May 30,2008:
While China is still, technically,
a communist police state, many of the things we usually attribute to such
dictatorships are gone. OK, they still have censorship, secret police, and slave
labor. But compared to a few decades ago, and current examples like North Korea
and Cuba, China is a lot better place to live and work. But one of the less
well known communist state attributes that still thrives is long range
planning. While corporations often have this sort of thing, working out
operations 5, 10 or more years in the future, it's less common for nations to
do that. This is generally because politicians rarely see beyond their own term
of office, which in democracies is not all that long. But China has never had
to worry about elected officials. Before the communists, there was thousands of
years of monarchies, and many of those planned long.
China does
not say much publicly about its long range plans, but the signs are everywhere,
especially when it comes to military affairs. Over the last few decades, China
has been systematically building a world class military equipment manufacturing
industry. While some of these technologies have commercial uses, many do not.
It's not just the technology, which can be stolen (from the U.S., Russia, Japan
or Europe), but the skilled workers and web of high tech suppliers that must be
created. China is not allowing all this to develop by chance. Time and again,
you can see the government encouraging, or ordering, things to be done that
will make China a source, and not just a buyer, of high tech weapons.
The
military is planning as well. Personnel policies are slowly being changed, for
the future time when the military will be much smaller, and much better
educated and trained. The Chinese military has carefully studied what the U.S.
military has done since it went all-volunteer in the 1970s, and how it
developed into the most effective military force on the planet.
The
Chinese have a plan, and they will continue carrying it out for decades, just as
they have already done for decades.