Nils Peterson
November 21, 2023
Key Takeaways
- Chinese Communist Party (CCP) military theorists
frame hybrid warfare as how countries deploy all aspects of physical and
non-physical state power, including civil society, to confront an
adversary indirectly. They also view it as a means of confronting great
powers within an interconnected and globalized world.
- The available CCP publications indicate that
hybrid warfare accepts the premise of systems confrontation that warfare
is a contest of comprehensive national strength. The publications suggest
that hybrid warfare departs from systems confrontation in that it does not
definitionally accept the emphasis on nested systems as the way to view
warfare, however.
- The PRC is fighting a hybrid war for Taiwan by
nesting it within a hybrid war against the United States. The hybrid war
against the United States also targets US regional allies, such as Japan
and the Philippines, to degrade the image of the US-led security
architecture as providing regional stability.
Introduction
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) military
theorists frame hybrid warfare as how countries deploy all aspects of physical
and non-physical state power, including civil society, to confront an adversary
indirectly. They also view it as a means of confronting great powers within an
interconnected and globalized world. Their framing presents hybrid warfare as a
competition of holistic, comprehensive strength. The theorists use the concept
to challenge the primacy of systems confrontation thought, which was the dominant
CCP framework throughout the 2000s and early 2010s.
This framework incorporates what US
policymakers refer to as hybrid warfare and “gray zone” activities, such as
public opinion manipulation or the deployment of irregular forces.[1] The CCP military theorists place the concepts
in a broader strategic framework that emphasizes coordination across domains
and government organizations to wage war. This differs from the US conceptions
that focus on tactical actions short of war.
US policies based on collaborating
with, competing with, and confronting the PRC where necessary must contend with
the CCP’s view that competition in countries around the PRC is a form of hybrid
warfare confrontation rather than competition.[2]
US explanations that the CCP is operating in a “gray zone” or using “hybrid
threats” do not account for this. They fail to nest the party’s actions into a
larger conceptualization of how the party employs coercion to achieve its
political objectives. Understanding hybrid warfare on the party theorists’
terms will inform decision-makers about how to holistically counter the CCP’s
coercive aims without needing to respond to each of the party’s coercive
actions.
CCP Hybrid Warfare Theory
The predominant view among CCP
military theorists is that hybrid warfare is how countries deploy all aspects
of physical and non-physical state power, including civil society, to
indirectly confront an adversary.[3] The
military theorist Gao Wei captured the breadth of this concept when he provided
the CCP’s first precise definition of hybrid warfare in a state-sanctioned
Ministry of National Defense–affiliated press outlet in 2020.
“[Hybrid warfare is] a unified and
coordinated act of war that is conducted at the strategic level, employing
political (public opinion, diplomacy, law, etc.), economic (trade war, energy
war, etc.), military (intelligence warfare, electronic warfare, special
operations), and other such means.”[4]
Gao’s use of the term ‘strategic’ is
in the context of a discussion around Russia’s military interventions in Syria
and Ukraine in the 2010s, which aimed to achieve Russian political objectives.
This context indicates that Gao’s understanding of the term roughly corresponds
to the strategic level of war, which regards the use of all forces available in
a given theater to achieve all of the goals within that theater. No CCP
theorist explicitly uses the levels-of-war framework when discussing hybrid
warfare, however.
- The US military defines the strategic level of war
as the level that includes national policy and theater strategy. “At the
strategic level, a nation often determines the national guidance that
addresses strategic objectives in support of strategic end states and uses
national resources to achieve them.”[5]
That at least some CCP organizations,
such as the Chinese Electronics Chamber of Commerce, have repeated this
definition in their work indicates a degree of consensus within party
bureaucracy around Gao’s conceptualization.[6]
A recent statement from a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) commander reinforces
this point. PLA Western Theater Commander Wang Haijiang, who has commanded in
various capacities in western China since the mid-2010s, published an article
in May 2023 that echoed Gao’s definition of hybrid war.[7]
Other CCP military theorists provide
insight into how the party views the concept of hybrid warfare by elaborating
on how to implement the concept. The perspectives that the theorists publish
indicate that the party views vying for influence with the United States in
geographically or politically important third-party countries on the PRC’s
periphery as hybrid warfare. The theorists are representative of party thinking
insofar as they either teach the elite party cadre or publish in widely
distributed military-affiliated publications.
