OPINION — “China views psychological warfare, centered on the manipulation of information to influence adversary decision-making and behavior, as one of several key components of modern warfare. Chinese psychological warfare has evolved, driven in part by technological progress that brought new opportunities and in part by lessons learned from other militaries, but the core principles and objectives have remained relatively constant. The importance placed on psychological warfare is increasingly linked to Chinese military assessments that the cognitive domain will be a key domain of future warfare.”
That quote is from Chinese Next-Generation Psychological Warfare: The Military Applications of Emerging Technologies and Implications for the United States, written by the RAND Corporation’s Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga, and published June 1, 2023 by RAND.
I was drawn to read into this 224-page RAND study initially because it said in the introduction that research for this project was sponsored by the Defense Department’s Office of Net Assessment. Also, the study led me to learn about the origins of China’s interest in psychological warfare and the elements that are now carrying it out.
As with many People’s Liberation Army (PLA) initiatives, what the U.S. military was already doing played a role in the Chinese army’s taking up a similar activity.
“PLA interest in the cognitive domain appears to have been in large part driven by the United States’ operational concepts in this area,” the RAND study says. “U.S. doctrine has included the cognitive domain as a domain of warfare since the advent of network centric warfare, most notably the 2006 Joint Publication 13-3, Information Warfare.”
Joint Publication 13-3, according to the RAND study, stated “that ‘psychological operations’ can target the cognitive domain to ‘influence’ the adversary, and ‘military deception’ can similarly target the cognitive domain to ‘mislead’ the adversary, along with ‘civil military operations,’ ‘public affairs,’ and ‘public diplomacy’ to ‘influence’ and ‘inform’ via the cognitive domain.”
In 2015, according to the RAND study, the main PLA doctrinal military publication, The Science of Military Strategy, published an article that stated, “Since the beginning of the 21st century, cyberspace has been used by some countries [i.e. the U.S.] to launch ‘color revolutions’ against other countries . . . [through] behind-the-scenes operations using social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook as the engine, from manufacturing network public opinion to inciting social unrest.”
It was also in late December 2015, during the early days under President Xi Jinping, that China formed a new unit called the Strategic Support Force (SSF) as part of the restructuring of the PLA. The SSF was charged with securing the information domain while working closely with other PLA services to execute regional and global military operations.
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The SSF has since grown, having absorbed cyber warfare, electronic warfare, satellite communications and reconnaissance, as well as psychological operations units, all of which highlights the importance of information warfare in the PLA’s plans for future combat operations.
Another indication of SSF’s importance is that its first Deputy Commander and Chief of Staff in 2016 was Gen. Li Shangfu, an aerospace engineer and space expert, who last March was named China’s Minister of National Defense by President Xi. He is also a member of the powerful, seven-member Central Military Commission of the Chinese Communist Party, chaired by President Xi and described as the highest military decision-making authority of the Chinese party-state. Like President Xi, Li’s father was a long-time Communist Party member, as well as a high-ranking PLA Commander in the Korean War.
Just four days ago, at the Singapore Shangri-La Dialogue dinner, it was Defense Minister Li who shook hands with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin as the two briefly met. Defense Minister Li in his speech last Friday at the Singapore meeting said a Cold War mentality is resurgent in the Asia-Pacific region, but Beijing seeks dialogue over confrontation.
Li, however, also said that “some countries” were intensifying an arms race and interfering in the internal affairs of others, an approach that echoed the old PLA 2015 argument that some countries launched “color revolutions” against other countries.
It was under Gen. Li Shangfu in 2016 that the SSF began with two deputy theater-level departments: the Network Systems Department (NSD) which manages cyber, electronic, and psychological warfare; and the Space Systems Department (SSD), which handles various space-based information and defense operations. SSD’s role will be discussed below.
The RAND study says some Chinese some data collection, “likely” done by NSD, such as the individual-level personal information obtained by hacking of the consumer credit agency Equifax (2017), could not only be used for future psychological warfare but also for other purposes.
Another element under NSD is Base 311, described in the RAND study as “PLA’s only known operational unit dedicated to psychological warfare.” It is located near Fuzhou, a city of more than seven million in Fujian Province, and is some 194 miles across the Taiwan Strait from Taiwan, itself.
