's pretty clear from his first administration and even from the 100 day trade war at the beginning of the second administration that the president, and rightly so, wants a level playing field on trade. But my guts tell me that the Chinese are going to be thinking at a much higher strategic level. I wonder whether they're going to be pressing for issues such as Taiwan, pressing the US On US Force posture in the Indo Pacific.
- [20:49]
Martin DeCaro
Yeah, let's dig into some of these issues now, David. But I just want to ask you one more thing about the generals and the purge. That word has a pretty eerie historical significance when you're talking about communist systems. Always has had a nefarious or even an ideological ring to it. Are you getting that same feeling too?
- [21:10]
David Finkelstein
Everything in a communist system is ideological and everything in a communist system is political. We use the word purge. The term that the CCP uses is political rectification. What may be unique about the current situation with the purges, or rectification, if you will, is the breadth and protracted nature of what's going on. Xi Jinping began culling the PLA general officer ranks almost as soon as he took power in 2012. The first big fish that he took down, allegedly for corruption, were two retired vice chairmen, retired Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission, Generals Guo Bosion and Xu Tsai Ho. The message here was, this is Xi Jinping, I'm here, I'm large and in charge and no one is safe. And it has continued since 2013, coming in waves. So. So it's the relentless and protracted nature of the campaign that may be a histor historically unique.
- [22:08]
Martin DeCaro
I was going to ask you how the military has changed under Xi in the last 14 years.
- [22:13]
David Finkelstein
Oh, how has the military Changed? Well, it is beyond question that Xi Jinping has put his personal stamp on the PLA in more ways than the purges of officers. The most important example is that Xi Jinping has used his political muscle to put the Chinese military through its most thoroughgoing and unprecedented reorganization since 1949. This was announced in 2013. It started to become implemented in 2016 and there have been adjustments since then. But just to give you a sense of how huge this reorganization has been under Xi, in effect, the PLA's 1950s era Soviet inspired legacy organizational structure was demolished almost overnight. And in its place has arisen a PLA tactical operational and strategic level organizational structure and new command and control arrangements that are more conducive to the prosecution of joint operations among the PLA's various services. This was the operational dimension of the reorganization, I. E. Be better positioned to fight as a joint force off China's littoral. But the organization, the reorganization also had a political benefit for Xi. It disestablished some of the PLA organizations that were bastions of institutional and personal power or corruption. Organizations such as the four Soviet style general departments in Beijing and the seven military regions were disbanded. And in their place came joint war fighting commands, five of them. It's a huge institutional change for the pla.
- [23:53]
Martin DeCaro
And this is a country that does not have a global military footprint yet.
- [23:58]
David Finkelstein
The PLA is mostly configured for fighting conflicts around its periphery. Yet the PLA is at the incipient stages of having a global presence, if not a global war fighting capability. Much to my surprise, in 2017, the Chinese, overturning 60 years of foreign policy, established a military base in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa. So now you have a PLA Navy base at a very critical choke point in global maritime transshipment. The Red Sea, the Gulf of Oman. And of course the PLA sends more blue helmet peacekeepers to UN peacekeeping operations than any other member of the Security Council of the un. So they don't have a global permanent global military presence save Djibouti, but they're out and about more and more. And that is probably the result of the rise of the PLA Navy.
- [24:58]
Martin DeCaro
That one naval installation that you mentioned is the only one need about 800 more bases to catch up to the United States or how many bases do the United States have? 1200 depending on.
- [25:09]
David Finkelstein
I have no idea. But we have, we have a tremendous global, permanent global footprint, not just in bases, but also in places. So the U.S. joint Force truly is a global force.
- [25:20]
Martin DeCaro
So Americans don't Know the names of these Chinese generals who are being canned or purged or rectified. Tell us just a little bit about Zhang Yujia. He was the top general who just was shown the door.
- [25:32]
David Finkelstein
Who was he?
- [25:33]
Martin DeCaro
Why was he important?
