Dragon Strike: The Millennium War

PREFACE

The events described in this book have not yet happened

… It is a future history, an exercise in military and political prediction, about a country whose emergence as a world power is one of the most important developments of the late twentieth century. The arrival of China on the world stage, however, poses problems not encountered by the world's democracies for well over fifty years. Like Europe challenged by an ambitious Germany in the first half of this century, Asia is challenged by China, which has marked out its own plans for expansion in its detailed claims to Tibet, the South China Sea, and Taiwan. In the spring of 1996, along China's eastern coastline, the People's Liberation Army conducted extensive military exercises that were little more than practice for an invasion of Taiwan. The year before there were skirmishes in the South China Sea as China sought to underline its disputed claim to that territory.

At the same time, China claims America has plans to contain its growth and begin a new Cold War. Those who have spoken out on this range from moderate academics to the present day leaders themselves such as President Jiang Zemin and Prime Minister Li Peng. The 1996 bestselling book by five young writers called China Can Say No encapsulated a new wave of belligerent Chinese nationalism which regards a confrontation with America as inevitable.

With Dragonstrike we have taken current trends, created a scenario, and seen it through to the end. To illustrate the threatening side of China's policy we have drawn on already published material, especially from the army newspaper Jiefangjun Bao, with its detailed claims to the South China Sea and how the military plans to achieve them. Most of what we put in the mouth of Wang Feng, our fictitious Chinese President, has been said by Chinese officials or appeared in the official Communist media over the past few years. In a similar way we have used authentic Japanese voices for some of what Noburo Hyashi, our fictitious Prime Minister of Japan, has to say. His account of the Amber system on pages 173nd much of his speech to the nation on pages 255s taken from The Japan that can say `No', by Akio Morita and Shintaro Ishihara. We have given references for our published sources throughout.

The political, military, and financial sections were discussed and worked on at length by experts. David Tait, former Operations Officer of the attack submarine HMS Opossum, helped us design the submarine battles exploiting to the full Chinese diesel-electric technology. John Myers, a former Royal Navy submarine commander, and Richard Sharpe, a former nuclear submarine commander and Editor of Jane's Fighting Ships, read and helped authenticate it. Former Royal Marine raiding troop officer David Dunbar helped plan the amphibious and helicopter assaults of the first day of Dragonstrike. Thanks are also due Ian Strachan, former fighter test pilot with the Royal Air Force, for his advice on the conduct of air warfare, and John Downing, a former Royal Navy intelligence officer, who helped with some of the information-warfare sections of the book. Many other still serving European and American military and intelligence officers gave their time to ensure the accuracy of the air, sea, and land battles, but their identities must remain secret. Any mistakes, of course, are our own.

Patricia Lewis made helpful comments on the design of the Japanese nuclear bomb, while Steve Thomas commented upon the sections on Japan's nuclear weapons capability. Damon Moglen and Shaun Burnie supplied documents and advice on the same, while Nick Rowe helped with details of how civilian populations and their local officials might react in the event of a nuclear war. Our researchers included Sophie Gregg, Charlie Whipple and Gene Koprowski, Kurt Hanson, Keiko Bang, and others who prefer to remain anonymous.

Diplomats constructed the meetings within the Western governments and we drew on the advice of experts in Hong Kong and London to piece together the impact Dragonstrike would have on financial markets. Peter Gignoux, John Mulcahy and Rosemary Safranek suggested how the Chinese might structure their manipulation of the markets. We used published sources, together with oil company executives who prefer to remain anonymous, for broader views about the outlook for oil markets, and the level of future oil exploration in the South China Sea. Ian Harwood and John Sheppard advised on how the world economy and major stock markets might look in 2001, and Paul Chertkow and Adrian Powell helped on foreign exchange matters.

The real potential of China has only become apparent during the Clinton presidency. Yet at the time of writing, America has failed to draw up a comprehensive policy on how to deal with it. Ten years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, another power bloc is emerging. It is wealthy. It is expansionist. It has yawning cultural differences with the West. It is embittered about its past. China is a non-democratic one-party state, whose government has to prove itself to survive. This book has been written as a warning of what might happen if Western, and especially American, policy towards China is allowed to drift.

HH SH