China's millitary modernization Technology Essay (Essay Sample)

IS CHINA’S MILITARY MODERNISATION A THREAT TO OTHER GREAT POWERS?
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Is China’s Military Modernisation a Threat to Other Great Powers?
Since the start of the 21st century, there have been significant discussions over the threat posed by a rising communist China to international relations. Great powers such as the United States, Russia, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Japan have pondered what a rising China would imply to them. One of the questions that the great powers have tried to establish is whether a rising China would try to disrupt existing world order that is dictated by western countries. China has focused on economic development to the extent that in 2014, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) showed that the nation had overtaken the United States as the largest economy in the world (Congressional Research Service, 2019). Besides its positioning as an economic power, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has embarked on military modernisation characterized by significant defense spending to have a more robust, efficient, and technologically advanced military force (Maizland, 2020). Although the Chinese leadership insists that it aims for peaceful development, recent military modernisation suggests that China aims to be more assertive in its foreign policies in a manner that they can challenge other great powers (Hearson & Prichard 2018). China, however, remains aware of existing constraints, such as the military might of other great powers and increased interdependencies with other great powers that have spurred its economic growth and appears not to seek a direct confrontational approach.
China’s Military Modernisation
Initially, after the modern state of China was born in 1949, the communist leaders’ ideology was mainly inclined to economic modernisation and paid little on the modernisation of the military. A pivotal moment would come during the 1990s when two events, the crisis at Taiwan Strait and the Gulf War, left China awestruck by the U.S. military capabilities (Maizland, 2020). China acknowledged that it was not able to engage such great power and began investing in its defensive ability.
From 2012, when the current Chinese president Xi Jing Ping rose to power, the regime has embarked on making military reforms that are aimed at having an effective military. The country’s large army has historically been inefficient. The numbers have been reduced - its command has been structured and decentralized in a bid to boost its effectiveness. The Chinese navy now boasts the largest number of ships globally, with more than 250,000 active personnel. Part of the Chinese modernization of the navy involves an increase in aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines. Based on data by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (2018), China’s spending on defense was $239 billion, spending that was only bettered by the United States. The Chinese Air Force has invested heavily in bombers, unmanned aerial aircraft, and a wide range of stealth aircraft (Maizland, 2020).