- [25:35]
David Finkelstein
Yeah, great, great question, Martin. General Zhang Yosha was one of two vice chairmen of the all powerful Central Military Commission of the Chinese Communist Party, which serves as the near equivalent of the U. S. National Command Authority in the prc. Xi Jinping, of course, is the chairman of this organization. The taking down of General Zhang Yosha took many PLA watchers by surprise, myself included. It certainly got my attention. Mostly this was because it was universally assessed that Xi Jinping and General Zhang were close, both personally and professionally. And Zhang was touted as a trusted advisor to Xi Jinping. Even their fathers worked together in the Red army in the early days of the Communist revolution. And Xi Jinping kept Zhang Yosha on active duty beyond the mandatory retirement age. This sort of upset the common wisdom on the relationship. Zhang was, in his own right, a respected professional soldier. Born in 1950, he joined the PLA as an enlisted soldier in 1968 at the height of the Cultural Revolution. And he spent most of his career in tactical ground force units, commanding troop units up to the army corps level, you know, three star level. He was possibly the only, only PLA general officer still on active duty to have experienced combat, albeit some 40 years ago during Beijing's invasion of Vietnam in 1979 and of course the border skirmishes with Hanoi that continued through the early 1980s. He commanded a military region and he eventually was promoted up to Beijing where he was the director of the PLA's Equipment Development Department, which is, you know, a place where you're putting out contracts. This is the organization responsible for developing and acquiring and fielding new equipment. So Zhang's relief got a lot of attention. And with Zhang Yosha's fall from grace, the Central Military Commission is now down from seven individuals to two people, Xi Jinping and another general whose name is Zhang Xiangmin. Hey, y'. All.
- [27:52]
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- [28:10]
Martin DeCaro
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- [28:19]
David Finkelstein
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- [28:22]
Martin DeCaro
So if there's one Chinese military issue that does make it into news stories that Americans read, it is the issue of Taiwan. And one question that I ask as a distant and not very informed observer here is why can't China get what it wants from Taiwan without resorting to war? Or is national prestige so important here? And the historical pieces of this as well. Taiwan's historic importance to China, right? Is part of China, not an autonomous or independent island. Is national prestige so important here that if it takes war, then it's going to have to be war?
- [28:59]
David Finkelstein
The Taiwan issue margin has a very long and complicated history that goes back to the Qing dynasty in the 1600s. It goes across Japan's possession of Taiwan as a colony from 1895 to 1945, Japan's defeat in the Second World War, the Chinese Civil War from 45 to 49. Actually, Martin, I think this very complicated history could be the focus of one of your future podcasts, because Taiwan is a great example of historical issues intersecting with the current.
- [29:31]
Martin DeCaro
I'll pencil you in for the next time I do that subject object.
- [29:35]
David Finkelstein
But that said, Beijing's position is that Taiwan is part of China, full stop, that Taiwan must return to Chinese jurisdiction. And while Beijing claims it prefers peaceful means to make that happen, the PRC will not renounce the right to use force if the Chinese can make this happen through wheeling, dealing and diplomacy with the authorities on Taiwan, which, by the way, is the Republic of China. On Taiwan, you have the remnants of Jan Kai Shek's defeated Nationalist government from the civil war in World War II, and Taiwan is still known formerly as the Republic of China. On Taiwan.
- [30:18]
Historical Narrator
Hero's Day and through the streets of Taipe, a marshall parade symbolic of the fighting spirit of Nationalist China's army. In the fortress island of Formosa.
- [30:29]
David Finkelstein
At.
- [30:30]
Historical Narrator
Government House, Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek greets men and women representing the hard core of military strength still under his command.
- [30:39]
David Finkelstein
But it is the aspiration, I think, of the Chinese on the mainland to make this happen peacefully. But they are quite prepared. Just ask them to use force if need be.
- [30:51]
Martin DeCaro
So what is the issue? It's because Taiwan is a democracy, has multiparty system, political pluralism, and is not dominated by the Chinese Communist Party. Is it that simple?
- [31:02]
David Finkelstein
No, it's not that simple.
- [31:03]
Martin DeCaro
Nothing's ever that simple. But that's why I have you here. Go ahead.
