CSF 2026, Day 2, Keynote: Dr Toshi Yoshihara

Well, good morning. >> Good morning. >> It's a real pleasure for me to be here to speak to you about uh the Chinese military's various lessons from uh past and uh recent wars. It's uh always such a pleasure to be back here uh at the Naval War College and in beautiful Newport, Rhode Island. Uh I'm just going to get right to it uh and just give you a sense of what the purpose and the methods are for my talk this morning. So, uh I'm going to be looking at the People's Liberation Army's various lessons from the past and the present. And the purpose of doing so is to get a sense for uh what these lessons might tell us about the PLA's views of future warfare, as well as what these lessons might tell us about the PLA itself as an institution in terms of the PLA's institutional identity and institutional outlook. To do so, I'm going to draw uh primarily from my most recent research over the past 5 6 years, but but I will also be drawing from my time here at the Naval War College, where I taught for a little over a decade. And of course, that means I'm going to be drawing from your time here uh at the Naval War College by tapping into the various pedagogical devices that are used in teaching the various courses, to tap into the curriculum, but also to uh tap into our collective historical sensibility that's that this War College has helped cultivate in me, and of course, cultivate in all of you, which is a deep appreciation for what history may tell us about the enduring principles of strategy, as well as what the past might tell us about the present and the future. All right. So, how does the PLA learn? Well, the the the the PLA is um a a very powerful learning organization. It has a voracious appetite for learning all sorts of things. Uh and it learns from a variety of sources. And so, what I'd like to do is to focus on two broad categories. The first category of learning is from other people's wars. And of course, that's not surprising because the PLA itself has not fought major conventional combat operations since 1979 with the border war with Vietnam. So, it has had to it has had no choice but to learn from other foreign military's experiences. Most famously, the PLA deeply studied the first Gulf War the first Gulf War. And many of those lessons, I think, continues to influence the PLA's modernization. And it has, of course, studied all of the wars since the first Gulf War to include the war in Iran. PLA analysts have also reached back even further, looking at more distant wars by foreign military's to include the Second World War. Not only the European theater of operations, but also the Pacific War. The PLA has also learned from its own nation's wars, right? China has a very proud, rich history going back into antiquity. And so, Chinese analysts have reached back to these semi-mythological, semi-apocryphal battles to draw inspiration. So, what's interesting is many PLA analysts find resonance with battles and wars that involved one side maneuvering the other side into defeat. And then I want to focus on one area where we frequently overlook, which is the PLA's own combat history. You might be surprised to learn uh that PLA analysts and PLA historians believe that the PLA actually has a rich and proud combat history running from the Chinese Civil War all the way through the regional wars of the 50s, 60s, and 70s. And so, I'm going to tap into some of those lessons as well to illustrate to you the diversity of sources that the Chinese used to understand future warfare. And so, for the purposes of my talk this morning, I'm going to focus on these three subcategories of learning. So, let's get right to it. I'm going to first of all focus on lessons the Chinese have learned from recent naval combat operations. And it's going to be drawn primarily from my latest book, the third edition of Red Star Over the Pacific, which I co-authored with Professor Jim Holmes. And so, in one of the chapters, I look at the Chinese literature on their writings about naval combat between Russia and Ukraine in the Black Sea, particularly in the opening months of the war, in particular focusing on the sinking of the Moskva cruiser. Now, what is really interesting about this episode is that the sinking of the cruiser seemed to have sent shockwaves across the naval watching community in China. It's partly a reflection of that community's kind of weird obsession, maybe even fetish on all things Soviet. And so, if you read the literature, they're they're they're not only shocked but deeply disappointed that the Russians had their flagship sunk. Now, they have a fairly balanced assessment of this particular engagement. So, on the one hand, they're highly critical of the Russians for what they believe to be Russian hubris, overconfidence, operating too close to shore, operating in predictable operational patterns, and they criticize the Russians for not having modern combat systems, modern electronic warfare suites to engage in jamming and counter jamming. On the other hand, the Chinese uh heap praise on the Ukrainians for their ability to combine creatively combine unmanned systems, land-based anti-ship cruise missiles, and of course importantly the ability to complete the kill chain by tapping into space-based sensors, space-based communications, and support of command and control from a multinational coalition basically from from the West. In this chapter of the book, I also document Chinese writings on combat in the Red Sea between the allied fleets and the Houthis. Again, they have a fairly balanced assessment of these these engagements. So, on the one hand, uh they they find it remarkable that the Houthis, what one article described as an army in sandals, {quote} {unquote}, uh were able to combine unmanned systems, land-based anti-ship cruise missiles, land-based um um anti-ship ballistic missiles, right? To engage in allied harassment operations. On the other hand, they're also quite impressed with American fleet defenses, right? Stout defenses in which nothing got through. And so, if you step back and look at the various lessons that the Chinese have learned from these two combat experiences, they seem to have mixed feelings. Again, on the one hand, uh these engagements seem to confirm the idea that there's value in land-based precision