China’s Military Transparency Changes And The Reasons

In1990s, as China’s economic take-off, China Economic Threat Theory spreadfrom Southeast Asia to western countries, which for a time became the core of ChinaThreat Theory. In21stcentury, Chinese government gradually increased investment inthe military aspects. The US-led western world began to worry whether China’s risewill pose a threat the US current status, and then condemned China’s military power.The international community’s view on China gradually shifted from China EconomicThreat Theory to China Military Threat Theory. The criticism on China’s militarytransparency, as a new measure to pressure on China, appeared more on diplomaticcommunication. As a result, the change on China’s military transparency became thefocus of public concern.In the academia, China’s military transparency has a lot of controversy. Phillip C.Saunders’ research on military transparency in China is the most representative. In orderto evaluate military transparency, he created a rating system including specificdefinitions and criteria for each level of transparency, and discussed China’s militarytransparency in19individual categories. He found that although the militarytransparency in China has been slightly increased, the whole level of transparencyremains low.Doctor Saunders’ analysis on military transparency made progress on quantitativeanalysis, but it has major defects of complicated criteria and simple material. Therefore,this article not only redesigns a criteria for evaluating China’s military transparency,which contains military intention, military capability and construction of the militarysystem, but also enlarges the sources of material for analyzing military transparency.The results indicates that Chinese government does have made great and effectiveefforts on increasing military transparency under US-led western counties’ request. Inthe dimension of construction of the military system and most part of military capability,the improvement on military transparency is significant; the change in the dimension ofmilitary intention and the other part of military capability is small while thetransparency remain stable. The conclusion indicates that China’s military transparencygradually increase and the level of transparency is high. At last, according to the analysis on the current China’s military transparency, thereason of its increase is the growth of China’s might and the intention of beingresponsible power, and the reason of its stability is the lack of military strategic trustbetween China and western countries and the Chinese secrecy system.