中国军事现代化已进入收获期 A Chinese J-20 stealth plane before its runway test on Wednesday in Chengdu, southwest China.
图：周三，成都，中国的J-20隐形飞机准备滑跑测试
作者：迈克尔．崴恩斯 和 爱德华．翁
本报北京站——美国国防部长罗伯特 M.盖茨将于周日抵达北京，与中国军队高层进行交流，以挽救两国之间岌岌可危的军事关系。但是在成都的一处机场，中国的军队领导人已经用一架新型飞机的测试表示了欢迎。
J-20是一款隐形喷气式飞机，拥有与五角大楼的隐形飞机F-22 “猛禽”一样的标志型双V型垂直尾翼。经过多年的绝密研制，中国第一款隐形飞机J-20已初具规模，却出乎意料地被公开披露本周在成都的航空设计所进行了一些测试。这个航空设计所非常开放，以致于经常有很多飞机爱好者聚集于此并拍照。
分析家们称，盖茨访华与隐形飞机公开的时间节点安排绝非偶然。周三，《加拿大杂志贯轮防务周刊》香港主编安德烈.常报道了这些测试，称“这是他们的另一种威慑策略，他们想向美国及盖茨先生展示下实力。”
一直以来，中国都没什么可以展示的。经过十年的埋头现代化建设，中国曾经脆弱不堪的军事力量逐渐有所收获，五角大楼和中国的亚洲邻国们也对此也日益关注。
总的来说，中国在军事技术方面落后于美国至少一代甚至更多，更不用说最尖端的海、空军事技能在战场实用化方面了。虽然年复一年地宣称自己没有成为美国同等军事力量的野心，现在中国正逐渐显露实力——有朝一日，这个国家将戮力挑战美国在太平洋区域的霸权。
报道称，不仅仅是J-20，中国人正在将前苏联乌克兰的一艘航空母舰（基辅号）改造成中国第一艘军事力量投射海上平台，而具备空中加油、携带导弹功能的喷气式舰载飞机也被设计以便于远离本土作战，航空母舰最快将于明年入役。
大量的新闻报道称一艘或者两艘航空母舰正在上海秘密建造；2006年军方否认了一例类似消息，但是今年高级军事将领已经扬言中国有造大船的意愿。五角大楼在一份2009年报道中预测，到2020年中国将会拥有数艘航母。
专家估计，为了达到军事的核威慑、避免固定式核弹头在发射基地被摧毁，中国从2008年开始将不超过160枚核弹头改造分别列装陆路机动发射装置或者先进潜艇。多（核）弹头导弹将是下一步的目标。已经成为亚洲首屈一指的60艘潜艇编队，中国仍然致力于研制超静音型核动力潜艇和装备第二代弹道导弹的潜艇。
广受关注被称为“航母杀手”的反舰弹道导弹，具备打击美国太平洋海军军事力量的核心——大型航母——的功能，可能近乎于装备部队。美国太平洋司令部长官罗伯特-威拉德12月份向一家日本报纸透露，反舰弹道导弹已经具备初步使用功能，这是一个标志性成果。海军军官随后说，中国人还在设计阶段，即使已经研制完毕，显然它还需要在大型水面舰只上做各种测试。
基于上文并其他武器方面，中国已经向外界清晰地释放出一条讯息——他们阻止敌人侵略疆域的能力正迅速成长。
当然，中国对自身的军事建设也有一套理论。普遍的观点认为，一旦台湾领导人寻求法理独立、脱离大陆，潜在进攻性武器诸如航空母舰、反舰导弹和隐形飞机是中国大陆收复台湾的必备利器。
目前台湾能够保持分而治之、由中国宣布拥有领土主权的现状，部分要归功于美台安保条约，该条约确保了一旦北京实施武力进攻，美国有责任协助台湾进行防御。根据今天（中国）军事建设的要素分析，专家们追溯至20世纪90年代中期台湾海峡危机，那一年美国派遣其航空母舰无害化经台湾海域将华盛顿的协助安保责任送达台湾岛屿。
中国官员也担忧美国及其盟友将形成O形包围，从而导致对外扩张本国国力及影响的雄心受阻。基于此，五角大楼的长远战略就是——紧紧维系并发展已经在中国东翼建立起的韩国、日本、台湾地区的合作关系。
徐钦华（音译）在中国人民大学的课题是研究俄国及中亚并向政府官员提供区域事务的咨询，他说，“一些中国学者担心美国依计完成对中国的合围，我们有理由这么忧虑，这是很自然的（事情）。”
五角大楼官方一直宣称，他们欢迎一个更加强壮的中国军队作为美国的伙伴一起维持公海的秩序、打击海盗、履行其他国际义务。现在他们该履行诺言了，不过最终还是由美国服务成员和纳税人买单。
但是中国军队领导人很少发布关于远期军事战略的任何内容，因此中国稳定提升远远高过国土防卫的进攻性军事力量建设水平着实刺痛了美国军队战略家的神经。
亚伯拉罕 M. 丹马克，盖茨办公室前任中国区主任，称“我们所谓的威胁，是实力与野心的合二为一。现在（中国的）实力已经日渐清晰，而他们正越来越明显地限制美国向西太平洋投射军事力量的能力。”
他说，“倒是他们的野心，目前仍是个未知数。中国的军事现代化显然是正确的。问题是他们的军事力量将如何发挥作用。”
丹马克目前在华盛顿新美国安保中心负责一项亚太安保计划，他说，中国最近对与日本、东南亚争议地区采取“亮剑”的做法，让五角大楼和中国的邻国们有了充分的理由担心（过于强大的中国）。
然而，一位高级海军情报官周三向华盛顿的一名记者透露，美国不应该高估北京的军事才能，中国还没有宣示其能够熟练使用不同的武器系统的能力。这名海军电子战部门副主管叫戴维 J. 多塞特，海军中将，称尽管中国已经开发了一些远超美国预期的武器，但不值得紧张。
他问道，“他们成建制地调动过海军吗？没有。我们有看到过大规模复杂性联合演习吗？ 没有。他们拥有一丁点儿熟练的战斗技能吗？没有。”
多塞特中将称，即使今年中国人计划利用“二手的、破败的”俄罗斯航空母舰进行海试、以建造自己的航空母舰，他们在诸如飞机在航母上降落、海上大规模战队操练等领域还是生疏的很。
很明显，中国的军事企图鲜有人知。五角大楼在2009年中国军事战略评估报告中露骨地宣称，尽管付出了不懈努力，他们对中国政府在国防的支出内容、水平等仍未取得明显进展。
周三的一次采访中，中国军队的一位资深专家朱锋（音译）称，一些关于先进武器的跨越式发展的说法实际上被浮夸的成分很大。
在电话采访中，他反问道，“实际情况又是怎样呢？ 我对此保持强烈怀疑。我见过很多关于武器采购的大标题，幕后则是满无休止的放卫星和夸大其辞，很多钱被浪费了。”
朱先生在北京大学主持一项国际安全计划的研究，他建议说，中国取得的军事成就，主要是扩大威胁、夸大进展以便为某个单位自己的项目获得更多的影响力和经费。
他说的也许是真的。然而，如果是这样的话，这些伎俩在中国的环太平洋对手——美国——那里是没有落脚地的。
“最终从美国的角度来看，问题归结于美国是否仍然像以往那样成为西太平洋的主宰，”华盛顿战略和国际研究中心中国问题专家葛来仪在电话采访里说。“显然，中国人愿意考虑得更加复杂。”
她说，“中国人应该能理性地看到这一点，但是对美国来说，这是不可接受的。”
