Reality Check

This page is being created for continuity. A long time ago, before 2000 we started discussing China as a threat to the US. Later, that discussion continued (around 2000 or so ) on Anomalies.Net. After my "retirement" from the site, most of the News articles were relegated to the trashbin there, and while Olav kept those threads intact, they are now in an archive area with no access to the public (or no posting allowed anyway). In the mean time those threads have continued on the http://www.transasianaxis.com site. For meaningful discussion, I would urge you to go there to that site, and find "The China Threat" thread continuing. For historical reasons, I've kept everything, including the IP addresses on this page. I'll also be posting some similar things, to allow you to continue research along these lines (including "The World At War" threads as they originated on Anomalies.net). The original thread is located here: http://communities.anomalies.net/forum/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/213952#Post213952 The continuation of this thread will be found on the TAA site here: http://www.transasianaxis.com/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=7 Rick Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-07-08 03:25:00 140.32.120.18 The China Threat Originally, I started the thread "Ground War in the US" to INCLUDE China as part of the threat of such a thing. However, in recent days I've come into some information that caused me to start doing some hard research on China. In doing so, I've found some things that scared me a bit. I'm not easily scared about anything, cautious, yes, scared no. In the research, I discovered a book I recommend that folks read. The book is: "The China Threat: How the People's Republic Targets America", Bill Gertz, (C) 2000, first paperback printing 2002, Regnery Publishing. ISBN 0-89526-187-1. Included in the book is an appendix which is full of documentation similar to the things I would personally like to see included in all such "theories" but is rarely included. To me, this book is not a theory, but documentation of the threat China currently poses to the US. In the introduction alone, it verifies and mirrors many of the things I've stated about China over the past year or so in the "Ground War" thread. A few days ago, I was "contacted" about my thread by a certain organization and asked to give them information to verify certain things I'd stated. I have done so, and they thanked me, and said they appreciated the work many of us have done to collect this data. Apparently, my thread has struck more than one nerve somewhere. I was frankly surprised that this information wasn't put together by someone else. It has been my contention all along that while our intelligence organizations are fully capable of collecting the right intelligence at the right time, it also my contention that during the previous administration they were constrained from doing so. This book not only verifies this, but backs it up with factual documentation. And with the "contact", it confirmed for me that "alert citizens" are as helpful as anyone in collecting intelligence. It just took more than a year for them to get around to reading it. (Shakes head....) Thus... anything you have on China, specifically RELATED to China as Threat to the United States, please post it here. That includes books and their information, articles, news reports and anything DIRECTLY related to China as a threat. What doesn't belong here. Opinions stating that "China isn't a threat". Facts proving they are not a threat is fine, if they are facts. Anything from the PRC that says they aren't a threat - well... don't put it here. Thanks **DONOTDELETE** () 2002-07-08 05:22:00 162.119.232.100 Re: The China Threat Considering US policy, has anyone considered, or looked into the economic costs that would be incurred by China, or the US if adirect military conflict between both nations ensued? It seems that such a reality must be accounted for in establishing credible threat assesment critera. Blind belligerence aside, most nations look to secure their soverigenty and expand their resource base- both of which would be threatened and/or denied in a hot war where both sides are armed with WMD. I am not suggesting that a war with China is not possible, I am suggesting that it is too costly (in terms of opportunity) to be a valid concern at this time. A serious cost-benefit analysis of military confrontation between any two groups should be done to adquetly assess the actual level of threat. Just my balanced view, delete me if you must, but it should be kept as a reminder. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-07-08 05:37:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat Yes. Might I suggest, Clark, you go read that book I suggested, then come back. Thanks Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-07-08 23:39:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat TO TAKE TAIWAN, FIRST KILL A CARRIER The Jamestown Foundation | July 8, 2002 | Richard D. Fisher, Jr. China's communist leadership has long anticipated that to militarily subdue democratic Taiwan it will first need to win a battle against the United States. The People's Liberation Army (PLA) is now preparing for one specific, and key, battle. It is developing methods to disable or sink American aircraft carriers and gathering the specific force packages to do so. With such a strike, Beijing hopes to quickly terminate American involvement in a Taiwan War. SHIFTING PRIORITIES The early 1990s saw much evidence of carrier-related research and nationalist-political advocacy, particularly from the PLA Navy (PLAN), to build a Chinese aircraft carrier. But, following the political crises of 1995 and 1996, which saw the Clinton administration deploy two battle groups around the carriers Independence and Nimitz near Taiwan in response to threatening PLA exercises in March 1996, sinking a U.S. carrier became much more pressing than building one. In developing that capability, Beijing hopes to deter U.S. military assistance to Taiwan, and by actually sinking one, to terminate U.S. attempts to save the island. This strategy follows from the bias--a potentially dangerous one for China--that America's aversion to military casualties equates to its unwillingness to risk a real war over the fate of Taiwan. This is apparently a widely held view. It was expressed most boldly by Major General Huang Bin, a professor at the PLA National Defense University, in Hong Kong's Ta Kung Pao daily newspaper on May 13: "Missiles, aircraft, and submarines all are means that can be used to attack an aircraft carrier. We have the ability to deal with an aircraft carrier that dares to get into our range of fire. Once we decide to use force against Taiwan, we definitely will consider an intervention by the United States. The United States likes vain glory; if one of its aircraft carrier should be attacked and destroyed, people in the United States would begin to complain and quarrel loudly, and the U.S. president would find the going harder and harder." SUMMONING COURAGE General Huang's statement is in fact not especially audacious, considering that since the mid-1990s the weakness of aircraft carriers and the methods to attack them has been a frequent topic in China's military press. It would appear that the PLA is mustering its courage, trying to convince itself that it can with some success attack U.S. carriers. In October and November 2000, for example, after Russian Pacific-based fighters and bombers made surprise runs against the carrier Kitty Hawk, the People's Liberation Army Daily could barely conceal its glee, devoting three articles to the incident. GATHERING FORCES The PLA's apparently growing confidence is likely bolstered by the fact that it is also gathering the forces needed to confront U.S. carriers at a useful distance from the Mainland. --Sensor Package. Finding an aircraft carrier group is aLMOST as important as attacking it. Understanding this, the PLA is investing in multiple layers of reconnaissance and surveillance systems. In space, it is expected to soon deploy the first of new generations of high-resolution electro-optical satellites and radar satellites, which are especially useful in piercing cloud cover. The PLA has been developing over-the-horizon (OTH) radar with ranges up to thousands of kilometers for a long time. And its Air Force will soon take delivery of its Russian A-50E AWACS to find ships at sea. But because radar can be jammed, it is likely that the PLA will also use hundreds of small fishing boats, as well as agents in Japan, to track U.S. naval forces. --Air Strike Package. The PLA Air Force (PLAAF) is now beginning to cooperate with the Navy in conducting naval strikes. Later in this decade, elderly PLA Naval Air Force H-6 (Tu-16) bombers will be supplanted by eighty to 100 PLAAF Russian Sukhoi Su-30MKK and about twenty indigenous Xian JH-7A fighter bombers. Both will carry long-range antiradar or antiship missiles, some of which will have supersonic speeds that can defeat U.S. close-in weapon systems (CIWS) for defense against such missiles. Both will also have new long-range self-guided air-to-air missiles (AAM) like the Russian R-77 or the indigenous Project 129 AAM, that will approach the usefulness of U.S. missiles like the AIM-120 AMRAAM. This means that PLAAF fighters will soon have half a chance fighting their way to their targets. --Sub-Strike Package. According to Russian press reports, China signed a contract on May 2 to purchase eight Project 636 KILO class conventional submarines, to be delivered in five years. The PLAN already has four KILOs, including two Project 636s, with advanced quieting technology that makes them very difficult to detect. The PLAN's new KILOs, however, will be armed with the Russian Novator CLUB antiship missile system. The CLUB-N is a 300km range cruise missile that looks like the American TOMOHAWK and can be configured for land-attack missions. The CLUB-S has a subsonic first stage with a 220km range, but also uses a rocket-powered second stage to defeat CIWS. In addition, the PLAN may now be building its fifth Project 039 or SONG class conventional submarine. Early difficulties with this class appear to have been solved: Series production is centering on an upgraded Project 039A version. For most of this decade, the PLAN will also have some twenty older MING class conventional submarines and approximately five older Project 091 HAN class nuclear-powered attack submarines. While these may be less effective than the KILOs or the SONGs, they will nevertheless greatly complicate the task of the defenders. --Surface Strike Package. The PLAN is adding two new modernized Sovremenniy class destroyers to two already acquired. Armed with their hard-to-intercept supersonic 300km range YAKHONT and the 120km range MOSKIT missiles, these ships would likely wait behind the submarines and attacking aircraft. But the PLA may also be considering purchasing a SLAVA class cruiser from Ukraine. These are armed with sixteen 550km range GRANIT supersonic antiship missiles. POSSIBLE PLA ANTICARRIER FORCES BY 2007-10, Surveillance/Targeting --2-4 A-50E Awacs --2-4 Optical and Radar Satellites --Over The Horizon Radar Air Strike --80-100 Su-30MKK w 4x antiship missiles --20 JH-7A w 2x antiship missiles --?? J-10 w 2x antiship missiles Sub Strike --4-12 Kilo SS --4-6 Song SS --20 Ming SS --5 Han SSN Surface Strike --4 Sovremenniy DDG Missile Strike --DF-21 intermediate range ballistic missile --DF-15 short range ballistic missile --Yakhont antiship missile --Sunburn antiship missile --Club Sub-launched antiship missiles --Air-launched antiship missiles --Other Strike Options. Another option mentioned in PLA literature is to attack carriers with long-range ballistic missiles. The former Soviet Union had considered this in the 1960s. With proper targeting, satellite navigation guidance and perhaps an enhanced radiation warhead, ballistic missile strikes could disable a carrier. The PLA can also be expected to make great use of deep-sea mines, such as its rocket-propelled EM-52, which could break the keel of a large ship. In addition, the PLA may use Special Forces to attempt to disable carriers in port and attack U.S. aircraft on foreign bases. This is especially critical, given that carriers now rely increasingly on land-based Navy and Air Force support aircraft. CAN THEY DO IT? It took the former Soviet Union more than twenty years to build a credible threat to U.S. carriers. China is trying to do so within this decade. To its credit, the PLA is rapidly gathering the right kinds of forces. Skeptics, however, will always question whether the PLA can use them in a sufficiently coordinated fashion to create maximum stress on carrier defenses. Once it has such forces in hand, the PLA will then have to marry layers of long-range sensors to force packages of air, submarine and surface ships armed with new long-range missiles. It may be that the Ukranian carrier Varyag, now being refurbished in a guarded Dalian shipyard, will best serve as a target ship to refine PLA carrier-attack doctrine and tactics. If properly used, the forces China is gathering could--at a minimum--stop one U.S. carrier battle group. IMPLICATIONS FOR WASHINGTON In a surprise attack scenario, given its strategic dependence on naval forces in East Asia, the United States might be able to muster only one carrier to support Taiwan. Strategic and economic pressures have reduced its fleet to thirteen carriers with smaller and less capable air wings. Former distinct fighter and attack aircraft are now melded in one platform, the F/A-18E/F. While this might be a convenient economical compromise for the Navy, it is not clearly superior to the Su-30MKK. Since 1999, the long-range antisubmarine function has been taken from the superb S-3 VIKING aircraft, and the number of E-2C HAWKEYE radar warning aircraft have been cut from five to four per air wing. It is time to reverse this trend. It is time to consider the systems needed to defeat China's gathering anticarrier forces if deterrence is to be sustained on the Taiwan Strait. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-07-08 23:42:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat (Personal experience shows that most of the attacks I've dealt with are from North Korea, China and former Russian satellite countries... in that order). Israel, Hong Kong Hotbed for Cyberattacks-Study iWon | July 8, 2002 SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Which part of the world has the dubious distinction of being the most active hotbed of computer hacking? Among the most highly wired economies, more cyber attacks originate from Israel and Hong Kong on a per-Internet-user basis than anywhere else, while Kuwait and Iran top the list of the category of countries with fewer Internet users, according to a study released on Monday. Overall, the United States generates by far the most cyber attacks, followed by Germany, South Korea, China and France, according to a report from Riptech Inc., a managed security service provider based in Alexandria, Virginia. The most likely corporate targets were power and energy companies, the study said. Political analysts have expressed concern hackers target such companies to try to maximize the impact of any attack. The Riptech study was based on a miniscule sample compared to the number of companies connected to the Internet, but because it was based on computer logs of attacks, which are not widely tracked or aggregated, it provides useful insight into global trends, industry analysts said. Riptech declined to speculate on why some countries were more active as the launchpads of computer attacks. "We try not to speculate as to motive," said Elad Yoran, co-founder and executive vice president of Riptech. "We want to keep the report as objective as possible." But he said, "it's interesting that countries that are less well-developed attack at a 50-percent higher rate on a per-person basis." Cyber attacks, which include everything from the spread of viruses to hacks used to cripple Web sites, were 28 percent higher in the first half of the year than attacks recorded during the second half of last year, a projected annual growth rate of 64 percent, the study found. Companies, on average, suffered 32 attacks per week, up from 25 attacks per week during the second half of last year. Most attacks happened on Wednesdays and Thursdays, the study said, without offering an explanation as to why. The report was based on data collected from computer logs at about 400 Riptech customers spread across more than 30 countries. Riptech monitors customer logs and traces attacks back to their purported source. Determining where attacks come from is complicated, said Tim Belcher, chief technology officer at Riptech. While most attacks can be traced back to what is believed to be the source country, it is possible for malicious hackers to hide their exact location. Still, 93 percent of the attackers monitored in the study were only active on one day, leading the company to believe they were launching attacks directly rather than going through another "zombie" system to hide their tracks, Belcher said. Forty percent of the attacks in the first half of this year appeared to have come from the United States, followed by 7.6 percent from Germany, 7.4 percent from South Korea and 6.9 percent from China. Although the United States is the source of most of the attacks, it also has the largest economy and a large share of Internet users. To get a more fair representation, the study also looked at attacks based on population of Internet users in each country, Belcher said. Of countries with more than 1 million Internet users, Israel had about 33 attacks per 10,000 users, followed by Hong Kong with 22 attacks per 10,000 users. Of countries with fewer than 1 million Internet users but more than 100,000, Kuwait had 50 attacks per 10,000 users, followed by Iran with 30 attacks per 10,000 users. ATTACKS DOWN IN THE UNITED STATES A second survey, also released on Monday, showed reports of cyberattacks may be waning in the United States. Of the nearly 3,500 U.S. companies and security professionals polled for the InformationWeek magazine survey, 44 percent said they experienced a virus, worm or Trojan horse attack, in which malicious software masquerades as a legitimate program, down from 70 percent a year ago. Reports of denial of service attacks, another common attack method that is the Internet equivalent to getting a busy signal from too many phone calls, were also down slightly, the survey found. "Although three in five firms report a security breach or espionage in the last year, the frequency of security incidents in the United States -- regardless of type -- is down in 2002," the InformationWeek survey said. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-07-08 23:43:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat US, China 'jammed each other's signals' The Strait Times (Singapore) | July 9, 2002 HONGKONG - Electronic warfare erupted recently when an unidentified US aircraft carrier, whose communications signals were interrupted by the Chinese military, retaliated by paralysing the 'enemy's' transmissions, reports said yesterday. Seen as the most severe military clash between the two countries in the past two years, the incident was also the second time that the US had crippled the Chinese military's communication capabilities in recent years. A report in the Taiwanese news portal ETtoday.com said the incident occurred during a routine military exercise by the US Navy's 7th Fleet off north-west Okinawa in Japan. A drill involving a jet fighter belonging to the carrier as well as another US EP-3 reconnaissance plane over the East China Sea was interrupted by electronic signals transmitted from a nearby Chinese warship, the report said. The US fighter plane retaliated by activating its anti-interference mechanism, leading to a brief electronic warfare of sorts between the two armed forces. Using very narrow frequency widths, the US fighter was said to have succeeded in jamming the electronic warfare equipment on board the Chinese vessel as well as bring communication at the Peoples' Liberation Army naval and army bases in the north of Fujian province to a standstill. Although media reports did not mention the precise date of the clash, the official website of the 7th Fleet indicated that one of its aircraft carriers - the Kitty Hawk - held its latest routine exercise in early May this year. There was no mention of the incident on the website. According to Hongkong's Apple Daily, this is the second time in recent years that a clash of this nature has taken place. The first took place in July 1995 during a controversial visit to the US by former Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui. Displeased about the visit, China flexed its muscles by staging a large-scale military drill at its coastal regions near the Taiwan Strait. The Clinton administration then sent out four jet fighters to the Chinese coast to suss out Beijing's real intentions, but their aerial communication was interrupted by signals transmitted by Chinese planes alerted to their presence. The US fighters retaliated by using advanced equipment to counter the signals and succeeded in blocking them. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-07-08 23:45:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat Next U.S. War - Made In China? Toogood Reports | June 25, 2002 | Toby Westerman As Americans brace themselves for terrorist activity at home, one of America's largest trading partners – China – is engaging in "a policy of intervention and naval adventurism," which could draw the U.S. into a major war in the Asia/Pacific region. China is "seeking the subservience of mainland Southeast Asia to Chinese national needs," and is "the main obstacle to democratic reform in mainland Southeast Asia today," according to a report in the China Reform Monitor, a publication of the American Foreign Policy Council. For the first time in that nation's long history, Chinese naval capability now extends into the Indian Ocean. With the cooperation of Burmese government, the Chinese navy now has the use of ports on the Bay of Bengal, with unfettered access to the wider seas to the south. Beijing's expansion is also occurring at the expense of fellow communist states. Vietnam, which, like Burma, borders China on the south, and historically has been able to defend itself against incursions of its much larger neighbor, ceded a portion of its territory to China in a secret 1999 treaty, according to China Reform Monitor. Beijing's continuing large military outlays continue to cause serious concern among its neighbors, especially to the island of Taiwan, which mainland China asserts is a renegade province. Taiwan served as the refuge for the anti-Communist forces of Nationalist Chinese leader, Chiang Kai-shek, following the communist triumph on the mainland in 1949. U.S. naval forces prevented communist forces from pursuing Nationalist troops, and remain a barrier to a mainland attack. The government on Taiwan refers to itself as the Republic of China (ROC), and, until 1971, the U.S. recognized the ROC as the sole legitimate government of China. Over the years, Taiwan has developed a market economy, and a democratic form of government. After the U.S. withdrew official diplomatic recognition of the ROC in 1978, America, nevertheless, pledged continuing military assistance to Taiwan, and confirmed its opposition to the forcible reunification of Taiwan and the mainland. Mainland China has never renounced its claim to the right to take Taiwan by force, and, consequently, Taiwan lives precariously under the threat of imminent communist Chinese invasion. Following Washington's withdrawal of diplomatic recognition, Taiwan has sought to clarify its position within the nations of the world. In 1999, then-president Lee Teng-hui declared that Taiwan had a "special state to state relationship" with the mainland, a move that comes close to a declaration of independence. The U.S. stated that it would not support an independent Taiwan, and Beijing threatened to invade the island if independence should be announced. Tensions remain high between the island and the mainland, with current Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian condemning Beijing's military build-up as a "great threat to Taiwan's survival," according to Radio Taipei International, the official broadcasting service of the ROC. U.S. ambassador to China, Charles Randt, recently reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to Taiwan, and referred to Beijing's approximately 350 missiles aimed at Taiwan, stating that they "do not help China's image as a peace seeker," Radio Taipei reported. China also has conflicting territorial claims against the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei. One of the most stunning – and contradictory – aspects of the communist Chinese build-up is the role of Russia. Despite the May 2002 declaration between U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin of a "strategic partnership" between their two nations, Moscow has – and continues to be – the single most important source of technologically sophisticated military hardware. Putin recently boasted that he has "big plans" for a substantial increase in Moscow's already considerable military cooperation with communist China. Russia, along with most of the former Soviet republics and allies, including Iran, is combining with China to form what may be called an "Eurasian empire" stretching over vast regions with incredible mineral wealth. Any confrontation with China may as well involve Russia and its allies, backed up by the region's incredible natural resources. Should Americans die in a conflict with China, much of the know-how and weaponry will have originated from our "strategic partner," Russia. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-07-08 23:49:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat This guy is ECHOING what I've been saying all along (also happens to be the author of the book I'm reading and mentioned in the first message): Inside the Ring - Mock Invasion - If India and Pakistan War, China may attack Taiwan Wash Times | 5-31-02 | Gertz; Scarborough Inside the Ring Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published 5/31/2002 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mock invasion U.S. intelligence officials have uncovered the war-game scenario for large-scale Chinese military exercises under way: An invasion of Taiwan. Communist Chinese military forces, specifically the 12th Group Army, have massed along the coast. As many as 100,000 troops, armored vehicles and amphibious ships are in the region. The maneuvers are expected to continue for six months. They will coincide with upcoming elections in Taiwan, a sign Beijing is using the war games to intimidate the breakaway island. The annual exercises are being watched closely by U.S. intelligence agencies because of recent tensions between China and Taiwan. Chen Shui-bian, president of the Republic of China (Taiwan), used the word "independence" recently in an interview with Newsweek magazine. He said Taiwan is ready for independence. Beijing has said it would use military force against Taiwan if the Taipei government makes such a declaration. One unusual feature of the war games this year is that there has been no mention of military exercises in the state-controlled press on the mainland. The only mention to date has been from Wen Wei Po, a mainland-controlled newspaper in Hong Kong. Intelligence officials are concerned that if war breaks out between India and Pakistan, which have massed troops on both sides of the border in disputed Kashmir, the Chinese military might use the war games to attack Taiwan. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-07-08 23:49:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat U.S., wary of China, outlines Asia buildup MSNBC | April 25 | Reuters WASHINGTON, April 25 — The United States, worried by China's missile build-up opposite Taiwan, is pushing ahead with plans to boost its forces in the region, according to the Pentagon's top policymaker on East Asia. In previously undisclosed remarks to a conference last month, Peter Brookes, a deputy assistant secretary of defense, said Washington was seeking ''contingency basing options'' and more access in Asia, the Pacific and beyond to be able to respond more readily to a crisis. U.S. intentions in the region are likely to figure in talks in Washington next week with China's leader-in-waiting, Hu Jintao, who arrives in Honolulu on Saturday on his first official visit to the United States. Brookes made his remarks at a closed-door conference on U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, which China deems a breakaway province risking attack if it moves toward formal independence or stalls on unification talks. Brookes' text was released to Reuters by the Pentagon this week in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. Hu, widely expected to be promoted to Communist Party general secretary in September, is expected to meet President George W. Bush on Wednesday after talks with Vice President Dick Cheney. He is also to meet Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. In his remarks to the conference in St. Petersburg, Florida, on March 12, Brookes said the United States was moving to expand the presence of U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups in the Western Pacific. Until now, U.S. Navy policy has been to maintain only one carrier battle group at all times in the Western Pacific. It is currently built around the Kitty Hawk, which is based in Yokosuka, Japan, headquarters of the U.S. Seventh Fleet. ''We are exploring options to homeport three to four additional surface combatants in the region, as well as guided-missile submarines to improve our forward deterrent posture,'' Brookes said, without specifying where the additional vessels might be based. ''These changes mean a U.S. presence in Asia that will be more capable, more flexible and able to respond more quickly and capably when needed,'' he said. In 1996, then President Bill Clinton sent two carrier battle groups to the region after China fired missiles into the sea off Taiwan's two main ports. The Pentagon laid out plans to put more U.S. warships in the region in a congressionally mandated, four-year strategy overview released September 30. Brookes, in his prepared remarks, said the United States did not view China as an adversary, ''but we must be honest about our differences such as human rights, proliferation and Taiwan arms sales.'' ''We are concerned about China's continued deployment of offensive missiles near Taiwan, and its growing naval and air forces that seems focused on building capabilities that could inflict harm on Taiwan and undermine peace across the Taiwan Strait,'' he said. A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Davis, said Thursday the United States was planning to rotate battle groups with home ports on the U.S. west coast to boost its presence. He said he was unaware of any plan to seek new bases in another country. In addition, later this year the Navy plans to base two Los Angeles-class nuclear-fueled attack submarines in Guam, a U.S. dependency in the North Pacific. A third is scheduled to be based there no later than 2004, according to a Navy spokesman, Ensign David Luckett. The Navy is also expected to base in Guam Trident submarines being converted to carry conventional cruise missiles and special operations forces. Larry Niksch, an expert on East Asian security issues at the non-partisan Congressional Research Service, said it was significant that Brookes outlined the buildup at a gathering that brought together Taiwan's defense minister, Tang Yiau-ming, and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. ''It counters the post-September 11 notion that old U.S.-China issues have been relegated to the back burner,'' he said. The meeting between Wolfowitz and Tang marked the highest-level, documented U.S.-Taiwan defense dialogue in at least 21 years. It angered China and led to speculation that it might cause Hu to cancel his visit. Wolfowitz told the session China's buildup of short-range missiles opposite Taiwan was ''clearly designed to project a threatening posture, and to try to intimidate the people and and the democratically elected government of Taiwan.'' The United States was ''eager to help'' Taiwan modernize and reform its defense establishment, Wolfowitz said in remarks made available earlier in response to a separate Reuters Freedom of Information request. