Despite military purges, China's next war ‘could be imminent' and spread fast
'There's no reason to sugarcoat it,' Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on May 31 at the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia's premier security conference. 'The threat China poses is real. And it could be imminent.'
Hegseth is right: America needs to urgently prepare for war.
War is coming to East Asia, and Taiwan — to which Hegseth was referring — is a target of Chinese aggression. Chinese President Xi Jinping, after all, has staked his personal legitimacy on annexing it as China's 34th province.
Yet the U.S. and its partners have to be ready for anything at any place and at any time.
Why?
The Chinese regime, which is mobilizing all of society for war, is now unstable. It is not clear who, if anyone, is in charge. Therefore, the regime could take us by surprise.
One thing we know: Xi's most senior loyalist in uniform has disappeared from public view. Gen. He Weidong, a vice chairman of the Communist Party's Central Military Commission and the second highest-ranked uniformed officer, was last seen in public on March 11, at the end of the Communist Party's major political event of the year, the so-called Two Sessions.
Many report that Xi sacked He. It's true that Xi, since being named general secretary of the party in November 2012, has purged many military officers, ostensibly for 'corruption,' and restructured the People's Liberation Army. Both moves resulted in his taking firm control of the military.
Some have therefore assumed that Xi, for some reason, turned on his most important supporter in the military in March. However, it is not likely that Xi took down He.
On the contrary, it is much more probable that Xi's adversaries removed that general.
While Xi loyalists were being removed from public view, PLA Daily, the Chinese military's main propaganda organ, ran a series of articles praising 'collective leadership,' a direct rejection of Xi's continual calls for unity, centralization of control and complete obedience to his rule.
These articles, which began appearing last July, were written by people aligned with the top-ranked uniformed officer, Central Military Commission Vice Chairman Gen. Zhang Youxia. The propaganda pieces could not have appeared if Xi were in complete control of the military.
Moreover, He's disappearance was followed by the disappearance of another Xi loyalist, Gen. He Hongjun. Rumors started that both generals had died by suicide in May at the military's 301 Hospital in Beijing. Whether they are alive or not, they are out of the way, so their disappearance spells trouble for Xi.
'Gen. He Weidong was instrumental in Xi's earlier purges in the military, so his disappearance could indicate a great threat to Xi's authority,' Charles Burton of the Sinopsis think tank noted in comments to me this month.
The recent disappearances follow the sackings of, among others, Gen. Li Shangfu, a defense minister, Gen. Wei Fenghe, one of Li's predecessors and perhaps as many as 70 in the Rocket Force, the branch responsible for the country's nuclear weapons.
Given all the turmoil in the Chinese military, America and its partners need to focus on more than just Taiwan. In fact, the main island of Taiwan might be the least likely target.
To start hostilities by attacking Taiwan's main island, China would need to launch a combined air-land-sea operation. To do that, Xi would have to give a general or admiral almost complete control over the military. The appointed flag officer would thereby become the most powerful figure in China.
Even in the calmest of times, Xi would be reluctant to create such a rival for power, but this is by no means a calm moment in Beijing. China's leader seems to have lost substantial influence recently — so much so that there is speculation he could be pushed out of power in the coming months.
Whoever is controlling the purges — Xi or his political enemies — the Chinese military does not look ready to launch a complex operation such as a Taiwan invasion. Either Xi does not have the power to order an invasion because the military no longer answers to him, or Xi does not trust the most senior officers, a precondition for such a complex undertaking.
Despite all the turmoil in the leadership ranks, Hegseth was right to talk about an imminent war. The disruptive leadership moves in China have not prevented the Chinese military from engaging in low-level but especially provocative actions in the last couple of months against countries to China's south and east.
We do not know whether China's regime has made the decision to go to war, but its series of dangerous actions clearly reveals it has made the decision to risk war.
And war, if it begins somewhere, will likely spread. For one thing, the Chinese leadership will not be able to deal with incidents responsibly. In senior Communist Party circles these days, only the most hostile answers are considered acceptable.
Another factor is the existence of alliance and semi-alliance networks in the region. Four of China's targets, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and Australia, are U.S. treaty allies, and one, Taiwan, is protected by the United States. China, for its part, could bring in its friends.
Moreover, the U.S. should be prepared for conflict with the world's most destructive weapons.
'China has spent the last five decades investing in building nuclear proxy forces in Pakistan, North Korea and Iran to create nuclear crises to divert Washington's attention away from the Taiwan Strait,' Richard Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center told me this month. 'China's investment in Russia's war in Ukraine is in the same vein.'
As Blaine Holt, a retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general, said after Hegseth's comments, 'Millions of lives now hang in the balance.'
Gordon G. Chang is the author of 'Plan Red: China's Project to Destroy America' and 'The Coming Collapse of China.'
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