fires. Now, that's good news to the extent that China has invested a whole bunch of resources into their own land-based precision fires to support their anti-access area denial capabilities. But on the other hand, it's also worrisome to Chinese analysts that they're witnessing the proliferation of what we might call friendly anti-access area denial capabilities among the United States and its allies, particularly along the first island chain. Chinese analysts also see that these incidences confirm the value of fleet defenses. And again, they're quite impressed with American fleet defenses and and that it's it's tough to get through American fleet defenses and therefore has implications for uh China's offensive capabilities when targeting the US surface fleet. And of course, this has deepened Chinese worries about the vulnerability of their own surface fleet, which is of course grown not only with you know, larger ships, but larger numbers of capital ships. And so, they've had to worry about shoring up the vulnerability of its own surface fleets. So, in my view, when you assess these writings, they seem to exhibit a fairly balanced, sophisticated, nuanced understanding of interaction between land-based precision fires and fleet defenses. And this interaction was underscored to Chinese analysts in the recent exercise in the Philippines. Uh when Japan's ground self-defense force uh launched these truck-mounted anti-ship cruise missiles during a sink ex. This is the first time that the Japanese launched uh such fires on foreign soil since the Second World War. And here's the image of that uh target ship being hit by one of these Japanese missiles. Chinese analysts also observed uh the American testing of the Typhon missile system. This is actually I I think the picture was taking, you know, um was taken in Australia, but here's a uh a screen grab of the night launch that took place in the Philippines. And it's no surprising that Chinese analysts are concerned about the proliferation of allied um land-based fires. If you think about these various systems deployed on the Philippines, overlapping fires and ranges that extend deep into the heart of the South China Sea, that would certainly have implications for Chinese naval operations as well as China's various island outposts in the Spratlys. And so, I followed the chatter after those exercises and I was already able to discern that Chinese analysts were talking about the need to build up countermeasures to include modern sensors, uh drones to conduct long-range strikes against those missile shooters, uh the need to deploy ever more modern air and missile defenses to protect China ships and their island outposts. But beneath that chatter, beneath that brav- that kind of bravado, it seems to me that there is another kind of interaction taking place. Because if the Chinese were in fact investing in these countermeasures, perhaps the allies are imposing cost on China. Right? To the extent that every yuan that China spends on these systems might be one fewer yuan that China can spend on other offensive capabilities that are most worrisome to the United States and its allies. All right, let me now talk about a different set of lessons. And this is really what I call synthesis, which is using historical lessons at different places in different times to draw some conclusions about a particular mode of warfare. And I'm going to be talking about some of their lessons from the Pacific War and the First Gulf War. And again, um to go back, uh I'm going to draw uh uh from my uh recent research on Chinese lesson from the Pacific War, but also a book chapter that I contributed to a co-edited volume by uh Professor John Maurer. So, what do these three images have in common? The person on the left is Vice Admiral Mikawa, who led the surface forces in the opening stages of the Guadalcanal campaign. The individual in the middle is, of course, Saddam Hussein, and the image on the right is the cover of a PLA doctrinal publication on joint logistics. What these three things have in common is a discourse among Chinese analysts about the importance of waging a counter logistics campaign. So, when Chinese historians look at the Guadalcanal campaign, which I know is a mini case study in the strategy and war course, uh they are highly critical of Mikawa for missing the opportunity to attack the vulnerable transports that were unloading goods at the outset of the Guadalcanal campaign. And their counterfactual analysis here is that had Mikawa pressed his attack, it could have had an outsized logistical impact on US operations on the island. And when Chinese strategists look at the first Gulf War, they're also highly critical of Saddam Hussein for supposedly missing his opportunity to conduct early strikes against US and coalition logistical vulnerabilities, including ports, airfields, and the mountain of iron that was being built up to launch the offensive operation. And again, in their counterfactual analysis, is that had Saddam actually launched those attacks early on, that that could have had a a significant disruptive impact on coalition operations. And these two historical lessons reinforce long-standing PLA doctrine that emphasizes the need to conduct an early large-scale counter logistics campaign against the adversary. In fact, they believe that the enemies logistical vulnerabilities should be considered primary targets equal in importance to the adversary's front line combat units. And so here I have a lengthy passage that talks about that describes the enemies logistical facilities as the fountainhead of the adversary's combat potential. And the metaphor here would be akin to cutting the stem of the grapevine to allow the fruit, the grapes to literally wither on the vine. So, the grapes in this metaphor would be the front line combat units. And therefore, the PLA must dedicate its firepower including air power, missile power, and special operations forces to wreck the enemies fountainhead. Let me now turn to the Chinese Civil War and the lessons that Chinese historians have drawn from their own experiences. And in this case, I'm going to draw from my forthcoming book called Mao's Finest Hour. Uh the publisher has not finalized the cover, so I decided to make my own. Thanks to Thanks to chat Chat GPT and Grok. Not Not bad. Not bad, I