- [31:06]
David Finkelstein
Fundamentally, from. From Beijing's perspective, Taiwan is the last piece of real estate taken from the Qing Dynasty by the European imperialist powers in the 19th century. It's the last piece of real estate that has not yet, quote, unquote, been returned to the motherland. Hong Kong went back back. The UK gave back Hong Kong in 1997. Macau was given back by Portugal in 1999. Only Taiwan is left to put closure on what the Chinese on the mainland refer to as, quote, the hundred years of humiliation at the hands of the west from 1849 to 1959.
- [31:45]
Martin DeCaro
So it's historic and it's national prestige because so many and historians and analysts talk about strategy. Is it strategic? We need this piece of territory for x number of strategic reasons, or is it ideological? Taiwan has political pluralism. It's not dominated by the Chinese Communist party. It sounds like you're saying that prestige matters even more than those things.
- [32:08]
David Finkelstein
So the Communist Chinese desire for Taiwan long predates the emergence of TMSC as a chip producer. I mean, in 1950, this is fascinating. In 1950, after the CCP had conquered the mainland and defeated the Nationalists, they were about to launch an invasion of Taiwan. And this presented a great policy dilemma for the United States. This may sound familiar. Does the U. S. Intervene or does it not intervene if the Red army tries to take Taiwan? But that invasion was aborted thanks to Kim Il Sung, of all people. Had the North Koreans not invaded south in June 1950, the PRC would probably have mounted their invasion of Taiwan and taken it back by force, or at least attempted to. So it's a matter of national honor for the mainland. This is something that has been inculcated in the general populace for decades. Since 1949, the idea that Taiwan is not part of China is a significant element in Beijing's officially cultivated narrative of aggrievement.
- [33:16]
Martin DeCaro
And now with these purges, there's a question of whether a war against Taiwan would have to be delayed. What's your take on that?
- [33:23]
David Finkelstein
That's a question that I'm. I'm reluctant to make any predictions on or assess with high levels of confidence. You know, the PLA has developed to the point where they have a lot of options other than an invasion. They have a lot of missiles that they can lob on Taiwan.
- [33:39]
Martin DeCaro
Sure.
- [33:39]
David Finkelstein
And. And of course, the question is, will Tai baby Kabul or will Tai baby Kiev? They have a navy now that they can use for a blockade. They have cyber capabilities. They have space capabilities. So invasion of Taiwan is. Is not the only option for the PLA at this point.
- [33:56]
Martin DeCaro
Yeah. Blockade would be the first or one of the first tools. Right. And then in that case, what would the United States do? A blockade is an act of no idea. Because this is an issue if the United States is committed to Taiwan's defense. While an amphibious assault is one thing, a blockade. What do you do with a blockade?
- [34:14]
David Finkelstein
So the United States is not technically committed to Taiwan's defense.
- [34:18]
Martin DeCaro
That's right. It's not a treaty ally.
- [34:20]
David Finkelstein
What the Taiwan relations Act of 1979 says is that the U. S will provide Taiwan with such defense equipment and services to help it provide for its own defense. And the United States would consider the use of force against Taiwan a grave affront to national interest. It's very short of committing the US to come to Taiwan's defense. And that, of course, has been the gist of a debate that went on a couple of years ago. Should the US Be strategically clear about its intention to defend Taiwan, or should the US Maintain what is known as its policy of strategic ambiguity? Keeping everybody guessing.
- [35:03]
Martin DeCaro
So, Dave, a testament to my great interviewing skills, we've been talking for about 30 minutes and I'm finally going to ask you the most important question of all. As mentioned before, China, last war, 1979, a punitive invasion of Vietnam that did not last long, did not go well for China. Given everything we've been discussing here, how can anyone know if the PLA is capable of fighting a war?
- [35:27]
David Finkelstein
Frankly, Martin, the short answer is you cannot know. One can look at a military's order of battle and study the capabilities of its hardware, weapons and platforms. You can also look at their war fighting doctrines and attempt to analyze a foreign military's exercises. And you can look at and assess their institutions of professional military education and do research about its personnel. You can do all of that.
- [35:54]
Martin DeCaro
Sounds like you've been doing all that.
