Two of China's most notorious military strategists are coming to the United States, not as guests of the Pentagon, but under a State Department program.
Col. Qiao Liang and Col. Wang Xiangsui are authors of the 1999 book "Unrestricted Warfare," which advocates China's use all forms of warfare, including state-supported terrorism, to win future conflicts.
"From a military standpoint, then, the traditional terror war is characterized by the use of limited resources to fight an unlimited war," they wrote.
The colonels' visit, expected in the next few weeks, comes amid questions about the Pentagon's military exchange program with China led by Adm. William J. Fallon, head of the U.S. Pacific Command.
Pentagon officials tell us China's military for nearly a decade has failed to cooperate with the United States in its selection of military officers for exchanges.
Policy-oriented military leaders have been blocked from the exchange program and their identity within an officer corps, estimated to be as many as 300,000 officers, remains a secret.
Instead, the Chinese military only sends officers who either seek information on U.S. warfighting weaknesses, or older generals who soon retire and thus cannot influence the future of China's military.
In one case several years ago, a Chinese officer asked a U.S. Navy officer during a visit to identify the key weakness of a U.S. aircraft carrier, a major Chinese target in any U.S.-Chinese conflict over Taiwan.
The officer was naively told that the weakest point is under the hull, and that it also happens to be closest to where its ammunition is stored.
Within two years of the disclosure, U.S. intelligence agencies detected Chinese military purchases of Russian wake-homing torpedoes that target ships from the rear and explode underneath the hull.
"The whole exchange program has been a nightmare," said one official.
Chinese President Hu Jintao nonetheless persuaded President Bush during a recent meeting to expand military exchanges and the Pentagon is reluctantly following through.
The challenge for Adm. Fallon is to prevent China from spying on U.S. military secrets and to persuade Beijing to send influential younger officers to learn the full extent of U.S. military power with the goal of avoiding any future miscalculation.
The new Chinese general in charge of the exchanges is Maj. Gen. Zhang Qinsheng, who recently replaced Lt. Gen. Xiong Guangkai, the Chinese military intelligence chief who in the past chose all the Chinese military exchange visitors.
If Gen. Zhang is also named to replace Gen. Xiong as military intelligence chief, Pentagon officials tell us they expect more of the same from the exchanges.
Warfare Update
A State Department official said that only one of the two Chinese colonels who wrote the 1999 book "Unrestricted Warfare," visited the United States as part of the International Visitors Program.
Col. Wang Xiangsui was in the United States from March 6 to March 24 as part of the State Department program, but his co-author, Col. Qiao Liang, did not take part. The official said Col. Wang was identified by the department as a "professor" and the director of a Chinese strategic studies center.
The official had no details on Col. Wang's visit.
The two colonels' book has raised concerns among Pentagon officials about Chinese military strategy and whether it supports the use of state-sponsored terrorism, as advocated in "Unrestricted Warfare."
The book stated that China must employ all forms of warfare, including "a traditional terror war" in waging war.
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