China's strategic and military goals

China has seen substantial economic growth over the last twenty-five years, transforming itself from a stagnant non-performing nation to that of an economic giant. This unprecedented growth now creates new problems for the government of China to retain its legitimacy, as its legitimacy is now centered primarily on the fact that they are the reason the nation is performing so successfully in the financial market. If this trend were to stop the government's legitimacy, may come into question. So to prevent this China must take steps to continue development in not only financial markets, but in procuring resources for its ever expanding economy, bolstering its military for national defense and force protection issues, and quality of life concerns must be addressed as well to curtail potential uprisings.

This paper will look at the short term and long-term strategic goals of China and what they want to accomplish as well as the current state of its armed forces. After establishing the current state of the military, this paper will address Chinas goals for improving its armed forces in the future, its military strategy in avoiding, and winning any conflict that arises, and how the military will be utilized to achieve the strategic goals of the nation. For instance, expanding the countries abilities to gather natural resources is well protected from any outside aggressor, or contested areas of land can be won through projection of force. This paper will also address the potential for cooperation between the United States and China in the future, due to the rapid growth of China, and it's newly found influence in the world and within East Asia.

China has developed a very balanced manufacturing sector for itself, one that is giving competitive pressures to almost every other economy. The state machinery of China is effectively employed for its modernization. China has the edge of establishing reforms in the marketplace ranging from ruling out collectivized agriculture, fiscal decentralization, better autonomy for state organizations and enterprises, and liberalization of foreign trade and investment. The quality of Chinese labor is gaining an appreciation from even the U.S. and Japan (Cordesman, 198).

For decades, China had the world's largest army but operated with antiquated equipment. The current state of Chinese army's technology level has lagged 10 to 20 years behind that of developed Western nations. In the 1980s, the Chinese leadership was interested in military modernization but gave relatively low priority to military spending and held down army budgets. The Ministry of National Defense is the government ministry in charge of recruitment, equipment, and research for the People Liberation Army (PLA). It does not exercise direct control over the PLA as the Department of Defense PLA does over the U.S. military (Jack, 139).

Traditional military strategies in China hold deception as the core of conflict and values ways to fool the enemy as the centrality of war. Inferior parties, by using superior stratagems, can easily defeat stronger opponents; one can potentially achieve victories far greater than their capabilities alone allow (David, ...