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-07-08 23:50:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat How the US will play China in the new Cold War Asia Times | 4/19/02 | Henry C K Liu How the US will play China in the new Cold War By Henry C K Liu There is a new Cold War brewing. The old Cold War, which ended with the fall of the Soviet Union, was a struggle between competing ideologies backed by two superpowers. International trade among Western bloc economies then occurred mostly within a narrow geopolitical context, with the United States subsidizing dependent economies to build showcase examples of capitalistic market economies. There was no official trade at all between the two opposing ideological blocs. The old Cold War brought about an all-out militarization of the peace that distorted the US economy, with the actual shooting in recurring regional conflicts confined to local surrogates. Each bloc attempted to show its ideological superiority through economic aid to the weaker economies within its orbit and to needy non-aligned nations. Since the end of the old Cold War, foreign trade has replaced foreign aid as the development venue of choice. Domestic economic development in the periphery has since been adversely distorted by excessive concentration on export to rich markets. The new Cold War is less ideologically based and more geopolitically framed, although still couched in residual ideological polemic. This trend actually began with former US president Richard Nixon who saw that world communism was not any more monolithic than world capitalism and that age-old geopolitical factors had not been made obsolete by modern ideology. In the new Cold War, the US, as the sole remaining superpower, has increasingly adopted a modus operandi of unilateralism and exceptionism against all not to its liking. The US now holds up American values as incontestable universal truths and proudly imposes moral imperialism on a defenseless world through the doctrine of failed states. It sponsors a new economic imperialism through neoliberal globalization. While at the beginning globalization was peddled as a trickling down of benefits from the rich to the poor, it now is presented as a new liberal imperialism that this chaotic world needs. The new Cold War is a conflict between the world's rich and its poor, between the powerful and the powerless who have been forced to resort to terrorism as a resistance of last resort, which in turn generates violent military response abroad coupled with wholesale assault on civil liberties at home. It is not unreasonable to question whether state terrorism is morally superior to outlaw terrorism. Neoliberal market fundamentalism operates on the principle that the only thing worse than being exploited is not being exploited at all, and the only rational option in dealing with the new imperialism is to be co-opted into the global empire. Before the war on terrorism, which has been hastily launched in reflexive reaction to the surprise attacks of September 11, the US had unilaterally identified China as its arch-enemy in the new Cold War. It is not that China does not wish to have friendly relations with the US. Rather, the US has made it clear that it will not permit normal, let alone friendly, relations with a communist China, except in the area of non-strategic trade. This shift from the Nixon China policy, despite the moralistic pretense of promoting liberal democracy against totalitarian centralism, represents a faithful commitment to geopolitical realpolitik under changed conditions. China is no longer considered as necessary for countering Soviet threat. Beginning with the Ronald Reagan administration, the US has been moving toward its historical fixation that any rising power in Asia is deemed a threat to US interests in the region. Replacing the European imperialistic powers, the US after World War II took upon itself the task of extending a new version of its open-doors policy, originally devised to preserve US interests during the de facto partition of China by Western imperialist powers in the 19th century. This new open-door policy is now extended to all of Asia, indeed the whole world, in the name of neoliberal globalization. Thus the US posture of moral imperialism against residual national communism is merely a convenient pretext to contain Chinese national revival in the New Cold War. There is a strong parallel between current US security policy toward China and US security policy toward a rising Japan in the 1930s. Thus, regardless of domestic political ideology inside China, as long as political developments lead toward Chinese national resurgence, the US will pursue a hostile security strategy toward China. The communism issue is merely icing on the cake. That is the fundamental reason why US-China relations will not be conflict free in the foreseeable future. Ironically, this US policy pushes China to form coalitions with non-communist governments internationally against US global hegemony. The central weakness of the Taiwan regime is that its subservient alliance with the US is based less on ideological convergence and more on opportunistic separatism that is treasonous to Chinese nationalism. The new Cold War is different in that while the US and China are locked into a long-term path of escalating security conflict, both governments appear to agree on the need for near-term economic cooperation based on each nation's own separate interests. Whether trade and economic cooperation can be facilitated within the framework of latent security conflict will be the challenge facing political leaders in both countries. History is not without examples of such arrangements. The US traded with Japan until Pearl Harbor. General Motors and Ford, among other major US companies, operated profitably in Germany even after Germany's declaration of war on the US in 1941. History is less clear on the ability of trade to prevent war. The US, while actively promoting trade with China, has maintained an embargo of duo-use strategic and military sales to China in the new Cold War. Despite a free-trade agenda, the US maintains a trade embargo against a list of other nations that provoke its displeasure, from Cuba to Libya and from Iran to Iraq, on which former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright asserted in a CBS interview on May 11, 1996, that the death of more than 500,000 children among the total 1.5 million deaths caused by US sanctions was a worthwhile policy cost. President George W Bush defends the US free-trade agenda by arguing that his administration's effort to break down tariffs is a moral imperative, a paraphrase of Henry Kissinger's "peace too is a moral imperative" dating back to rhetoric used in defense of his approach to end the Vietnam conflict and the policy of detente. "Open trade is not just an economic opportunity, it is a moral imperative," Bush declared. "Trade creates jobs for the unemployed. When we negotiate for open markets, we're providing new hope for the world's poor. And when we promote open trade, we are promoting political freedom." The Bush White House has been reorganized to place its top economic adviser (Lawrence Lindsey) under its national security adviser (Condoleezza Rice). Such claims remain highly controversial when tested by actual data. Millions of domestic manufacturing jobs in the US have been lost to overseas locations through foreign trade. On a global basis, although the number of jobs has been increased to do the same amount of work through the use of less skilled labor, the aggregate wages for the same amount of work has been falling drastically. The World Bank has shown that globalization has created 200 million newly poor people in the world in the past decade, adding up to a total of 1.5 billion poor, a quarter of the world's 6.2 billion population. Bush also predicted that China, which reached a trade agreement with the US at the close of the Bill Clinton administration, would benefit from political changes as a result of liberalized trade policies. Yet it is clear that political freedom is often the first casualty of a garrison state mentality which inevitably would result from increasingly hostile US security policy toward China. For trade to truly benefit the trading economies, two preconditions are necessary: 1) the de-linking of trade from ideological/political objectives, and 2) a recognition that global full employment is the prerequisite for true comparative advantage in global trade. With regard to Europe, Japan and Australia, the US faces a different situation. While the US is likely to be able to preserve its residual old Cold War security alliances with these nations, despite mounting difficulties in identifying new common threats, the conflict between these decades-old military allies lies in trade contradictions. The US has benefited from an international financial architecture that gives the US economy a structural monetary advantage over those of the European Union (EU) and Japan, not to mention the rest of the world. Competition between these three leading economic heavyweights could spill over into security areas, allowing economic interests to conflict with ideological sympathy. All three of these stalled engines of growth are desperately seeking new markets, which inevitably leads them to populous Asia, anchored by a fast growing Chinese economy, with its 1.2 billion eager consumers bulging with rapidly rising disposable income. Even the US defense establishment has largely come around to the view that US industries must export, even to China, to remain on top. This was spelled out for Congress recently by Donald Hicks, a leading Pentagon technologist in the Reagan administration. "Globalization is not a policy option, but a fact to which policy makers must adapt," he said. "The emerging reality is that all nations' militaries are sharing essentially the same global commercial-defense industrial base." Already, China is the main supplier of army boots to US troops, a critical item even as warfare turns high-tech. With trade replacing aid, the US has embarked on a strategy to use Third World cheap labor and environmental lawlessness to compete with its industrialized rivals, taking advantage of the US anti-labor tradition to export low-paying jobs, which both the EU and Japan cannot do with comparable immunity. At the same time, the US has pushed for global financial market deregulation and emerged as a 500-pound gorilla in the global financial markets that left the Japanese and Europeans playing catch-up in the dust. The enabling tool of this strategy was the hegemonic role of the dollar as the dominant reserve currency for world trade. Out of this emerged an international financial architecture that does real damage to the actual producer economies for the benefit of the virtual financier economies. Money, instead of a neutral agent of exchange, has become a weapon of massive economic destruction more lethal than nuclear bombs and with more extortionary power, which is exercised ruthlessly by the International Monetary Fund all over the developing world on behalf of the Washington consensus. Trade wars are fought through volatile currency valuations. The dollar enables the US to use its trade deficit as the bait for its capital account surplus. Trade is no longer a valid measure of global competition. Today, transnational firms compete with unparalleled success in the global marketplace through foreign affiliate sales instead of exports. This has created a gap between gross domestic product (GDP) and gross national product (GNP). To mask this tilted playing field and unfair monetary regime, GNP has been quietly replaced by GDP as a statistical measure for growth. GDP measures the total value of a country's output, income or expenditure produced within the country's physical/political borders. GNP is GDP plus "factor income" - income earned from investment or work abroad. With globalization, these two technical measurements have taken on new meanings and relationships. In 1991, GDP replaced GNP as a standard statistical measure for growth - a quiet change that had very large implications as the 1990s were the decade of rapid globalization. GNP attributes the earnings of a transnational firm to the country where the firm is owned and where profits would eventually return as factor income. GDP, however, attributes the profits to the country where factories or mines or financial institutions are located, regardless of ownership, even though profit and investment may not stay there permanently. This accounting shift has turned many struggling, exploited economies into statistical boomtowns, while seducing local leaders to embrace a global economy. The rich nations at the core are walking off with the periphery's resources and profiting obscenely from local slave wages while calling it a statistical gain for the periphery, with the help of the local elite - a new compradore class whose members are celebrated by the neoliberal press as national heroes. GDP figures are "gross" because GDP does not allow for the depreciation of physical capital or environmental degradation, let alone the abuse and depreciation of human resources. When the value of income from abroad is included, then GDP becomes the GNP. A declining GNP is particularly damaging for economies with large trade sectors, which includes many developing countries that have been forced to rely on exports financed by foreign direct investment as the sole development path. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has changed the shape of the international economy. Since the early 1970s, FDI has grown faster than global trade and has been the single most important source of capital for developing countries, displacing near non-existent domestic net savings. Much FDI is denominated in dollars, a fiat currency that the US can produce at will since 1971. By necessity, FDI is concentrated in export-related development, mainly those destined for US markets, or markets that resell to US markets, for dollars with which to provide the needed FDI financial returns, also denominated in dollars. US economic policy is shifting from trade liberalization promotion to FDI liberalization promotion. A trade spat with the EU over beef and bananas, and now steel, for example, risked large US investment stakes in Europe. And the suggestion to devalue the dollar to promote US exports is dismissed, for it would only make it more expensive for US affiliates to do business abroad while making it cheaper for foreign companies to buy US assets. An attempt to improve the US trade balance, then, would actually end up hurting FDI balance. This is the rationale behind the slogan: a strong dollar is in the US national interest. In the US, and now also beginning in Europe and Asia, capital and debt markets are rapidly displacing banks as funding intermediaries - savings vehicles and sources of corporate finance. This shift, along with the growing global integration of financial markets, is supposed to create promising new opportunities for investors and make capital allocation more efficient around the globe. Neoliberals even claim that these changes could help head off the looming pension crises facing many nations. But so far it has only created sudden and recurring financial crises as those in Asia in 1997, and Mexico, Russia, Brazil, Turkey and Argentina subsequently. The reasons are traceable to dollar hegemony. The introduction of the euro has accelerated the growth of the EU region's financial markets. For the current 12 members of the European Monetary Union, the common currency has nullified national requirements for pension and insurance assets to be invested in the same currencies as their liabilities - a restriction that had long locked the bulk of Europe's long-term savings into fragmented local assets. Europe's corporate pensions industry is set to grow from 3.5 trillion euros (US$3.1 trillion) to 17 trillion by 2020 as governments are forced to make companies and individuals pay into pension schemes. Freed from foreign exchange transaction costs and risks of currency fluctuations, these savings fueled the rise of larger, more liquid European stock and bond markets, including the recent emergence of a growing high-yield (junk) bond market. These more dynamic capital markets, in turn, have placed increased competitive pressure on banks by giving corporations new financing options and thus lowering the cost of capital within Euroland. How this will interact with the euro-dollar market is still indeterminate due to dollar hegemony. Interestingly, the European Union Competition Commission rejected General Electric's proposed $41 billion merger with Honeywell International by citing concerns about whether the combination of GE's strong market share in aircraft engines and Honeywell's in avionics would give the merged company an unfair advantage in the European market to possible bundling or tying that could allow the new entity to extend its dominant position from one market to another. A key issue was the aggressiveness of GE marketing through vendor financing in which GE, until now, has enjoyed an unique advantage through its dominance in the US and euro commercial paper markets. Other regional markets, particularly in Asia, will no doubt become more aware of such concerns going forward. Before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs on July 20, 2000, Fed head Alan Greenspan summarized his view of the US boom at its peak, "For some time now ... a continuing disparity between the growth of demand and potential supply would produce disruptive imbalances." Greenspan repeatedly insisted that it was to address this anticipated "imbalance", his euphemism for inflation, that governed his one-note monetary policy of raising short-term interest rates. It was not to target the equity market bubble. Between 1999 and 2000, Greenspan raised Fed funds rates (ffr) six times, from 4.75 percent to 6.5 percent to fight phantom inflation. Barely four months later, he was forced to lower short term rates 12 times in 12 months, with the ffr set at a historical three-decade low of 1.75 percent currently, down from 6.5 percent on January 2, 2001. Price volatility in the equity market is the bastard child of derivatives and portfolio insurance, which Greenspan repeatedly celebrates as the innovative financial tools of the new prosperity. Sudden changes in short-term rates also create volatility in commodity prices. Greenspan is merely trying to defend himself from the monetarist criticism when he defends interest rate volatility as an effective means of combating price volatility, which in some other quarters is considered as fighting fire with gasoline. Greenspan continued, "The current account deficit is a proxy for the increase in net claims against US residents held by foreigners, mainly as debt, but increasingly as equities. So long as foreigners continue to seek to hold ever-increasing quantities of dollar investments in their portfolios, as they obviously have been, the exchange rate for the dollar will remain firm. Indeed, the same sharp rise in potential rates of return on new American investments that has been driving capital accumulation and accelerating productivity in the United States has also been inducing foreigners to expand their portfolios of American securities and direct investment. There has to be a limit as to how much of the world's savings our residents can borrow at close to prevailing interest and exchange rates. And a narrowing of disparities among global growth rates could induce a narrowing of rates of return here relative to those abroad that could adversely affect the propensity of foreigners to invest in the United States." Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers pointed out with some accuracy that the current account deficit of the 1990s reflects the nation's economic health. Professor Paul Davidson, an eminent American post-Keynesian economist, also has insightfully observed that the price of US-led globalization is a perpetual US trade deficit. The 2001 current account deficit was $420 billion, compared to $155 billion in 1997. This money eventually came back to invest in US assets, meaning the US ran a capital account surplus. Foreign direct investment flows into the United States have been robust. Direct investment inflows have been lifted by the extraordinary level of cross-border merger and acquisition activity. Portfolio flows have also been affected by this activity. Many of the largest acquisitions have been financed by swaps of equity in the acquiring firm for equity in the target firm. The Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates that US investors acquired $153 billion of foreign equities in this way in 2001. The ominous aspects of this situation are the hot and cool money issues. A market crash can result from hot money flight if foreign-owned dollars earned from US trade deficits suddenly exit US markets en masse. And if foreigners exchange their dollars into their own currencies suddenly, in order to buy assets in their own countries, the dollar can go into a free fall. The extra investment income coming from abroad in the form of cool money can eventually cause US entrepreneurs to take too much risk, as has been evident in the Internet and telecom sectors. According to Greenspan, this could create significant problems for the US economy. On this point he is correct, even though he has taken no action to prevent it. Hot money movement is directly linked to interest rates. As Greenspan raised US rates to moderate reflexive inflation fears, he pushed up the exchange value of the dollar, and thus forestalled potential capital exit. Greenspan has now been forced to lower rates aggressively to a three-decade low. It is anybody's guess when abnormally low US rates will trigger a hot money flight from US assets. Besides the hemisphere-wide pact pursued at the summit meetings in Quebec City and Mexico City, the US is seeking bilateral trade agreements with such countries as Jordan, Chile and Singapore, as well as a new round of global trade accords. While the US historically has claimed security monopoly in the Americas under the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine, economic and trade conflicts have emerged as problems with uncertain futures, despite Bush's recent declaration of trade as a moral imperative. Argentina and Venezuela, though fundamentally dissimilar, are glaring examples of US policy failure. Ironically, the weaker economies in the Americas now have alternative options away from US domination because of globalization, despite the US push on a regional free trade zone. Further, populist regimes can no longer be conveniently dismissed as communist stooges directed from Moscow, or be summarily overthrown with military coups instigated from Washington. Resentment against US hegemony has been growing around the world when government policies are constrained, if not dictated, by US ambassadors and bankers; when globalization turns out to be a trade regime used for the special benefits of US transnationals; and when the global financial architecture is dominated by dollar hegemony. Nationalism developed historically against the forced internationalization of the Napoleonic empire, despite the fact that the French Revolution began as a liberating force against the ancient regime. Nationalism rose up against the Napoleonic idea of a supranational European order unified by uniform law and administration, with a continental economic system, a single-dimensional anti-British foreign policy backed by a grand army under unified command. In the new Cold War, US hegemony has many parallels with the Napoleonic imperial order. China has no direct security issues with any nation beyond Asia, and most of its security conflicts within Asia are traceable to US instigation. As Nixon played his China card in 1972, Leonid Brezhnev played his India card. Now three decades later, Bush is playing his new India card as part of his pan-Asia strategy to contain China. China does face complex economic issue with the Southeast Asian economies, but the prospect of peaceful resolution of these issues remains high due to the high growth potentials for all of Asia. To do this, Asian economies have to get off the dead-end path of competing for exports to US markets in a race to the bottom. To counter US security hostility, China will develop mutually beneficial economic relations with Russia, the EU, Japan, Southeast Asia, Latin America and the Middle East economies, some of which also face security hostility from the US. Russia continues to be a security threat to the US by virtue of its formidable nuclear arsenal. Russia also has historical geopolitical security conflicts with Europe, both Eastern and Western, and with Japan and China. An economically desperate Russia will mean problems for Europe, particularly Germany, as an expansionist Russia also would. Regionally, security relationships between Russia, China and Japan have a triangular nature that may require classic balance of power solutions. Thus both Japan and Russia have incentives to help strengthen China technologically to a certain extent. Russia needs low-cost Chinese consumer goods until it manages to restructure productivity in its economy and Japan needs the vast Chinese market to get out of its decade-long recession. The US cannot afford to import inflation, especially since last year's interest rate cuts, and a decade-long tax cut program has been designed to stimulate consumption to counter a slowing economy. Also, many suspect that the US monetary strategy of a strong dollar is to continue to export inflation, leading to global deflation in dollar terms and inflation in local currency terms. US allegations against Chinese military prowess are a false pretense. The US is not seriously concerned about China's present or potential military might in the foreseeable future. The gap between US and Chinese technological capabilities may in fact be increasing. The US is actually uneasy about Chinese economic growth, which might challenge US economic predominance in the 21st century, even though actual data in the past two decade show that the per capita GDP gap between the two economies actually widened, despite impressive strides made by China since 1978. A Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) report on the year 2015 presents four possible future scenarios, and in all of them US economic power is projected to be waning while China's is rising, not withstanding that in the old Cold War the CIA consistently over-estimated Soviet strength, up to the fall of the USSR, which took the CIA by surprise. Thus, despite anticipated structural problems facing the Chinese economy after World Trade Organization accession and intractable social resistance to economic reform, the US is fixated on China's bullish future, and therefore worried about losing its sole superpower status, at least in Asia. Washington's real objective is to check China's growth along a path independent of US satellite models. In this scenario, US strategy is to help China develop enough to moderate China's current political system, so as to avoid a total political collapse caused by economic failure, but it aims to prevent China from prospering too much outside of the US orbit as to challenge US hegemony. In the 1980s, despite a lingering fear for the Soviet threat, a main concern in Washington was the rise of Japanese economic power, which looked like it was destined to surpass the US, at least in manufacturing, and impose a whole new set of alien values onto US society. Anti-Japanese sentiments rose sharply in the US as a consequence, until the US figured out the new game of finance capitalism, leaving the Japanese economy to wallow in obsolete industrial capitalism. Similarly, the Chinese economy in the coming decades could eventually overtake that of the US in size if not in sophistication. Furthermore, as Japanese transnational companies did in the 1980s, Chinese transnationals could challenge US transnationals' market shares in sectors that the US no longer considers critical, or shift the natural loyalty of some international transnationals away from US national interests. There is also the ugly race issue that has yet to subside fully in US geopolitics. A new containment policy against China is becoming the main fulcrum around which US foreign policy is framed, affecting Washington's traditional Eurocentric perspective as well as US policy in the Middle East, as evidenced by recent US-Israeli conflict over the Israeli sale of military technology to China. The increasingly visible manifestation of US policy of hostile confrontation has in turn fueled anti-American sentiment among the Chinese public, putting the current Chinese leadership on the defensive on its pro-US policy of the past two decades. The anti-China Blue Team in the Bush administration currently dominating US policy on China views a policy leading to a revival of the radical left in Chinese domestic politics as serving to kill two birds with one stone: the stone is its anti-China Pan-Asia strategy, and the two birds are: 1) minimize the potential success of China's reforms and open-to-the-outside policies that would lead to Chinese economic prowess, by creating conditions that would encourage the rise of the radical left in domestic Chinese politics in the name of nationalism, and; 2) promote a global high-tech arms race that would bleed China of its economic potential. The real battle in the US-China-Taiwan arena is the battle between the trade doves and the security hawks on all three sides. In reality, no amount of arms sales to Taiwan, quantitative or qualitative, can enhance the security of Taiwan. What makes China think twice about taking Taiwan by force is the cost-benefit analysis of the possibility of a direct military conflict with the US over Taiwan. If such conflict is inevitable due to US policy in Asia generally, then a military offensive to achieve the reunification of Taiwan would simply be a matter of forsworn conclusion. The "one country, two systems" (OCTS) policy, originally framed during the final phase of the old Cold War, has become China's response to the new Cold War. For Hong Kong, OCTS has a time limit of 50 years. For Taiwan, OCTS has no time limit. The two systems refer to the socialist and capitalist systems in a strict economic sense, although allowances are tolerated in Hong Kong for a neoliberal socio-political-legal infrastructure deemed necessary for the smooth functioning of a market economy. OCTS assumes a non-adversary relationship between the two economic systems. It is a precarious assumption. Hong Kong is not expected to be an anti-China political base nor is market capitalism expected to work for the demise of socialism. Neither of these expectations has been fulfilled flawlessly in the almost five years since Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997. One aspect of the OCTS policy that is conveniently underemphasized is that the "two systems" arrangement implies that socialism will remain the operative system on the mainland, that Chinese policies of reform and open-to-the-outside do not include anti-socialist objectives. Many supporters of OCTS are in fact quietly and openly working for the "one country, one system" - the capitalist system, with direct US support. It is not at all clear that OCTS has redeeming positive impacts on the economic development of China, or on the reunification of Taiwan. On the other hand, OCTS legitimizes the Hong Kong Relations Act and the Taiwan Relations Act, two pieces of US legislation that the US relies on to interfere openly in China's internal affairs. The Taiwan Relations Act further provides the legal basis of provocative US arms sales to Taiwan. Trade in the new Cold War also has domestic consequences in all countries. Widening domestic income disparity in both rich and poor countries is justified as necessary for national security, as are unemployment and environmental abuses. The battle is increasingly shaping up to be one between an international elite against the world's poor, many of whom live in the rich economies. Henry C K Liu is chairman of the New York-based Liu Investment Group. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-07-08 23:52:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat Japanese leader warns China of nuclear option The Times of India | Sunday April 7 2002 | AFP TOKYO: A conservative Japanese political leader has warned Beijing that Japan can arm itself with nuclear weapons overnight if China goes ahead with an excessive military build-up, press reports said on Sunday. The warning from opposition Liberal Party chief Ichiro Ozawa is likely to provoke sharp reaction from China and the rest of Asia, sensitive to any signs of Japan's military revival. In a lecture in the provincial city of Fukuoka on Saturday, Ozawa said he had referred to the nuclear option during a recent meeting with an official from the intelligence division of the Chinese Community Party, the reports said. "China is undergoing an expansion of its military power in a bid to join the ranks of the superpowers," said Ozawa, a renowned advocate of a strong armed forces. "It is trying to become a military power following in the steps of the United States." Ozawa, 59, a former secretary general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, said he had told the unidentified Chinese visitor: "If you get too inflated, Japanese people will get hysterical." "It would be easy for us to produce nuclear warheads. We can produce thousands of nuclear warheads overnight. We may have enough plutonium at nuclear power plants for 3,000 or 4,000 rounds." He added: "I told that person that if we rise to the occasion, we will never be beaten even in terms of military power." Ozawa, however, emphasised that what he really wanted was a fully democratic China and a society in which "China and Japan can co-exist". He said the introduction of democracy to China was essential to world peace. "Any break down of order in China will be no match for that in Afghanistan or Yugoslavia. It will lead to significant global turmoil," he said. However, Japanese newspapers expressed concern about the possible repercussions arising from Ozawa's remarks. "His position, in which he has tried to hold China in check by bringing up the possibility of nuclear armament, is likely to cause ripples at home and abroad," the conservative daily Sankei Shimbun said. The influential daily Asahi Shimbun said it anticipated a "backlash from the Chinese government and others". Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-07-08 23:53:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat China warns US over actions on Taiwan Dawn | March 20, 2002 BEIJING, March 20: China has starkly warned the United States that a "freezing wind" was chilling relations because of Washington's policy towards Taiwan, putting at risk newly-improved bilateral ties. Washington put good relations "in jeopardy" with a string of actions this month, most notably allowing Taiwan's defence minister to attend a conference in Florida, Chinese media said. "A freezing wind is blowing in China-US relations," warned an angry and strongly-worded commentary by the official Xinhua news agency late Tuesday. China has been enraged by the US decision to allow Taiwan's Defence Minister Tang Yaoming to participate in an arms summit this month and to meet key US officials while in the US. The US ambassador to Beijing has twice been called in for dressings down over the issue while a state-controlled newspaper reported Monday that China was preparing to cancel naval exchanges with the US in retaliation. However, the Xinhua commentary used perhaps the strongest language unleashed by China on the US since relations began improving following Beijing's backing for the US-led war on terrorism. Ties warmed still further during US President George W. Bush's visit to Beijing last month, the article noted. "However, since the beginning of March, what the US government has done with regard to bilateral ties is putting them in jeopardy with its erroneous move," it thundered. "The US government must correct this serious mistake and put up no new barriers to the development of China-US relations." The commentary condemned a recently-leaked US review of its nuclear arms policy listing China as a potential target and Taiwan as the likely flash-point. "These perfidious acts by the US side... interfere in China's internal affairs and represent a provocation to the Chinese people." It added: "Today, certain Americans should learn from history and not do to others what you do not want done to yourself - as the old Chinese proverb goes. Some 'hawks' in the US, however, are bent on acting in a diametrically opposite way - to do to others what you do not want done to yourself. What is the logic?" Analysts have warned that while relations appear to have improved in recent months, Beijing and Washington remain at odds over a series of issues, notably Taiwan, and that the strain was bound to show sooner or later.-AFP Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-07-08 23:58:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat (and now a slightly different perspective) Will China and US Follow the Tracks of Soviet-US Cold War? Peoples Daily (CCP NEWS) | 6/29/02 Will China and US Follow the Tracks of Soviet-US Cold War? Seeing the rise of China in recent years, some people in the United States and other countries advertised the "theory of China threat", holding that China, following the former Soviet Union, would become the main enemy of the United States and a new Cold war and even a hot war would break out between the United States and China. Then let's make a comparison between the then Soviet-US relationship and today's Sino-US relationship, will China really become another Soviet Union? The nearly 50-year period from the end of World War II to the disintegration of the former Soviet Union was the so-called Cold-War period. During this period, the world situation was characterized by the all-round confrontation between the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, a nuclear war had reached the extent where "the bow was drawn but the arrow was not discharged", the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union overwhelmed other international relations and put them in a subordinate position. This phase of just past history stamped deep brands in people's minds and psychology. Seeing the rise of China in recent years, some people in the United States and other countries advertised the "theory of China threat", holding that China, following the former Soviet Union, would become the main enemy of the United States and a new Cold war and even a hot war would break out between the United States and China. Then let's make a comparison between the then Soviet-US relationship and today's Sino-US relationship, will China really become another Soviet Union? The answer is negative. China Does not have Super-powerful Military Strength In those years, both the United States and the Soviet Union were superpowers and both had military and overall national strength which was greater than the combined strengths of other large countries. The nuclear arsenals of the two countries were approximately equal, and both had the capability to destroy the other side many times, the conventional military strength of the Soviet Union was even more mighty. US economic and scientific and technological strength was superior to that of the Soviet Union, but the gap between the two at that time was not very wide, the Soviet Union was the opponent on a par with the United States. Therefore, in the Cold War, both sides had offensive and defensive, before the Soviet Union was finally disintegrated, it was hard to tell who would win and who would lose. Today, the United States is the sole superpower, its GDP represents over one-fourth of the world's total, its military spending is greater than the combined total of the eight military powers placed behind it, its military might is great enough to cover the whole globe, it also possesses enormous soft strength. There has never been any other country possessing so great superiority like it since the dawn of history. China of today is still a developing country, with its GDP accounting for only one-ninth of that of the United States, and its nuclear weapons for only the odd of that of the United States. The balance of strength between the two sides is asymmetric, that is to say, the strength of today's China is just enough for self-defense. China has very great potential, but to develop in every aspect to the extent that can be mentioned in the same breath with the United States perhaps still needs 30-50 years even if everything goes smoothly. China Does Not Have the Ambition to Seek Hegemony Both the United States and the Soviet Union had the ambition to play the hegemonic overlord. What they were scrambling for was world domination, that is, to exercise the right to control over others. They had carved out spheres of influence in Europe since the Yalta Agreement in 1945, they had their respective military alliances, carried out massive activities to guarantee each other's destructive nuclear deterrent strategy and tried to regulate long-term, unceasing arms race through arms control negotiations. At the same time, they stirred up one crisis and local war after another in various parts of the world outside of their own territories, striving to expand their own domains. Their struggles had never ceased. China is different from them. As a developing country which had not long rid itself of foreign aggression and control. The main purpose of China's foreign policy has always been defense of its own independence and striving for a peaceful international environment to carry out economic and social development and improve the living standards of the entire Chinese people. China advocates the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, nonalignment, not serving as head and refraining from forming blocs. China does not have a single soldier overseas, nor a sphere of influence. China opposes hegemonism, particularly American acts of infringing on China's sovereign interests, but China does not seek hegemony and it has not the least intention to contend for hegemony with the United States. There Are Widespread Exchange and Cooperation Between China and the US The two major camps of the United States and the Soviet Union not only were opposed to each other politically and militarily, they also divided into two isolated markets economically, their economic systems were totally different, and they had very few non-governmental exchanges. Today, Sino-US relationship is quite different. After China introduced the reform and opening up policy, particularly after it joined the World Trade Organization (WTO), the country has successfully changed its planned economic system, established a socialist market economy and actively participated in the international trading system. There are lots of mutually beneficial exchanges between China and the United States and a situation in which "there is something of each in the other" has been formed to some extent. Now the number of American tourists traveling to China each year has exceeded 800,000. Altogether 180,000 students and visiting scholars from the Chinese mainland have studied or worked in the United States and over 60,000 Chinese students are continuing their studies there; the trade volume between the two countries reached US$80.4 billion in 2001, actual US investment in China has totaled US$34.5 billion, and these figures are still on the rise, more and greater mutually beneficial cooperation is in the ascendant. China Does Not Differentiate Between Friend and Foe According to Ideology Both the United States and the Soviet Union insist that their own concepts of value, social modes and lifestyles are the only ones universally applicable to the whole world, while those of the other side are evil and reactionary. Perhaps this attitude is related to the history and religious traditions of the two countries. Puritans who founded the United States believe in the manifest destiny, holding that they themselves are the God's "voters" and saving the world is the sacred mission entrusted to them by the God; Russia's Orthodoxy maintained that Moscow was the "third Rome" following the ancient Rome and Byzantine. Therefore they both spared no efforts to disseminate and spread their own concepts of value and social modes, and even unhesitatingly imposed them on others. Well-wished people maintain that reshaping others' society in accordance with their own images means practicing benefactions and doing others a favor; while ill-intentioned people seek occupying things of others, publicize themselves and control others. Whether they are well wished or ill intentioned, they lack respect for others' society. China adheres to socialism and has contradiction with the United States in ideology, but this kind of contradiction is somewhat relaxed than the US-Soviet contradiction. China has a long history and has seen much of changes in human life, ordinary Chinese lay stress on reality, pay attention to the middle course, and have a faint religious concept about monotheism and they do not have the tradition of doing missionary work abroad. Today China is adopting a fairly open attitude toward ideology, and advocates seeking truth from fact and emancipating the mind. It adopts an attitude of compatibility toward either China's own fine tradition or advanced foreign cultures. In international relations, China does not marking out in accordance with ideology, it recognizes the diversity of the cultures of various countries, it stands for dialogs between different civilizations and learning from each other. The Chinese people's achievement of this has not come about easily, it is because the many sufferings they experienced over a period of nearly 200 years have compelled them to adapt to and influence the outside world by selectively changing hemselves, they have traversed a course of exploring between blind conceit and passive inferiority, learning from the strong points of foreign cultures to make up for China's deficiencies on the basis of mutual respect and seeking common grounds while reserving differences. In addition, the sources of Chinese and the US cultures are different. When reflected in diplomacy, the interaction of China-US relationship is more sensitive and complicated, eliminating misunderstanding and reducing trouble will become a long-term arduous task that will appear over and again. China Does Not Have the Nature of Expansion Both the United States and the Soviet Union had a strong expansionist tradition. Over a short span of several hundred years, the small Moscow grand duchy had expanded several hundred times to become the Soviet Union, while the United States with only 13 states located out of the way on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean had expanded within even a shorter time deep into the Pacific Ocean to become today's United States consisting of 50 states. In the process of expansion, they both resorted to unbridled use of war means to plunder other countries of their territories. After they ceased territorial expansion, they still continually expanded their spheres of influence. An American statesman once said that expansion was the life of Russia, once it ceased expansion, Russia's subsistence would face crisis. In fact, US own records show it was so busy expanding that it had no time to make concession. Therefore crashes between the two were unavoidable. China does not have the nature of expansion. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China in particular, we have been pursuing an independent foreign policy of peace, good neighborliness and friendship, although we have fought several wars of resistance against aggression to protect our homes and defend our motherland and counterattack for self-defense, we suffered not a single defeat, but even we had won big victories we invariably pulled our troops back to our own territory and even withdrew from the disputed areas which we had occupied, this is rare in the history of international relations, ordinary Chinese people consciously accepted this policy decision of the government. US Attitude: Key to Determining Sino-US Relations The key to China-US relations is the Taiwan issue. The nature of this question is US intervention in China's internal affairs and encroachment upon China's territorial integrity and sovereignty. Similar issue did not arise between the United States and the Soviet Union. For some US right-wingers, maintaining the situation of no war, no peace, no reunification and no independence between the two sides of the Taiwan Straits could possibly be a magic weapon for containing the rise of China. This is a potential explosive issue, the longer it is delayed, the more it is unfavorable to Sino-US relationship. The nature of Sino-US contradiction is quite different from the US-Soviet contradiction. Currently China does not constitute threat to the United States, and it has no intention to contend for hegemony with the United States. After China is fully developed in the future, there is great possibility for China to continue peaceful coexistence, friendship and cooperation with the United States, while the possibility is very small for a life-and-death struggle with the United States. This distinguishing feature of China has reduced the possibility of a China-US conflict, but this does not mean Sino-US relationship is bound to be a plain sailing. Facts since the birth of New China show US attitude is the main aspect determining whether China-US relationship is good or bad. When the United States adopts an offensive posture and alternately or simultaneously uses the two tactics of contact and containment, it has an object in its mind of changing China in accordance with the US requirement. China is in a defensive position, it also reacts by taking two policies, it strives both to establish a constructive and cooperative relationship with the United States, and resolutely opposes any US power means. China has never taken the initiative to provoke the United States, nor does it want to change the United States in accordance with China's requirement. Considering the backgrounds of the growth of China's strength as well as scientific and technical progress, globalization and the rapid development of threat to non-traditional security, we can say that today's China-US relationship will not evolve into the long-term, all-round confrontation during the US-Soviet Cold War. Bilateral cooperation in the aspect of common interest will continue to develop, but contradictions and struggles in many fields will also exist for a long period of time. As to partial confrontation, for instance, the Taiwan issue and some problems in the ideological field, they have never been ceased for many years, but facts have proved that so long as both sides properly handle such problems, and refrain from overdoing things, such local confrontation can be brought under control and will not expand to become all-round confrontation. Before Nixon's China visit, China and the United States had experienced all-round confrontation for more than two decades. Confrontation, needless to say, means a heavy burden on China, it is not a light and easy thing to the United States either. In October 1967, in his article published in the periodical, "Diplomacy", Nixon said: From the long-term point of view, we can't afford to bear the burden of eternally keeping China outside the big family of various countries¡­.In this small celestial body, the 1 billion talented and capable people cannot be allowed to live in a state of wrath and isolation. The strong anti-China force in the American society incessantly advocated coping with China as they did with the former Soviet Union. Some of them did so out of political or ideological prejudice, some out of the intention of guaranteeing the United States' absolute, ever-lasting superiority, some out of the consideration of the interest of war industry or other economic benefits, they need to create an enemy, so as to deceive the masses and divert people's line of sight. China has a vast expanse of land, a large population and rapid development, and it is a socialist country, so it is just right to be taken as their target, it is described as a threat even though it is not a threat. However, these people are in the minority in the United States, most Americans disagree to this viewpoint. Several American presidents have openly stated that a powerful and prosperous China is in the interests of the United States and that the United States hopes to establish stable, good relationship with China. These words have been repeated over and again. In the United States, debate on US policy toward China will continue for a long time to come and there will still be twists and turns, but it should be believed that the interests of most people will ultimately take the upper hand, we hold a prudent and optimistic view about the prospect of Sino-US relationship. The above commentary was published on page 4 of Global Times, June 20 Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-07-09 00:01:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat China warns of looming setback in Sino-U.S. ties Yahoo/Reuters | 28 March 2002 | John Ruwitch BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese media blasted the United States on Thursday barely a month after President George W. Bush's euphoric visit to Beijing, accusing his administration of betrayal after a string of insensitive moves. The English-language China Daily criticised Washington in an editorial on Thursday, reflecting a turnaround in Beijing's rhetoric on the United States since the late February visit. In the days after the visit, state media were hailing Bush's meetings with top leaders as bringing relations closer than ever. Those heady reports have all but dried up. "Here we are on the verge of another setback in Sino-U.S. ties," the China Daily said in an editorial on Thursday. "Beijing feels betrayed," the state-run newspaper said, adding: "Gone is the euphoria that surrounded U.S. President George W. Bush's visit in February." The renewed tension in relations has raised speculation about whether Chinese Vice-President Hu Jintao will visit the United States in April as planned, but on Thursday the Foreign Ministry said both sides were making preparations for the trip. Topping the list of China's concerns was the U.S. decision this month to allow Taiwan defence minister Tang Yiau-ming into the United States for talks with defence officials. China regards Taiwan as a rebel province which must be reunited with the mainland by force if necessary. "FRIENDSHIP OUT OF THE QUESTION" Beijing is also upset about a Pentagon report saying China was one of several targets in America's nuclear weapons planning, and "undisguised attempts" to bring Taiwan into the World Health Organisation, it said. Taiwan, ousted from the United Nations in 1971, is pushing to join the WHO as an observer. "The current row, unless resolved in a timely and constructive manner, will definitely undermine the already slight Chinese confidence in genuine friendship between the two countries," the state-run newspaper said. "Friendship is out of the question in the absence of reciprocity," the editorial said. In another sign of its displeasure with the United States, China this month denied permission for a U.S. navy destroyer to make a routine port call in Hong Kong. And on Tuesday, Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji told visiting U.S. senators that Beijing was opposed to America's Taiwan policies, saying Washington had violated three Sino-U.S. communiqués by letting Taiwan's Tang into the United States. That visit to Florida, in which Tang met U.S. Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, is the highest-level documented U.S.-Taiwan defence dialogue in at least 22 years. HU STILL LIKELY TO GO The Foreign Ministry has declined to confirm whether or not Hu's trip was still on. But on Thursday spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said preparations were under way in what appeared to be a positive sign. "The details I will let you know in due time," she said. Political analysts said they would be surprised if Hu pulled out of the U.S. invitation over the latest row, saying it would be a disproportionate response. "It would take something much bigger than this," said one Western diplomat in Beijing. Mei Renyi, director of the American Studies Centre and the Beijing Foreign Studies University, said the signal to the United States of Hu pulling out would be too strong. "Not going would be a very big move. I would consider it similar to the recall of the ambassador in 1996," he said. China withdrew its ambassador from the United States after Washington issued Taiwan president Lee Teng-hui an American visa. Hu is expected to take over as Communist Party chief later this year when President Jiang Zemin steps down as general secretary. Hu is set to become president next year. The planned U.S. trip would be a key opportunity for him to bolster his credentials, analysts say. Sean Osborne (Member) 2002-07-13 06:26:00 68.83.185.238 Re: The China Threat China - Taiwan ALERT The Pentagon has issued an alert that China is in position for an immediate and sustained blitz-like attack on Taiwan. This first indication come up on DebKa an hour or so ago. I am now looking for anything to corroborate the Alert Message Status. (BTW...I have now High-Speed Internet access hooray! so searching is 50x is more rapid.) Anyway this is meant as a heads-up (high gain antenna search mode...any attack against Taiwan, IMHO, would also certainly be initiated with a blinding US intel in region, and/or attempting to neutralize Any US carrier forces/naval assets in situ. Like to DebKa (Pentagon Alert headline) Sean Osborne (Member) 2002-07-13 07:07:00 68.83.185.238 Re: The China Threat Found this about Joint Russian-Chinese miltary exercise scheduled for mid-August 2002. China-Russia Joint Exercises Set for mid-August Becareful accessing Chinese site. i just experienced massive attempted intrusion at one site. Info via PeMail only. Sean Osborne (Member) 2002-07-13 07:48:00 68.83.185.238 Re: The China Threat Here is the basis of the DebKa headline. The Pentagon released a major study to Congress yesterday. The intelligence findings of this magnitude would normally be classified. So this maybe an intentional leak of classified material, for the obvious reasons. Pentagon report: China Targets Taiwan; ICBM\'s Take Aim on USA Theere is additional intel in the Jiang Zemin will not step down as planned. He is being lionized in the tradition of Mao Zedong, and the Chinese penchant for "Cult Personality" in leadership roles. There is informed speculation he will not cede power. Al C. (Member) 2002-07-13 08:17:00 208.193.163.206 Re: The China Threat Buy your bicycles but not from 'China' along with other things. Again the report from another place: http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020713-92365049.htm High Tech War beginning: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_2124000/2124946.stm I certainly hope that people begin to 'NOT' support China. I would be concerned with saving their 'face' but perhaps, they do not have one! Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2002-07-13 18:07:00 216.68.39.209 Re: The China Threat Sean, You beat me to the punch in regards to announcing the DoD China report! Also, thanks for the update on the Chinese ambitions against Taiwan. As the report says, China relies on surprise as a force multiplier. Here is the actual report put out by the DoD – Annual Report On The Military Power Of The People’s Republic Of China It certainly makes for an interesting read. A few interesting points brought up by the report: - Despite China’s claim of spending only $20 Billion on their military, it is in effect 4 times that much. quote: China’s defense spending may be some four times larger than its public announcement in March 2002 of a defense budget of about $20 billion. -The DoD admits that their knowledge of Chinese military activities is not at all complete. quote: This report begins with a cautionary note that was first outlined in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Net Assessment’s Report to Congress on Implementation of the Taiwan Relations Act in 2000. The Net Assessment report surveys how little is known about the most significant aspects of Chinese military power. Chinese secrecy is extensive. ~~~ Since the 1980s, U.S. military exchange delegations to China have been shown only “showcaseâ€� units, never any advanced units or any operational training or realistic exercises. Although, the report is 56 pages long it is well worth the read. While it states that China may not yet pose a direct threat to the US, keep in mind that this report is simply based on what IS KNOWN, NOT WHAT IS UNKNOWN! The whole stance the government is taking in regards to China is indeed curious. On one hand we see people saying that China isn’t a threat and is our ally: - Paper Says Bush Keen for New China Military Ties - Powell Unconcerned with Chinese Military Buildup - Chinese Army Barracks Open to Foreign Media (I wonder if any of the soldiers were seen still holding their scripts in hand? :rolleyes: ) - China\'s Military Opens Doors in Transparency Drive And on the other hand we see those who are saying that China is a threat and we should be preparing to deal with them in the near and long term: - U.S. Eyes Chinese Military Buildup - U.S. Panel Expected to Urge Tougher China Sanctions - Report: China Moves Endanger Taiwan - U.S. Eyes Chinese Military Buildup - China Moves Endanger Taiwan - Pentagon to Release Report on China Threat - Pentagon Warns of China Threat There certainly seems to be quite a bit of divergence in opinion within the government. In my opinion, this is a concerted effort by the Chinese to undermine the US government. Much in the way they didn’t hesitate to cause a rift in the government by donating to the Democratic party. An interesting line of thought… Perhaps Jiang intends to retake Taiwan before he is scheduled to cede power to Hu Jintao in an effort to cement his position as President and keep himself in power. It would not only be beneficial for him but, it would be beneficial to China in that it would unite them behind one goal. This uniting would help to relieve some of the problems that they have been having with the working class and others who are becoming disillusioned. I could see this happening when we have our resources tied up in Iraq (An attack is expected to come in late summer/early fall). The Iraq attack would come before Jiang is expected to turn over power to Hu in the fall. It would all coincide. And it would obviously come when China has a huge number of its forces in the area for “military exercisesâ€�. Assuming that an invasion of Taiwan would be successful (Which in my opinion would be since they have such massive numbers of SRBMs. They could literally blanket the island with them. Perhaps some of them NBCs.) Jiang would become nearly immortal in the eyes of most Chinese for being successful for not only “reunitingâ€� China but reuniting all the people disillusioned with the Communist party. The public would then most certainly support his staying in power. It would also be a way in which the Chinese can say that they indirectly defeated the Evil West. This would cause further uniting of the Chinese people and a drive to finally overthrow the US. Another interesting tie-in is the reluctance of some Mid-East countries to allow us to use their air and land for staging the attack against Iraq. This would require the use of more aircraft carriers to stage air strikes from. With a larger than normal number of our carriers tied up in Iraq, there would be less to respond to Taiwan’s need for help in the event of a Chinese invasion. With the diminished number of ships available, the Chinese military stands a larger chance to successfully attack US military assets that respond to the situation. This would coincide with the article recently posted on China’s plans to kill a carrier to disillusion the American public and make them pull out. The disillusion of the American public and subsequent pullout would make us appear to be weak and in the eyes of the Chinese, that would be a huge blow. Also, here are a few more articles dealing with what you brought up about a joint Russian/Chinese military exercise: - China-Russia War Games Confirmed quote: Liu added that reports in overseas media which suggested the maneuvers were aimed at a third country were "untrue and [circulated] with an ulterior motive." Of course they are! How dare anyone accuse the Chinese or Russians of having ulterior motives! :rolleyes: Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-07-14 23:24:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat China's use of U.S. capital raises security concerns Reuters | 14 July, 2002 | Carol Giacomo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China has helped fuel its surging economy and military modernization by raising billions of dollars in American capital markets, raising serious concerns about the impact on U.S. national security, according to a Congressional commission. In a 200-page report obtained by Reuters, the U.S.-China Security Review Commission disclosed the findings of a year-long study on Sino-American relations. It recommended a tougher policy toward China, including possible limits on Beijing's access to U.S. capital markets, restrictions on its U.S. imports and increased reporting requirements for American companies doing business in China. The report was made available as the Pentagon also released a long-delayed assessment of Chinese military trends, which concluded Beijing planned to bring Taiwan to its knees rapidly if it uses force to unite the island with the mainland. A Bush administration official played down both reports as "a dime a dozen." Some of the commission's concerns repeat fears voiced previously by American hard-liners toward China. But together the two documents suggest that while usually volatile U.S.