本篇由北京迈克尔.崴恩斯、厦门爱德华.翁报道。伊丽莎白.巴米勒从华盛顿发布报告。本杰明.哈斯和杨希云（音译）参与研究分析。
原文： Push by China to Modernize Military Bears Fruit - NYTimescomChina’s Push to Modernize Military Is Bearing Fruit
Kyodo News, via Associated Press
A Chinese J-20 stealth plane before its runway test on Wednesday in Chengdu, southwest China.
By MICHAEL WINES and EDWARD WONG
Published: January 5, 2011
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LinkedinDiggMixxMySpaceYahoo! BuzzPermalink. BEIJING — Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, on a mission to resuscitate moribund military relations with China, will not arrive in Beijing for talks with the nation’s top military leaders until Sunday. But at an airfield in Chengdu, a metropolis in the nation’s center, China’s military leaders have already rolled out a welcome for him.
It is the J-20, a radar-evading jet fighter that has the same two angled tailfins that are the trademark of the Pentagon’s own stealth fighter, the F-22 Raptor. After years of top-secret development, the jet — China’s first stealth plane — was put through what appear to be preliminary, but also very public, tests this week on the runway of the Aviation Design Institute in Chengdu, a site so open that aircraft enthusiasts often gather there to snap photos.
Some analysts say the timing is no coincidence. “This is their new policy of deterrence,” Andrei Chang, the Hong Kong editor in chief of the Canadian journal Kanwa Defense Weekly, who reported the jet’s tests, said Wednesday. “They want to show the U. S., show Mr. Gates, their muscle.”
These days, there is more muscle to show. A decade of aggressive modernization of China’s once creaky military is beginning to bear fruit, and both the Pentagon and China’s Asian neighbors are increasingly taking notice.
By most accounts, China remains a generation or more behind the United States in military technology, and even further behind in deploying battle-tested versions of its most sophisticated naval and air capabilities. But after years of denials that it has any intention of becoming a peer military power of the United States, it is now unveiling capabilities that suggest that it intends, sooner or later, to be able to challenge American forces in the Pacific.
Besides the J-20, a midair-refuelable, missile-capable jet designed to fly far beyond Chinese borders, the Chinese are reported to be refitting a Soviet-era Ukrainian aircraft carrier — China’s first such power-projecting ship — for deployment as soon as next year.
A spate of news reports allege that construction is already under way in Shanghai on one or more carriers; the military denied a similar report in 2006, but senior military officials have been more outspoken this year about China’s desire to build the big ships. China could launch several carriers by 2020, the Pentagon stated in a 2009 report.
