SOCIO-CULTURAL FACTORS

Socio-cultural factors and their influence on military prowess and strategic thinking are less obvious and have not been treated as amply in the literature as have the more obvious and measurable economic factors. The notion of "national character," "national morale," and the "quality of society and government" and their influence on national power were treated by Morgenthau in his 1948 classic, Politics Among Nations.42 In efforts to discern Soviet military thinking, studies on Moscow's "strategic culture" appeared in the 1970s,43 and have since been supplemented more recently by similar studies addressing other cultures.44 One study in particular has sought to refine this approach, arguing that "the nature of a society can affect the military power generated by the society," suggesting that our analyses should focus on "the dominant social structures of a country" and how they influence "the amount of offensive and defensive national military power that can be generated from a given quantity of material resources."45

With regard to the RMA in particular, much scholarship and the popular imagination have tended to stress the technological factor as a driver of military change. But in the context of the current debate on the RMA, the most careful observers emphasize the multi-dimensional character of the RMA, and stress how it is couched within a broader set of determinants. Cooper argues that:

     creating a revolution is more . . . than pushing the
     frontiers of science or the boundaries of military
     systems; it must be a positivist process that requires
     adaptation by the organism (or organization) for
     exploitation to occur.46 
     

Another analyst of the RMA notes the importance of behavioral factors such as "new operational concepts, new tactics, and new organizational structures," all of which derive from "the current confluence of social, political, economic, and technological forces."47

It is to this socio-cultural realm that we now turn to analyze how established Chinese norms and values affect the country's approach to RMAs. In particular, the following pages will consider historical and contemporary Chinese socio-cultural foundations and their impact--for better and for worse--on China's ability to recognize, appreciate, adapt to, and exploit revolutionary changes in military affairs.

Historical Context.

Confucianism. Confucianism is at its root a set of socio-cultural norms which value and legitimize conservatism in thought, and the maintenance of the status quo in political, socio-economic, and cultural structures. Originally conceived as a means to ensure the stability and prosperity of Chinese agrarian society, Confucianism seeks precisely to avoid revolutionary and disruptive change. As Lucien Pye argues:

     The Confucian ideal was eminently appropriate for an
     agrarian society but was detrimental to the development
     of commerce and industry. Eventually, the Confucian
     tradition . . . worked against the Chinese in their
     confrontation with the modern industrial and
     technologically oriented West.48 
     

RMAs by their nature are "antithetical to existing cultural norms and bureaucratic structures."49 It will be difficult enough within a society and military which values technology and is relatively accustomed to innovation and change--such as the United States--to come to grips with the demands of the new era in military affairs. For China, a society which is--by tradition and by exigencies of contemporary socio-politcial realities--conservative and resistant to foreign ideas, adapting to new concepts and organizational structures will be difficult and problematic.

Specifically, we can point to four key aspects of Confucianism as important in relation to RMAs. First, the pervasive influence of Confucianism is still felt today in its segmentation of society, both horizontally and vertically. Confucian norms look favorably on and promote a society so regulated because it is understood that the system is stable and conducive to prosperity and moral betterment when "everything is in its proper place." From top to bottom, in rank order, society was divided into the following: the emperor, the mandarin class of scholar-bureaucrats, farmers, and artisans, with merchants and soldiers occupying the bottom rungs. Cutting down vertically across those horizontal divisions were other lines of division: geographic, demographic (urban vs. rural) and familial. This structure tended to restrict movement of ideas and labor, while conserving the socio-cultural structure intact with little change. In principle, the tenets of Confucianism allowed that those with merit--as determined by the level of scholarly ability to master the Chinese canon--were able to cross over these societal divisions. In practice, only those with the time and means to devote to the years of training and study necessary to succeed in the examination system could hope to enjoy much mobility.

Second, Confucianism teaches the centrality of government not only as a dominant but (ideally) enlightened ruling force, but also as purveyor of unifying socio-cultural values. It also served for the ruling class as a "common code" of conduct and moral virtue. In the wrong hands, however, this ideal could be easily corrupted to a simple facade for perpetuating authoritarianism and tyrannical political, social, and cultural policies.

