The evidence is mixed when attempting to assess whether the PLA and Chinese defense industries can assimilate new technology. Beijing needs medium technology components for its armored vehicles and has depended on foreign countries for the engines, transmissions, drive trains, and weapon sensor systems. But the PLA has yet to be able to develop an indigenous turbine engine-transmission system for its armored vehicles. Assistance from Germany, Great Britain, the United States (before 1989), Russia, and the Ukraine failed to help China's defense industries in this endeavor. [45] In May 1998, the PLA tried to get access to world-class, modern defense electronics by sponsoring a Defense Electronics Exhibition in Beijing. This show was the product of a 2-year effort originated in the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense and the Electronic Warfare Department of the PLA General Staff Department. But it was delayed for almost 2 years from its conception by bureaucratic in-fighting among several SOEs and ministries in China. The experience of the planners for the Defense Electronics Exhibition demon- strates what may be the greatest impediment faced by China in incorporating new technology and developing new systems-the weight of its own bureaucracy and the seeming inability to change. [46] The best example of how China's management system and bureaucracy seem to defy change and innovation is probably in the book by former The Los Angeles Times correspondent to China, Jim Mann. In Beijing Jeep, Jim Mann documents the problems in quality control and management encountered by the Jeep Corporation in establishing a joint venture to assemble kits in China. [47] Simple assembly line processes and quality control are alien concepts to Chinese managers. Even today, years after the Jeep plant in China began operation, one can still see newly assembled Jeep Cherokees all over China with doors hung improperly and that don't close flush. China still makes a motorcycle from the same assembly line that produced the 1937 BMW used by the German Army in World War II. But all Chinese that operate the motorcycles will advise that one should buy a used rather than a new one because the bearings invariably go bad within the first 1,000 kilometers of use. Examples more relevant to the defense sector can be found in China's attempts to develop a new destroyer using General Electric LM 2500 gas turbine engines. The ships were designed and partially built before Chinese naval engineers discovered that they had designed engine spaces too small to accommodate the engines. [48] A 1989 visit to the Changxindian Armored Vehicle Plant south of Beijing by the U.S. Defense Science Board was also revealing. Despite the presence of modern, four-axis milling machines in the plant, Chinese workers were carefully filing and milling cylinders and bearings for armored personnel carriers by hand. When one U.S. industrial engineer, through an interpreter, asked a workman why the automated machinery wasn't used, the worker responded that he had been trained by his own father to do the work by hand. The automated equipment had never been used. Perhaps the most relevant examples of the seeming inability of the Chinese industrial bureaucracy to accommodate change and innovation is that provided by a U.S. manager from a major aerospace corporation who deals regularly with three Chinese aircraft companies. Although the Chinese workers are able to master good sub-assembly processes on parts for the United States, they require continuous supervision by Western quality assurance specialists. According to the U.S. corporate manufacturing representative, the fear of failure by Chinese engineers and workers prevents them from developing any product improvement ideas. Chinese engineers and workers will duplicate anything they are given, but won't innovate or create. This fear of innovation, according to the American, stems from the system of criticism and punishment by Communist Party organizations built into the Chinese corporate structure in SOEs. [49] Part of the problem with Chinese manufacturing, according to the U.S. aircraft corporation representative, is that industrial management in China still relies on 1950s Soviet styles. This involves "batch building" a full order of aircraft in advance based on a state-planned and dictated order for parts and materials. As a consequence of this system, there are no direct lines of accountability for quality control, and no cost-cutting discussions or steps available to mid-level management. There is no competitive bidding for contracts, workers are redundant, and schedules continually slip because state planning doesn't have a fixed required-delivery date for products. If production is late, the state plan is simply revised. China's older engineers are so immersed in this system that they seem unable to change their ways. At the same time, according to this experienced observer, China's own cultural superiority keeps Chinese engineers from accepting change. Young managers stay risk-averse and are reluctant to change or improve on the system. The future of China's industry was painted as so bleak by the individual that I interviewed that he characterized China's aircraft industry as containing "pockets of adequacy, but no pockets of excellence." Despite all of these problems, China is still working hard to build a powerful military. The implications of this effort for the United States are quite serious in the long term. Back to Table of Contents China's Military Potential Back to SSI List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1998 by US Army War College. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com