-China relations have stabilized, scepticism about Chinese intentions runs deep in some quarters of Washington. The commission report -- to be formally released on Monday -- is expected to be controversial, especially among U.S. firms heavily invested in propelling China's economic growth. CAPITAL ACCESS The United States has its largest trade deficit with China, is a premier investor in its markets and has permitted Chinese companies to raise more than $14 billion in U.S. capital markets through initial public offerings in the past three years, the commission said. "The presence of Chinese debt and equity offerings in the U.S. capital markets raises U.S. national security concerns that have not been adequately examined to date." The commission expressed concern about the identities and nature of Chinese companies accessing U.S. capital markets, including the extent to which they have ties to China's army, defence industry and intelligence services, and may be involved in the spread of weapons of mass destruction. "U.S. investors, including sophisticated pension and mutual funds, may be unknowingly funding Chinese companies that pose a security risk to the United States through their purchases of overseas listed securities," the report suggested. It said in "egregious cases" denying Chinese entities access to U.S. markets may be warranted, and recommended creation of a federally mandated corporate reporting system to try to better understand the U.S.-China trade and investment relationship. The commission said China is attempting to acquire a vast array of advanced western technology. "The increasing transfers of U.S. research and manufacturing facilities to China could have a negative impact on the strength of our technological and industrial base as well as the relative military strengths of the two countries," it said. In particular, the commission said the U.S. defence industrial base may be becoming dependent on Chinese imports or Chinese-owned companies and urged monitoring of this issue. Policymakers "should prepare for all contingencies" in the complex U.S. relationship with China, the report said. But the government is "poorly organized" to manage this and does not dedicate enough resources to understanding China. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-07-14 23:28:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat In addition to the last post.... This is from Washington: REPORT TO CONGRESS OF THE U.S. - CHINA SECURITY REVIEW COMMISSION - The National Security Implications of the Economic Relationship Between the United States and China Report Al C. (Member) 2002-07-15 17:40:00 208.193.163.201 Re: The China Threat Three or four years ago on another forum, an Australian thought that the U.S. was 'nuts', because once in the door, China will take over the economy! News with commentary: http://www.newaus.com.au/ Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-07-17 10:54:00 24.221.202.151 Re: The China Threat Summarizing the Great Threat Dr. Alexandr Nemets and Dr. Thomas Torda Tuesday, July 16, 2002 In the article "New Great Leap Forward in Chinese-Russian Military and Defense Cooperation?" published by the authors on July 3, it was stated that by 2002, with primarily Russian technology and with minimal use of imported components, China had mastered the production of all small-size and mid-size weapon platforms. And in the article "Chinese Multi-Level Air Defense Network," published on July 9, it was claimed that, in 2002-2003, China will master – or has mastered already – serial production of air defense missile (ADM) systems HQ-15, HQ-16, HQ-17 and HQ-18, and that this will make China's air defense network almost impenetrable. Report in Shijie Ribao Confirmation of these claims came even earlier than the authors expected. Look at the following report. New York-based Shijie Ribao (World Journal) newspaper, June 24, 2002, p.A7 – "China Serially Produces Hongqi-15 Missile [System] – the King of Air Defense" (with insignificant omissions): (Information from the newspaper's correspondent in Hong Kong): China earlier imported from Russia the S-300 ADM system, which received the Chinese name Hongqi (HQ)-15. These systems are deployed mostly near the Taiwan Strait and turned into the factor of psychological pressure on Taiwanese military pilots. According to reliable sources, China has already started serial production of the HQ-15, which has become the "king weapon" of Chinese air defense. Russia's "Military survey" (probably the authoritative "Independent Military Survey" weekly newspaper) recently published the following report: In 1992 China imported from Russia three systems (battalions) of S-300 PMU missile launchers and 144 missiles for them. Later (in 1992-93) seven more improved S-300 systems were imported. Very rapidly, China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) mastered these systems and began missile-launching training. After several training-maneuvers of this kind, in 1994, the PLA became satisfied [with the S-300's performance] and decided to import the production line for S-300 "guochanhua" (serial production from Chinese components). According to reports available, presently China managed to increase the "guochanhua level" (share of Chinese components) up to 70 percent in the Chinese-made HQ-15 system, i.e., a copy of the S-300 PMU-1. These systems are capable of launching a missile every three seconds and of attacking six different targets at once; the response time of this system is as little as 15 seconds. The reports of Rosoboronexport corp. (the Russian state-owned weapon export monopoly) indicate that China is producing a renovated variety of the S-300, with improved space characteristics and software; moreover, the modular principle of S-300 design allows the Chinese side to upgrade these systems significantly by substituting a small number of key components. Presently, S-300 systems (both Russian-made and Chinese-made) deployed near the Taiwan Strait are engaged in tracking Taiwanese Mirage (Mirage-2000) fighters. According to the insiders' information, the introduction of S-300 systems greatly increases China's air defense safety. After the Kosovo War, the PLA did its best to upgrade its air defense. PLA experts believe that if the Yugoslav army had had S-300 systems, it would have been capable of hitting U.S. military aircraft. Presently, China and Russia are jointly developing several new ADM systems, particularly the HQ-16. Researchers on both sides jointly worked out the tactical-technological characteristics of this system and are moving ahead with its development. (end of summary from Russian "military survey" and Shijie Ribao article) The most evident conclusions They are as follows: 1) China is now capable of annually producing at least 10 battalions of HQ-15 or S-300 PMU1 ADM systems or maybe an even greater number. Each battalion includes 12 mobile launching platforms with four mobile launchers on a single platform and is capable of launching 48 missiles simultaneously. It also includes several mobile platforms with radars and controlling devices. Each battalion of this kind effectively protects an airspace inside a circle with about 120-km radius, with an altitude of up to 25 km. The cost of such a battalion, for the PLA, evidently has fallen to about $30 million, while the Russian export price for an S-300 battalion reaches $300 million. The PLA will be capable, in 2002-2004, of obtaining several dozen HQ-15/S-300 battalions and, consequently, of protecting the entire highly developed eastern coastal zone (which produces up to 60 percent of China's GDP) plus the most important eastern regions of the country. According to several unconfirmed reports, in 2001 the PLA acquired from Russia several Triumph S-400 ADM launchers, with a range up to 250 km. Evidently, it won't be very difficult for the Chinese side to upgrade the HQ-15/S-300 systems to the S-400 level ("by substituting a small number of key components"), thus greatly expanding the combat potential of the already constructed multi-level air defense network. An item of particular importance: China is acquiring some components for HQ-15/S-300 systems through the "back door" – the same as components for J-11/SU-27 fighters – from Russian defense plants and army units. For example, at the end of 2001, some sophisticated parts of S-300 systems were stolen in Birobidzhan garrison (about 150 km east of Khabarovsk city), very close to the Chinese border. So, if necessary, China will upgrade its HQ-15/S-300 systems or increase their production volume even without an official agreement with Moscow. 2) Now one can claim that, very probably, China – by mid-2002 – also started serial production of Tor-M1/HQ-17 systems – very effective mid-range, mid-altitude ADM systems, although their technological level doesn't surpass that of the HQ-15 systems. Each company of these systems includes four mobile platforms with two missile launchers on a single platform plus an additional radar/command and control platform. How many such companies could the PLA obtain in 2002-2004? Probably hundreds, taking into account their comparatively low cost. Mid-range, mid-altitude HQ-17 systems are supplementing long-range high-altitude HQ-15 systems and supporting them on the lower level. If an enemy's fighter or cruise missile escapes the HQ-15 missile, then – almost certainly – an HQ-17 missile will hit it. As mentioned in an earlier article, the "super Tor-M1"/HQ-16 is under joint Chinese-Russian development, probably a rapid one. When this system's development is completed, it would be comparatively easy to upgrade HQ-17 systems in the PLA inventory up to the HQ-16 level. That's because the Tor-M1 design – just like the S-300 one – is based on a modular principle, so the change of a small number of key components will provide a high rise in combat capacity. 3) Finally, let's look to the grimmest part of the picture (after Sept. 11, there is no way to "hide one's head in the sand" and ignore unpleasant realities). In the case of "high-tech limited conflict" around Taiwan – and the PLA during the last several years has actively prepared specifically for this – the losses of U.S. tactical aviation (F-15, F-16, F-18 fighters) could be very high. This would be the result of joint actions of long-range HQ-15/S-300 ADM systems, mid-range HQ-17/Tor-M1 ADM systems and low range missile-artillery Feimeng/Tunguska systems etc. Let's be "grateful" for all of this to the Kremlin and Moscow. Let's think what forms our gratitude could take. Some additional conclusions Exact information, given in the last several articles, about recent acceleration of modern fighters and ADM systems development and production in China drives us to the upgrading of estimates regarding other small-size and mid-size weapon platform manufacturing. China's defense industry, capitalizing on the newly acquired economic and technological potential of this country, indeed reached a new qualitative-technological level in 2002. So it is possible to now claim that the following weapon systems – close enough to advanced world levels – are in serial production already or will be put into serial production in the nearest future: Advanced weapons for ground force: tanks, armored vehicles, self-propelled guns, grenade launchers, etc. (in particular, there is precise information about some advanced tank models, based on "Russian design, Ukrainian engines, Belarus chassis"). By 2004, PLA could get a number of perfectly equipped and trained ground force divisions. Land attack cruise missiles (LACMs) with a range between 1,000 and 3,000 km: At least several brigades of such ground-based LACMs could be equipped soon. The air-launching and naval varieties of the same LACMs could be installed, a little later, on PLA long-range bombers and nuclear attack submarines of the new generation (these belong to large-size platforms, and China's defense industry has some difficulties here). Road-mobile solid-fuel DF-31 ICBMs, with a range surpassing 9,000 km. All these items, including the "pleasantest" last one, are mostly based on Russian technology. Let's be "grateful" to Moscow and the Kremlin for this also. And it is not excluded that North Korea, Iran and some other Middle Eastern "nations of concern" will gain access to this sophisticated weaponry – if not via Russian channels, then via Chinese ones. Of course, China still has a lot to learn from Russia in the weapons area. Traditionally, China has problems in manufacturing so-called "da dongxi (large things). Indeed, China's defense industry is unable, at the present moment, to develop and manufacture independently advanced "large weapon platforms" – primarily, nuclear submarines of strategic and attack type, diesel-electric submarines, destroyers, cruisers and aircraft carriers – with characteristics close to world levels. However, Russian assistance to China is now concentrated precisely in this sector. Dr. Alexandr V. Nemets is co-author of "Chinese-Russian Military Relations, Fate of Taiwan and New Geopolitics." Dr. Thomas J. Torda has been a Chinese linguist specializing in science and technology with FBIS, and a Chinese/Russian defense technology consultant with the Office of Naval Intelligence. You may contact Dr. Torda at ThomasJTorda@cs.com. Original Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-07-17 10:56:00 24.221.202.151 Re: The China Threat Monday, July 15, 2002 News Flash: Arming China Isn't a Good Idea America's longtime policy of "constructive engagement" with communist China is destructive for the United States, a new report by a congressionally appointed commission admits. "According to the U.S.-China Security Review Commission appointed by Congress in October 2000, the Chinese government has taken advantage of American friendliness to become a bigger threat than ever," Fox News Channel reported today. Building the Enemy's Military C. Richard D'Amato, chairman of the U.S.-China Security Review Commission, said, "It needs to be corrected, particularly today as China grows in economic and military strength, and the United States plays a very substantial role in contributing to that rise in military and economic strength." China has the ability to hit the U.S. mainland with intercontinental ballistic missiles, the report noted. The Asian giant can strike as far inland as Mississippi. The commission was formed to "monitor, investigate and report to Congress on the national security impacts of the bilateral trade and economic relationship between the U.S. and China." It concluded, "U.S. policy toward China has lacked consistency and depth and has often been driven by narrow commercial interests, specific human rights issues or particular military and security concerns." 'You'd Have to Be an Idiot' Michael Ledeen, vice chairman of the panel, said: "We are concerned when we see constant rhetorical attacks on the United States, constant warnings to the United States, that if push comes to shove, China is perfectly happy to fight a war against us, and then to see a strategic doctrine from the Chinese military that lays out the ways in which they propose to win that war. "That's very bothersome. You'd have to be an idiot not to take that seriously." Secretary of State Colin Powell, however, does not take that seriously. On Friday, the Pentagon warned Congress that China's military modernization threatened Taiwan - and America. "The Chinese doctrine is moving toward the goal of surprise, deception and shock effect in the opening phase of a [military] campaign," the Pentagon asserted in a report to Congress submitted Friday. "The People's Republic of China's ambitious military modernization casts a cloud over its declared preference for resolving differences over Taiwan through peaceful means," the report said. 'Focusing More on America' The Associated Press reported, "On a broader front, the report casts China as intent on developing a vastly more potent military, with its training focusing more on America as an enemy." It also estimated that Beijing is spending about $65 billion this year on the military rather than the $20 billion the dictatorship reported publicly in March. Kurt Campbell, an Asia specialist at Center for Strategic and International Studies and an Asia policy adviser at the Pentagon during Bill Clinton's exceeedingly cozy-with-China administration, told AP the Bush administration was right to worry about the missile buildup. "It's clearly the biggest area of concern," Campbell said Thursday. Yet here's what Powell had to say about the Pentagon's warning. He claimed he saw no cause for concern about China's military modernization as long as it did not "reflect any kind of new strategic purpose." Original Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-07-17 11:03:00 24.221.202.151 Re: The China Threat U.S. 'Asleep' While China Builds Military Jim Burns, CNSNews.com Saturday, July 6, 2002 ARLINGTON, Va. – While the United States pursues its war on terrorism, it is "asleep at the switch" in planning for a possible conflict with China, according to retired U.S. Army Maj. Andy Messing. China's communist government is "making great strides" in building up its military and plotting ways to "take out [U.S.] intelligence and commercial satellites," he said. Messing, executive director of the National Defense Foundation, said a war with China would involve a whole new level of technology. "We're going to have a different type of war with China," said Messing. "It will be a space and air and cyber war and naval war." And actually, the U.S. and China are already at war, Messing said. 'Over the Barrel on Economic Issues' "Mainland China is bending us over the barrel on economic issues right now, and so we're in a warfare that we are not even comprehending," Messing said. "At some point, when they feel they are strong enough, they will segue into declaring that all the space over China is their space. If we fly over it without their permission, they will take out our satellites and thus thousands of jobs." Messing believes America should spend more money on its space program to head off any Chinese hostilities in space. He says conservatives should be more enthusiastic in their support for the space program. "The SDI [Strategic Defense Initiative] programs have already developed 3,500 patents that have translated into jobs, which has gotten us closer into space," Messing said. The government watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS) says NASA should change its priorities and become more financially efficient if it stands to gain taxpayer support. In a statement on its Web site, TCS states that "while the space program yielded many successes in years past, taxpayers are no longer getting their money's worth from a space program that focuses on repeating the deeds of yesterday." According to TCS, "current priorities allow the scientifically and financially bankrupt $100 billion Space Station to absorb a larger and larger share of the NASA budget." TCS called for the cancellation of the International Space Station program and said Space Shuttles should continue to be launched only for "short duration, human space flights as needed." Original Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-07-17 11:08:00 24.221.202.151 Re: The China Threat Friday, June 21, 2002 9:51 a.m. EDT China Continues to Arm Al-Qaeda Despite their own concerns about Islamic terrorism, Communist Chinese military officials have continued to arm Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda commandos with sophisticated surface-to-air missiles even after the 9-11 attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., according to U.S. intelligence reports. "Late last month, U.S. Army Special Forces troops discovered 30 HN-5s, the designation for Chinese-made SA-7s surface-to-air missiles, in southeastern Afghanistan," reports the Washington Times in Friday editions. "Other intelligence reports indicated the Chinese shipped missiles to the Taliban after September 11." Just last week a captured al-Qaeda operative told interrogators that he had fired a surface-to-air missile at a U.S. military plane from a position just outside Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. The missile was a Chinese made SA-7, according to Pentagon sources. Before Sept. 11, the People's Liberation Army provided training for Afghanistan's Taliban militia and its al-Qaeda supporters, the Times added. "It was carried out in cooperation with Pakistan's ISI intelligence service," defense officials told the paper. Though Beijing has denied supporting al-Qaeda forces, reports indicate that Chinese dictator Jiang Zemin was so impressed with bin Laden's 9-11 attack that he sanctioned a domestic propaganda effort suggesting the U.S. got what it deserved. "In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, workers at Beijing Television worked round-the-clock to produce a documentary they called 'Attack America,'" reported the London Telegraph in November. In the video, Chinese film editors mixed real news footage of the two commercial jetliners slamming into the World Trade Center with scenes from a 1998 remake of "Godzilla" where the monster wreaks havoc on New York. As carnage fills the screen, the film's narrator proclaims that the city had reaped the consequences of decades of America bullying weaker nations. The anti-U.S. entertainment bears the imprimatur of the Communist Party-controlled media, the Telegraph said, with the most popular offerings produced by the Xinhua information agency, Beijing Television and China Central Television. "Communist Party officials say President Jiang Zemin has obsessively watched and re-watched pictures of the aircraft crashing into the World Trade Center," the Telegraph said. Original Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-07-17 11:09:00 24.221.202.151 Re: The China Threat Oh and for whatever IDIOT told me "China is not a threat" - this one is for you, jackass. Monday, Nov. 5, 2001 4:09 p.m. EST Chinese Propaganda Machine Celebrates Twin Towers Attack While Chinese leaders tepidly back America's war on terrorism in public, Beijing's state propaganda machine has been enthusiastically cranking out dozens of movies, books and video games celebrating the Sept. 11 kamikaze attacks on New York City's Twin Towers as something the U.S. deserved. "In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, workers at Beijing Television worked round-the-clock to produce a documentary they called 'Attack America,'" the London Telegraph reported Sunday. In the video, Chinese film editors mixed real news footage of the two commercial jetliners slamming into the World Trade Center with scenes from a 1998 remake of "Godzilla" where the monster wreaks havoc on New York. As U.S. rescue workers search for survivors at Ground Zero, a narrator proclaims that the city had reaped the consequences of decades of America bullying weaker nations. The anti-U.S. entertainment bears the imprimatur of the Communist Party-controlled media, the Telegraph said, with the most popular offerings produced by the Xinhua information agency, Beijing Television and China Central Television. The impetus for Beijing's new wave of anti-U.S. propaganda apparently comes straight from the top. "Communist Party officials say President Jiang Zemin has obsessively watched and re-watched pictures of the aircraft crashing into the World Trade Center," the paper said. The outrageous celebration of American suffering comes as the ink is barely dry on a whole host of trade agreements between the U.S. and China, and just months after the Bush administration offered its tacit support for Beijing's bid to host the 2008 Olympics. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2002-07-24 14:58:00 216.68.35.35 Re: The China Threat Well, I’ve just finished reading Bill Gertz’s “The China Threatâ€� and I must say that I found it highly enlightening. This is a book that everyone monitoring/contributing/etc. in this series of threads should read. I do have one thing I would like to add to the message that Mr. Gertz’s presents. His premise is that China is building its power to deter us from getting involved in Taiwan and to simply become the dominant power in Asia. I, personally, feel that China’s motives are far more sinister. Those motives involve the demise of the United States of America. This is demonstrated by their influence in various countries listed further down in this post. This isn’t just expansion to deter us from getting involved in a conflict over Taiwan. No, this is far too extensive and hints more at a plan to surround and isolate us in preparation for an attack. Much the same way as the US is surrounding most of the Mid-East with bases to conduct operations out of in its preparations to attack Iraq. I’d also like to post some interesting points the book brings up. These are in no particular order: - An interesting quote given in the book from General Chi Haotian, vice chairman of the Communist Party Central Military Commission: quote: Seen from the changes in the world situation and the United States’ hegemonic strategy for creating monopolarity, war is inevitable. We cannot avoid it. The issue is that the Chinese armed forces must control the initiative of this war. We must make sure that we win this local high-tech war against aggression and interference; win this modern high-tech war that [the] military bloc, headed by U.S. hegemonists, may launch to interfere in our affairs militarily; and win this war ignited by aggressor countries’ sudden offensives against China. We must be prepared to fight for one year, two years, three years, or even longer. That doesn’t sound like simple deterrence… - Because of technology proliferation to China due to Hughes Electronics and Loral, China is rapidly building its ability to integrate command of air, sea, and land forces into one fighting group. In 2000 China via the state owned ChinaSat launched the first of several military communications satellites called Feng Huo-1. This new system called Qu Dian will provide China with a high-speed and real-time battlefield view that will allow faster and more efficient force management. - China has threatened to MIRV its new ICBMs if the US deploys an NMD system. They have the ability to MIRV due to their theft of the US’s small-sized and highly efficient W-88 nuclear warhead. Their new missile, the Dong Feng-31, which will be their mainstay long-range ICBM (until the DF-41 is put in service) also has the ability to be equipped with dummy warheads to aid in the defeat of a Ballistic Missile Defense System. It’s also truck-mounted and therefore highly difficult to kill while on the ground and extremely easy to hide. - This ability to easily hide the DF-31 brings me to an interesting fact. The DF-31 can be broken down and be shipped via containers. This certainly brings new light to why the Chinese have established ports in the Bahamas and Panama that handle shipping containers!! Another interesting fact is that China has sought to make the assembly of the DF-31 and subsequent DF-41 as simple as possible. Their older generation of missiles had to be shipped to Nanjing Guided Missile Plant 307 for assembly and then onto another location for final completion. The new DF-31 and 41s do not have to be shipped to the Nanjing plant for construction. The report in the back of “The China Threatâ€� from which this information was obtained states that “the reason for this change is uncertain at present.â€� I surmise that this was done to facilitate rapid re-construction after shipment where the proper missile assembly facilities may not be available and to do so in the shortest amount of time possible (i.e. at a container shipping port in either the Bahamas or Panama). Add to this their vast arsenal of short and medium range missiles that are small enough to not need to be disassembled to be shipped in containers. Interestingly enough there is a short, fictional account in “The China Threatâ€� of the Chinese shipping and basing missiles at their shipping ports. - Speaking of Panama and the Panama Canal… It turns out that we lost more than just the Panama Canal when we let the Chinese have it. According to a former intelligence officer quoted by Bill Gertz, we also lost the following: * the former U.S. Southern Command – An underground “mini-Cheyenne Mountainâ€� * Albrook Air Field – How tough would it be to ship unassembled aircraft to the location and assemble them there? * Rodman Naval Air Station – Yet another airfield… * the Special Forces Jungle Training Center – No explanation necessary. * and various military and intelligence facilities in Corozal, Corundu, Fort Clayton, and Fort Sherman. Letting the Chinese control the Canal is a huge mistake but allowing them to have and use this infrastructure is an even greater mistake. In fact, that same intelligence official goes on to say, “We will pay dearly for this as surely as the sun rises.