- [35:57]
David Finkelstein
But until a military is actually deployed and employed, it's very difficult to assess whether it can bring all of the parts together, whether it can adjust to the unanticipated, whether it will be resilient in the face of losses, whether personnel systems or campaign plans, and still press on to achieve its assigned tactical, operational and strategic objectives. You won't know that until it happens.
- [36:22]
Martin DeCaro
Are there any Chinese soldiers alive today who fired a rifle in anger in their lives? Not many. Many.
- [36:29]
David Finkelstein
There are probably quite a few veterans of the border conflict with Vietnam that went into, well into the 1980s. They're pretty elderly by now, but they're. They're out there.
- [36:39]
Martin DeCaro
Are they still involved in. In the military now or are they.
- [36:42]
David Finkelstein
Oh, no, they're long retired. But I think what we can assess, Martin, is that the PLA has over the years become A military with enhanced modern weapons and capabilities. It's a military that's beginning to operate for the first time as a joint force with multiple services and multip battle space domains. And it is a force that can now project force offshore to make its littoral a highly contested area.
- [37:10]
Martin DeCaro
It wants hegemony in East Asia. Agree.
- [37:12]
David Finkelstein
You could say that if you define hegemony literally, meaning that countries in the region have to consider China's preferences before it makes its own decisions, then yes, hegemony would be a good thing for China.
- [37:25]
Martin DeCaro
Economic coercion has been the tool they've been using, not military domination nation.
- [37:30]
David Finkelstein
The cruel fact is that today in Asia, in the Indo Pacific, China is the largest trade partner of everyone out there.
- [37:36]
Martin DeCaro
Yeah.
- [37:37]
David Finkelstein
But another point just to, just to throw out there, it should be pointed out that today the U. S. Joint force, our military really is the world's most combat tested military. And PLA professionals have a healthy respect for that. They're no fools. They look at the joint force and they know we're probably the world's toughest adversary. But we in turn need to have a healthy respect for the PLA's combat potential. I underscore the word potential given how far They've come in 40 years of focused and funded military modernization.
- [38:11]
Martin DeCaro
And neither the United States nor China has an interest in going to war with one another. But we know wars do start.
- [38:18]
David Finkelstein
I, I do believe that to be true. I, I believe that neither the Pentagon nor the PLA is itching for a fight. But it is also true that both are preparing for one.
- [38:29]
Martin DeCaro
And I should say it's not only economic coercion. China does have voluntary trade relationships with its neighbors. Of course. What is China after in the South China Sea with the Philippines. So over the years there have been many clashes with boats. Philippines is a treaty ally of the United States, but they don't use live ammunition. No one's being killed in these encounters, but they're pretty rough. Sometimes sailors get knocked off their boats and into the ocean. What is China after there? And how dangerous are those encounters to potentially drawing the United States into a conflict?
- [39:07]
David Finkelstein
Yeah. So China is one of several claimants to reefs, atolls and other maritime formations in the South China Sea. The Vietnamese have claims, the Malaysians have claims. The Philippines obviously have claims. And China over the past few years, probably since around 2013 or so, has been using its growing coast guard, navy and maritime militia to put military pressure on some of the other claimants, even as they try to negotiate a code of conduct for The South China Sea. And so the Philippines, of course, have been leaning pretty far forward in asserting their claims in what they call the West Sea, which we call the South China Sea, because, because the Philippines are a US ally, the Chinese are picking on Manila, trying to use coercion to show Manila that it can't have counterclaims without encountering some form of coercion. It can get pretty risky. And in fact, it is in the South China Sea where US and Chinese forces have from time to time, had less than safe encounters. So it's sort of a tinderbox area where a lot of things can go wrong. And the same goes for the East China Sea, where China and Japan have competing claims over the Diaoyu or Senkaku Islands, depending upon what your point of view is. So it's a pretty dangerous piece of ocean out there.
- [40:33]
Martin DeCaro
So final thing here, DAVE de Escalation seems necessary and that's only possible with good diplomacy. We know that US China relations have really gone south in recent years. How do you assess the potential for having better relations with China? Yes, we can compete, we can prepare for war against each other, but there also has to be better relations at the same time. And that is not impossible. You just go back to the late stages of the Cold War and the Reagan administration. He wanted better relations with the Soviet Union, even as he, Reagan did chastise the Soviet Union for its behavior in, say, Afghanistan.