- Han Aiyong, a researcher at the Central Party
School’s International Strategy Research Institute, one of the
organizations that train the party elite on international relations, views
the goal of hybrid warfare as destabilizing great powers along their peripheries
without directly targeting the great powers.[8]
A hybrid war does not have to conquer territory but wins over the
populace, slowly degrading the surrounding security environment of a great
power.[9]
- PLA-affiliated Liberation Army News theory
department editor Xu Sanfei stated the common argument among CCP theorists
that the interconnected nature of globalization opens a path for indirect
means of confrontation between major powers.[10]
Interconnectedness enables weak and strong countries alike to compete via
hybrid warfare through all means available to the state.[11] He also noted that hybrid warfare
emerged because major powers with nuclear weapons and large armies make
substantial direct conflict between such powers’ conventional military
forces a lesser possibility.[12]
- The official PLA website published an article
stating that traditional military force forms the backbone of hybrid
warfare even though large-scale battles are not the main avenue of
competition.[13] Irregular units
and fifth-column subversion of an enemy society mutually reinforce
non-kinetic means to wage war.[14]
The military section of the CCP media outlet People’s Daily also
wrote how non-kinetic means such as economic, diplomatic, cognitive,
legal, cyber, and public opinion intertwine with kinetic activity to wage
hybrid war.[15] These articles
demonstrate that the CCP’s much-publicized “three warfares” (public
opinion, psychological, and legal warfare) are means to conduct hybrid
warfare.[16]
The CCP theorists elaborate on the use
of hybrid warfare with reference to how they argue the United States and Russia
have used it. This includes the importance of a veneer of legal justification
in hybrid warfare. The legal justification can range from claims to uphold
principles of international law to explicit requests for intervention from a
host government. The theorists also explain that a country can use hybrid
warfare for offensive or defensive purposes but do not articulate differences
between the uses in terms of implementation or efficacy. Labeling a hybrid war
offensive or defensive is therefore a normative statement by the CCP rather
than an articulation of different categories of warfare. Notably, there have
been few public-facing articles on hybrid warfare since the start of Russia’s
ongoing full-scale conventional invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
- Gao Wei emphasized how Russia justified its
military interventions in Syria and Ukraine by claiming to legally
intervene at the request of the host country throughout the 2010s. He also
cited the example of Russia holding a referendum after occupying Crimea to
formally incorporate it into Russia.[17]
An official PLA website also stressed the importance of legal
justifications, such as freedom of navigation operations, for underpinning
the alleged United States hybrid war against China in the South China Sea.[18]
- The theorists Li Xiangying, Wang Jianing, and Xia
Zhenning wrote in a Ministry of National Defense–affiliated press outlet
that the United States wages offensive hybrid war while the Russians do so
defensively.[19] They explain that
the United States acted offensively in supporting the eastward expansion
of NATO since the 1990s, which made Ukraine a buffer zone through which
the United States and Russia compete. They argue that the United States
pushed Ukraine further away from Russia via the hybrid warfare tactics of
inciting the Ukrainian populace against their pro-Russian government. The
latter point is presumably a reference to the 2014 Revolution of Dignity
that forced the pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych from
office.[20]
- The CCP military theorists broadly see Russia as
the most useful case study for implementing hybrid warfare because of the
frequency it has used hybrid warfare across Africa, Syria, and Ukraine.[21] There is consensus among CCP theorists
that Russia initially lagged behind the United States in implementing
hybrid warfare but has caught up since 2013.[22]
Intersection of Hybrid Warfare and
Systems Confrontation in CCP Strategic Thought
CCP military theorists give little
explicit attention in public-facing party publications to the interaction
between hybrid warfare and systems confrontation, which refers to the view of
warfare as a competition between opposing systems of systems.[23] The available CCP publications indicate that
hybrid warfare accepts the premise of systems confrontation that warfare is a
contest of comprehensive national strength. The publications suggest that
hybrid warfare departs from systems confrontation in that it does not
definitionally accept the emphasis on nested systems as the way to view
warfare, however.