â€� The same chapter that mentions this also mentions how China is positioning itself at strategic choke points. They include the following: * the Indian Ocean (their bases in Burma) and the South China Sea (Hong Kong) * the Straits of Malacca (the Spratly Islands and a growing role in Cambodia) * the Central Pacific (a major land satellite tracking station on Tarawa) * the coast of Hawaii (a major ocean mining tract) * the Caribbean (Cuba and the Bahamas) * Central and Southern America (Panama and their spreading influence in Brazil, Venezuela, and other countries with enclaves of Marxist rebels) This list doesn’t include those Axis of Evil countries that China is constantly lending support to. Nor does this include our theorized involvement of China in Mexico or areas in the US and the rest of North America. I know I posted this once before over in the Ground War thread but this diagram shows how they are tightening the noose around us… - The book gives some interesting facts on the US’s W-70 nuclear warhead. That would be the enhanced radiation nuclear warhead (a.k.a. neutron bomb). For instance, the designs were stolen from the US in the late 1970s. And China tested it in 1988. The Chinese stole information on the W-70 as recently as 1996. They have presumably perfected their version of the W-70 warhead with all this information and time. - China doesn’t need a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons, like that of the Soviet Union, to destroy the US. It simply needs accurate and survivable weapons. They have the accuracy part down thanks to tech transfers under Clinton. And they have the survivable part down since China is only the second country to utilize a road-mobile ICBM force (Russia being the first). The Cold War arsenals were based largely on the assumption that a number might be taken out in their silos in the event of a nuclear first strike by an enemy. With a road-mobile ICBM force this is impossible to do. The road-mobile forces’ survivability is increased by China’s use of an interesting method of what is basically smoke to confuse laser guided munitions. These particulate clouds cause lasers to bounce off inaccurately and therefore direct laser-guided munitions off course. Also the fact that their new generation of missiles will be MIRVed makes their nuclear arsenal even more deadly. - The book also makes an interesting point on a quote from a Chinese military document about the US being largely untested in large-scale, modern warfare. They feel that the U.S. military will become “exhaustedâ€�. To a large extent, they are right. The US military is currently facing a shortage on grenades and various other large arms; a shortage of parts for tanks, support vehicles, aircraft, and ships; and our military underwent 8 years of dismantlement. It has been postulated that the attack on Iraq has been put off due in part to these shortages. What would happen in the event of a large-scale war? In closing, two things: 1) Definitely check out “The China Threatâ€� but keep in mind that there is a good chance there is more to the Chinese buildup than simple deterrence. I’m also have and am going to read “Red Dragon Rising: Communist China’s Military Threat to Americaâ€� by Edward Timberlake and William C. Triplett III and “The Coming Conflict with Chinaâ€� by Richard Bernstein and Ross H. Munro. I have yet to obtain Bill Gertz’s previous book “Betrayalâ€� or Edward Timberlake and William Triplett’s “Year of the Ratâ€� both dealing with Bill Clinton’s sellout of America to China. I will advise on these once I read them. 2) Again I know I also posted this previously in the Ground War thread but I think I shall post it once again. It is a list of Chinese/Russian war preparations compared to those of the US (the original list can be found here . It’s worth reading over.): quote: Russian War Preparations: * Moscow has outfitted hundreds of fighter-bombers with additional fuel tanks and in-flight refueling capability, augmenting Russia's intercontinental strike capability. * Russia has been constructing large numbers of military transport aircraft for foreign customers who do not exist. * Russia has been building and accumulating dry docks even though, at the moment, no foreign customers for them exist. * Russia has recently fielded a new battle tank; a new state-of-the-art fighter; super-quiet submarines which can engage sea, land and air targets simultaneously; a new attack helicopter and sniper rifle. * Russia has developed a revolutionary new rifle-fired infantry weapon, the so-called vacuum grenade, which can give a single Russian soldier the firepower of a 155mm howitzer. Russia has begun joint production of this weapon with the Chinese. * Russia now emphasizes the production of mobile ICBMs like the Topol-M, which are designed to evade satellite detection, permitting the Russians to cheat on arms control agreements. * Russia continues to develop biological and chemical weapons, sometimes with the use of U.S. funds. According to recent defectors, Russia is now working on a super-plague weapon. * Russian diplomacy is clearly attempting to build an anti-American alliance which includes countries like China, North Korea, Cuba, Iraq, Libya, South Africa, Syria, Venezuela, Vietnam, Iran and India. * Russian Spetsnaz commandos continue to train with suitcase nukes against U.S. targets. * Russia is hoarding strategic metals which are vital for keeping up war production through the first months of a nuclear world war. * Russia is importing more food than needed for domestic consumption. At the same time, Russia has constructed huge underground nuclear-proof food storage facilities. * Russia has developed an impressive engineering rescue capability, organized into special military formations positioned outside large cities, for rescuing citizens trapped beneath rubble in the event of a nuclear attack. * Recent Russian movies and pop songs depict Americans as stupid animals who deserve to die. In keeping with this theme, NATO is depicted as an aggressive alliance, sometimes likened to Hitler's Third Reich. * Russia is building huge underground cities, like the one at Yamantau Mountain in the Urals. These cities are built more than a thousand feet into the earth and are able to withstand direct nuclear attack. * Russia has been modernizing nuclear bunkers located beneath Moscow. * Russia has erected a system of national missile defense far beyond that allowed by the 1972 ABM Treaty. Deploying approximately 10,000 dual-purpose mobile SAM/ABMs, Russia has used a loophole in the treaty to provide a powerful missile shield. Using a common-sense approach to ABM defense, Russia's interceptor missiles employ special nuclear warheads that can destroy incoming warheads without having to score a direct head-on hit. * Russia is also ahead of the United States in directed energy weapons that could be used to blind or destroy U.S. early warning satellites. * Many of Russia's mafia organizations operate in collaboration with, or under the supervision of, military intelligence and the state security services. Organized crime is used to penetrate Western banks, technology companies, law enforcement and government. Routes used for smuggling drugs and other contraband are reserved in wartime for bringing biological, chemical and nuclear weapons into the U.S. Chinese war preparations: * Civil defense drills began in major Chinese cities last summer. * Chinese military commanders have been told that nuclear war with America could begin at any time. * China has been developing and deploying new road-mobile long range missiles like the DF-31 and DF-41. * China is modernizing its navy, purchasing advanced Russian warships and missiles capable of sinking U.S. carriers. * China has been rapidly building a large store of advanced nuclear warheads. * China has positioned bases to block the main western entry point into the Pacific, and has acquired indirect control of the Panama Canal through front companies. * China has formed military ties with Cuba and Venezuela. * China has also penetrated Sudan, and is spreading missile and nuclear technology to rogue states in Africa and the Middle East. * China has massed troops, aircraft, ships and missiles opposite Taiwan. * China has engaged in war exercises during which U.S. forces in the Pacific were targeted by Chinese forces. USA War Preparations: * No civil defense. * No national missile defense. * No road or rail-mobile ICBMs. * Abandonment of the Panama Canal. * U.S. officials have allowed nuclear warhead secrets to leak out to China. * The U.S. pays Russia billions of dollars to encourage disarmament measures, but these billions are diverted to Russian war preparations. * The U.S. Navy is short of fuel. * The U.S. Army is short of recruits and officers, and has only 10 divisions, with 8 of them unfit for combat. * The U.S. Air Force is facing pilot shortages, and many aircraft remain grounded for lack of spare parts. * Only 18 ballistic missile submarines remain in the U.S. Navy, with only 9 at sea on any given day. Many of the missile tubes on these boats are loaded with ballast instead of missiles, due to the START Treaty. * America's ballistic missile submarine commanders no longer have the launch codes to fire their nuclear weapons, but must rely on the president to send them the launch codes in the event of a war emergency. * Shop until you drop. * Wave good-bye to your country. * Say hello to your new landlord, Mr. Wang. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-07-25 02:30:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat BRAVO Ryan!!!!!!!!!! BRAVO. That is the BEST book report I've ever read in my entire life. Thank you. I started reading it about 2 weeks ago. I usually read a couple of books per DAY, but lately, things have been busy on other fronts, including my recent illness. I'm getting better. I highly recommend the book as well (even though I have not completed it). I'm also working on one called "Beyond Terrorism", by Ralph Phillips, and one called "Inside Delta Force" - which actually tells the history, from an Army Command Sgt. Major's point of view. (I was involved from the AF side as a lower ranking NCO, and helped to feed the service with folks as a job). Anyway - The China Threat is one of the better books I've seen on the subject so far. Ra (Member) 2002-07-25 05:05:00 67.96.38.5 Re: The China Threat I agree 100% with Rick. Great report! I plan to purchase this book tonight. It's a sad state we are in people. I love my country, but it needs some work. Ra (Member) 2002-07-26 07:41:00 67.96.38.5 Re: The China Threat I have the book now...will read it over the weekend. Thanks again! Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2002-07-28 07:55:00 216.68.35.79 Re: The China Threat Well, thanks for the praise! I guess my Jesuit high school English teachers would be proud! LOL! I’m just calling it like I see it though. Based on the information I have gathered, this is the conclusion I have reached. I’m now in the beginning pages of “Red Dragon Risingâ€�. I would be further into it but I decided to read a couple other books for fun. You know all work and no play… One thing I have been pondering… We have continually shipped numerous amounts of arms, some of them a bit advanced, to Taiwan. What if the Chinese are successful in taking the island (which I believe they will be) and as a result seizing at least some of the arms we have sold to Taiwan? Having some of those F-16s, AV-8B Harriers, P-3 Orions, AWACS, Patriot missiles, and other arms we have sold to Taiwan fall into ChiCom hands would not be a good thing. I want Taiwan to be able to repel any ChiCom attack but, I really want to try to keep as much of our tech out of the Chinese’ hands as possible (despite Bill Clinton’s efforts to the opposite effect). Just some food for thought. Also, a few other articles on reluctance in the Mid-East to assist the US in an attack on Iraq: - Jordan\'s King Says it\'s `Somewhat Ludicrous\' to Intervene in Iraq While Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Rages – Sounds like someone is fishing for an excuse. -I had an article from the Tehran Times about how Bahrain was opposed to a US attack on Iraq but, it appears that the link is expired. - Qatar in Dilemma Over U.S. Threat to Iraq As I said, these nations neighboring Iraq are vital in a long term assault. They provide areas to base aircraft, store supplies, and quarter troops. Unfortunately we are seeing some divisiveness among these countries. As a result we will not have as many land based places to stage attacks from. This will increase our reliance of aircraft carriers and as a result their accompanying support ships. All of this takes assets away from other parts of the world. Less assets in the Pacific and Indian Oceans means less assets to protect Taiwan and less assets to provide support to the ships permanently there, leaving them more open to defeat by the Chinese military forces. I say look for a move on Taiwan when we make a move on Iraq. This will interestingly fall at a time when Jiang is supposed to turn over power to Hu Jintao (signs are pointing to a US attack sometime in early-mid fall), the Chinese are engaged in war games opposite Taiwan, and a lot of the US’s assets are tied up in Iraq (and most possibly all of the Mid-East). This would only be the beginning of Chinese aggression… spacecatfish (Member) 2002-08-01 13:41:00 63.49.182.6 Re: The China Threat I just returned from the book store with my copy of The China Threat, I cant wait to start reading it. Unfortunately none of the books by former Soviets were available and had to be ordered, will be here in two weeks at the earliest, sigh. Sean Osborne (Member) 2002-08-02 07:38:00 198.26.130.36 Re: The China Threat From Newsmax: Chinese-Russian Military Exercise Targets U.S. Sean Osborne (Member) 2002-08-02 08:26:00 198.26.130.36 Re: The China Threat Are all those missiles currently targeted against Taiwan really targeting Taiwan? Read this... China Preparing A Pearl Harbor Style Attack Ra (Member) 2002-08-04 02:35:00 24.234.48.202 Re: The China Threat By Willy Wo-Lap Lam CNN Senior China Analyst HONG KONG, China (CNN) -- In a stern reaction to provocative statements by Taiwan's leader, China's foreign ministry says Beijing will not tolerate any move towards independence by the island. The response from Beijing comes a day after Taiwan's President Chen Shui-bian said he might support a referendum on the island's independence. China regards Taiwan as a renegade province, and has threatened war if the island moves toward independence. The reaction did not make any specific reference to Chen's proposal, made in a televised address to Taiwanese groups in Japan, that Taiwan residents should seriously consider legislation on holding a referendum to decide the island's future. But in typical fashion from the Chinese foreign ministry, the reaction was very terse and to the point, with a spokesperson saying there was zero tolerance for independence for Taiwan or anything that moves in that direction More.... aaahz (Member) 2002-08-05 01:38:00 216.148.246.134 Re: The China Threat More of the same, China Says Chen Leading Taiwan to Disaster Sean Osborne (Member) 2002-08-06 08:55:00 198.26.130.36 Re: The China Threat Here is the greatest resource I have found yet. If it concerns Red China and its war prep against US, this is THE compendium of information, bar none. Chinese Miltary Power The Chinese military view is that NOTHING is outside of their arsenal of weaponry, especially in the inevtiable war with the US. Here is one article from the above site which immediately grabbed my eye...and although penned in April 2001, it is even more relevent today. China Explores Ways To Defeat Superior U.S. Forces In Fight When China goes to war in the not-to-distant future... they will annihilate fully 1/3 of the worlds population. They are the "Kings of the East." Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-08-06 23:40:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat China's army warns Taiwan of use of force if referendum called Agence France-Presse | 8/07/02 Taiwan risks attack from China if President Chen Shui-bian presses ahead with a referendum on the island's future, Beijing's military warned through state-run media. In the first direct reference to possible military action since Chen's call for a referendum at the weekend sparked a crisis between the rivals, an unidentified "senior military source" told the China Daily that force always remained a possibility. Chen's comments underscored the growing possibility that "peace will have to be safeguarded and won through the use of force", the source was quoted as saying. "If we want to strive for peace, we have to be fully prepared for military actions," the source said. "We have enough confidence and determination to settle the question." The source reiterated Beijing's long-held stance that it would continue to work for peaceful reunification with the island, while also stressing that the Taiwan issue was purely an internal affair of China. However, he emphasized "the need for the mainland to proceed with military preparations as a backup to encourage a peaceful reunification". "We must not delude ourselves that the separatists will abandon their pro-independence pursuit overnight," the source warned. Over the past two days Chinese officials and state-run media have reacted angrily to Chen's remarks on Saturday that the island's "future and destiny" could only be decided by its people through a referendum. Beijing said Monday that Chen's comments, in which he also strongly suggested Taiwan's status as a country, were leading his people to "disaster". Officials in Taipei have sought to play down the comments' significance. China and Taiwan have been separated since the end of a civil war in 1949, but Beijing still considers the island part of its territory, awaiting reunification, by force if necessary. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-08-07 02:54:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat China-Taiwan militaries take different tack August 7, 2002 Posted: 1:35 AM EDT (0535 GMT) TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Political posturing across the Taiwan Strait has taken another twist, with Taiwan canceling naval exercises just as China is hardening its aggressive military stance toward the island. Amid rising tensions with China, Taiwan's military canceled a submarine-hunting exercise scheduled for next week, a military spokesman said Wednesday. Although the military would not say whether the decision was directly related to the recent friction with China, the military spokesman said that Taiwan called off the drills to avoid creating new "misunderstandings." "It was a routine drill, but we were afraid that the public and the media would read too much into it," said the spokesman, speaking on customary condition of anonymity. But as Taiwan attempted to downplay the war of words sparked by President Chen Shui-bian calling for a referendum on independence, China was hardening its stance, enhancing its summer exercises. "The People's Liberation Army (PLA) has conducted annual coastal maneuvers from April to October for more than a decade," an Asian military attaché told CNN. "It has made some modifications to the exercise routines in response to Chen's recent remarks -- and the purpose is psychological warfare." He added examples included more emphasis on invasion of beaches and islands as well as staging naval blockades; deployment of more recently imported jet fighters and submarines; and deployment of more reservists, particularly in the "front-line" Fujian province. However, according to foreign military attaches based in Beijing, there are no indications the PLA are about to stage new war games, such as missile drills. Comments 'oversimplified' Chen has said comments he made over the weekend describing the island as a country on equal footing with China and calling for a referendum on independence had been "oversimplified." On Saturday Chen said that such a referendum was "a basic human right" as, in reality, there was "one country on each side" of the Taiwan Strait. His comments sparked a furious reaction from Beijing, which has repeatedly threatened to use force if Taiwan made any moves towards formal independence. On Monday, officials warned that Chen's comments showed he was trying to split China, and said that formally declaring independence would "bring Taiwan into disaster." Taiwan and mainland China split in 1949 following the communist takeover on the mainland, but Beijing insists the island is part of "One China" and is merely a renegade province. Media campaign The Chinese leadership has since embarked on a campaign in the official media and through interviews with pro-Beijing figures overseas to put pressure on Chen and his pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). While the official media had kept quiet on coastal exercises that begun last April, it was expected selected maneuvers would be given prominent treatment in the press as part of an anti-Taipei campaign. The official China News Service on Wednesday ran several pictures of different army and naval units conducting exercises, including amphibious troops taking over beaches. Also on Wednesday, most papers in Beijing ran a joint commentary by the Xinhua News Agency and the People's Daily denouncing Chen's separatist moves. The commentary said Chen had "bound the future and safety of 23 million Taiwan people together with the 'Taiwan independence' powder keg." The commentary, however, did not mention specific retaliatory measures. Chinese television and the print media have also run numerous interviews with anti-separatist public figures and scholars in Hong Kong, Macau, Thailand and the U.S. U.S. conflict A Chinese source familiar with Beijing's Taiwan policy said President Jiang Zemin would not order any tough retaliatory actions unless Chen were to say or do something even more inflammatory. "Jiang is putting a lot of store by his summit with [U.S. President George W.] Bush in October," the source said. "Beijing is satisfied the U.S. was not behind Chen's separatist remarks last Saturday. Jiang will bring up this latest example of 'trouble-making' by Chen to urge the U.S. to rein in the pro-independence movement on the island." The source added Beijing would try to drive a wedge between Washington and Taipei by playing up the fact that Chen's remarks could result in the U.S. being dragged into a military conflict in the Taiwan Strait. -- CNN Senior China Analyst Willy Wo-Lap Lam contributed to this report Sean Osborne (Member) 2002-08-10 09:02:00 198.26.130.36 Re: The China Threat Red China has completed all preparations for "preserving national unification". That means the PLA (Army,Navy,Air Force)could launch an invasion of Taiwan AT WILL. When it happens not only will the Reds be attacking Taiwan, but defending against an American response, or even pre-emptively taking action to prevent a US response. A joint Sino-Russian military exercise will kick-off this week. Ra (Member) 2002-08-22 03:11:00 67.96.38.5 Re: The China Threat Arming China Makes U.S. Nervous quote:This year alone, China has ordered two new Project 956EM Sovremenny destroyers for $1.4 billion, eight Kilo submarines for $1.5 billion and S-300F naval air defense systems for $200 million, according to media reports. Also on the table are some 30 Su-30MK2 fighters equipped with X-31A anti-ship missiles. And just this week, Russia delivered the first 10 of 40 Sukhoi Su-30MKK fighters that China ordered last summer and offered China a license to assemble military helicopters, news agencies said. more.... Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-08-25 23:15:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat Well, well, well.............. Yemen confirms it bought Scuds from North Korea Dubai Gulf News via WorldNetDaily.com ^ | Monday, August 26, 2002 | Nasser Arrabyee Original Article Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh yesterday confirmed that his country possessed Scud missiles bought from North Korea. Addressing more than 60,000 members of his People's General Congress (PGC) at its annual meeting, President Saleh said: "We have bought those missiles and this is a legitimate right of Yemen." He said the U.S. penalised North Korea but it has not imposed a military ban on Yemen as Sanaa was cooperating with Washington in its war against terrorism. The New York Times quoted the U.S. officials last Friday as saying that the Bush administration has imposed sanctions on North Korea after being sure that the latter sold components of Scud missiles to Yemen before Bush took office. Saleh criticised the U.S. campaign against Saudi Arabia as unjustified. "We declare our solidarity with Saudi Arabia," he said. He expressed his country's rejection of the U.S. threats against Iraq saying: "We totally refuse the threats against Iraq. It is a dangerous initiative that a state changes the system of another. "This is an affair concerning only the people of that state, and interference in the internal affairs of any state is not at all acceptable. "The region as a whole is passing through political turmoil, and all Arab states will meet the same fate. No Arab country should think it is safe from the U.S. threats," Saleh warned, adding what is happening to Iraq can happen to the neighbouring countries. "We wish the Arab League and the Arab leadership achieve the minimum solidarity to confront the threats and challenges facing them," Saleh said. aaahz (Member) 2002-08-27 02:44:00 64.0.99.233 Re: The China Threat US Envoy Leaves China as War on Terror Brings Sides Closer US Welcomes New China Missile Rules but Wants Enforcement Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2002-09-09 18:15:00 216.68.45.12 Re: The China Threat Some news on the China Threat. - Watching Comrade Collector – Unbelievable!! (Written by one of the authors of Red Dragon Rising) - Chen Links China\'s Threat to Terrorism - China and Pakistan to Strengthen Military Ties - Advanced China Fighter Aircraft to Debut at Airshow I’ve long since finished my other books detailing China’s threat to us, “Red Dragon Risingâ€� and “The Coming Conflict with Chinaâ€�, as well as a book detailing our diplomatic relations with China since the Nixon era, “About Faceâ€�. Expect summaries of these books soon. And a final interesting link – Real-Time Testing of Internet Filtering in China . The Chinese can indeed read the Anomalies forum. Have fun! Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2002-09-19 19:35:00 216.68.45.253 Re: The China Threat BREAKING NEWS! U.S., China in New Naval Dispute quote: U.S., China in New Naval Dispute U.S. survey vessel in Yellow Sea accused of ‘criminal activity’ By Tammy Kupperman NBC News Producer WASHINGTON, Sept. 19 — The Chinese and U.S. military are engaged in a high-stakes game of cat and mouse just off the coast of China, NBC News has learned. China is accusing a U.S. survey vessel off its coast of “criminal activityâ€� in its waters, while the United States says the ship is operating in international waters, Pentagon officials revealed. CHINA HAS PROTESTED the presence of the USNS Bowditch, an unarmed United States hydrographic survey ship, some 60 miles off China’s coast in the Yellow Sea. While the Bowditch does map the ocean floor, it also listens underwater with its towed sonar system. Pentagon officials said that last week Chinese reconnaissance aircraft began flying over the Bowditch, and a Chinese intelligence ship began trailing the U.S. survey ship. Territorial waters are generally recognized to extend 12 miles from the shoreline. U.S. officials say the ship is clearly in international waters and has a right to be there. China, however, says the ship is in its “exclusive economic zoneâ€� — a maritime term that claims exclusive rights to economic exploitation to an area extending beyond territorial waters. While officials say that none of the actions by the Chinese is considered dangerous, they say that the Y8 and Y12 reconnaissance aircraft are flying 100 to 500 feet above the Bowditch and that the Chinese have warned the Bowditch that it is “engaging in criminal activityâ€� in bridge-to-bridge communications, to which the Bowditch has not responded. A Chinese fishing vessel damaged the towed sonar equipment, knocking off a hydrophone. It remains unclear, defense officials say, whether the fishing vessel hit the sonar deliberately. U.S. officials say they are watching this situation, but at this point no one is “too spun upâ€� over it. According to one Pentagon official, “we’ve got a right to be there, and so do they — and to check us out.â€� The last time this happened with the Bowditch was in June 2001, according to a defense official. Unlike this time, last year a Chinese frigate “locked and loaded,â€� so the unarmed Bowditch departed the area. This time, officials say that so far there aren’t any armed Chinese warships or aircraft involved. On April 1, 2001, a Chinese fighter jet collided with a U.S. Navy EP-3 spy plane, forcing the EP-3 to make an emergency landing on China’s Hainan island. In the episode, leading to a low point in recent Sino-U.S. relations, the fighter crashed into the sea, killing the pilot. The 24-member crew of the U.S. plane was detained for 11 days before being released, leading the Bush administration to call a virtual halt to military cooperation with China. U.S. military figures have said that China’s surveillance of U.S. aircraft has since been less aggressive. NBC’s Tammy Kupperman is a news producer in Washington. MSNBC.com’s Kari Huus contributed to this report. Also see this thread from Free Republic – U.S., China in New Naval Dispute ExpandedMInd (Member) 2002-09-23 06:48:00 198.81.26.209 Re: The China Threat Hi Rick: Congrats on your awareness of a formidible enemy, China. I confess I have not read all your posts, but I am up on this subject somewhat. No, war with them is not near, but it is inevitable, unless we stay strong enoug to deter them as we did the Soviets. We will not run them into the ground economically as we did the USSR, however. Their social structure, unlike the Soviet's, is so strong it can withstand crushing poverty. China's young people and growing middle class are our only hope. There is another good book on this subject, don't know if you referenced it already. The title is "Hegemon" and I will post the author after my next trip to the library, assuming I remember to look it up. Steve D Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2002-10-22 06:08:00 216.68.66.220 Re: The China Threat Jiang Zemin will soon be visiting with President Bush in Crawford, Texas. This should be Jiang’s last official dealings with President bush as President of China. There is a chance that Jiang won’t step down as he is supposed to in March. It will be interesting to see what happens with all of this… - Bush and Jiang\'s Crucial Hour Alone - China Hopes for Military Ties on Jiang\'s US Visit - China Sends Heavy Message Before Jiang Meets Bush - China\'s President Jiang Zemin Coming to America - North Korea Spoils Jiang\'s Party – Someone over on Free Republic picked up on something interesting: quote: Qian struck a positive note ahead of the Jiang -Bush summit: "When [Sino-US] relations experience setbacks and hardships, we have to cope stoically and remain confident of victory". "Victory" not success, not "a mutual agreement". I think WE know what he means. And other articles on China: - Bruce Herschensohn on China, Iraq, Pakistan, India, Israel - ChevronTexaco and China Petroleum And Chemical Corporation Announce Agreement on Technology License - China & Russia Deploy New Missile - CHINA: A Strategic Enemy of the United States - China Denies Helping North Korean Nuclear Program - China Predicts War in 5 Years - \'China to Keep US Cities in Striking Distance\' - China Weighs Battle With U.S. - China\'s Balance of International Payments (trade) Strong - China\'s Cheating (On WTO) Hurting US Farmers - China\'s Priority - and America\'s - China\'s Strategic Deception - Chinese Airshow a Hit With the Military - Chinese Airshow, Part Two - Chinese Companies With Ties to Military Encircle U.S. [COSCO] - Chinese Navy Threatens Asia - Chinese Official on Sino-US Ties: Old Friends to Trust – Yeah, trust as far as I can throw a piano! :rolleyes: - Clinton-Approved Computer Exports Help China Build Atomic Bombs - COSCO Chooses CPR Service into U.S. Heartland - Economic and Geopolitical Realities in China and Russia - GAO-Commerce Exports Could Help Chinese Military - Interview with Chinese Dissident Harry Wu - Made-in-China Boosting Chinese Economy - New Chinese Nuclear Submarine Can Strike US - New Submarine Deployment Sends Message – I think that this is too little, too late. It may solve anything coming from China to attack the US but, it won’t solve the problem of any Chinese assets already in South America, Canada, or the Caribbean. - Nuclear Arms Race in Asia - Pakistan and China are Co-Producing Supersonic Fighter Aircraft - People\'s Republic of Products - PRC Espionage Leads to \'Terf\' War - Report China Test Fires Sunburn Missiles in War Games - China’s Great Wall Project - US Provision for (US – Taiwan) Cooperation Dies - War with China - China Denies Helping North Korean Nuclear Program - CHINA: A Strategic Enemy of the United States A couple news stories on something curious… - Report Says Hundreds Of Navy Computers Missing - Large-Scale Theft in US Navy Does anyone else find it interesting that these computers went missing from the Pacific Fleet? Can you say espionage? I also have a few other articles that I feel are of extreme importance. I will put those in posts of their own with the full text. Always keep this in mind: quote: The bigger the smile, the sharper the knife. --49th Ferengi Rule of Acquisition (Yes, I am a bit of a Star Trek fan! :p ) Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2002-10-22 06:17:00 216.68.66.220 Re: The China Threat China\'s Silent Invasion quote: J.R. Nyquist August 19, 1999 Mexico's top drug trafficking cartel, run by the Arellano Felix brothers in Tijuana, is working closely with the Chinese. According to Jamie Dettmer, writing in the August 23 issue of Insight magazine, ships arriving in Mexico from China may contain "more than illegal immigrants." The Chinese are pumping people and supplies into Mexico, and the cargo is considered so sensitive that it is "often under the apparent protection of Chinese and Mexican naval vessels." American authorities are helpless, as usual, to block this strategic smuggling operation on our southwest border. America is helpless because President Clinton will not support improved border controls, and he won't get tough with the Mexican government. Clinton's immigration policy can be characterized as appeasement of the Mexicans, appeasement of the Chinese and a "who cares?" attitude. But why should Americans worry about large Chinese smuggling operations on our southwest border? After all, it's probably only drugs and illegal immigrants. And if people want to destroy their lives with heroin or cocaine, why waste money trying to stop them? And if immigrants want to come here, why not welcome them? Setting aside the issue of dangerous drugs and illegal immigration, the reason we should worry about drug and alien smuggling into this country, and the reason that no effort should be spared in making our borders impenetrable, is because nuclear and biological weapons can be smuggled into the country by the same routes that illegal narcotics are smuggled. According to Colonel Stanislav Lunev, highest ranking defector from the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian General Staff, narcotics trafficking is a way of establishing secure pathways into the United States. If there is a hole in our border due to corruption by drug traffickers, that hole can be used to ship more than narcotics. It can be used to ship suitcase nuclear bombs. With illegal immigration there is an additional concern. The Russian and Chinese general staffs have long been fascinated by Hitler's invasion of Norway. In that invasion German combat units entered Norway disguised as civilians. Once on Norwegian soil they deployed to sites where uniforms and weapons were waiting. Entire German combat units were able to invade Norway without having to fight their way up beaches. The country was penetrated in depth at the outset. Laugh if you like, but the United States is not invincible. If an alliance of relatively weak countries intended to defeat the United States in a war, they would have to take advantage of every potential avenue of attack. The open U.S. border to the south is an obvious weak point. In a typical war scenario, after a general nuclear exchange, thousands of Chinese soldiers pre-deployed to Mexico could move across the border and grab key points. Therefore, Chinese and Mexican warships escorting Chinese shipments to Baja California should raise a red flag. OK, perhaps it is only narcotics trafficking today. But some day it could be turned into something more. And that fact makes the problem absolutely intolerable from a national security standpoint. Ironically, Clinton has declared a state of national emergency because of the threat of nuclear and biological terrorism