Podcast: Dean Cheng on “The Challenge of China: Lawfare, Technology, and More”
Over the past several years one of the most popular speakers at our annual LENS conference has been Mr. Dean Cheng. His luncheon presentation on “The Challenge of China: Lawfare, Technology, and More,” at out the 30th Annual National Security Law conference was another hit.
I’m pleased to tell you that the video of his remarks is now available for viewing/listening is here. This year in honor of the 30th anniversary of our conference, he does something of a retrospective of “how far China has come in the past 30 years of the LENS Conference.”
You’ll want to listen to his entire presentation, but here are a few snippets:
At one level, basic capabilities-wise, submitted for your consideration, in 1995, the Chinese navy had 18 destroyers. It had still 160 torpedo boats, something that John F. Kennedy would have been familiar with. The PLA Air Force in 1995 had about 25 Su-27 flanker-type fighter aircraft. It had 3,000 J-6 Farmers, which is the equivalent of the MiG-19.
To give you a sense, and this is 1995– the MiG-19 was contemporary to the American F-100 Super Sabre. It had 500 J-7 MiG-21s. This was the Chinese military we confronted in 1995.
The Chinese economy on a good day was still probably not in the top 20 economies of the world. There was an earlier excellent presentation on space. In 1995, we were still working with the Chinese to launch American satellite payloads on Chinese rockets.
Fast-forward to today– in 2025, and this is by no means a comprehensive overview, just to give you a sense– the Chinese navy today has three aircraft carriers, 31 Type 052D destroyers, which are comparable to the US Arleigh Burke class, our cutting-edge destroyers, six Type 55 cruisers, which are comparable, roughly, to a Ticonderoga class, but actually is more recently built and more modern. And that is by no means the entire Chinese navy. That’s just the destroyers and cruisers. So they have literally dozens and dozens of frigates and no more motor torpedo boats.
The PLA Air Force has 450 J-11s, which is the equivalent of the Su-27. They have 600 J-10s, which is F-16-like fighter, and over 300 J-20 fifth-generation fighter aircraft.
Dean lays out China’s accomplishments in outer space over the last three decades:
From being a nation that might be able to launch somebody else’s satellites, China today fields complete constellations across all the major portfolios. They were the third nation to deploy a position navigation and timing constellation after GPS and GLONASS. They did it ahead of Europe. They have a human-rated space flight program, which Europe does not have.
[The Chinese] are deploying three [satellite] constellations, each currently projected to be over 15,000 satellites. And in fact, the Chinese are pretty explicit in saying, we are competing with and, hopefully, will drive out of business Mr. Elon Musk and Starlink in terms of providing satellite– internet satellite bandwidth around the world to a range of customers.
Some things do not change:
So with this growth, there are, nonetheless, certain points of constancy. From the Chinese Communist Party’s perspective, their core interests have not changed. The core interests remain– one, keeping the CCP in power; two, what the Chinese termed national sovereignty and territorial integrity, which is why Taiwan matters– Taiwan is not going away as an issue anytime soon– but also, why Tibet is an issue, why Xinjiang is an issue; and finally, sustained economic growth because as the CCP leadership understands, staying in power is only partly a function of repression and authoritarianism.
He later adds the observations below which will be of particular interest to lawyers:
[The] the point here is that for the foreseeable future, the Chinese will be a factor on legal issues, on ethics issues, certainly on national security issues, and at that nexus point of legal warfare because legal warfare is part of political warfare is part of how the Chinese are shaping how we think about the question and what language that question is going to be considered in. And hopefully, one of the takeaways from this– hopefully, one of the takeaways from the broader discussion here — is the recognition that it’s not all about bombs and bytes, but also about the law and legality as one of the battlefields that we confront the Chinese on
Obviously, this is a podcast that any student of world affairs will not want to miss! Again, you can find it here.
The views expressed by guest speakers do not necessarily reflect my views or those of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security, or Duke University. (See also here).
Remember what we like to say on Lawfire®: gather the facts, examine the law, evaluate the arguments – and then decide for yourself!
Watch this space for additional podcasts from the conference. Some presentations, however, were for attendees only, so save the date to attend LENS 31 set for 27-28 Feb 2026