- [41:11]
David Finkelstein
I think the way to think about this is that how the two leaders of both countries approach the relationship is going to have a profound impact on all the other elements of the relationship. So that's why the Trump XI meeting is potentially so important when it happens, assuming it still happens in, in April. But I would also say the two militaries do speak to each other.
- [41:35]
Martin DeCaro
Other.
- [41:35]
David Finkelstein
It's not perfect, it's sometimes frustrating, but they do speak to each other. So for example, since 1998, there has been a forum for discussing unsafe practices at sea and in the air. It's known as the Military Maritime Cooperation Agreement. It met recently in Hawaii and six months before that. I think they met in Nanjing in China. But this is a semi annual, almost semi annual meeting where the two militaries can put on the table their complaints about the activities of the other and try to make sure that all interactions are professional. We also have a couple of memorandum of understanding that go back to 2014, 15, 16 about notification of military operations and also briefing each other on our strategic papers, such as white papers or the National Defense Strategy. So the two militaries at a very operational level level are trying to maintain contact to ensure that miscalculation does not result in escalation. The problem, of course, is that over the years, military contacts have been either cut back or, or cut off completely for political reasons. And, and that's absolutely dangerous. So it's not like we're not talking to these people or they're not talking to us US and of course our, our respective defense attaches and our respective embassies are talking to each other on a regular basis. The U. S. China relationship started to deteriorate by the second Obama administration. And mostly, in my view, which is admittedly biased, it was the result of a lot of Chinese activities that were inconsistent with U. S. National interests. And when you think about it, a lot of the domestic and foreign policies that China had put in place back then alienated almost every constituen that was in favor of a good relationship. They alienated the US Media, they alienated Congress, they alienated the business community, which was usually one of their most stringent supporters.
- [43:41]
Martin DeCaro
So what were they doing? Was it like theft of intellectual property?
- [43:44]
David Finkelstein
Theft, intellectual property. And you know, there are probably tens and tens of thousands of US Government employees who had their personal data. It's true access after the big data breach that was ascribed to the Chinese. Raise your hand if yours was compromised. I'm raising my hand, by the way. So by the time Trump comes into office, it's pretty clear that we're in a very highly competitive relationship. This was acknowledging the obvious, the national defense and national security strategies that the Trump 1 administration put out, just laid it out. We are in a competitive relationship ship and then Trump gives way to Biden and Biden really, the Biden administration did something that almost I, I don't think I ever saw before. Got all the elements of the US Government aligned on how we were going to compete with China and got our allies and partners to do the same. So the Chinese have been under a lot of pressure from the US and its allies and partners, but of course, we're in a different moment. Yeah, obviously, yeah.
- [44:47]
Martin DeCaro
I mean, there's been some attention not being paid to China now on the part of Americans because of other problems here at home and other places in the world that are garnering more of our attention at the moment. So in that sense, tensions have eased a little bit with Washington's attention elsewhere, but maybe not. I mean, international relations are so complicated. Countries can interact on any number of levels. There's the military, economic interdependence as well. As there are cultural exchanges, student exchanges, and there's also the fact that China is an authoritarian police state that keeps a million Uyghur Muslims or whatever it is in a concentration camp. So there's a lot to this.
- [45:28]
David Finkelstein
Even though China may not be in the news, there are significant strategic issues between our two countries that are not going to go away in my view, very quickly or easily. These are issues that need to be managed and not necessarily solved in short order. For example, the Taiwan issue is out there. Next, you have unfair trade practices, China's military buildup and its coercion against U. S Treaty allies, Japan and the Philippines.
- [45:59]
Martin DeCaro
In particular Australia too.
- [46:00]
David Finkelstein
Australia, of course, the Australians have, have been on the receiving end of, of Chinese coercion version.
