Here’s where I rest my analytical case today. The proof is really in the pudding. If you look at what the PLA Navy is receiving from China’s shipbuilding industry, it’s not receiving junk. These are increasingly sophisticated vessels. And the reason we can be sure that the PLA Navy is increasingly satisfied — although always wanting to improve — is that there are longer and longer production runs of fewer and fewer classes of vessels. It seems like they think that they’re getting something right.
There are still some limitations that China is struggling with. The largest and most sophisticated surface combatants are not easy to produce, and they tend to involve complex system of systems. For developing that kind of apex technology and making it work in practice, what you could call China’s preferred second-mover piecemeal integration of foreign and domestic technologies can’t offer a good enough result for that.
That is where China still has a lot of work to do, and a good example involves aircraft carrier development… China’s shown it can build decent carrier hulls, but that’s not the real challenge of an aircraft carrier. It’s the system of systems of aviation operations from the deck of the carrier…
And then there’s when I had the pleasure and honor of teaching aboard the USS Nimitz some years ago I saw how they performed their operations and the person on board kept talking about what they called tribal knowledge — an intangible knowledge of carrier operations that’s very demanding and you can’t go anywhere and download that no matter how good your cyber-theft capabilities are.
That was “The PLA Navy’s Growing Prowess: A Conversation with Andrew Erickson” on the China Power podcast. As we move to higher levels of complexity, such as to a system of systems, it appears that having only the articulated information available in engineering schematics isn’t enough. I’m very sympathetic to this view, but I don’t find it overwhelming.
If China can build new designs quickly and cheaply, then it can afford to do a lot more experimentation. Imagine if China stuck with US designs and then rapidly iterated its operations until it fit the technology. And since US designs were developed in conjunction with US operations, it would make sense that they would converge on US operational efficiency. From there, they could afford to experiment with new designs and perhaps root out errors in current US technology/operations. Get inside the OODA loop, if you will, because of an asymmetric advantage in getting hardware out into the field.
Now, this of course assumes that the PLA Navy is culturally adaptive enough to pursue such a strategy. That’s a tall order. But if they get toward parity, the question really shifts to how well Chinese engineers can start designing new concepts at the frontier. And while such design requires a great deal of intangible knowledge as well that is embodied in the networks of individuals in US labs, industry, etc., I wouldn’t bet against the Chinese for too long…
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