What is the Chinese air force actually for? Is it intended to win wars or prevent wars from ever happening at all? If the Chinese air force is for invading Taiwan, conquering the Indoacific and beating the United States into submission, well, then it’s got an uphill battle, doesn’t it? But for China to actually invade Taiwan, or really for China to actually invade anywhere, would be a major departure from how the modern Chinese state chooses to operate.

Beijing hasn’t fought a war since the late ‘7s, but that’s not for lack of opportunity.

If it wanted to, it could have sent its forces abroad on stabilization missions across Asia and Africa to protect Chinese interests tied up in the Belt and Road Initiative.

It could have taken a more belligerent stance in its Himalayan border disputes with India.

It could have deployed peacekeeping forces to the Middle East, sent troops in large numbers to pick up experience in Ukraine, or tried to snatch a bit of land from any one of the neighbor nations with which China shares a border.

Just this year alone, China has had three separate opportunities to intervene militarily in regional conflicts.

India versus Pakistan, Thailand versus Cambodia, and the civil war in Myanmar.

But every single time Beijing has declined the opportunity.

Of course, nothing in geopolitics is absolute.

But if China really intended to invade Taiwan, then why would it give up so many opportunities for its forces to gain combat experience and for its equipment to be tested out in lower stakes confrontations? The way to explain China’s air force, not as a platonic ideal, but as it really exists today, is to explain it as an instrument of deterrence.

Now, the classical weapon of deterrence in today’s world is the nuclear warhead.

Yeah, it could wipe out a city if you actually use it.

But if you threaten to use it, you can make even the most powerful adversaries think twice and change their behavior.

In a defensive sense, it’s easy to see how China’s air force could be a deterrent.

After all, if any world nation were to attack China, then they’d find themselves on the receiving end of China’s entire aerial might.

And that’s obviously going to go rather badly, even if an adversary manages to win.

But deterrent weapons don’t necessarily have to be a tool of defense in order to be used for maximum effect.

Instead of comparing China’s air force to a nuclear weapon, let’s say you’re robbing a bank.

You go up to the teller, you pass them a note, and you tell them to put some money in that bag, and you make some very obvious show of reaching into your bag as you’re staring at them.

You don’t actually take anything out of the bag, and as it happens, you just don’t need to.

The bank teller realizes they’re under threat, they comply, and within a couple of short minutes, you and your accompllices are gone out the door.

So, what was in your bag? Was it a fully loaded gun, a big gleaming buck knife, a rubber chicken, thin air? Whatever the truth might have been, nobody ever asked to know because you were able to convince the bank teller that calling your bluff on what was actually in the bag just wasn’t worth the risk.

It’s in this same way that China has been able to build its air force into a potent tool of deterrence.

And if China’s recent unveiling of new mysterious aircraft, its overfocus on stealthy combat jets, and its emphasis on combat over logistics are any indication, then building a tool of deterrence has been China’s objective this whole time.

Much like our bank robber reaching into their bag with an air of threatening mystery, China uses it air force to ask its adversaries one single question.

Whatever you want to fight China for, whatever you want to gain or protect or bargain for, is it really worth the risk of tangling with the Chinese air force? Sure, China’s adversary might believe that it can win in the end, but our bank teller might be 90% sure that the bank robbers backpack is empty.

90% certainty isn’t so certain when the risk that you might be incorrect is the risk that you might take a bullet.

If we understand China’s air force as a tool of international military intervention, the entire thing is busted.

It’s lethargic.

It’s unbalanced.

And its personnel have never tasted even limited combat.

But if we understand China’s air force as a tool of military deterrence, then even though those drawbacks still exist, they don’t matter.

Threaten to send 500 J20s to defend China’s interests.

Even if only a hundred could actually be allotted to a war effort, even if they’ve got questionable stealth, small weapons loads, and underpowered engines, a 100 stealthish advanced jets like that could still inflict major losses on an advanced air force, and they could still run through an air force like Taiwan’s or Vietnams or the Philippineses in a one-on-one contest.

If China can hold the vague threat of sixth generation fighter aircraft over its adversar’s heads or threaten them with a strategic bomber fleet that could in the right circumstances break through and lay waste to an enemy target, then the question for America, Japan, South Korea, or another of China’s powerful adversaries isn’t whether they’d ultimately win a knockdown dragout contest.

The real question is whatever they want from China, is it really worth the pain of a knockdown dragout contest at all? Probably some things still will be worth the pain.

Right now, it’s still somewhat likely that the US would fight a war to protect Taiwan despite the costs, not just in the air, but on the sea and on the ground.

Japan or South Korea or Australia would still protect their own sovereignty.

And for the sake of regional stability, they’d probably come to the defense of smaller allies like the Philippines or New Zealand, even if that’s a fight that would really suck to endure.

But other things just aren’t worth fighting anymore.

China’s iron grip over rare earth mines in Myanmar, its progressive absorption of Hong Kong, its growing alliance with Pakistan against India, its island building and its intimidation operations in the South China Sea, and its many belt and road initiatives all across the world do matter to China’s adversaries.

But they aren’t significant enough to tangle with China militarily.

And if those strategic flash points aren’t worth the risk, then what else could China get away with using its military and primarily the threat of its air force to convince its adversaries to back down? If China were to unilaterally seize the entirety of the Spratley Islands disputed by the Philippines, that would be a major international incident, but it probably wouldn’t be worth a war.

If China were to annex other small unpopulated islands, or even an island here and there that did have a population of its own, is it really a problem so grave that China’s adversaries would go to war? I mean, maybe, but as things stand right now, it just isn’t very likely.

So, as we step back and take a final look at China’s convoluted, malformed, busted, broken air force, we’re left asking one final question.

What will China, the world’s single greatest rising superpower, choose to do with it? If China were looking to change its strategy, to go back on the long-held principle that China does not make war to achieve its goals, then a revision of its military would probably involve major structural reforms.

Party officials would be trimmed out of the decision-making apparatus.

Training and exercises for Chinese military aviators would get a lot more realistic.

And the nation would invest heavily in logistical and intelligence support aircraft.

Perhaps it would engage in limited interventions in Myanmar or across the Thailand Cambodia border to give its pilots and tacticians a taste of the real world.

But if China were building a world-class deterrence, then it would continue to do the same things it’s doing now.

It would focus on building advanced combat aircraft in greater number and greater range of models.

It would unveil and leak hyper advanced prototypes regularly.

It would invest heavily in new spending and new research and development because the more it invests and the more it builds, the less its adversaries want to take the chance to mess with it.

How big and how advanced would China’s air force have to be in order to convince the Western world to accept a formal annexation of Taiwan without trying to contest it militarily? How strong would China’s air force have to be to convince Japan or South Korea or Australia that while its own sovereignty is non-negotiable? The sovereignty of say the Philippines or Lao or Thailand could become an acceptable loss.

If China’s current course is any indication, then Beijing intends to find out.

If it does, then China’s air force may remain a broken asset for years or even decades.

In the end, that brokenness might not matter at all.

Thank you for watching.

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