- [46:06]
Martin DeCaro
And yes, New Start. New Start just expired. It did not cover China. China's never signed a nuclear arms control treaty with the United States. There was a good reason for that for a long time because China didn't have too many nuclear weapons. The most recent expert I spoke to about this issue, Joe Cirincione, said, I mean, ultimately the idea behind New Start was that as the US And Russian stockpiles got smaller and smaller or the, the deployed weapons got smaller and smaller, well, then you can bring China in. China wouldn't have an interest in negotiating a limit if the United States has 5,000 missiles, Russia has 5,000 missiles and China has 600. There's always an incentive to have nuclear arms control for the sake of our planet. But from the Chinese perspective, is there any incentive on their part to enter any nuclear arms control deals? It doesn't sound like, it sounds like they're going in the opposite direction. Direction.
- [47:01]
David Finkelstein
I think you're, you're fundamentally correct, Martin. There's very little incentive if you talk to them about these issues, and I do, and many of us do, their stock answer is that, well, when the Russians and the Americans start to decrease and bring down their stockpile, then, then maybe we'll talk to you guys about it. But at the same time, there's almost a reflexive abjuring on the part of China to signing international treaties like that. It would be interesting to see how many international treaties China has actually signed on security issues. Probably not a lot. And they're probably tied to UN resolutions. So I don't think that the Chinese are going to be changing their mind anytime soon. I hope I'm wrong again. I'll defer to others who know more about nuclear arms control, but I think that one of the reasons President Trump did not renew New Start is that he wants to put pressure on the Chinese to consider being part of a new three way agreement. But I fear if, if the past is prologue, he may end up disappointed once again.
- [48:05]
Martin DeCaro
Well, he said there China not being willing to sign too many international agreements. Does this come down to the so called rules based order post 1945 and how the Chinese want to establish a different kind of order order?
- [48:20]
David Finkelstein
I actually think that the Chinese may be very nervous at the prospect of the rules based order being so challenged these days because they have been one of the world's great beneficiaries. Yes.
- [48:30]
Martin DeCaro
Entering into the World Trade Organization, opening up their economy to American factories.
- [48:36]
David Finkelstein
Without the international rules based order, they would probably not be the economic megalith that they are today. So China's point of view is that hey, we're not looking to destroy it. We just want to adjust the world order order to make it more reasonable. And in parentheses and not stated is reasonable for us. And like most countries, but more so, the Chinese are very selective about the international rules that they choose to adhere to. So for example, when they lost the ruling against the Philippines on the South China Sea, they just merely ignored it. Yet they go to the UN and demand that everybody comport with the UN Security resolution. So it's very selective on their part. Most countries do that. One of the great disappointments of American statecraft for me has been the fact that the US Congress has never had the US be a signatory to the law of the sea deciding not to join the Trans Pacific Partnership that just gave China free hand to be the 500 pound gorilla economically in the Indo Pacific. There's going to be a lot on President Trump's plate when he heads on out there. And it will be interesting to see what he and the administration prioritize and what comes out of this.
- [49:52]
Richard Nixon
I want to express my very deep appreciation to all of you who have come here to send us off on this historic mission. And I particularly want to express appreciation to the bipartisan leadership of the House and Senate who are here. We of course are under no illusions that 20 years of hostility between the People's Reform Republic of China and the United States of America are going to be swept away by one week of talks that we will have there. We must recognize that the government of the People's Republic of China and the government of the United States have had great differences. We will have differences in the future. But what we must do is to find a way to see that we can have differences without being enemies in war. If we can make progress toward that goal on this trip. The world will be a much safer world and the chance, particularly for all of those young children over there to grow up in a world of peace will be infinitely greater. I would simply say in conclusion that if there was a postscript that I hope might be written with regard to this trip, it would be the words on the plaque which was left on the moon by our first astronauts when they landed there. We came in peace for all mankind. Thank you and goodbye.
- [51:37]
Martin DeCaro
Coming up on History As It Happens. The next several episodes will be dedicated to the fourth anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Germany's growing military power and Israel's annexation of the West Bank. Those topics and more as we report History As It Happens. Stay up to date on what I'm working on by signing up for my newsletter. Just go to Substack and search for History As It Happens.