on American soil. Executive Order 12938 was issued on Nov. 14, 1994. Unfortunately this laughable "state of emergency" -- which hardly anyone knows about -- cannot do much as long as our borders are easily penetrated. A few years ago I happened to interview a Mexican gun runner. He bragged about his contacts in the Mexican underworld. With a loaded gun lying on the table, he philosophized in broad Marxist generalities, hinting at the liberation of Mexico, the liberation of the poor and downtrodden peoples of the Southwest. He also mentioned his Cuban "friends" and contacts. He spoke of the day when suburban America would be exterminated. "These people are living in a dream world," he told me. He laughed at America's politicians and bureaucrats. There is a pattern in all of this. Gun running and drug smuggling along America's southern border is not merely criminal. There is a political and ideological component which has long been ignored. There should be little doubt: when terrorism overtakes us, drug traffickers and gun runners will have played a key role. From a strategic standpoint, Mexico sits at our soft underbelly. Any country waging war with the United States would covet a secret alliance with Mexico. Such an alliance would open an avenue of attack. For this reason alone the participation of Mexican warships in Chinese smuggling operations should put us on guard. But the president will not do anything. He will not act. Meanwhile, China is actively attempting to secure control of the Panama Canal. According to Admiral Thomas Moorer, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "If we proceed along our present course, by the end of this year, on December 31st, Communist China will become the de facto new owners and rulers of the Panama Canal." They are weeping with laughter in Beijing at our shopping mall society and its flabby reflexes. One can only guess the jokes that pass between officials of the People's Liberation Army. The Americans are pathetic. They are weak. They are decadent. Ha, ha, ha. Why has there been no reaction in Congress? Why hasn't anybody launched a campaign to force the government to defend the national security? As President Coolidge once said, "The business of America is business." Behind our Congress there exists huge financial interests. And the People's Republic of China (PRC) and its agents of influence have neutralized our national security by directly appealing to American big business. According to the Cox Report: "The PRC's massive consumer market is the key factor behind the willingness of some U.S. businesses to risk and tolerate technology transfers." The logic of this applies to both our big corporations and the national government in Washington. The linkages are clear. According to the Cox report, "The People's Republic of China (PRC) has stolen classified information on all of the United States' most advanced thermonuclear warheads." This is no lucky hit. The methods for penetrating U.S. institutions have been well worked about by the Chinese. They have found a way into us. They merely exploit our greed. The Chinese have demonstrated, time and time again, that they will stop at nothing to turn the tables on us. If anyone doubts the threat they represent, consider the success they have enjoyed in stealing everything that is nailed down. This type of success proves that the U.S. is actually much weaker than it appears. This weakness can be found in the White House and in Congress. If we had real leaders, strong and decisive steps would have been taken long ago. Instead, we get weak words and ineffectual actions. Perhaps Chairman Mao was right when he said that "America is a paper tiger." ------------------------------------------------------------ J.R. Nyquist is a WorldNetDaily contributing editor and author of 'Origins of the Fourth World War.' email: jnyquist@northcoast.com Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2002-10-22 06:22:00 216.68.66.220 Re: The China Threat The Mexican Authorities May Not Have Been Alone (Scroll Down) quote: In the assault at San Ysidro, CA, the Mexicans allegedly had some assistance. Scott Gulbransen, a writer for an Internet-based publication, The Strategic Jungle Syndicate, reported that men of Asian origin were witnessed among the attackers. Furthermore, his report indicated the presence of non-English speaking Caucasian males. A skirmish between U.S. Border Patrol agents and armed soldiers in Mexico has raised several disturbing questions related to the security of America's borders. The incident, which occurred on October 24 near the Otay Mesa border-crossing southeast of San Diego, has received little attention in the mainstream media but local law enforcement circles are a buzz at reports that Mexican soldiers were not the only ones in the area. Several eyewitness accounts stated soldiers of Asian and Caucasian origin were also firing from Mexico on the Border Patrol agents in the unprovoked attack. A Border Patrol agent, speaking to the Strategic Jungle Syndicate on the condition of anonymity, stated the attack was more than Mexican soldiers firing upon what they thought might be drug dealers. “Everything happened so fast but I know not all of them were Mexican nationals,â€� the agent said. “More than two of us saw what appeared to be an Asian soldier. I didn't get a real clean look at his eyes but he certainly looked Asian to me. The bottom line here is this was planned and not some random event. The government might not want to admit that but it's the damn truth.â€� The agent also stated several Mexican nationals, attempting to cross the border illegally, also told of “chinos,â€� a slang term in Spanish for Chinese, soldiers dressed in fatigues. “There were a few people in the brush trying to get into the United States and after the shooting ended, they were apprehended and being processed to return to Mexico,â€� the Border Patrol agent said. “Two or three of them were close enough and said they heard men speaking what they described as Chinese. They were scared and said they had seen the men before, including some white men driving military type vehicles.â€� Local law enforcement officials have also confirmed the movement of unidentified military vehicles. A deputy with the San Diego County Sheriff's office confirmed officers have encountered unknown vehicles in and near the border area. "We're all law enforcement officers and we talk a lot about what we see," the deputy with nine years in the department said. "There's been strange things going on. Even homeowners have been calling about automatic weapons fire in the canyons near Otay Mesa. I know my friends with the San Diego Police Department also hear about it. There's something going on and most of us feel like we're not being told everything." Increased activity along the U.S.-Mexican border has yielded strange events over the past three months. In addition to the powerful Mexican drug cartels, and the ever-profitable smuggling of illegal immigrants to better working wages in California, many in border towns report strange activity. "You know, I've lived here for many years," said Domingo Sanez of San Ysidro, "but never have I heard so many strange noises and lots of traffic. I always say it must be a war because I hear trucks all the time and they wake me and my wife." Sanez works as a parking lot attendant near the border crossing at San Ysidro and lives on the eastern outskirts of Tijuana. He said many believe there are things going on in the night but he believes drug cartels are the culprit. "There is so much money and they are so powerful," he said. "I think they are getting ready to go to war with the Americans. I don't know why but people want those drugs and it's big money.â€� Still others feel more international forces may be working within Mexico. "You have to sit there and ask yourself why are there Chinese soldiers in Mexico and why have people reported seeing other blond soldiers not speaking English," the Border Patrol agent said. "It scares me to think some enemy army may be closer than we think. People out there need to demand the truth and find out what our government knows." Keith Weeks, president of NBPCL 1613, said he's not sure why the Border Patrol has side stepped the issue and watered down it's story on the incident. "What the agents told us directly and what the Border Patrol said in their statement don't match completely," Weeks said Wednesday. "For whatever reason they're more concerned about keeping it quiet and we don't know why." Weeks said his organization had contacted Congressman Duncan Hunter about the agent's concerns and that the congressman was supportive of their concerns. "Maybe this has something to do with the election next week," Weeks said. "I can tell you when the agency called me they told me they were very disappointed we issued our press release. That's not right.â€� Weeks also questioned why highly skilled military personnel would be stationed on the border directly in violation of current treaties with the United States. Weeks was not aware of the eyewitness reports related to Asian soldiers being part of the group that fired on his fellow agents. "I'm going to check again with the agents but I have not heard that yet," he said. The only official word concerning the incident came three days after the skirmish from National Border Patrol Council Local 1613 who called for an investigation by the U.S. and Mexican governments. The union represents Border Patrol agents and is a division of the American Federation Of Government Employees. NBPCL 1613 stated the incident was the second confirmed incident this year in which Border Patrol Agents have been shot at by what they believe to be Mexican military. The other occurred on March 14 in Santa Teresa, New Mexico. The press release stated not only stray soldiers had fired upon the agents, but also that two of them had taken sniper positions as well. The agents identified themselves in Spanish but the soldiers kept on firing and pursuing the Americans. "I don't think they understood Spanish," the Border Patrol agent speaking to the Strategic Jungle Syndicate said. "A few did and they moved more into a rear position while the others fired. The rest were in a van near the western most part of the canyon." Both law enforcement officials are disappointed, the media, in particular, hasn't noticed the story. "Can you imagine if a bunch of soldiers fired on police officers in downtown San Diego what coverage that would get," the Border Patrol agent said. "We were involved in an international incident and there's not a damn thing anyone is doing about it." The questions remain and no answers appear to be in sight. Kundalini-Rising (Member) 2002-10-31 02:44:00 24.107.32.246 Re: The China Threat Another good book on the subject is Seeds of Fire by Gordon Thomas. Seeds of Fire It details a lot of the industrial espionage that went on at Los Alamos and the theft of the Promis software along with many of the subjects touched upon in this thread. Frankly, this whole subject scares the **** out of me. Specially Huchison-Whampo and that recent tour of South America by China's leader. It seems to me that we will be spread very thin when we attack Iraq and in perfect position for a joint Russian-Chinese counter-attack, justified by our unilateral bullying. Friction along the US-Mexico border is at an all time high, with the "Reconquisa" movement, the IMF raping of Argentina, Venzuala..we could be in some deep trouble. Good thing those Texans have all those guns Jools (Member) 2002-10-31 06:07:00 195.92.198.74 Re: The China Threat I agree, Kundalini. Throw in a bit of domestic "terrorism", declare martial law and it will be the UN with Russia and China arriving to restore "order". And all done with full compliance by those who covertly control the US government. However, it's old chestnut time: "He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword". Sean Osborne (Member) 2002-11-01 06:25:00 192.172.8.11 Re: The China Threat quote:Originally posted by Jools: "He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword". Thus is the life of a soldier. Beats getting old; alzheimers; hospitals; elderly care nursing homes; or HORROR OF HORRORS rotting away in a VA facility. Push comes to shove I'm taking MORE than my fair share of enemy out. Stone Cold. Jools (Member) 2002-11-01 08:41:00 195.92.198.74 Re: The China Threat Just an opinion, but I think your talents would be far better suited attempting to make America truly free once the inevitable take over has happened. Why go out with a bunch of drones when you can stick around and face the real scum orchestrating it? WeGrok (Member) 2002-11-02 12:12:00 198.81.26.209 Re: The China Threat Ryan 7/28/02 "I say look for a move on Taiwan when we make a move on Iraq." You hit that one on the head. It's looking more everyday like Boy George is going to trade Taiwan for the oil rights in Iraq Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-11-05 23:13:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat Actually, somewhere along the way, I said that long ago. China is waiting, biding it's time to do just that. I figured Iraq though, would have pushed us to the point where they would have forced an attack on them back a few months ago. If they'd done that, we'd have been fighting them, and Al Qaeda in Afghanastan. At that point, I thought Pakistant and India would start lobbing weapons back and forth, and North Korea might even act up and go after South Korea. THAT would be a sincere "world war". Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2002-11-06 19:15:00 216.68.37.205 Re: The China Threat WeGrok, I sure hope none of us have hit the nail on the head. I am a little disappointed in the stance that President Bush took in his recent meeting with Jiang Zemin. He basically said that the US doesn’t support independence for Taiwan . But, I’m hoping it is all lip service as our actions seem to belie what he said… See, we recently said we are indeed going to sell Taiwan the Aegis cruisers they have wanted . I just wish we would come right out in the open and say, “We support independence for Taiwan, now what are you going to do about it?!?â€� This wishy-washiness is only making us look like weak fools in the eyes of the Chinese. They only respect force and we are showing the exact opposite in an effort to “play niceâ€�. We Americans seem to have a fatal flaw of being too nice and trusting with everyone! We did the same thing with the EP-3 incident. I’d also like to point out how it’s interesting that a “fireâ€� has sprung up with North Korea declaring it has nuclear weapons. As I said over in the Ground War thread, there is talk about using military action to solve the problem in North Korea. That would tie up our military even more. The North Korean military is nothing to sneeze at like the Iraqi military. Especially considering how the Chinese backed their North Korean brothers up in the Korean War. I’d also like to point out that they are getting ready to test their newest long-range ICBM that is capable of hitting most, if not all, of the US. Everything is happening just like it has been theorized here… Rick said: quote: I figured Iraq though, would have pushed us to the point where they would have forced an attack on them back a few months ago. I’m a little surprised about that too. I guess, though, that everything is being drug out as long as possible to wear us down bit by bit. And in other Chinese news… - China to Buy More Advanced Russian Warships - China to Unveil Top Secret Warplane - Chinese Spy Ship in Taiwan Waters - China Maneuver Raises Stakes - China Makes Spying A Company Policy - Gainesville Company Gets Chinese Owner - The Sino-Saudi Connection - Pentagon Prepared To Restart Frozen U.S.-China Military Talks - Jiang Zemin Is Not Santa Claus - China Leader Bypasses Local Critics - The Bush-Jiang Summit: A New Chapter in U.S.-Chinese Relations - China May Overtake The United States As Top Destination For Foreign Investment- - Jiang Gets Invitation To Visit Taiwan - North Korea Nukes Loom Over Bush-Jiang Meeting - U.S. And China Still At Odds Over Arms Transfers - U.S. Opens New FBI Office... In China - Hong Kong Warily Watches China Leadership Shift - China Launches New Photo-Reconnaissance Satellite And, I’m sure everyone remembers the recent attack against the internet root servers. Now, isn’t it a bit odd that the attacks were traced to both South Korea and America at the same time ? China has said in their “Unrestricted Warfareâ€� that they see an internet attack as a force multiplier. Now, here’s something that everyone should read… Has China Become An Ally? This is the tripe that most people read and actually believe! Sad… While the next article doesn’t directly relate to the threat that China poses, it does indeed show just what type of a government they are – China Executes Dozens Ahead of Congress . I’d like to know where in the hell is the international outrage over this!! Everyone gets their knickers in a knot because the US wants to remove a murderous lunatic with weapons of mass destruction from the face of the Earth but, no one says a ******* word about dozens of people being summarily executed by a Communist government!! Good lord this ****** me off to no end! Jools, quote: And all done with full compliance by those who covertly control the US government. I have to disagree with you… I don’t see it as a conspiracy. We are being maneuvered into the position that others want us to be in. As I mentioned above, we Americans are often too nice and trusting with other nations. Just look at WWII… We utterly destroyed Germany and Japan only to rebuild them bigger and better than before WWII. Regrettably, many others out there aren’t as nice as we are. Take for example the various arms control treaties the US has signed with Russia in good faith. We sign an arms control treaty to cut nuclear warheads, dismantle ICBMs, etc. The US complies with the treaty by gradually destroying our most potent ICBM (the Peacekeeper), cutting our SSBN fleet, and numerous other nuclear arms control measures. All the while Russia builds a new generation of more potent, highly survivable, road-mobile, MIRVed ICBMs – The Topol-M. The last US ICBM was built in ’89 yet the Russians are building newer and better ones. Ones that are even able to maneuver past our ABM system we are working on (although this new laser technology gives me some glimmer of hope). Another example… We agree to give North Korea foreign aid, food and medicine, free oil, and build them safe and modern nuclear reactors on condition that they stop their nuclear weapons programs. They agree. We start bringing in the oil, food, medicine, and money yet they continue their weapons programs and even build an ICBM (although not as advanced as Russia’s) that can target nearly all of the United States! What ******* type of thanks is this?!?! Hell, North Korea has been the largest recipient of foreign aid in the entire Asian region! On top of that they take the food and medicine meant to help the starving people of North Korea and hoard it for the government and military. That same scenario happens with Iraq in regards to food and medicine. We let Iraq sell oil for food and medical supplies. We give the food and medicine to the Iraqi government thinking that it will surely be given to all those ailing Iraqi children that Saddam claims the sanctions are hurting. But no. Just like with North Korea, the needed supplies are hoarded by the government and military. We are trusting of others to the point of it being dangerous… We also believe that we are the strongest nation in the world while their militaries are small and weak. Therefore, individually, we don’t think of them as a credible threat. In light of that, it is important to remember that a pack of hyenas can take down a strong and healthy lion. The task is even more simple when that lion has been weakened by minute, constant attacks (terrorism, peacekeeping, military reductions, etc.). Notice that Russia is building its nuclear forces while China is the one focusing on its manpower. Other smaller countries such as those of the Axis of Evil are being equipped by both Russia and China in an effort to bring even more “hyenasâ€� into the fight. Again, I don’t see it as a conspiracy. I see it more as a vast game of chess. Unfortunately, we are still playing checkers. Diane (Member) 2002-11-14 08:34:00 205.188.209.104 Re: The China Threat Look at all these pseudo milidroids rubbing their weapons and pumpin their mega.POWER hyper-rifle bolts. I'll bet when they are out in public and they pass an Asian person, they flash back to Rambo mowin down a million commies. I'll bet whenever they see an I.ran.ian they simply freak out and can hardly function as real human beings. By the way the correct pronunciation of the name of the country of a million very sweet and good people, is Eir.Raaaaan, if you ever bother to speak to one, thats what they will tell you. Love, Diane Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2002-11-14 13:52:00 216.68.44.83 Re: The China Threat **DONOTDELETE** () 2002-11-19 23:54:00 24.150.41.165 Re: The China Threat Chinese missile has twice the range U.S. anticipated China recently test-fired a new cruise missile with twice the range U.S. intelligence agencies initially estimated, intelligence officials say. The test comes as Chinese Communist officials last week appointed a top general in charge of China's missile buildup to a new post within the leadership that runs the military. China fired a YJ-83 anti-ship cruise missile from a JH-7 fighter-bomber earlier this month over Bohai Bay, off northern China. The test results surprised U.S. intelligence officials. Until recently, the estimated range of the YJ-83 had been assessed to be about 75 miles. The new missile test showed that its range is about 155 miles. The last time the missile was tested was July 4, when the People's Daily, the official Communist Party newspaper, announced the testing of a beyond-visual-range anti-ship missile. This weapon is believed by Pentagon officials to be part of Beijing's efforts to develop a long-range strike capability against U.S. aircraft carriers and ships. Officials say the missile represents a new capability for the Chinese military in conducting "over-the-horizon" attacks on U.S. or allied ships in any conflict with China. The YJ-83 is believed to be a derivative of the C-801 anti-ship cruise missile but can travel at supersonic speeds, making it very difficult for ships to stop. Defense specialists say the YJ-83, sometimes called the C-803, also has the capability to receive target information in flight Richard Fisher, a specialist on the Chinese military with the Jamestown Foundation, said the new YJ-83 will probably be outfitted on the upgraded JH-7a fighter-bomber. "With a range of 250 km [155 miles], it gives the PLA and its export clients a new anti-ship missile that can fire beyond the reach of U.S. Naval anti-aircraft missiles like the Standard SM-2, which will soon equip Taiwan's Kidd-class destroyers," Mr. Fisher said. "This test also indicates that longer-range land-attack cruise missiles are just around the corner," he noted. China announced major leadership changes last week that elevated new leaders to many Communist Party posts. However, outgoing Chinese President Jiang Zemin stayed on as chairman of the Party's Central Military Commission, the powerful organ that controls the military. The commission was used by the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in 1989 to bypass deadlocked government and party structures in ordering Chinese military forces to attack unarmed civilian protesters who had occupied Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Hu Jintao, who was named the new Chinese party leader, was reappointed last week as a vice chairman of the military commission. Additionally, two generals were named commission vice chairmen: Gen. Guo Boxiong and Gen. Cao Gangchuan. Both generals are proteges of Mr. Jiang, who promoted them when he was party leader. Gen. Cao is expected to become China's defense minister, replacing Gen. Chi Haotian, in the next several months. His appointment is viewed by U.S. intelligence analysts as a sign that China's major military buildup will increase under his leadership. Officials said Gen. Cao's promotion within the commission is significant; as head of the General Armament Department he was the official in charge of China's missile development and other weapons-modernization programs. Gen. Guo was an aide to Gen. Fu Quanyou, the chief of the Chinese general staff, who lost his post on the Central Military Commission. Gen. Guo is expected to replace Gen. Zhang Wannian, who ran the military commission until the recent leadership changes. Copyright © 2002 News World Communications, Inc. Original article. ddodd777@yahoo.com (Member) 2002-11-20 01:53:00 208.161.136.146 Re: The China Threat Americans, Hyphenated- Americans, do not take any s**t! China, Russia, and the rest of the hyenas are in for a big ole' red white and blue surprise. When the "blue helmets" NATO troops seem to be moving in, we'll be waiting. Our citizens are armed, and we will make them wish they stayed home. Here's another angle. Everyone and their mother has a copy of The Art of War by Sun Tzu. EVERYONE. Imagine a war between gangs. Gangs that have survived by following the actions of their leadership, and observing the mistakes made by others that lost and died. Each gang has a similar strategy and is prepaired to do damage. Each gang knows it can win. Each gang thinks it can play The Art of War on the others. Now the fighting is fair all the way around. Someone throws the first "sunday-punch" and all hell breaks loose. "ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE!" If you think WWIII is going to be monday night football. You're not going to survive. Arm yourselves. Phsyically, mentally, spiritually. You'll need all of it when all hell breaks loose. ddodd777@yahoo.com (Member) 2002-11-20 02:01:00 208.161.136.146 Re: The China Threat I fear nothing. I have faith in my King. The King of the kingdom of Earth. I am prepaired to follow his instructions. How'bout you? Snafuun (Member) 2002-11-30 12:38:00 217.215.121.254 Re: The China Threat Thread Originator: quote:However, in recent days I've come into some information that caused me to start doing some hard research on China. In doing so, I've found some things that scared me a bit. I'm not easily scared about anything, cautious, yes, scared no. Think about it. The poster isn't scared about anything. Just cautious. What a relief! China, the next big military threat against the US? Gee, that sounds even more convincing than Iraq. Jeezus. :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: "Mr President, we cannot allow a mineshaft gap!" Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2002-12-01 00:47:00 216.68.39.53 Re: The China Threat Someone has obviously not done ANY reading in the Ground War thread or this thread, nor done any research on their own! If you had, you wouldn't be singing the tune you are. Ignorance is bliss I suppose... :rolleyes: **DONOTDELETE** () 2002-12-03 08:55:00 24.150.41.165 Re: The China Threat The recent unveiling (sort of) of China's first domestically designed (sort of) fighter jet was the culmination of a long saga of international military-hardware wheeling and dealing that has seen US-designed or -funded high-tech weaponry fall into the hands of potential military rivals. The showpiece of many years' work, dating back to the late 1980s, recently happened - albeit unobserved - when China confirmed the existence of, but did not unveil, the Jian-10 fighter jet. It had been reported that the J-10 (F-10 being the export version, using North Atlantic Treaty Organization designation) would be shown in public for the first time during the fourth China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition (Airshow China 2002) held in Zhuhai in southern Guangdong province from November 4-10, but the plane did not appear... Full article. Copyright Asia Times Online Seems like the Chinese have been "Obtaining" more than just U.S. nuclear missile technology, and this from some of America's allies to boot. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2002-12-03 15:46:00 216.68.39.156 Re: The China Threat Dejitaru, Yes, I’ve been reading up on the J-10 for a little while now. It appears that they have gotten technology from the canceled Israeli Lavi project as well as an F-16 we sold to Pakistan. Fortunately it is on par with the F-16. I say fortunately because the F-16 will begin to be replaced in 10 years by the JSF F-35. This will effectively put China a generation of aircraft behind us barring that they acquire Su-32s, Su-35s, and Su-39s from Russia. Unfortunately, it looks like there is a very good chance they will though – From Bad to Worse . Here’s some other news articles on the J-10: - China\'s New High-Tech Fighter, The F-10 Based On American F-16 Technology – Note the machinery the US sold to China under the Clinton government that allows the manufacture of advanced aircraft parts and even cruise missiles. Also don’t forget that China paid al-Qaeda for unexploded Tomahawk missiles after the Clinton raids on the medicine factories. So now that they have the design and the machines, they can begin making Tomahawk clones! - Chinese Air Force Gets New Jet Also, here are a few other China related articles: - Will Iraqi War Tempt China to Invade Taiwan? – Gee, isn’t this what we have been saying for quite some time here at Anomalies?!? Just add in a move by North Korea on South and several Mid-East Countries on Israel and you have the scenario painted here. - Beijing waiting for U.S.-Iraq war? - When US Is Plagued by the Mid-east Situation, China Can Get a Relatively Relaxed World Environment – Straight from the horse’s mouth no less! - Australian Group Warns Of Sino-US War Over Taiwan - Communist Chinese Heavily Penetrating Canada - China Fighter Jets Fly Near US Spy Plane – How many times has this happened now? - China Denies Selling Radars To Iraq - China Revs Up Its I2R Missile Efforts - PLA Navy Obtains New-Generation Submarines - Russia Reports Missile Launch In China - GAO: U.S. Satellites Vulnerable to Cyber Attack – I guess China can indeed do some damage with its cyber-warfare division. If our satellites are crippled we loose a HUGE edge in battle and the Chinese know this. This is also why they are focusing so much on anti-satellite technology (micro-satellites, lasers, etc.) - Losing the Info-War – Some more info on how the US is lagging behind in computer security despite our extremely large reliance on technology. - Lonely China Looks To NATO – Looks like Anatoly Golitsyn is being proven right. “Former Communistâ€� and current Communist countries are trying to infiltrate NATO and render it useless. Just look how we recently admitted several Soviet Bloc countries and have partially let Russia in!!! - China Seeks Dialogue With NATO - Ukraine Peddles Its Arms In China - Ukraine Probe\'s Focus Shifts To China - Beijing Supplying Iraq? - Preemption Takes Aim At Ukraine And China - Beijing To Construct Seven Missile Brigades Facing Taiwan By 2005 - Facing China\'s Fifth Column - Beijing\'s Goodwill Is An Illusion - Chinese Missile Has Twice The Range U.S. Anticipated - (Taiwanese) Military Unfazed By New Missile - End to the Sham Over Taiwan - Editorial: Be Wary Of Chinese Gestures - Elite PRC Generals Take Charge Of Taiwan Front - (Communist) Party Retains Its Grip On Changing China - 2 Of Missing (Los Alamos) Printers Assigned To \'Wen Lee\' - American Businesses Flock To China - Asia Worries About Growth of China\'s Economic Power - China Eyes Flat Tax - China, Hub Of The World\'s Next Bloc - China To Give More \'Oomph\' To Its Silicon Valley In Beijing - China Urges US to Stick with 1994 North Korea Arms Control Agreement - China\'s Engagement In Afghanistan Shows New Diplomatic Assertiveness - China\'s Exports: How Low Can Prices Go? - China\'s New Peace Strategy - Chinese Oil Diplomacy Focuses On Middle East - China, US, Saudi Arabia, And The Future - Downed EP-3 Is Flying Again - Hu Jintao Pledges to Keep China on Marxist Path - Rumsfeld Says U.S. Anger Toward China Subsides – Not for me it hasn’t! - SEC Aide Quits After Leak To Chinese - The Ominous Subtext To US-China Relations - US Semiconductor Maker to Produce Chips in China - Where\'s Hu? Chinese See Little Of Their Heir Apparent - White House Congratulates New Chinese Leader; Former U.S. Ambassador Calls Shift Depressing - Woken Giant Is A World-Beater (China’s Economy Should Overtake US In Size By The 2020s) - How To Improve U.S.