Third, Confucianism diminishes the role of the individual in favor of the collective good. Confucians expect individuals to perform certain duties and functions in accordance with their determined place within society. In doing so, the individual is assured to have done his part in contributing to the stability of the entire society. Individualism, or acting outside one's "role," was not considered socially acceptable behavior, and contravened the interests of the whole.

Fourth, the Confucian system valued education to the degree it accomplished two principal purposes. First, education was intended to be the formal vehicle through which was conveyed a narrow set of immutable and predetermined norms, values and precepts. The process of scholarship entailed committing these subjects to memory with little question or investigation. Problems which subsequently arose were to be solved with strict reference to the canon. Second, education was intended to broadly prepare the scholar to assume functionally unspecialized duties within the government. As a result, matters of study outside of the canon--natural sciences, technology--were beyond the socially acceptable pale or were scorned for their overly specialized and impractical nature. Under this system the inventiveness and innovation which marked early Chinese history bogged down from the Ming dynasty onward into the 20th century--a span of nearly 500 years.

The Tiyong Concept. The tiyong concept is another historically important influence on Chinese socio-cultural norms. It provides a transcendent normative basis for Chinese approaches to socio-economic and technological development and its relations with the outside world in general. The tiyong concept--short for zhongxue weiti, xixue weiyong (Chinese learning for substance, Western learning for practical use)--speaks to a belief in the inherent superiority of things Chinese. This is the view which understands China as an inherently higher culture and civilization, reluctant to accept and integrate the ideas and learning of foreigners, particularly those of the West. Moreover, as the notions of "science" and "technology" became increasingly associated with the West, so too they were treated with less respect within the tiyong framework. Time and time again in Chinese history since the 1500s, the introduction of Western learning and concepts--sometimes introduced peacefully, other times rudely crashing onto Chinese shores--were rejected with reference to arguments conceptually related to the tiyong ideal.50

One example of this tendency is particularly illuminating for our understanding of socio-cultural influences affecting the exploitation of RMAs in China. Following its devastating defeat at the hands of Japan in the 1895 (in which China was forced to cede Taiwan, the Pescadores and the Liaodong peninsula to Japan), China subsequently launched the ill-fated "Hundred Days of Reform." With little planning or strategic vision, reform-minded advisors to the Qing court attempted to drive through rapid changes to the Chinese economic and scientific system similar to what they perceived to be the accomplishments set in motion in the late 1860s by the Meiji Revolution in Japan. The reformers issued proclamations mandating the establishment of new academies of learning, the development of railroads, the adoption of Western scientific methods, and the translation of Western texts. This movement was quashed almost as quickly as it began by the Empress Dowager and her court of conservative supporters. The reformers were hounded out of office, some were killed, and the violently xenophobic Boxer Uprising erupted shortly thereafter in 1900.

These concepts underpinning Chinese socio-cultural norms are not simply historical oddities, but continue to shape the way modern-day Chinese leaders and citizens view their world. On the one hand, this outlook helps to unify a disparate nation of more than a billion persons, and provide some sense of Chinese identity. The sense of "being Chinese" is a powerful emotional and motivational force to Chinese on the mainland and around the world. On the other hand, remnants of the Confucian socio-cultural system, strengthened in ways by communist rule, stifle innovation, promote rigidity in thinking, and tend to favor paralysis over adaptability, all of which are not conducive to recognizing, accepting, and exploiting the emergent RMA.

Contemporary Context.

Communist authoritarianism. Communism and Confucianism share many socio-cultural similarities, but communist rule added new dimensions of its own. In particular, through wielding modern means of communication, propaganda, and political control, the communist leadership has largely strengthened many of the stultifying practices of Confucianism (while often condemning the belief system in theory). On the other hand, the communist leaders in their early years of rule were able to concentrate the levers of power available to them in a way which resulted in significant military-technical breakthroughs particularly with regard to establishing a rudimentary but functional conventional and nuclear deterrent.

