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Assassin's mace

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Legendary ancient Chinese weapon

A photo of the ancient Chinese assassin's mace
The assassin's mace of ancient China was a rectangular club designed to break sharp weapons in combat by hitting them

An assassin's mace (Chinese: 杀手锏; pinyin: Shāshǒujiǎn) is a legendary ancient Chinese weapon. It is now used metaphorically to describe certain Chinese weapons systems. The term has its roots in ancient Chinese folklore, which recounts how a hero wielding such a weapon managed to overcome a far more powerful adversary. The eponymous assassin's mace was a club which was used to break an enemy's blade in combat, or a hand mace that could impact through an enemy's armor. According to American military analysts, the term is now used in China to describe a specific type of military system that demonstrates asymmetrical warfare and anti-access/area denial capabilities to counter the United States. Whether assassin's mace refers to a government-defined class of weapons or is merely used in the Chinese government to describe these weapons is disputed.

Etymology

The term shashoujian is composed of three characters that can be literally translated as 'kill', 'hand', and 'mace' when read separately. However, the combination of those characters is often interpreted in different ways when translated to English (as Chinese has many two-character words), with the Foreign Broadcast Information Service using over 15 different translations from 1996 to 2005. Typically, shashoujian is rendered in English as 'assassin's mace', where the two character compound shashou is interpreted as 'assassin' and jian is interpreted as 'mace'. However, the term can also be translated as 'killing mace', as the word shoujian refers to a small hand mace used in ancient China to kill heavily armoured enemies. The definite origin of the combined term shashoujian is elusive, but has its roots in Chinese folklore where the term is typically used to describe a secret weapon of surprising power used to overcome a more powerful adversary.

Modern usage

While the term as a figure of speech has been around for centuries and has been revived in contemporary Chinese pop culture, one of the main disputes is on its usage in a modern military context. The term is frequently used in Chinese military contexts to describe new weapons systems, and military analysts Bruzdzinski and Michael Pillsbury interpret this as technical terminology used by China to denote a new class of weapons that are designed to counter a superior adversary. In contrast, Alastair Johnston disputes this deeper meaning, describing it as being a popular expression roughly equivalent to the English idioms "silver bullet" or "trump card", and means anything which ensures success.

Application to military systems

Proponents of the term assassin's mace to describe Chinese military development say that the Chinese government uses the term to describe a group of technologies or strategies that are specifically designed to counter the United States and displace it as a world power. Rush Doshi suggests that People's Liberation Army strategists developed the concept of these weapons to displace the United States as a world superpower and that fulfilling the concept necessitated the development of the People's Liberation Army Navy Submarine Force, sea mines, and anti-ship ballistic missiles. Doshi and Bruzdzinski also describe assassin's mace as being specifically focused on asymmetrical warfare and anti-access/area denial tactics.

Grand strategy

Doshi argues in his book The Long Game that China seeks to displace the United States as the world's dominant military and economic superpower. He models this as a reaction to what he calls the "traumatic trifecta", of the Tiananmen Square massacre, the Gulf War, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which changed China's view of America from a potential cooperator against a Soviet threat to the primary threat to China. In Doshi's view, the American reaction to the Tiananmen square massacre showed that the United States wanted to undermine China's political system, Iraq's lopsided defeat in Gulf War demonstrated that the US could have the military ability to defeat China, and the end of the Soviet Union left China almost alone in the world as a socialist state. Doshi says that this caused China's military to re-orient itself against the United States by developing assassin's mace weaponry that could counter America's conventional superiority.

Submarines

The Chinese Type 039A submarine
The People's Liberation Army Navy has built 17 diesel-electric Type 039A submarines.

Doshi and Bruzdzinski agree that submarines are a key component of assassin's mace weaponry, but propose different reasons for how they fit into that paradigm. Doshi describes assassin's mace submarines as those that can attack American carrier battle groups using anti-ship missiles and sea mines, while being weak in land-attack capabilities. In Doshi's view, the assassin's mace concept requires China's navy to use a mix of diesel electric and nuclear submarines in contrast to the American policy of only using nuclear submarines. Doshi proposes that China chose to incorporate diesel-electric submarines into their fleet as an asymmetrical weapon because they are cheaper and quieter than the nuclear submarines used by the United States. While diesel-electric submarines do not have the range of a nuclear submarine, this would be an acceptable trade-off in a conflict close to Chinese territory where the submarines are used to deny American access to the Asia-Pacific region.

To contrast, Jason Bruzdzinski describes nuclear ballistic missile submarines as being "the shashoujian of the Chinese navy". Bruzdzinski's view is that such a submarine would be stealthy and have a large range, meaning that it would be resistant against pre-emptive strikes and serve as a nuclear deterrent. Bruzdzinski cites Chinese analysts Liu Xiaodu and Kang Fashun as supporting the view that the threat of nuclear weapons are able to deter a technologically superior force such as the United States from entering into a conflict with China.

Sea mines

Andrew S. Erickson considers sea mines as being a core part of assassin's mace as they are able to cost-effectively deny access to an area. According to Erickson, Chinese military strategists describe sea mines as "easy to lay and difficult to sweep" and label sea mines as assassin's mace weaponry, having invested significant resources into developing them. Chinese military analysts have also said that attacks utilizing sea mines against the USS Tripoli and USS Princeton during the Gulf War demonstrated significant vulnerability of American ships to this type of weaponry.

Missiles

The Dongfeng-17 mounted on a road-mobile missile launcher.
The DF-17 is designed to launch a hypersonic glide vehicle, a kind of missile that takes an unpredictable path to hit its target and would be more difficult for the United States to intercept.

Anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs) are considered to be another major assassin's mace weapon. The Science of Second Artillery Campaigns, a textbook published by People's Liberation Army Rocket Force, says that ASBMs should be used as assassin's mace weapons to keep away enemy aircraft carriers. Chinese analyst Dong Lu describes aircraft carriers as a tool of the rich and powerful states that want to be aggressive. Due to what Dong describes as asymmetry in defensive versus offensive technologies, ASBMs can be an effective way for poor states to defeat or prevent military intervention from an aircraft carrier.

See also

Notes

  1. that is, where a usually weaker combatant uses unconventional military tactics to defeat a generally superior foe.
  2. that is, denying enemy's forces access to a certain operating environment.

References

  1. Pillsbury, Michael (January 2000). "China Debates the Future Security Environment". National Defense University Press. Archived from the original on June 20, 2003. Retrieved 27 August 2013. Chinese writings on the future of warfare and the revolution in military affairs (RMA) frequently use three Chinese ideograms to signify something that can be used in a war that will surprise and overwhelm the enemy, vital parts of exploiting the RMA. The three ideograms (sha shou jian) literally mean "kill," "hand," and an ancient word for club, or "mace." U.S. Government translations have rendered this term as "trump card," "magic weapon," or "killer mace." None of these translations is wrong, but none captures the full meaning. The importance of the term can be seen in its continued usage over time, both originally in traditional Chinese novels and ancient statecraft texts, as well as today in the daily military newspaper. Behind these three ideograms may lie a concept of victory in warfare through possession of secret weapons that strike the enemy's most vulnerable point (called an acupuncture point), at precisely the decisive moment. This entire concept of how RMA technology can win a war cannot be fully conveyed by its simple English translation of "trump card."
  2. ^ Scobell, Andrew; Wortzel, Larry; Bruzdzinski, Jason. "Demystifying Shashoujian: China's "Assassin's Mace" Concept". Civil-Military Change in China: Elites, Institutes, and Ideas After the 16th Party Congress. Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute. ISBN 1-58487-165-2. Retrieved 9 February 2022.
  3. Khan, Saif Ul Islam (2017-04-04). Assassin's Mace: A Chinese Game Changer. Rohan Vij. ISBN 978-93-85563-03-4.
  4. ^ Ho, Soyoung. "Panda Slugger, the dubious scholarship of Michael Pillsbury, the China hawk with Rumsfeld's ear". Washington Monthly. Archived from the original on 14 February 2015. Retrieved 3 February 2015. And what about the "Assassin's Mace," one of Pillsbury's major preoccupations? Here, Pillsbury appears to have taken a common Chinese term, shashoujian, and decided, based on his own unfamiliarity with it ("I first saw this unusual term in…1995," he writes in a 2003 article) that it indicates what he calls a "secret project." In fact, though, the term has been around for centuries and has been revived in contemporary Chinese pop culture, a slangy phrase that appears in articles about everything from soccer to romance. Pillsbury cites public speeches by Chinese leaders and articles in Chinese newspapers that speak of developing "shashoujian" weapons, but he never explains how this adds up to evidence of a secret program. It's as if a Chinese researcher, hearing a U.S. official speaking of a need for "kick-ass weapons," were to become confused by the term "kick-ass" and conclude that there must be a secret "kick-ass weapons" program. In short, Pillsbury has identified a secret program that, by all indications, is literally no more than a figure of speech.
  5. Hambling, David (2 July 2009). "China Looks to Undermine U.S. Power, With 'Assassin's Mace'". Wired.com. Retrieved 27 August 2013. Sha Shou Jian a popular expression used by sports commentators, businessmen and even in romantic advice columns. Alastair Johnston of Harvard University criticizes the way Washington pundits want to make the Assassin's Mace "mysterious and exotic": it's simply the decisive, winning quality. In sports, the Assassin's Mace may be the key goal-scorer; in business, it's any quality that puts you ahead of the competition; in love, it might be the subtle smile that wins over the object of your affections. Johnston suggests that a fairly idiomatic translation would be "silver bullet"...
  6. Ho, Soyoung (July–August 2006). "Panda Slugger". Washington Monthly. Archived from the original on 14 February 2015. Retrieved 27 August 2013. The term "assassin's mace," more commonly translated as "trump card" (shashoujian) is, according to Pillsbury, integral to a Chinese notion of "inferior defeats superior."
  7. Pillsbury, Michael (2015). The Hundred-Year Marathon: China' Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower. New York: St. Martin's Griffin. pp. 134–155.
  8. ^ Doshi, Rush (2021). The Long Game: China's Grand Strategy to Displace American Order. : Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780197527917.001.0001. ISBN 9780197645482.
  9. Xiaodu, Liu; Fashun, Kang (May 25, 2002). "A Certain Brigade Builds Itself into an All-round, Perfectly Masterful 'Assassin's Mace' Unit". Huojianbing Bao.
  10. ^ Erickson, Andrew S.; Murray, William; Goldstein, Lyle (2009). Chinese mine warfare: a PLA Navy "assassin's mace" capability (PDF). Newport, R.I.: China Maritime Studies Institute, U.S. Naval War College. ISBN 978-1-884733-63-5. Archived (PDF) from the original on April 25, 2022. Retrieved 13 April 2022.
  11. Fu, Jinzhu (March 1992). "Mine Warfare in the Gulf War". Modern Ships (75): 30–33.
  12. Zhou, Yi (March 1, 2002). "Aircraft carriers face five major assassins". Junshi Wenzhai: 4–6.
  13. Yu, Jixun (2004). The Science of Second Artillery Campaigns. Beijing: Liberation Army Press.
  14. ^ Erickson, Andrew S. (2013). Chinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile (ASBM) Development: Drivers, Trajectories, and Strategic Implications. Washington, DC: Jamestown Foundation. p. 36. ISBN 978-0983084266. JSTOR 10.7864/j.ctt1dgn67n.
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