- The CCP’s thinking on systems confrontation
emerged before hybrid warfare and lays out the conceptions with which the
latter interacts. This nascent interaction is relevant to the body of
strategic thought that the PLA general officer corps draws upon.
- The rapid US-led coalition victory in the First
Gulf War served as the impetus for the CCP to begin framing modern
conflicts as confrontations between systems. Within this framework of
systems confrontation, the CCP emphasizes establishing information and
decision-making dominance.[24]
- Systems confrontation theory and hybrid warfare
theory both look to the period of globalization and technological
modernization starting after the First Gulf War as conceptual starting
points. Systems confrontation thought emerged throughout the 2000s and
early 2010s.[25] Hybrid warfare
initially entered the party lexicon in the late 2010s.[26]
Some articles about hybrid warfare and
systems confrontation from CCP military theorists, such as Guo Ruobing, suggest
that the intersection between the two concepts is an ongoing topic of research
for party theorists.[27] Guo used
systems confrontation as a starting point to describe hybrid warfare in a 2022
article by viewing the latter as a “systematic confrontation based on the
comprehensive strength of a country.”[28]
Guo embraces the view of hybrid warfare that merges kinetic and non-kinetic
means in an ongoing struggle.[29] This
indicates the importance of hybrid warfare to executing the party’s political
objectives within, even when two states have not declared war upon each other.
Implications for the United States and
Taiwan
The coercive actions that the CCP is
taking to control Taiwan fall within the military theorists’ framework of
hybrid warfare. The CCP's attempts to infiltrate all of Taiwanese society
through political, economic, and military means fit the core components of Gao
Wei’s definition of hybrid warfare. The CCP also claims to act in concert with
Taiwanese organizations representing ROC nationals to grant the party’s actions
a veneer of legitimacy under the hybrid warfare framework.
- PRC Taiwan Affairs Director Song Tao met with a
Taiwanese Mazu Friendship Association delegation in February. Mazu is a
sea goddess worshiped in the ROC and PRC. Song framed the Mazu Friendship
Association as a way to strengthen Chinese culture and “maintain the
national feelings on both sides of the strait.”[30]
Using such religious organizations likely enables the CCP to spread
pro-CCP narratives surrounding Chinese identity in the ROC. The Taiwanese
Mainland Affairs Council warned of CCP efforts to use religious temples in
this manner in October.[31]
- The PRC Ministry of Commerce began an ongoing
investigation in mid-April after ROC President Tsai Ing-wen met with
then–US Speaker of the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy in early
April. The Ministry of Commerce reserves the right to extend the investigation
to January 12, the day before the ROC presidential election.[32] This demonstrates that the CCP
leverages economic investigations to influence political elections within
the ROC through hybrid warfare.
- The PLA Air Force has increased the number of
aircraft committing daily violations of Taiwan’s Air Defense
Identification Zone over the past three years.[33]
This demonstrates the most salient military dimension of the CCP’s hybrid
warfare efforts targeting Taiwan.
The CCP perceives its hybrid war
against Taiwan as defensive, which is similar to Russia’s experience with NATO
expansion. This perception arises because the CCP falsely views the sovereignty
of the Republic of China (Taiwan) as illegitimate due to the party’s incorrect
view that Taiwan is a province of the PRC. The CCP views itself as engaging in
a hybrid war to force Taiwan away from its relationship with the United States,
much like it perceives the Kremlin as engaging in a defensive war against the United
States in Ukraine before 2022.
- The CCP-controlled media frames Taiwan as a US
pawn that the United States manipulates and will abandon in the event of a
crisis.[34] From the CCP’s
perspective, it needs to remove the chess player’s (United States) ability
to communicate with and move the pawn (Taiwan) to accomplish the party’s
goal of “unifying” with Taiwan. The party aims to degrade US political,
economic, and military influence with Taiwan, the core components of Gao
Wei’s definition of hybrid warfare, to achieve this goal.