think. I probably would have accepted this if the publisher came up with this. But in any event, I argue in this book about Mao's Finest Hour is that Mao's Finest Hour took place in the last year of the Chinese Civil War when the PLA conducted extraordinary operations of just sort of you know, splendid operational results that then gave way to strategic outcomes of the highest stakes, which is of course sweeping the CCP to power. One of the great campaigns actually involved non-kinetic operations, and this is what I want to focus on this morning, which is the so-called peaceful liberation of Beiping, now Beijing. The CCP and the PLA were able to engage in a series of political psychological operations using compromised insiders, double agents, secret agents, and spies to undermine the fighting morale of the garrison in Beijing. In particular, they dedicated their attention against the garrison commander pictured here on the right. In fact, one little interesting detail about this political psychological campaign was that his own daughter, turned out, was a committed communist who was a double agent. She was slipped into Beijing to try to convince her father to stop fighting. And that she spent her days and nights monitoring her own father's emotional and psychological disposition, which she would then dutifully report back to her handlers, back to the CCP's operational headquarters. And ultimately, all of that pressure worked. General Fu gave up without a fight, gave up about 250,000 troops defending the area. Now, what does this have to do with the 21st century? A lot, right? In fact, a former Chinese policy maker responsible for cross-strait relations explicitly talked about and wrote about applying a so-called Beiping model, which would use coercive measures, including vast demonstrations of force around Taiwan, to create an atmosphere of war, what he calls the enemy at the gates, to convince the Taiwan to convince the Taiwanese to stop fighting. A famous, or you might even call it an infamous, PLA officer with a close ties to Xi Jinping himself has written about waging a new type unification war that would be focused on coercive methods to avoid collateral damage because brute force would obviously create such collateral damage and to use psychological and coercive methods to crush the hearts and minds of the Taiwanese to get them to stop fighting. Still other PLA analysts have talked about forming a third United Front meaning the CCP and the PLA would form relationships with various factions within Taiwan to dissolve Taiwan's cohesion. This would produce what I've described as a reverse Zelensky effect. We know what the Zelensky effect is, right? Which is that by refusing to leave Kyiv he boosted Ukrainian morale and galvanized international public support. The reverse of course is that if the CCP and the PLA were to pull off some form of a decapitation campaign or destabilization of the body politic, then that would of course have a significant impact on the morale of the Taiwanese, but it would also sow doubt in the minds of American policy makers and allied policy makers about Taiwanese willingness to fight and therefore have an impact on their support to the island democracy. In fact, we have mounting evidence in recent years of active and retired politicians, senior military officers and troops working actively with Chinese intelligence agencies to provide them with intelligence offer public pledges of support to them quote unquote motherland but also to serve as saboteurs to disrupt Taiwanese defensive operations behind Taiwan's lines if the PLA were to attack from the front. And the Taiwanese government knows this threat all too well and has gone to great lengths to shore up Taiwan civil defenses, and here is an English translation of a of a pamphlet on Taiwan civil defenses designed in part to ensure continuity of government operations. And there is a page, uh a really eye-opening page, that acknowledges that hostile foreign forces might seek to sow division within the society, but that there would be local collaborators working on behalf of the CCP that would also seek to spread disinformation. And the bottom line from this pamphlet is this, if there's any news that Taiwan's been defeated or that Taiwan has surrendered, it must be treated as false. All right, so let me wrap up uh by sort of pulling some of these threads together. What do some of these lessons tell us? Well, first of all, I think in reading this literature, it seems that Chinese analysts have a pretty sophisticated understanding and a nuanced understanding of the interactions between offense and defense. They have a pretty good understanding of the offense-defense balance in these cases in the naval domain, in the uh logistical domain, and in the political-psychological domain. But I do want to caveat my comments by saying that knowing a lesson is very different from learning a lesson, right? Knowing a lesson is what I've just done is to highlight to you what Chinese analysts have identified. But knowing a lesson is a completely different set of activities uh that requires institutionalization and internalization through things like doctrine, education, uh training, exercises, force experimentation, and force development. I also think that learning Chinese learning these Chinese lessons may tell us a few things about the PLA's own institutional blind spots. The PLA, like all military organizations, have a tendency to want to learn the lessons that it would prefer to learn, not the lessons that it ought to learn. And so, understanding what the Chinese believe are the important lessons might tell us about certain confirmation biases that are being exhibited by the PLA. And then, finally, uh hopefully what I've been able to highlight to you this morning is that the PLA is an impressive learning organization that has a voracious appetite for seeking to understand future warfare. Because the PLA clearly understands that in order to compete effectively, it must learn. And by implication, so must we. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Great. Well, thank you very much for your attention. >> [applause] >> That was awesome. >> Thank you. >> All right, Toshi, uh you did not disappoint. Thank you very much for coming back to the War College, and hopefully we continue to engage.