The communist leadership is duly proud of its accomplishments in restoring a semblance of order and stability to China upon its victory in 1949, following the long "century of shame" characterized by chaos, war, civil strife, and the often-vicious intrusions of foreign powers. The communist system quickly sought to impose its set of rules upon the Chinese society to govern behavior, reward the good and punish the evil. The system included its own understood hierarchy where--as in Confucianism--the leaders were above the law but (ideally) benign and with the society's greater interests in mind. Beneath the leaders, the widening ranks of party members--properly imbued with the communist canon--took control of the bureaucratic levers of power, while beneath them China's vast numbers of peasants were considered with special favor as were soldiers who fought for the revolution. At the bottom of the ladder, merchants, entrepreneurs, and landlords were eventually dispossessed of their capital and relegated to second-class citizenship. Also near the bottom of this hierarchy were persons with foreign connections and learning, who were particularly suspect in the new system. Geographic, demographic, and familial divisions remained important, but the communists added a new dimension with the introduction of huge bureaucratic socio-economic organizations such as mass organizations, collectives and communes, and the danwei, or work unit. The upwardly or horizontally mobile knew the value of party membership--or at least a strict adherence to the party's teachings--to their ambitions.

As in Confucian practice, the centrality of the ruling group--embodied under communism in the form of the Party--is unquestioned. Moreover, through the massive socio-economic organizations to which all belong, the party is able to socialize the citizenry, unify thinking, and convey acceptable socio-cultural norms and behaviors. The role of the individual is subsumed to the will of the society--as defined by the party orthodoxy. Moral models such as Lei Feng--a self-proclaimed simple but devoted cog in the giant social machine--are extolled. Individualism and unorthodox thinking are shunned and often punished severely.

With Maoist disdain and suspicion of intellectuals, learning is less revered than under Confucianism. "Merit" and moral conduct (i.e., learning and practicing the communist canon) is more often preferred to technical expertise. Experts and specialists in science and technical fields, while often talented, are shabbily and at times brutally treated, and considered suspect in difficult political times. The Cultural Revolution destroyed a generation of possibilities in terms of human capital. It may seem strange that the official line of the defense science and technology sector is compelled to exhort its people to "respect the knowledge and talent" of the intellectuals and experts in their ranks, but such calls are apparently still necessary.51 To this day, the arguments pitting "red" versus "expert," the "open door" versus the "Four Cardinal Principles," and attacking the deleterious effects of (foreign) "bourgeois liberalism" and "cultural pollution" provide a thin contemporary veneer over the deep-seated nature of these debates.

These proclivities of the communist society reveal themselves in the troubled way in which defense-related R&D and production are conducted in China. These problems have been often cited by Western and Chinese observers alike.52 In reviewing the relevant Chinese and Western literature, and in discussions with official researchers and experts concerned with the development of China's defense R&D and production base, problems related to the communist system consistently emerge: the persistence of "leftist" and "ideological" thinking which has prevented the establishment of a more rational and scientific approach to decision-making; bureaucratic formalism and over-centralization; poor coordination across the life cycle of a weapon system; profligate and misdirected spending; an institutionalized lack of horizontality between the defense R&D and production sectors and to the outside commercial sector; and a continuing lack of esteem and incentives for scientific expertise. In addition, the nature of the Chinese socio-economic system requires a considerable amount of political will to be directed from the top down before change and innovation reform can be implemented from the bottom up.

Attempts to break down this system and to introduce reform and management techniques aimed at improving the defense industrial base have had only mixed success, limited almost entirely to the commercial sector. In the words of one Chinese defense industry expert, a change for the better in the system will require "efforts by a generation of people."53

Post-Mao modernization. In the two decades since Mao's death, Chinese society and values have undergone tremendous change. While deeply-rooted forms of social organization and values under Confucian and Communist systems continue to be predominant, the reforms and societal transformation of China over the past 15 years--which can be expected to continue and even accelerate in the years ahead--create change and tensions that are both beneficial and detrimental to China's ability to adapt to exploit the changes inherent in the emergent RMA. It is still too early to know with certainty where these changes will lead, if they can be sustained in a positive way, or if China will stay true to its history and continue its rocky and problematic relationship with change and foreign concepts.