The PRC nests the hybrid war against
Taiwan within a hybrid war against the United States. The pursuit of a hybrid
war targeting Taiwan also involves a hybrid war with the United States because
the party perceives any US relationship with the Republic of China (Taiwan) as
destabilizing the PRC. The CCP holds this view because it considers the ROC
(Taiwan) as an illegitimate state whose annexation by the PRC is the only way
to stabilize the immediate security environment. The CCP targets US regional
allies, such as Japan and the Philippines, to carry out the hybrid war and
degrade the image of the US-led security architecture as providing regional
stability.
CCP propaganda in August falsely
alleging that Japan had discharged dangerous amounts of radioactive wastewater
from Fukushima is a recent example of the PRC’s nested hybrid war effort. This
propaganda is also part of the hybrid war against the United States because of
the close US–Japan political, economic, and military collaboration in the
region. The CCP framing Japan as irresponsible also serves to counter the
positive role that the United States plays in the region. That image of
irresponsibility enables the CCP to claim that the US-led security architecture
produces chaos rather than stabilizing the region.
- The PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs and state-run
media accused Japan of “misrepresenting” the safety of the discharge. They
also implied that Japan worked in concert with the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) to conceal the true danger that the wastewater
presented on multiple occasions.[35]
The messaging conflicts with statements from the IAEA, which deemed the
discharge from the Fukushima nuclear power plant safe.[36]
The CCP military coercion of the
Philippines, such as on the Second Thomas Shoal, also enables the party to
violate the territorial sovereignty of a United States treaty ally, undermining
the US-led security architecture as part of a hybrid war. The PRC Coast Guard
and maritime militia rammed Philippine ships on a resupply mission to the
Second Thomas Shoal on October 22.[37]
The PRC Coast Guard continues ongoing harassment of Philippine ships on
resupply missions in November.[38] The
aggression aims to legitimize PRC territorial claims to the Second Thomas
Shoal, which the Philippines has occupied since 1999.
Endnotes
[1]
https://www.soc.mil/Files/PerceivingGrayZoneIndicationsWP.pdf
https://www.csis.org/analysis/competing-gray-zone-countering-competition-space-between-war-and-peace
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/us-adversaries-have-been-mastering-hybrid-warfare-its-time-to-catch-up/
[2]
https://www.state.gov/a-foreign-policy-for-the-american-people/
[3] https://brgg dot fudan.edu.cn/articleinfo_4769.html
http://www dot
81.cn/yw_208727/10034967.html
http://www.81 dot
cn/jfjbmap/content/2021-09/02/content_298119.htm
http://wx.gdinfo dot net/articles/article_detail.aspx?id=7108473682
[4] http://www.81 dot
cn/jfjbmap/content/2020-01/02/content_251236.htm
[5] https://irp.fas.org/doddir/dod/jp1.pdf, I-7—I-8
[6] http://www.cecc dot
org.cn/news/201809/549119.html
[7] https://mp.weixin dot qq.com/s/f8qTtzuqsfMLDUWjqQDI0g
[8] https://www.sohu dot com/a/290470022_618422
[9] https://www.sohu dot com/a/290470022_618422
[10] http://www.81 dot cn/ll_208543/10071341.html
http://world dot
people.com.cn/n1/2017/1202/c415646-29681721.html
http://www dot
81.cn/yw_208727/10034967.html
[11] http://www.81 dot cn/ll_208543/10071341.html
[12] http://www.81 dot cn/ll_208543/10071341.html
[13] http://www.81 dot
cn/jfjbmap/content/2020-01/02/content_251236.htm
http://www.81 dot
cn/jfjbmap/content/2021-09/02/content_298119.htm
[14] http://www.81 dot
