Defense Focus: China's weapons -- Part 1

WASHINGTON, Feb. 6 (UPI) -- The Chinese domestic arms industry may one day be one of the biggest and most important in the world, but it is very far from that yet. Western experts believe China will need major outside suppliers for large amounts of equipment for years to come.

The complex, evolving Russian-Chinese arms relationship reflects the complexities and surprising weakness of China's current arms industry. China is already one of the premier industrial powers on Earth in terms of steel production and industrial, light engineering and consumer durable exports. Guangdong province in southwestern China was named by The Economist magazine a few years ago as the new "Workshop of the World," a title it took from Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania through most of the 20th century and from Birmingham or Sheffield in England through the 19th century.

In some areas, that has already translated into formidable military-industrial and potential strategic clout. China already makes its own intercontinental ballistic missiles and increasingly sophisticated space satellites. On Jan. 11, 2007, it startled the world by successful carrying out an anti-satellite test by exploding one of its own satellites to destroy another one. A significant number of satellites that China has launched that it has claimed are for weather surveillance purposes have orbits that are close to, or significantly intersect, the orbits of known U.S. intelligence, surveillance reconnaissance or military communications satellites, and some U.S. experts believe that after its successful ASAT test of a year ago, China may be planning to use them to destroy or cripple U.S. ISR and command and control, space-based capabilities in the event of any future conflict.

Diesel submarines, a technology that the United States has abandoned for decades, is an area where China has bought off-the-shelf expertise -- in this case from Russia -- and used it to create its own indigenous and reliable military industry. China already produces large numbers of diesel submarines per year -- especially the formidable Kilo class. In 2006 the U.S. Department of Defense noted that China produced 14 submarines. The United States built only one -- although that was a nuclear-powered one, as all subs in the U.S. Navy have been for many years.

Liberal U.S. analysts have argued that China's concentration on building diesel-powered subs rather than nuclear-powered ones in significant numbers and its refusal so far to build an aircraft carrier fleet -- though there are some moves at last in this direction -- means that its current leadership has no plans or desire to challenge the United States for global military supremacy. Conservatives argue that the growth in Chinese military spending, arms manufacture and military budgets proves that they do have such ambitions.

In fact the growth of China's long-term strategic ambitions and military clout appears perfectly clear, but it remains limited, and will be for years or decades to come, by the limits of the nation's weapons-producing facilities.

China does make nuclear submarines, strategic ones that carry submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles and it has had that capability for many years. But the speed at which it can produce such weapons and their technical reliability remains highly questionable. By contrast, its ability to churn out large numbers of much shorter-range and more limited capability but still tactically useful Kilo-class subs is unquestioned.

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Next: China's aircraft carrier strategy