At this early stage, however, it may be useful to consider how post-Mao modernization has affected the social position and status of Chinese human capital, which, perhaps more than any other single factor, will determine China's ability to grasp the emergent and future RMAs. As noted, the past record of Chinese human capital development is mixed, and since 1949 and the advent of the communist system has included long periods in which scholarly and scientific training and intelligence were actively scorned, and scientists and intellectuals actively punished and even killed. In recent years, China has taken steps to invigorate and heighten the social status of scientific and R&D communities, which, if sustained, will no doubt contribute to improvements in the development of RMA-related systems and organizational constructs. As noted in relation to other aspects of the economy elsewhere in this monograph, the present shake-out in the economy as a result of reform will probably have short-term deleterious effects on the development of China's human capital, but may pay off over a longer term.

In the short term, the socio-cultural mantra defining the rapid Deng-era changes could be summarized in the words of the paramount leader himself: "It is good to be rich." This has resulted in an increase in corruption, an entrepreneurial preference for quick profits over long-term visions, an even more covetous protection of information and technology by bureaucrats-cum-businessmen, and, of interest to our discussion, a slow drain of expertise out of scholarly and research fields, and into business. For the defense R&D and production sector, this trend poses some difficult challenges. For example, the president of Aviation Industries of China (AVIC) said in 1993 that in the face of lucrative opportunities in the commercial sector, he has problems keeping his staff of 10,000 engineers, technicians, and designers "energized and committed to aerospace."54 Frieman argues that the "open door policy has also made a career in non-defense related science more attractive than it might have been in earlier periods," adding that the "military sector might still have some of the best, but it no longer has all of the best, of China's scientists."55 The apparent employment of some Russian scientists also suggests that China has difficulties meeting its defense production R&D goals strictly through reliance on its own expertise. Indeed, the official history of the Chinese defense industry makes the case for improved technical training and education, allowing that China "lacks personnel" who can "carry forward the frontier of today's national defense science and technology sector."56

Thus, while the modernization and reform effort will carry forward and meet with a number of significant gains, it may do so by taking socio-cultural directions not immediately beneficial to long-term national health. This period of socio-cultural change will be characterized by social disruption and decentralization, restructuring of societal organization, the introduction of new cultural norms and behaviors, the development of new conceptions of "good" and "bad," "right" and "wrong," and the creation of a novel approach to solve pressing problems. This process will take time, will be resisted by entrenched interests, and in the near term will slow China's efforts to fully exploit the emergent RMA.

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NOTES

42. Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, 4th ed., New York: Albert Knopf, 1966, pp. 122-35. (Back to text)

43. Jack Snyder, The Soviet Strategic Culture: Implications for Nuclear Options, Santa Monica: Rand, 1977. (Back to text)

44. See Elizabeth Kier, "Culture and Military Doctrine: France Between the Wars," International Security, Spring 1995; Alastair I. Johnston, An Inquiry into Strategic Culture: Chinese Strategic Thought, The Parabellum Paradigm and Grand Strategic Choice in Ming China, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1993. See also, Alastair I. Johnston, "Thinking About Strategic Culture," International Security, Spring 1995. (Back to text)

45. Quotations drawn from Stephen Peter Rosen, "Military Effectiveness: Why Society Matters," International Security, Spring 1995, p. 6. (Back to text)

46. Cooper, p. 21. (Back to text)

47. Tilford, p. 2. (Back to text)

48. Lucien Pye, China: An Introduction, 4th ed., New York: Harper Collins, 1991, p. 34. (Back to text)

49. Cooper, p. 1. (Back to text)

50. On this point see the historical background offered by Yuan-li Wu and Robert B. Sheeks, The Organization and Support of Scientific Research and Development in Mainland China, New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970, pp. 11- 40. (Back to text)

51. Xie Guang, Vol. 2, p. 495. (Back to text)

52. Richard J. Latham, "China's defense industrial policy: looking toward the year 2000," in Richard H. Yang, ed., SCPS PLA Yearbook 1988/89, Kaohsiung: Sun Yat-sen Center for Policy Studies, 1989, pp. 79-89; Yan Xuetong. (Back to text)

53. Interview, Beijing, March 1995. (Back to text)

54. Michael Mecham, "With many suitors, China seeks equal partnership"', Aviation Week & Space Technology, October 25, 1993, p. 23. (Back to text)

55. Wendy Frieman, "China's defence industries," Pacific Review, Vol. 6, no. 1, 1993, p. 60. (Back to text)

56. Xie Guang, Vol. 2, p. 497. (Back to text)

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