The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) openly talks about five ‘inabilities’ of their Commanders occupying leadership positions in the armed forces namely their inability to; analyse the situation, understand the intentions of their superiors, make a decision on a course of action, deploy forces and handle contingencies. One of the several recommendations to fix these ‘inabilities’ published in the People’s Liberation Army Daily i.e. the CCP’s mouthpiece, urges Commanders to strengthen their awareness of battlefield deception and be good at using high tech means, especially subversive technology, through the deployment of true & false, the combination of true & false and the integration of true & false to achieve success in combat.
Could this explain the surge in high tech and seemingly innovative ideas publicised by CCP forces in the recent past to portray a force multiplier effect? In November 2019, the CCP Navy released pictures of a portable underway-replenishment system that can be installed onboard Commercial ships to optimally utilise CCP’s 3,500 strong merchant ships in the Fleet Support role in times of war. In August 2020, the CCP released a video showing Z-19 and Z-8 helicopters landing, refueling, rearming and taking off from a commercial semi-submersible heavy-lift ship’s deck. This was to demonstrate that the aviation brigade of the CCP Ground Forces could use commercial ships for mobile maintenance and refueling of their helicopters during a conflict. In November 2020, images appeared on CCP controlled social media of the air-launched anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) designated as CH-AS-X-13. This is likely to carry a Hypersonic Glide Vehicle (HGV) and is aimed at targeting high value targets such as aircraft carriers from ranges in excess of 1500 Kms. The long range of the H-6 Bomber coupled with its aerial refueling capability makes it an ideal platform for launching the ASBM against targets operating well beyond the first island chain and South China Sea. Public declaration of such high tech capabilities are a mixture of true & false to deter the enemy from initiating aggressive action against China.
It took the CCP Army eight months to fabricate a story and declare the loss of five of its soldiers in the fierce hand to hand combat with the Indian Army at Galwan Valley on 15th June 2020. The absurdly low fatalities officially declared by the CCP Army, many months after the clash, goes with the CCP ethos of fictionalising the facts. In March 2021 i.e. after the pullback of troops from the Pangong Tso area, Global Times reported that larger fixed wing armed reconnaissance drones such as GJ-1 and GJ-2 may be deployed along China’s border with India. A CCP propaganda video on the subject showed how drones were used to deliver food on the India-China border and how larger drones deployed on the border would be able to solve three problems of the CCP Army on ground i.e. to see where people can’t see, to hear where people can’t hear and to go where people can’t go. This is the CCP’s attempt to assure its citizens that the area would still be under their surveillance despite the unprecedented pullback of the CCP Army on ground.
In the Maritime domain, such a combination of true & false perhaps underlines China’s thought process not only at the tactical level but also at the operational and strategic levels. The CCP Navy itself has a dual-command structure, with the Political Commissar working alongside the Military Commander across all echelons i.e. from their Headquarters ashore to all units at sea. The Political Commissars are given equal authority as the Commanding Officer of the unit and this in turn gives them the authority to influence naval operations in accordance with CCP ideology. Through this unique collective leadership model, the CCP has institutionalised a Command & Control structure that does not encourage individual thought and in turn facilitates dissemination of highly sanitised and suitably fictionalised accounts of global happenings within the rank and file of the CCP Navy.
At the strategic level, China’s exaggerated claims in the 3.6 million sq km South China Sea based on the ‘nine-dash line’ is a classic example of the true and false ideology. Their claim thus extends to about 2000 kms from the Chinese mainland and covers almost half of the sea. This exaggerated Chinese claim suffered a severe setback in 2016 when the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) at the Hague ruled against it. Thereafter, while protests on maritime boundary disputes from several sovereign states in the region namely Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam, as also from other states outside the region, have got louder, the CCP has maintained that they do not recognise the decision of the PCA.
The strategy of cleverly mixing true and false can also be seen in China’s grandiose Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This CCP Initiative aims to undertake infrastructure development in over 70 countries in three continents at a supposed cost of about USD 1.3 Trillion over the next decade. China’s unilateral narrative has been that participating countries would witness a growth of about 2-3% in their GDP. However, in reality it is nothing but a debt trap with the potential to fuel corruption and autocratic behaviour in struggling democracies. Countries are finding it difficult to repay loans and are being compelled to part with some of their strategic assets. The 99 year lease of Hambantota Port by the Sri Lankan government to China Merchant Port Holdings Limited in 2017, is a grim reminder of how seemingly rosy CCP facts must never be taken at face value. Djibouti too is now learning the hard way the price of CCP benevolence. A study by the Center for Global Development reported that eight BRI recipient countries (Djibouti, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Maldives, Mongolia, Montenegro, Pakistan, and Tajikistan) are at a high debt risk. These countries will need support to service their BRI loans and will have to turn to the IMF or similar lending agencies for bailing them out of their debt crisis.
Will the CCP be able to condition the thoughts of every individual in China and its BRI signatories through this double edged strategy of true & false? Or will the larger majority of the global population, which is not under the CCP’s influence, learn to call the CCP’s bluff? While these questions may not have any immediate answers, we would do well to make informed assessments on China’s strengths after carefully segregating ‘fact’ from ‘CCP fiction’.