The military’s nuclear deterrent, estimated by experts at no more than 160 warheads, has been redeployed since 2008 onto mobile launchers and advanced submarines that no longer are sitting ducks for attackers. Multiple-warhead missiles are widely presumed to come next. China’s 60-boat submarine fleet, already Asia’s largest, is being refurbished with super-quiet nuclear-powered vessels and a second generation of ballistic-missile-equipped subs.
And a widely anticipated antiship ballistic missile, called a “carrier-killer” for its potential to strike the big carriers at the heart of the American naval presence in the Pacific, appears to be approaching deployment. The head of the United States Pacific Command, Adm. Robert F. Willard, told a Japanese newspaper in December that the weapon had reached “initial operational capability,” an important benchmark. Navy officials said later that the Chinese had a working design but that it apparently had yet to be tested over water.
On that and other weaponry, China’s clear message nevertheless is that its ability to deter others from territory it owns, or claims, is growing fast.
China, of course, has its own rationales for its military buildup. A common theme is that potentially offensive weapons like aircraft carriers, antiship missiles and stealth fighters are needed to enforce claims to Taiwan, should leaders there seek legal independence from the mainland.
Taiwan’s current status, governed separately but claimed by China as part of its sovereign territory, is maintained in part by an American commitment to defend it should Beijing carry out an attack. Some experts date elements of today’s military buildup from crises in the mid-1990s, when the United States sent aircraft carriers unmolested into waters around Taiwan to drive home Washington’s commitment to the island.
Chinese officials also clearly worry that the United States plans to ring China with military alliances to contain Beijing’s ambitions for power and influence. In that view, the Pentagon’s long-term strategy is to cement in Central Asia the sorts of partnerships it has built on China’s eastern flank in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.
“Some Chinese scholars worry that the U. S. will complete its encirclement of China this way,” said Xu Qinhua, who studies Russia and Central Asia at the Renmin University of China and advises government officials on regional issues. “We should worry about this. It’s natural.”
The Pentagon’s official view has long been that it welcomes a stronger Chinese military as a partner with the United States to maintain open sea lanes, fight piracy and perform other international duties now shouldered — and paid for — by American service members and taxpayers.
But Chinese military leaders have seldom offered more than a glimpse of their long-term military strategy, and the steady buildup of a force with offensive abilities well beyond Chinese territory clearly worries American military planners.
“When we talk about a threat, it’s a combination of capabilities and intentions,” said Abraham M. Denmark, a former China country director in Mr. Gates’s office. “The capabilities are becoming more and more clearly defined, and they’re more and more clearly targeted at limiting American abilities to project military power into the western Pacific.”
“What’s unclear to us is the intent,” he added. “China’s military modernization is certainly their right. What others question is how that military power is going to be used.”
Mr. Denmark, who now directs the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, said China’s recent strong-arm reaction to territorial disputes with Japan and Southeast Asian neighbors had given both the Pentagon and China’s neighbors cause for concern.
Still, a top Navy intelligence officer told reporters in Washington on Wednesday that the United States should not overestimate Beijing’s military prowess and that China had not yet demonstrated an ability to use its different weapons systems together in proficient warfare. The officer, Vice Adm. David J. Dorsett, the deputy chief of naval operations for information dominance, said that although China had developed some weapons faster than the United States expected, he was not alarmed over all.
“Have you seen them deploy large groups of naval forces?” he said. “No. Have we seen large, joint, sophisticated exercises? No. Do they have any combat proficiency? No.”
Admiral Dorsett said that even though the Chinese were planning sea trials on a “used, very old” Russian aircraft carrier this year and were intent on building their own carriers as well, they would still have limited proficiency in landing planes on carriers and operating them as part of larger battle groups at sea.
Little about China’s military intentions is clear. The Pentagon’s 2009 assessment of China’s military strategy stated baldly that despite “persistent efforts,” its understanding of how and how much China’s government spends on defense “has not improved measurably.”
In an interview on Wednesday, a leading Chinese expert on the military, Zhu Feng, said he viewed some claims of rapid progress on advanced weapons as little more than puffery.
“What’s the real story?” he asked in a telephone interview. “I must be very skeptical. I see a lot of vast headlines with regards to weapons procurement. But behind the curtain, I see a lot of wasted money — a lot of ballooning, a lot of exaggeration.”
Mr. Zhu, who directs the international security program at Peking University, suggested that China’s military establishment — not unlike that in the United States — was inclined to inflate threats and exaggerate its progress in a continual bid to win more influence and money for its favored programs.
And that may be true. If so, however, the artifice may be lost on China’s cross-Pacific rivals.
“Ultimately, from a U. S. perspective it comes down to an issue of whether the United States will be as dominant in the western Pacific as we always have been,” Bonnie Glaser, a China scholar at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in a telephone interview. “And clearly the Chinese would like to make it far more complicated for us.”
“That’s something the Chinese would see as reasonable,” she said. “But from a U. S. perspective, that’s just unacceptable.”
Michael Wines reported from Beijing, and Edward Wong from Xiamen. Elisabeth Bumiller contributed reporting from Washington. Benjamin Haas and Xiyun Yang contributed research.
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发表于 2011-1-7 14:04:08
