The current dispute focuses on the Senkakus (known by China as the Diaoyus), a group of small uninhabited islands approximately equidistant between mainland China and the Japanese island of Okinawa. Beijing and Tokyo both claim sovereignty over the islands. But Japan has exercised continuous administrative control over the islands since the US returned control to the Japanese in 1972.

In 2012, China began to actively challenge Japan’s claims to uncontested sovereignty by conducting Coast Guard patrols near the islands — sometimes supported by a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) naval presence. In November 2013, China upped the ante by declaring an air defence identification zone (ADIZ) that included the Senkakus, prompting added concerns about the potential for a direct clash between East Asia’s two major powers.

Some analysts view recent developments with genuine foreboding.

On 13 February, senior US naval intelligence officer James Fanell issued a public warning: China’s military exercises in late 2013 were designed to overwhelm Japanese forces in the East China Sea. Drawing on open source Chinese publications, Fanell asserted that Mission Action 2013 — a large scale Chinese amphibious and cross military region exercise — signalled that the PLA ‘has been given the new task to be able to conduct a short, sharp war to destroy Japanese forces in the East China Sea, followed with what can only be expected, a seizure of the Senkakus or even the southern Ryukyus’.

Are Fanell’s claims credible? Our review of dozens of reports in Chinese military media paints a very different picture. Mission Action 2013 was not a sudden, short attack. Rather, it was a series of three joint exercises launched by the PLA over a six-week period during September and October, representing an extended campaign in a high intensity conflict. The operations were a continuation of PLA training evident since 1996. The exercises explicitly depicted an unidentified enemy that had attacked China. They focused on honing the command and control of joint operations with significant civilian support in a ‘complex electromagnetic environment’ — and could presumably be applied to an assault on any island within reach of land-based Chinese aircraft.

But they were clearly well in excess of what would have been required to occupy undefended islands. More important, none of the exercises involved military action needed to defend against the inevitable counterattacks that would follow such overt aggression.

The first exercise with 17,000 troops began on 10 September, while a simulated enemy was conducting air strikes and electronic jamming on the mainland. Units from a division in the Fujian area assaulted an enemy-defended beach in Guangdong province. Navy and Army vessels transported the units, who were supported by Army aviation, special operation forces, Air Force units and naval artillery.

The second exercise launched on 22 September and commanded by an Air Force general, included more than 10,000 personnel. It involved nearly 100 bombers, fighters, early warning, reconnaissance, and refueling aircraft that conducted an air raid and information/electronic warfare attack on a target ‘thousands of kilometers away’. Enemy forces responded with a major counterattack.

The third exercise, involving about 20,000 personnel, began in Guangdong province on 11 October and portrayed China to be under direct attack. PLA forces focussed on a forced landing in Fujian by a regiment of an amphibious mechanised infantry division. Navy and Army amphibious vessels and a civilian roll-on roll-off ship transported the division.

Overall, the exercises highlighted China’s increased capability and will to defend Chinese territory. Such exercises no doubt trigger anxiety on the part of China’s maritime neighbours, but Chinese planners conceptualise them as part of a far more robust and conventional deterrence posture than China was able to mount in previous decades.

If the PLA wanted to attack the Senkakus, the operation would not look like Mission Action 2013. Moreover, any attack begs the issue of how China would defend and supply forces isolated on islands 200 miles from its coast. The military leadership also knows that such actions would more than likely result in a US–Japan air-sea onslaught, which they are not confident that they could successfully counter.

The Chinese may one day prove capable of the highly coercive actions outlined by Fanell, but the PLA does not want to face the prospect of a humiliating defeat. Mission Action 2013 was not a ‘bolt from the blue’ or a surgical strike, but it demonstrated the PLA’s determination to protect Chinese territory from external aggression. The image of a ‘short sharp war’ might play well in worst-case scenarios, but is it realistic to imagine that China will oblige those drawn to such dire forecasts? Far more likely, China’s intention in Mission Action 2013 was to underscore yet again that deterrence is its preeminent objective.

Jonathan D. Pollack is a Senior Fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center and the Center for East Asia Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution.

Dennis J. Blasko is an independent China military analyst and former Army Attaché at the US Embassy, Beijing.

This article was first published here by the Brookings Institution.