cn/jfjbmap/content/2021-08/19/content_296897.htm
[15] http://military.people
dot com.cn/n1/2021/1220/c1011-32312291.html
[16] For an overview of the three warfares, see https://jamestown.org/program/the-plas-latest-strategic-thinking-on-the-three-warfares/
, https://www.usip.org/publications/2023/08/china-and-space-next-frontier-lawfare
[17] http://www.81 dot
cn/jfjbmap/content/2020-01/02/content_251236.htm
[18] http://www.js7tv
dot cn/news/201701_74837.html
[19] http://www.81 dot
cn/jfjbmap/content/2021-09/02/content_298119.htm
http://world dot
people.com.cn/n1/2017/1202/c415646-29681721.html
[20] http://www.81 dot
cn/jfjbmap/content/2021-09/02/content_298119.htm
[21] http://www.81 dot
cn/jfjbmap/content/2021-09/02/content_298119.htm
http://wx.gdinfo dot net/articles/article_detail.aspx?id=7100532779
http://wx.gdinfo dot net/articles/article_detail.aspx?id=7108473682
http://www.xyfzqk dot
org/UploadFile/Issue/202111080001/2023/3/20230328024405WU_FILE_0.pdf
[22] https://www.sohu
dot com/a/212718228_465915
http://www.qstheory dot cn/llwx/2019-05/16/c_1124500309.htm
[23] Engstrom, Jeffrey, Systems Confrontation and System
Destruction Warfare: How the Chinese People's Liberation Army Seeks to Wage
Modern Warfare. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2018.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1708.html, p.iii-iv, ix.
[24] Jeffrey Engstrom, “Systems Confrontation and System
Destruction Warfare: How the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Seeks to Wage
Modern Warfare,” Rand Corporation, 2018
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1708.html, p. 12.
[25] Engstrom, Jeffrey, Systems Confrontation and System
Destruction Warfare: How the Chinese People's Liberation Army Seeks to Wage
Modern Warfare. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2018.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1708.html, p. 9-19.
[26] http://www.js7tv
dot cn/news/201701_74837.html
http://www.qstheory dot cn/llwx/2019-05/16/c_1124500309.htm
http://world dot
people.com.cn/n1/2017/1202/c415646-29681721.html
[27] https://www.81 dot
cn/jfjbmap/content/2022-09/29/content_325064.htm
[28] https://www.81 dot
cn/jfjbmap/content/2022-09/29/content_325064.htm
[29] https://www.81 dot
cn/jfjbmap/content/2022-09/29/content_325064.htm
[30] http://www.gwytb
dot gov.cn/xwdt/zwyw/202302/t20230216_12510997.htm
[31] https://www.taipeitimes
dot com/News/taiwan/archives/2023/10/18/2003807856
https://news.ltn dot com.tw/news/politics/paper/1610468
[32] http:// trb.mofcom dot
gov.cn/article/cs/202304/20230403403369.shtml
http://www.news dot
cn/fortune/2023-08/17/c_1129808404.htm
[33]
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qbfYF0VgDBJoFZN5elpZwNTiKZ4nvCUcs5a7oYwm52g/edit?pli=1#gid=0
[34] https://news.gmw
dot cn/2023-09/15/content_36833975.htm
https://news.cctv dot com/2023/07/02/ARTIwoEcGJDxeoy14YSXZejO230702.shtml
https://cn.chinadaily dot com.cn/a/202306/14/WS64893e76a310dbde06d234c2.html
[35] https://www.fmprc.gov
dot cn/fyrbt_673021/202307/t20230714_11113401.shtml
https://world.huanqiu dot com/article/4DgE2pp1cnB
[36]
https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/pressreleases/iaea-finds-japans-plans-to-release-treated-water-into-the-sea-at-fukushima-consistent-with-international-safety-standards
[37]
https://www.state.gov/u-s-support-for-our-philippine-allies-in-the-face-of-repeated-prc-harassment-in-the-south-china-sea/
https://apnews.com/article/south-china-sea-philippines-second-thomas-shoal-64d4fad7bb42b44f991df183fb39fe1d
[38]
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/11/world/asia/philippines-sierra-madre-south-china-sea.html?unlocked_article_code=1.9kw.Go4J.DVsyWIFfMoMw&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