Base 311 is “historically focused on propaganda targeted at Taiwan and is generally understood to focus on radio, TV, and now internet-based information warfare,” according to the RAND study. Other operational units of the six PLA regiments on the base support psychological warfare in other ways, including political propaganda.
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For example, Base 311 also houses the PLA-run China’s Huayi Broadcasting Corporation, whose CHBC stations focus on Taiwan-related content, including The Voice of the Taiwan Strait. Established in 1991, CHBC has described itself as seeking to “promote Chinese culture” and has emphasized that “cohering compatriots’ feelings” was the company’s abiding purpose. In 2015, the broadcast unit was transferred from the PLA’s General Political Department to the newly created SSF, which had taken over psychological warfare against the Taiwanese. For some time, the PLA commander of Base 311 also served as the chairman of CHBC.
The RAND study said that Base 311 researchers have argued the PLA should speed up social media manipulation, subliminal messaging, employment of virtual reality and big data and social media open-source data collection, as well as voice information synthesis technology, which enables computers to convert written text into spoken language.
The RAND study cautioned, however, “There is always the possibility the PLA is pursuing additional psychological warfare activities that are not being publicly documented.”
Last March, after Gen. Li was appointed Defense Minister, the Voice of America (VOA) in an article noted his former SSF association in a story that said the Chinese spy balloon that drifted over the United States for a week beginning January 28, “bore the earmarks” of SSF, which it described as a “little-known hybrid branch” of the PLA.
The VOA story also noted that a Chinese recruitment film last January highlighted 5,000 civil positions were open at SSF, “among them engineering positions and posts in a special medical science center within the SSF, according to information later released by the PLA recruitment center.”
There have been recent stories alleging China activities that seem to relate to SSF-type operations. For example, in early March the Canadian press reported the Canadian Security Intelligence Service found that Beijing’s consulates were pressuring community members to support Prime Minister Trudeau. But the Chinese were also was using disinformation campaigns in in Vancouver and Toronto, which have large Chinese immigrant populations, against certain candidates. The aim was to have Trudeau end up with a minority government, thus keeping him in check.
China’s ambitions in space related to the SSF, as mentioned earlier, are handled through its Space Systems Department (SSD).
SSD maintains space situational awareness through a command headquartered in Xian,
and a maritime space tracking command and a control center in Beijing. Together they integrate space tracking data from ground-based assets in China, sea-based units, and a number of international ground stations located in the Indo-Pacific region and elsewhere, according to a 2020 report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission entitled China’s Space and Counterspace Capabilities and Activities.
SSD also oversees an expanding space-based monitoring system that covers U.S. activities in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond. In space, China has electro-optical, radar, and other space-based sensor platforms that “can transmit images of the Earth’s surface to ground stations in near-real-time,” according to the Commission report. China has also invested heavily in synthetic aperture radar and other electronic reconnaissance surveillance capabilities.
In the counter space areas China has deployed, or is developing, jamming and cyberspace
capabilities, directed energy weapons, on-orbit capabilities, and ground-based ASAT [anti-satellite] missiles, one of which was tested back in 2005.
In 2021, China also tested a satellite that that could interact with other satellites, which Beijing said was designed to “test and verify space debris mitigation technologies.” However, if China’s satellite can move space debris out of orbit, it could also be used to do the same to an operational American military satellite.
Li’s connections to SSF and the Chinese military space operations, as well as the defense research and development communities, make him intimately aware of the most cutting-edge military technologies the PLA currently possesses sees for the future.
The RAND study concludes that Chinese in a world of standoff, over-the-horizon, and cross-domain strikes, heavy reliance on psychological warfare would most likely be limited to a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan, and U.S. forward forces, especially those closer to China.
However, the study also suggests that as the Chinese military continues to embrace artificial intelligence, and couples it with its ongoing collection of data on foreign decision-makers and societies, the combination may offer new weapons for psychological warfare.
I would add, Gen. Li’s past connections to SSF and its space operations, plus his position as top military advisor to President Xi, make it reasonable for the U.S. to see China as potential near-peer competitor in the evolving sphere of modern warfare.
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