-China Relations And, one last thing that has recently occurred that is highly interesting… Russia and China have been holding some very high level, strategic talks within the last few days. I will post two of the several articles I have dug up on the talks here but will post the others over in the Ground War thread. - Beijing Courts Putin With Defense Links - Jiang And Putin Hold Summit Talks With Iraq, Nkorea On Agenda **DONOTDELETE** () 2002-12-03 16:08:00 24.150.41.165 Re: The China Threat Thanks for the links Ryan, I've got some light evening reading to catch up on now. You don't have to tell me twice about the threat China poses to North America(I don't live in the USA though I am just across a lake from y'all) and the most unsettling aspect of it is that very few people here will admit that it actually exists. I can count on one hand all the people that I personally know that think China is anything but a backwater nation of rice growers. Sean Osborne (Member) 2002-12-06 05:42:00 192.172.8.11 Re: The China Threat I don't know if this has been discussed yet, but I found this article fascinating and enlightening in the extreme. Comments? Panama Canal Treaty is Null and Void ddodd777@yahoo.com (Member) 2002-12-09 04:53:00 208.161.136.169 Re: The China Threat After reading Sean's last posted link. I have imagined 101 new conspiracies. I can see all this coming down hard in the next ten years. Heavy. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2002-12-09 07:12:00 216.196.173.127 Re: The China Threat Dejitaru, quote: I can count on one hand all the people that I personally know that think China is anything but a backwater nation of rice growers. Yes, this seems to be quite a popular misconception. I just wish people wouldn’t look at me like I have two heads when I tell them otherwise! People of today’s fast-food, disposable society fail to look to the future. They only live for the moment. The Chinese and Russians are doing the exact opposite. They are biding their time. Sean, While the treaties shouldn’t have allowed the transfer to happen, I don’t think that there is anything short of military action that would reverse the current situation. And can you imagine the ruckus that would be raised if the US wanted to militarily retake the Canal! “Oooh, the big evil US is attacking a country that hardly even has a standing military just to further its imperialistic goals!â€� and “Show us proof that China is in control!â€� The fact is that although it shouldn’t legally be in the hands of the Chinese, it will unfortunately continue to be. I just wish that people would get themselves informed and realize the deadly situation that is brewing. ddodd, Ten years is about when it indeed looks like things will be going down. I just hope that it is enough time to prepare ourselves thoroughly. Sean Osborne (Member) 2002-12-15 01:05:00 68.84.99.121 Re: The China Threat New from JR Nyquist. Weekly Column - Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2002 "China Prepares to Invade Taiwan" by J. R. Nyquist On Nov. 26 a Pravda headline asked, [is] “Beijing Waiting for U.S.-Iraq War?â€� The article is about U.S. concerns that China might strike Taiwan if the U.S. attacks Saddam Hussein in the Middle East. (1) Is this a realistic possibility? The future remains uncertain, but an invasion of Taiwan remains high on Beijing’s list of “things to do.â€� The Communists in the Far East are restless. In late October several warships from China’s North Sea Fleet sailed east of Taiwan. The move was part of an ongoing and complex military exercise in the South China Sea. Taiwan’s defense minister, Tang Yao-ming, said the exercises were “unprecedented.â€� Addressing the Taiwanese (Republic of China) legislature, Defense Minister Tang begged legislators to purchase four U.S. Kidd-class destroyers. In late November the Chinese used bad weather to mask amphibious exercises in the South China Sea. This was the fourth straight year the Chinese military practiced a coastal invasion, and it was the second year Chinese commanders succeeded in hiding their amphibious capabilities and new combined arms tactics from U.S. intelligence. As for human spies and infiltrators getting a look at Chinese capabilities, the Washington Times alleges that U.S. government policy “limits conducting human spying operations in China to avoid upsetting Beijing.â€� (2) On its side, China is aggressively scouting the waters around Taiwan. Since March Chinese spy boats have been spotted along Taiwan’s eastern shore on several occasions. Hong Kong’s Ming Bao newspaper reported that Beijing’s navy is following a special directive to “make preparations for military struggle against Taiwan.â€� This directive was issued last March by President Jiang Zemin. On Monday the People’s Liberation Army “rebuffedâ€� U.S. questions about Chinese arms sales to rogue states during high-level strategic talks. The Chinese refused to renounce the use of force against Taiwan; they also refused to limit the export of missile and nuclear technology to “axis of evilâ€� countries by denying that such exports are taking place. According to the Washington Times, one U.S. official said: “The continued proliferation by China of nuclear, chemical and missile-related materials and technologies remains a problem.â€� (3) In violation of its international commitments, China has long been exporting weapons of mass destruction to terrorist regimes. U.S. officials are often too timid, perhaps too sensitive to U.S. economic interests to consistently enforce laws that would activate sanctions against Chinese companies. The Clinton administration briefly imposed sanctions on Chinese companies on two occasions in the 1990s. The first occasion involved missile sales to Pakistan and the second occasion involved chemical weapon sales to Iran. At the time no sanctions were imposed on for China’s exporting germ warfare equipment and cruise missiles to Iran. (4) Is there a connection between China’s military buildup and its exports to rogue states? There may be a strategic connection. It is no mean coincidence that Iraq’s new air defense system was installed with Chinese assistance. Meanwhile, China’s military buildup opposite Taiwan has continued for four years. This buildup involves the deployment of hundreds of short and medium range ballistic missiles. According to USAF Major Mark A. Stokes, an air attaché at the U.S. embassy in Beijing from 1992 to 1995, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is preparing a powerful first strike against Taiwan. In a report issued in 1999, Stokes wrote: “The People’s Republic of China, is developing one of the most daunting conventional theater missile challenges in the world.â€� He further stated: “A large arsenal of highly accurate and lethal theater missiles serves as a ‘trump card,’ a revolutionary departure from the PLA of the past. The PLA’s theater missiles and a supporting space-based surveillance network are emerging not only as a tool of psychological warfare, but as a potentially devastating weapon of military utility.â€� (5) Surprise attack is part of the Chinese war plan against Taiwan. Stokes’ 1999 report said the PLA was planning to use 400 missiles in an opening volley that would decapitate Taiwan’s political and military leadership, forestalling any effort to preemptively disrupt China’s missile forces with air strikes. Targets would include Taiwan’s defense ministry and the presidential palace. In terms of its plan, Beijing is respectful but not fearful of U.S. military intervention. In a 1999 strategic directive from China’s Central Military Commission to all corps-level commands, China’s strategic leadership stated that nuclear war with America was an option because America would recoil in horror after the loss of one city while China had the toughness to prevail despite much heavier losses. It is in this context that North Korea’s war preparations and Russia’s friendly overtures to China must be viewed. A regional war in the Middle East involving U.S. forces might tempt China to launch an attack. The North Korean military buildup is significant in this regard as well. On Dec. 5 the U.S. government reminded the North Koreans that they had promised not to develop nuclear weapons. But the North Koreans, backed and supplied by China, have thrown defiance in the face of the Americans. After 1994 the United States gave a great deal of aid (especially food and fuel aid) to North Korea on the basis of Pyongyang’s promises. Now that North Korea has broken those promises, true to Communist form, tensions are on the rise. Last week the United States government described the situation in North Korea as “very serious.â€� As if to make matters worse, the North Koreans recently admitted to having operational nuclear weapons. In October they admitted to secretly enriching their uranium stockpile for the construction of additional nuclear weapons. Sino-Russian relations lie at the core of the emerging Far East crisis. Conventional analysts may think this an odd fact, but nothing seems to have changed in the region since the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, except that China and North Korea are stronger than ever and armed with mass destruction weapons – and Russia is working closely to build up China’s military potential. According to Dr. Alexandr Nemets, writing in Newsmax, Russian President Vladimir Putin has decided “to use all means and tools for the expansion of weapon exports to China.â€� Russia’s defense industry is now tied to China’s military, and is China’s leading supplier of advanced weapons. Last month the Chinese and Russian foreign ministers, along with President Putin, decided to transform the Shanghai Cooperation Organization into a military bloc. (This organization combines the former Soviet states of Central Asia with China and Russia.) Russia is absolutely committed to modernizing the Chinese armed forces, and has promised to deliver shipments of SU-30 MKK fourth generation Russian fighters to China. The list of Russian military items being shipped to China is very large, and very worrisome. (6) (1) Pravda, “Beijing Waiting for U.S.-Iraq War?â€� http://english.pravda.ru/columnists/2002/11/26/39994.html (2) Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough, Washington Times, “Inside the Ring,â€� http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021129-7413878.htm (3) Bill Gertz, Washington Times, “China's Arms Sales, Stance on Taiwan Chill Talks With U.S." http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021210-81002548.htm (4) Edward Timperlake and William C. Triplett II, Red Dragon Rising: Communist China’s Military Threat to America (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 1999 ), p. 117. (5) Bill Gertz, The China Threat: How the People’s Republic Targets America (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2000), p. 189. (6) Alexandr Nemets, “From Bad to Worse,â€� http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/11/27/163850.shtml © 2002 Jeffrey R. Nyquist December 10, 2002 I have placed in bold key portions of the text which require emphasis. China Prepares to Invade Taiwan Now let me pose a question. In light of all the anti-war sentiment coming from the usual suspect...WHY IS IT THAT THERE IS NOT ONE PEEP OF DISCOMFORT COMING FROM THESE SAME INDIVIDUALS CONCERNING THE CHINESE ACTIONS, NOR THE RUSSIAN ACTIVITES OF PROVIDING THEM ARMS, NOR THE APPARENT NORTH KOREAN'S ACTING IN CONCERT WITH CHINA???!!! You mean to tell me that America is the only "war-mongerer" on the planet? Or is it that I am correct in my inital assessment that these people are decidedly anti-American to their boney core? That by being silent on these issues of Chinese preparations for war, nuclear war with the US, they have exposed themselves for what they truely are...haters of America, and enemy sympathizers. **DONOTDELETE** () 2002-12-15 05:24:00 24.150.41.165 Re: The China Threat How can you call China a War-Mongering state? Don't you realize that they are OUR ally? They supply a lot of vital components to the North American markets through Wal-Mart and COSCO, without which the average shopper would have to pay much more for similar products. They also are willing to sacrifice themselves and work for a lower wage, thus increasing our status as having the higher paid workforce. They are just helping us all realize a higher standard of living by keeping prices on comsumer goods down. They also have an exemplary record of helping the war on drugs by executing those caught smuggling contraband substances, thus helping to ebb the flow of heroine into North America and Europe. They also fought a battle in the war on terrorism long before 9/11. They eliminated thousands of terrorists that had threatened the stability of the country and those that had supported them back in 1989. The P.R.C. cannot invade Taiwan, as it is already part of their empire, they are just preparing to remove the rebels that have infiltrated the Gov't of that province to restore Law and Order. P.S. If you can't tell by the tone of my text, I am being SARCASTIC. Btw, Great Post Sean. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-12-16 02:41:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat quote: Originally posted by Jools: "He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword". Yes indeed. I fully expect to "die by the sword". As Sean so succiently put it, "such is the life of a soldier". There are things in life, and our futures we should never be privy to, and one of those things is the vision of our own death. Some of us know and understand what death is, and have seen it in several forms, and in several faces, whether in the face of loved ones or friends, or enemies - we have seen it, and in it, we've seen our own mortality. I have seen people die. I saw my own daughter die as a baby, 19 years ago. A poor, innocent child who did nothing to no one, and yet, medical science could not save. I saw some people die in the jungles of central america, many moons ago. I heard of some of my own, best friends dying on an airplane in the Sahara Desert in 1980 on Operation Bright Star when a C-141 crashed in to the very same desert, not far from where we'd all been stationed for the atempted rescue attempt in Iran - where yet others of my "ilk" (the soldier) died. Of all of those, not even the enemy in the jungle deserved to die, except that he tried to take the lives of others around me. And yet, die they did. Soldiers chose the life they chose for many reasons, NOT ONE OF which is "for the money". Soldiers chose the life they live because they BELIEVE in what they are doing, the protection of innocent people. This attitude that soldiers are just "evil people in uniform" or "warmongers" is simply wrong. I can't change anyone's minds about that, but it's a fact that NO soldier actually WANTS to go to war. That's in the movies, it is not reality. quote: Just an opinion, but I think your talents would be far better suited attempting to make America truly free once the inevitable take over has happened. Jools, there is no 'inevitable takeover'. The fact is, you simply are blinded by all this misinformation out there. Besides, tell me truthfully, why do you care? You don't live here. If I were you, I'd be worrying more about your own country and the fact that this "take over" already took place in your own country. Look at the attitudes of your own people and guns, as an example. The brainwashing in your country is so bad that there have been those (who I might add are good friends of mine most of time) believe that "guns are evil". That's their BELIEF! They tell me "America should disarm". And "we don't have guns here, and that's a good thing". Methinks your own country has already suffered that "inevitable takeover" and perhaps your own efforts at "freeing the free" should be directed inward, instead of outward. quote: Look at all these pseudo milidroids rubbing their weapons and pumpin their mega.POWER hyper-rifle bolts. I'll bet when they are out in public and they pass an Asian person, they flash back to Rambo mowin down a million commies. I'll bet whenever they see an I.ran.ian they simply freak out and can hardly function as real human beings. By the way the correct pronunciation of the name of the country of a million very sweet and good people, is Eir.Raaaaan, if you ever bother to speak to one, thats what they will tell you. You're a laugh every time you write something, Meta.. er... I mean "Diane". You ARE a commie, which is what makes this whole smart assed comment so damned funny! You think military people are like Rambo, because you watch too much television. In reality, they are nothing like that. We are all good people who do (or did) what we do, because we believe in our country. While you might find that laughable, hard to believe or simply sickening - that's reality, friend. Your racist remarks are just that, racist. You think we are racist, but your TRUE colors have finally shown through your yet-another-ignorant-alias. Why don't you quit hiding behind lies and step into the light "Diane" and tell us your "real name" and stand up for what you really believe in? In fact, I challenge you ALL to do so. I stand behind what *I* say with MY real name. Why can't the rest of you cowards do so? quote: by Snafuun: Think about it. The poster isn't scared about anything. Just cautious. What a relief! China, the next big military threat against the US? Gee, that sounds even more convincing than Iraq. Jeezus. Being the "thread orginator" let me point out that I just posted something in another thread about this. We're not in this to promote fear, ignorance, nor disinformation. We're ALL in this TOGETHER to remove doubts, fear, suspicions and disinformation - not to mention ignorance, which somehow seems to rise it's ugly head every few days on these forums from someone or another. One thing we all need to understand is that no matter how "pat" something seems, it isn't always like that. In fact, when someone is out there prattling about this or that conspiracy, and they simply do not put down the proof, then they simply do not know what they are talking about. One thing we've tried very hard to do in the Survival Forum is to NOT place information here that is simply unproven, or lies. We seem to have a resurgence these days of the basic "NWO conspiracies" (Jools?) and other such things. This forum, this thread and other threads of this forum are NOT the place for you to vent your perceived and so-call "political injustices", "conspiracy theories" nor complaints about your political disagreements with me, the current (or any) administration, nor your simple and to me, distasteful and disingenuious defeatism. As for my "caution", Snafuun, in the original post, it has to do more with the fact that TIME is on our side on this. China is a SERIOUS threat, greater in the long run than North Korean, Pakistan, Cuba and Iraq rolled into one thing. The difference is, we can EXPECT that they WILL develop intercontinential ballist missiles that will rival and exceed our own (America's) capabilities within 12 years. Between now and then we are working on missile shields and other methods that will effectively turn all incoming missile threats to nothing at all. Unfortunately, in the mean time we have to deal with rising nuclear threats, the potential for nuclear terrorism and a host of other petty issues (at least on strategic scale) from other countries. By 2015 the Chinese will our gun us, out number most of the rest of the world, and most importantly, they BELIEVE they WILL be at War with the US before they can advance any further. They are growing in numbers, in hatred for the US and other western civilizations, and I personally believe they will invade the United States by land and sea within the next 20 years, perhaps less. They can't afford to do it too soon, but at the same time, they can't afford to allow us to be able to completely negate ballistic missiles - which we will do soon enough. Thus, the time line is set in stone, and we can predict with some accuracy their moves, our moves and the outcome of both. One false step on the part of either side and absolute annilation exists. If the balance is kept, then peace will eventually come. But, understand this, I do NOT forsee the latter as the ultimate outcome. I see a war between the US and China coming "home" to us. I see North Korea, Cuba and some of the Middle Eastern countries allying with the Chinese in an attempt to cause the final fall of the United States of America. I see it coming, and if you're smart, you will to. I'm here to do what I can to stop it, in whatever time I have left in this world. If I can even convince ONE person to pay attention to world affairs and stop listening to the doomsayers and conspiracy theorists and LOOK AT THE FACTS of REALITY, then I've won a piece of the war. If not, then only you can be responsible for yourselves. quote: Ignorance is bliss I suppose... [/quote Yes, Ryan, it is. And apparently you addressed this to the same person I addressed the above paragraphs. Perhaps enlightenment is at hand, if he/she bothers to spend time reading. Perhaps not. Sean... about the Carter fiasco.... [quote] Carter’s greatest blunder, giving away the Panama Canal, has so far gone unmentioned here. But if he is indeed the moral man he purports to be, why did he perpetrate fraud on America in order to be able to give away the Canal? According to international law, both countries party to a bilateral treaty must agree to the same treaty. The Senate in 1977 ratified the Carter-Torrijos Panama Canal Treaty with a key amendment, the DeConcini Reservation whereby the U.S. reserved the right to intervene unilaterally and militarily without Panama’s permission in order to keep the canal open, should it be closed to American ships by Panama or any other foreign power. However, Omar Torrijos, the Marxist dictator of Panama at that time, rejected the DeConcini Reservation. Carter knew that without the Reservation the treaty never would be ratified, for several Senators had told him so. Nevertheless, in his diary for 4/7/78 he wrote, “If Torrijos wants to, he can issue a reservation about his understanding of what the treaties [note his admission that there are different treaties] mean on intervention in the internal affairs of Panama.â€� The Panama Canal has been mentioned HERE many times, in the ground war thread, and I think in this thread. If not, I WILL mention it here. It was the most unforntunate thing Carter or any President could have done, which was to allow the Panama Canal to be handed over to the Chinese. In fact, ALL countries in the western hemisphere WILL suffer, suddenly, one day because of this. China has an inroad to the mainlands of North and South America because of the Panama Canal. It would allow them to bring in entire Navies from one ocean to another, but more importantly, it is a place where by night ships can easily unload their "cargo" of "humans" into the jungles of Central America to make their way up to the borders in Mexico and the US. Eventually, when enough have "sneaked in" they can use their sheer numbers to overwhelm unsuspecting border patrols and raid along the borders, seizing militay installations, homes, businesses, whole towns if they chose to do so. That is, I believe one weakness we have now, granted to us by the "Great Jimmy Carter, peanut farmer and nuclear engineer".... Sean Osborne (Member) 2002-12-16 04:27:00 192.172.8.11 Re: The China Threat Good to see you back Rick. Iposted somewhere in here an op ed piece/article where the author was saying the Canal deal is null and void because the ratified treaties are different treaties. What ever happened to oversight committees on National Security. I was reminded recently by something Thunderstruck posted. It was a reference to "Jimma Carter". I remember very well seeing him on TV for the first time. His first words were: "Ha, mah name is Jimma Carter. Ah am runnin' for President." I fell over laughing. Fast forward....Soviet invasion of Afghanistan...Iran hostage crisis...I stopped laughing. CLARK CHITWOOD (Member) 2002-12-16 04:28:00 216.128.171.60 Re: The China Threat Rick, Your post sure got my attention! Do you have a scenario in mind for how the Chinese could accomplish an invasion of the US? How would they neutralize the Navy? Would a fifth collumn initiate the attack from those port facilities in the US, as mentioned in other threads? Would they land in Mexico and Canada and split the US in a pincers movement? How would they degrade our defenses to the point an invasion would have a reasonable chance of success? I agree with your assessment of their intentions. I would appreciate your thoughts on how it might happen. Sean Osborne (Member) 2002-12-16 04:32:00 192.172.8.11 Re: The China Threat Lemme guess, Rick will suggest you read the "Groundwar in the US" thread. I would agree, that's the place to start. It is an excellent read. CLARK CHITWOOD (Member) 2002-12-16 05:05:00 216.128.171.60 Re: The China Threat Sean, Thanks. I should have looked harder before asking all those questions. There's enough material in these threads to keep me busy for a while! Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-12-16 05:17:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat (Chuckles)... Sean, thanks. He beat me too it Clark. At least I know you're not the "other ClarK" now. LOL. I KNOW HE knows where the stuff is located, as you will see as you read through it. Hahaha. quote: Fast forward....Soviet invasion of Afghanistan...Iran hostage crisis...I stopped laughing. Don't remind me. That's some thing I have tried to forget. Remember, "I was there". I hate to say this, but it was thanks to "Jimma Carter" that I changed parties. HAhahaha CLARK CHITWOOD (Member) 2002-12-17 05:52:00 216.128.178.214 Re: The China Threat Rick, Sean, I spent 3 hours yesterday and 6 hours today reading the "Ground War" thread. It is not only a remarkable chronological archive of events but also a great tool for identifying trends and discarding erroneous assumptions. I think I have a better appreciation of what you mean by "connecting the dots". Thanks P.S. I'm DEFINITELY not that other Clark. Finlay (Member) 2002-12-17 07:37:00 194.109.246.37 Re: The China Threat Impressive post, Rick, I think you said it all... ----------------------------------------- quote:Originally posted by CLARK CHITWOOD: How would they degrade our defenses to the point an invasion would have a reasonable chance of success? In my humble opinion, American armed forces are already spread quite thin, though I don't see how such an invasion could be succesful in the long run unless 'they' bring in a horrendous ammount of troops fast. **DONOTDELETE** () 2002-12-17 10:53:00 24.150.41.165 Re: The China Threat Report forecasts a more assertive Beijing by 2010 CLOCK TICKING: China's rising economic power could result in problems for Taiwan within the next eight years, a study by the government says By Ko Shu-Ling STAFF REPORTER Tuesday, Dec 17, 2002,Page 1 By 2010, China might have set its own timetable for reunification with Taiwan and may even have employed direct military threats, according to a study to be released by the Cabinet's Research, Development and Evaluation Commission today. According to the 20-page report, internal pressures in China might cause it to become aggressive with its neighbors as it becomes one of the world's superpowers. This aggression could include attempts to expand its boundaries, the report says. "Taiwan shouldn't rule out the possibility that China will set the timetable to unify with -- or stage military intimidation against -- Taiwan by 2010," the study says. Taiwan should therefore streng-then and elevate the functions of the National Security Council. "The Presidential Office and the Executive Yuan should work together to integrate the resources and elevate the functions of agencies responsible for public safety in response to China's increasing threat," the report says. To raise global awareness of the cross-strait situation, the report says that Taiwan should step up its efforts to promote the idea that peace in the Taiwan Strait is beneficial to peace in the rest of East Asia. The government should also earmark more money for intelligence agencies to buy state-of-art intelligence gathering equipment, to train intelligence personnel and to cooperate with other countries, the report recommends. According to the report, Taiwan's national security strategy and foreign diplomacy in 2010 will be influenced by various factors, both international and domestic. "US President George W. Bush's re-election bid in 2004 and China's new leadership lineup in 2007 will have an impact on Taiwan-US relations," the report says. "Taiwan's legislative and presidential elections in 2004 will also affect the formulation of foreign policy here," it says. However, Taiwan can remain stable if the number of its political allies remains steady and the public continues to support the government's bid to join international organizations. Original article. Copyright © 1999-2002 The Taipei Times. Pretty optimistic view of the situation, thinking that they have up to 8 years to prepare. I wonder if the Party leaders in Beijing will indulge them that long a reprieve? Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-12-18 00:42:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat My hope is that Hilary Clinton will NOT be President in 2008 (or 2004 for that matter) - but specifically in 2008 because if she is, or anyone of her ilk, there will be serious changes in the way we do things in relation to China. Already we're 'waking up' to that threat, and putting her or someone like her in office before China can get their missiles up to par with ours, will simply advance the Chinese timeline by YEARS. 2015 will be here in 2012, or even 2010 in that case. Rick CLARK CHITWOOD (Member) 2002-12-18 03:38:00 216.128.178.214 Re: The China Threat China can only be dealt with in one way, counter every move they make, resist, with force, every act of aggression, annihilate them if they attack us directly and, most importantly, make sure they have no doubts about our will and ability to do so. Chinese apply a cost/benefit analysis to everything they do. I can think of few things that might tip the balance of that equation in favor of an expansionist China like Hillary Clinton as President. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-12-24 01:16:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat Drudge: RUSSIA, FRANCE, CHINA NOT CONVINCED OF NEED TO ATTACK IRAQ LA Times via DrudgeReport ^ | 24 Dec. 2002 Three key members of the U.N. Security Council Russia, France and China are not yet convinced an Iraqi declaration this month failed to fully disclose any weapons of mass destruction, an sign that the United States might face an uphill battle building the case for war against Baghdad, the LOS ANGELES TIMES is reporting in Tuesday editions... Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-12-24 01:17:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat Russia and China 'broke Iraq embargo' BBC ^ | 19 December, 2002 Russian and Chinese firms exported military equipment and know-how to Iraq despite a United Nations ban on arms sales, a German newspaper has reported. The Tageszeitung (Taz) says parts of the Iraqi arms declaration which it has obtained show that three Russian and one Chinese company broke the embargo imposed after the end of the 1991 Gulf War. The paper lists almost 60 companies from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - the United States, United Kingdom and France, as well as China and Russia - which it says were involved in arming Iraq since the mid-1970s. These companies assisted atomic, biological and chemical weapons development as well as aiding Iraq's missile and conventional arms programmes, according to Taz. They too may have continued to supply Iraq after the embargo came into force, the paper alleges. US indirect help Documents from the UN inspections team (Unscom) show the Russian firm Livinvest, prepared to export equipment and parts for M-17 helicopters to Iraq, Taz reports. However, the documents do not make it clear whether the equipment was in fact delivered. Two other Russian companies, Mars Rotor and Niikhism sold parts for long-distance missiles to Iraq. These were transported to Baghdad by a Palestinian middleman in July 1995, the paper reports. The Chinese firm Huawei Technologies Co broke the embargo in 2000 and 2001 by supplying hi-tech fibreglass parts for air defence installations, according to Taz. The paper suggests that contracts signed between Huawei Technologies Co and the US firms IBM and AT&T may mean that US know-how could have found its way into Iraqi technology. The latest revelations come after a Taz article earlier in the week, which said that more than 80 German companies were listed in the Iraqi declaration - several of which were still involved in Iraq last year. Thursday's article also says companies from Japan, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Sweden are named in the declaration. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-12-24 01:18:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat Analysis: The Rise of China -- a Threat or an Opportunity? The Peoples Daily ^ | 12.22.02 Beijing's successful bid to host the 2008 Olympic games is widely regarded as recognition by the international community of the success of China's reform and opening up policies of the past two decades, while Shanghai's successful bid to host the 2010 World Expo is more a reflection of the world's expectations with regard to China's encouraging economic prospect. To world leaders and business giants, China is considered more as an opportunity than a threat, and is an ideal place for the rest of the world to showcase their products and expand their markets, according to government officials and academicians. The once-notorious idea of "the China threat" is giving way to a new concept -- "the China opportunity". "Engine" of World Economic Recovery? The "China opportunity" theory is based on the fact that China's economic growth helps accelerate the recovery of the world economy, said Hu Angang, a Chinese economist. In July 2002, China launched a 140 billion yuan (17 billion US dollar) natural gas pipeline project to transport gas from Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to Shanghai. The largest joint venture with foreign enterprises in Chinese history now involves partners from the Royal Dutch & Shell Group, Exxon Mobil Corp. and Russia's gas monopoly, Gazprom. For the planing and construction of the 2008 Olympic venues, Beijing has promised to invite public bidding from across the world and has even adopted legislation to ensure a smooth bidding process. China's other massive project, which include diverting water from the Yangtze River to North China, developing its vast western regions and building a number of airports, railways and highways, are also interesting opportunities from the perspective of overseas enterprises, said Hu. China's neighbors appear to be benefiting from its economic development due to their geographic proximity. In October 2002, Australia was awarded a 30-year deal on a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project in Guangdong Province worth billions of US dollars. The gas project's economic outlook has since improved considerably. Immediately thereafter, Indonesia secured a 25-year agreement on the sale of 2.6 million tons of LNDper year to Fujian Province. Experts predict that the country's combined imports in the next five years will reach 150 billion to 200 billion US dollars. In fact, members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) saw a 27 percent increase in exports to China in the first 10 months of this year. China has become the fastest-growing source of international tourists. Statistics show that, during the first three quarters of this year, Chinese citizens registered 12 million overseas trips, up 40 percent year-on-year. To the delight of many tourist destination countries, Chinese are spending more than Japanese tourists. An average Chinese tourist in Australia currently spends 2,300 US dollars, more than the average Japanese, while in Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines, Chinese tourists are welcomed as the "pillar" of their respective tourist industries, and as the "engine of their economic recoveries". Neil Andrew, speaker of the House of Representatives of the Australian Federal Parliament, told his counterpart, Li Peng, during the latter's visit to Australia in September, that everyday there is a jumbo jet full of Chinese people landing at the Sydney Airport, so that there is no reason for Australia not to welcome an ever more prosperous China. Among the passengers aboard these planes are not only heavy-spending sight-seeing tourists, but also Chinese students. Every year, about 250,000 Chinese students go abroad to study. In Britain, where annual living expenditures are as high as 150,000 yuan, the number of Chinese students who traveled there to study in 2002 rose 70 percent compared with the figure for 2001. While improving its internal business environment to attract foreign investors, China is also encouraging its business people to go abroad. To date, more than 6,800 Chinese enterprises have established branch companies overseas. Analysts say that the steady growth of the Chinese economy will lure further overseas investment. According to Hu Angang, calculations based on the 2002 World Bank Database indicate that during the period from 1980 to 2000, when China recorded fourfold economic growth, its contribution to world economic growth ranked second behind the United States. Its contribution to the growth of global trade and services ranked third behind the United States and Japan. In view of the progress of the past 20 years, the Chinese people apparently have higher expectations for the next twenty. The recently-concluded 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) set a goal of quadrupling the 2000 GDP figure by the year 2020. This 20 year period has been described by Chinese President Jiang Zemin as "a period of important strategic opportunities, which China must seize and which offers bright prospects." It can therefore be predicted that the powerful Chinese engine will continue to accelerate and inject more energy into the world economy in the next 20 years, said Hu. "To some extent, the two decades also represent an important strategic opportunity to the rest of the world," he said. A Trustworthy country with mature Leadership The subdued cries of "the China threat," says Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan, are ultimately the result of the country's performance on the world stage over the past several years. "The world has come to see that China is an important, mature, trustworthy and responsible country," he said in an interview. While visiting war-torn Afghanistan earlier this year, Tang said that he was greeted with thumbs-up and smiles from people on the street. He later learned that they were expressing their gratitude for China's generous assistance in the immediate post-war period. They were especially grateful for two cargo planes full of emergency aid which arrived shortly after a severe earthquake, Tang was told. "The Chinese mean what they say," an Afghan official said. As a matter of fact, China's "mean-what-they-say" style has long been acknowledged by its neighbors, especially following the Asian Economic Crisis in 1997, Tang said. During the crisis, the Chinese government maintained the value of its currency despite strong pressure from slumping exports and sweeping competitive devaluations in the rest of the region. The strong yuan proved to be a tangible source of stability in the regional and the world economy. While many leaders of these crisis-stricken countries are still praising China for its courage and for other assistance during the crisis, Chinese leaders emphasize that, in addition to consideration of China's overall national interests, its decision to maintain the stability of the yuan was made based on the cultural tradition "never hit others when they are down." During the past years, China has shown itself to be an important, mature and trustworthy country by properly handling a series of international crises, including the nuclear crisis in South Asia and the terrorist attack against the United States on September 11 of last year. China has also built stronger relations with neighboring countries and is actively involved in multilateral activities within the framework of the United Nations. Its proposal for a newsecurity concept based on mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality and cooperation won high praise from the international community. Over the past year, China has fulfilled its commitments to the World Trade Organization (WTO), and all the major members of the organization say they are pleased with the "overall performance of China" thus far. "China is no threat because it's trustworthy and mature," Tang said. "China Opportunity" Concept Increasingly Popular The cries of "the China threat" have long been manipulated by anti-China elements to contain the growth of the most populous country. The assumption that China will pursue military expansion when it becomes strong has been negated by many scholars because it contradicts China's history and the goodwill it has shown to the world throughout the years. Although some detractors still remain, there number is declining. In November, China and the 10 ASEAN countries signed a framework agreement on comprehensive economic cooperation and on a code of conduct for the South China Sea. By cooperating with China,the ASEAN leaders have shown that they are ready to share the prosperity of their giant neighbor, observers say. In Japan, the concept of "the China opportunities" has won more and more support. Politicians and business leaders seem to be rather optimistic about the rise of China. Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro has been saying that the growth of China constitutes both an opportunity and a challenge to Japan, and Japan must seize the opportunity for common development with China. In Singapore, Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong has said that China's growth will have a positive impact on Singapore and on the region at large, saying "China offers immense opportunities provided we restructure our economy and encourage entrepreneurship to take advantage of them." The international business community has already shown its support for the "the China opportunity" concept by continuing to invest in the country. Among the top 500 companies across the globe, 400 have engaged themselves with China. A survey by "Fortune" magazine of the United States says that 92 percent of multinational corporations are considering establishing branch offices in China in the near future. Estimates show that, in view of the fact that about 50 billion US dollars of foreign direct investment is utilized this year, China will probably rank first in attracting foreign investment for the year 2002. The concept of China opportunity was coined by Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji in April 1999, during a speech given in Washington D.C.He called on the American people to transform their thinking from "China threat" to "China opportunity." His speech was a big success. Three years later, the "China opportunity" concept is increasingly acknowledged and accepted throughout the world. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-12-24 01:19:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat China arrests US resident as terrorist Vanguard (Nigeria) ^ | 12-21-02 China arrests US resident for espionage Saturday, December 21, 2002 China yesterday said it had arrested missing exiled democracy activist Wang Bingzhang, a permanent US resident, for espionage, six months after he disappeared. A spokesman for the Ministry of Public Security was quoted as saying Wang was also facing charges of engaging in "violent terrorist activities" in southern Guangdong province. He was formally arrested in Guangdong on December 5, Xinhua said. "The state security department had verified that Wang, starting in the early 1980s, had struck up contact with Taiwan’s espionage organization, which paid him as he collected and stole state secrets," it said. Wang, 54, and two other democracy activists, French resident Yue Wu and US resident Zhang Qi, were reported missing on June 26. Xinhua said Yue and Zhang, a woman, had been cleared of all charges and released, although their whereabouts remain unclear. China’s admission Friday comes just days after a top US human rights and democracy official handed over a list of 298 prisoners in Chinese jails that Washington believes are being held as political prisoners and urged Beijing to review their cases. It was not immediately clear whether they were on the list. The three entered Vietnam on June 16 with valid visas and last communicated with their families on June 26 when they were near Vietnam’s border with southern China, family members have said. The China Democracy Party (CDP) has previously said it received intelligence that the trio were kidnapped at or near the Vietnam-China border, possibly by Chinese agents, the Free China Movement said in a statement. The Movement is a coalition of more than 30 Chinese pro-democracy organizations from around the world, including the CDP, an outlawed party many of whose members are either jailed in China or exiled overseas. Vietnam said in July it had no record of them entering the country. Wang, who has lived in Canada and the United States since 1982, and Yue are longtime democracy advocates. Zhang is a leader of the Zhonggong spiritual group, which is also outlawed along with the Falungong group. They all have connections with exiled Chinese opposition groups, including the CDJP, the China Labor Party and the China Democracy Party. Xinhua said the three were found tied up in Bohu Temple in the suburbs of Fangchenggang city, in south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous region by local police on July 3. It said they had been kidnapped by unspecified people on June 27 in Vietnam’s Tinh Quang Ninh and were being blackmailed for 10 million dollars. It was not clear why it took so long for Chinese security officials to work out who they were and arrest them, nor where they were held since being found. Wang earlier entered China in 1998, but was expelled after two weeks. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-12-24 01:20:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat China Expresses Concern at Missile Defense Plan UK ^ BEIJING (AP) - China expressed cautious concern Thursday at the United States' announcement that it would develop a missile-defense program, saying the deployment of any such system ``should not undermine the security and stability of the world.'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said the Chinese government is evaluating the Bush administration's announcement. ``We worry about the possible negative impact on regional stability of a missile-defense system. We hope the relevant parties will act prudently,'' Liu said at a regular briefing, answering a question raised by a reporter for China's government-run Xinhua News Agency. ``Only through the good cooperation of the international community can we effectively solve the threat posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,'' Liu said. ``The missile-defense system should not undermine the security and stability of the world. Neither should it undermine global and regional security.'' President Bush ordered the Pentagon on Tuesday to have ready within two years a basic system to defend American territory, troops and allies against attack by ballistic missiles. Development of missile defense systems was severely limited under the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which expired in June, six months after Bush announced that Washington would withdraw from the 30-year-old agreement. Liu wouldn't say whether China would add missiles to its arsenal or change its military deployments in response to the news. ``China, in accordance with its national defense needs, will make the appropriate deployments,'' he said. Russia's Foreign Ministry issued a blistering response Wednesday to the U.S. plan, saying it would destabilize the world and lead to a ``new senseless arms race.'' Beijing is wary of any U.S. military plans that would change the region's strategic outlook, but it is loath to criticize Washington of late. Both sides have taken pains to characterize their relationship as on the upswing, and recent high-level military visits - including two in the past week - have restored defense ties cut back after a collision between a U.S. spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet over the South China Sea early last year. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-12-24 01:21:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat China hits out at U.S. missile plans cnn asia ^ | Willy Wo-Lap Lam (CNN) -- Beijing has reiterated opposition to Washington's deployment of a National Missile Defense (NMD) system, saying it will upset the "global strategic balance." China's representative at the Geneva Office of the United Nations Sha Zukang also indicated Beijing had put into place a rigorous management and control mechanism over the export of nuclear-related material. The state media on Thursday quoted Sha, a top expert on disarmament, as saying in a public function in London that "China does not approve of the development and deployment of missile defense systems that will disrupt global strategic balance and stability." In remarks apparently aimed at U.S. President George W. Bush's announcement earlier this week to deploy NMD by 2004, Sha said it was not good for certain countries to have double standards on nuclear proliferation. The senior diplomat added nuclear weapons, no matter whose, should be "comprehensively banned and thoroughly destroyed." "China has all along opposed the proliferation of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems, " Sha said, adding that Beijing's policy was not to help other countries develop nuclear capacities. The comments follow Russia's "regret" at the NMD decision, saying the move could lead to a new arms race. The U.S. argues that a missile defence system is necessary to protect the country against possible attack, primarily from rogue states that could possess ballistic missiles. Development of missile defence systems was severely limited under the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which expired in June, six months after Bush announced that Washington would withdraw from the 30-year old agreement. Extend defense Diplomatic analysts in Beijing said the Chinese leadership was afraid Washington would use Pyongyang's nuclear program as a pretext to extend its missile defense system to Asian allies including Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Bush had cited the growing threat of North Korean missiles as a reason to expedite the deployment of the multi-billion dollar NMD system. And politicians in Japan and Taiwan have already indicated keen interest in building a joint missile-defense system with the U.S. The analysts said Sha was also countering charges carried in the American and Western media that Beijing had played a role in the nuclear weapons program of North Korea, China's traditional ally. Sources close to China's foreign-policy establishment said Chinese diplomats had in private urged Pyongyang to rein in its nuclear development program. The sources said, however, Beijing had not decided on whether to increase pressure on North Korea by threatening to cut down economic and other kinds of aid to the Kim Jong Il regime. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-12-24 01:21:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat (China) Subversion law to impact Taiwan Taipei Times | 12.21.02 By Cheng An-Kuo à Â�°²‡ø and Andy Hu ºúÈ«Ã�þ Saturday, Dec 21, 2002,Page 8 More than 60,000 people took to the streets of Hong Kong on Monday to protest against a planned anti-subversion law, which falls under the territory's Basic Law. Before Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule, the diplomatic wrestling between the British and Chinese governments resulted in a compromise to the effect that the government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) should be responsible for legislation regulating treason, secession, sedition and subversion (as stipulated in Article 23 of the Basic Law). Just as is the case with a Constitution, therefore, implementation of the Basic Law requires additional legislation and administrative orders. However, the motives behind this piece of legislation are being questioned. The process has been met with distrust, and there are disputes over essential points in the law. This is what has caused such a strong reaction among the citizens of Hong Kong. As for motives, the question of whether Article 23 should be implemented through additional legislation or through amendments to relevant existing legislation has been disputed ever since the SAR government was created five years ago. On Sept. 24, the SAR government published a "Consultation Document on Proposals to Implement Article 23 of the Basic Law" (also known as "the blue bill"). It is generally believed that the main reason an implementation draft was proposed at that time was that Beijing demanded it. In June this year, one of China's vice premiers, Qian Qichen (Ã¥XÆäè¡), requested that the SAR government implement Article 23 as soon as possible. In a speech in July, China's president, Jiang Zemin (½­Â�ÉÃñ), stressed Hong Kong's importance for China's security and stability. The reason for this is that China worries that Hong Kong will become a place where Falun Gong and Tibetan separatists can freely express their opinions and cause instability in the Chinese interior. China also worries that dissemination of statements by Taiwanese independence forces in the Hong Kong media may be detrimental to its unification efforts. The motives for legislation, therefore, are not to be found among the needs of the Hong Kong Semi-Autonomous Region itself, but they come from central government pressure. Second, looking at the process, the Hong Kong SAR government follows the example of the British colonial government by issuing a public consultative document (the essential points of legislation) or a public white draft (the actual legislative text) three months prior to legislation to consult with the people of Hong Kong. The consultative document issued by the SAR government this time around does not include the legislative text. Democratic parties and people concerned about Article 23 legislation cannot obtain the exact meaning and implementation of terms and criminal charges from the consultative document. They are therefore suggesting that the SAR government, after completing consultation via the blue bill, once again consult with the people of Hong Kong regarding the draft text of the law using the white document. The SAR government, however, still refuses to publish a white consultative document, an attitude which causes further worries among Hong Kong's democratic parties and citizens. Taking a look at the essential points of legislation in the blue bill, the following criticisms have been raised by Hong Kong media and the public: One, the definitions of "sedition" and "subversion" are not clear: its inability to clearly define what kind of behavior or statements constitute sedition and subversion could easily lead to abuse. Two, it punches a hole in Hong Kong's Common Law: Hong Kong civil organizations proscribed by the central Chinese leadership may also be banned in the territory, which means that orders by the central Chinese leadership can extend to Hong Kong. Three, the media's freedom to report will be circumscribed: reports about Tibetan separatists and Taiwanese independence proponents may be deemed illegal "seditious" behavior, and would lead to the media being silenced. Four, it diminishes the regulations in the Basic Law: Article 23 of the Basic Law only mentions regulations restricting Hong Kong and foreign political organizations and groups, but the blue bill adds regulations regarding Taiwanese political organizations, thus expanding the extent of restrictions. If the SAR government really does go against public opinion and forces the passage of legislation related to Article 23 of the Basic Law (laid down according to the current set of main legislative guidelines), not only would freedom of speech within Hong Kong be restricted, but it would also have an effect on Taiwan: First, to avoid sensitive issues, even fewer statements by Taiwanese government officials would make it into the Hong Kong media. Second, the operations of Taiwan's representative organization in Hong Kong could at any time be in violation of Hong Kong law. Third, exchanges between Taiwan and Hong Kong would be restricted, and the freedom of exchange between social organizations and political groups in Hong Kong and Taiwan would shrink. Most importantly, in the past, Hong Kong always filled the function of initiating democratic opening in China. The implementation of the Basic Law would further weaken democracy in Hong Kong. In the Chinese world, Taiwan would become lonely in its pursuit of liberal democracy for China. Cheng An-kuo is a former general manager of the Chung Hwa Travel Service in Hong Kong. Andy Hu is an assistant research fellow with the National Policy Foundation. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-12-24 01:22:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat Reunification = war Taipei: China wants to reunify by 2010: Cabinet redicts aggression, military threats from Beijing WorldNetDaily.com ^ | Wednesday, December 18, 2002 | By Jon Dougherty China is likely to become more aggressive and may even employ military threats in a bid to reunify with Taiwan by 2010, says a study released by the Taiwanese Cabinet's Research, Development and Evaluation Commission. "Taiwan shouldn't rule out the possibility that China will set the timetable to unify with – or stage military intimidation against – Taiwan by 2010," said the 20-page report, according to the Taipei Times. The report said internal struggles within China could cause Beijing to become more aggressive as it works to become one of the world's superpowers. That tension, the report said, may also include attempts to expand its boundaries. In response, the commission recommended expanding and strengthening the functions of the national security council. Taiwan government offices "should work together to integrate the resources and elevate the functions of agencies responsible for public safety in response to China's increasing threat," said the report. Also, the panel said Taipei should spend more money to beef up intelligence-gathering capabilities, such as investing in new technologies and stepping up training of intelligence personnel. Chinese President Jiang Zemin refused to rule out the use of force to reunify with Taiwan in remarks to the Communist Party's 16th Congress, which opened Nov. 8. But he stressed the threat is aimed at "foreign forces" seeking to interfere over the status of the island. "Our position of never undertaking to renounce the use of force is not directed at our Taiwan compatriots," Jiang said. "It is aimed at the foreign forces' attempts to interfere in China's reunification and the Taiwan separatist forces' schemes for Taiwan independence." National unification is one of three "major historical tasks" of the Communist Party and the Chinese people, said Jiang. "No one is more eager than we are to resolve the Taiwan question through peaceful means ... (but) the Taiwan question must not be allowed to drag on indefinitely," said the Chinese leader. As WorldNetDaily reported last year, Beijing's military leaders also have predicted war with Taiwan by 2006. Chinese army Gen. Zhang Wannian, vice chairman of China's Central Military Command, told attendees at the Year 2000 PLA Equipment Conference in Guangzhou that "during the period of [China's] 10th five-year plan, it is certain that war will break out in the Taiwan Strait." That five-year plan began in 2001. Beijing has also been stepping up its military modernization plans by acquiring new fighters, warships, submarines and ballistic missiles. Also, China's Central Military Command has requested and received budget increases several times since the mid-1990s. Despite China's technological deficit, CIA Director George Tenet told Congress Feb. 6 that Beijing still poses a threat to the U.S. and Taiwan. "Over the past year, Beijing's military training exercises have taken on an increasingly real-world focus, emphasizing rigorous practice in operational capabilities and improving the military's actual ability to use force," Tenet told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Noting that Taiwan was still the focus of China's military buildup and modernization, Tenet said his agency believes that while the Sept. 11 attacks "changed the context of China's approach" to Washington, it didn't change Beijing's overall goal of achieving military superiority over its smaller neighbor. China also seeks to build enough military power to at least be able to prevent the U.S. from successfully defending Taiwan in the event of a future conflict. China has repeatedly said it would reunify with Taiwan by force if necessary, he said. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-12-24 01:24:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat China Prepares to Invade Taiwan Geopolitical Global Analysis ^ | 12/10/02 | J.R. Nyquist On Nov. 26 a Pravda headline asked, [is] “Beijing Waiting for U.S.-Iraq War?â€� The article is about U.S. concerns that China might strike Taiwan if the U.S. attacks Saddam Hussein in the Middle East. (1) Is this a realistic possibility? The future remains uncertain, but an invasion of Taiwan remains high on Beijing’s list of “things to do.â€� The Communists in the Far East are restless. In late October several warships from China’s North Sea Fleet sailed east of Taiwan. The move was part of an ongoing and complex military exercise in the South China Sea. Taiwan’s defense minister, Tang Yao-ming, said the exercises were “unprecedented.â€� Addressing the Taiwanese (Republic of China) legislature, Defense Minister Tang begged legislators to purchase four U.S. Kidd-class destroyers. In late November the Chinese used bad weather to mask amphibious exercises in the South China Sea. This was the fourth straight year the Chinese military practiced a coastal invasion, and it was the second year Chinese commanders succeeded in hiding their amphibious capabilities and new combined arms tactics from U.S. intelligence. As for human spies and infiltrators getting a look at Chinese capabilities, the Washington Times alleges that U.S. government policy “limits conducting human spying operations in China to avoid upsetting Beijing.â€� (2) On its side, China is aggressively scouting the waters around Taiwan. Since March Chinese spy boats have been spotted along Taiwan’s eastern shore on several occasions. Hong Kong’s Ming Bao newspaper reported that Beijing’s navy is following a special directive to “make preparations for military struggle against Taiwan.â€� This directive was issued last March by President Jiang Zemin. On Monday the People’s Liberation Army “rebuffedâ€� U.S. questions about Chinese arms sales to rogue states during high-level strategic talks. The Chinese refused to renounce the use of force against Taiwan; they also refused to limit the export of missile and nuclear technology to “axis of evilâ€� countries by denying that such exports are taking place. According to the Washington Times, one U.S. official said: “The continued proliferation by China of nuclear, chemical and missile-related materials and technologies remains a problem.â€� (3) In violation of its international commitments, China has long been exporting weapons of mass destruction to terrorist regimes. U.S. officials are often too timid, perhaps too sensitive to U.S. economic interests to consistently enforce laws that would activate sanctions against Chinese companies. The Clinton administration briefly imposed sanctions on Chinese companies on two occasions in the 1990s. The first occasion involved missile sales to Pakistan and the second occasion involved chemical weapon sales to Iran. At the time no sanctions were imposed on for China’s exporting germ warfare equipment and cruise missiles to Iran. (4) Is there a connection between China’s military buildup and its exports to rogue states? There may be a strategic connection. It is no mean coincidence that Iraq’s new air defense system was installed with Chinese assistance. Meanwhile, China’s military buildup opposite Taiwan has continued for four years. This buildup involves the deployment of hundreds of short and medium range ballistic missiles. According to USAF Major Mark A. Stokes, an air attaché at the U.S. embassy in Beijing from 1992 to 1995, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is preparing a powerful first strike against Taiwan. In a report issued in 1999, Stokes wrote: “The People’s Republic of China, is developing one of the most daunting conventional theater missile challenges in the world.â€� He further stated: “A large arsenal of highly accurate and lethal theater missiles serves as a ‘trump card,’ a revolutionary departure from the PLA of the past. The PLA’s theater missiles and a supporting space-based surveillance network are emerging not only as a tool of psychological warfare, but as a potentially devastating weapon of military utility.â€� (5) Surprise attack is part of the Chinese war plan against Taiwan. Stokes’ 1999 report said the PLA was planning to use 400 missiles in an opening volley that would decapitate Taiwan’s political and military leadership, forestalling any effort to preemptively disrupt China’s missile forces with air strikes. Targets would include Taiwan’s defense ministry and the presidential palace. In terms of its plan, Beijing is respectful but not fearful of U.S. military intervention. In a 1999 strategic directive from China’s Central Military Commission to all corps-level commands, China’s strategic leadership stated that nuclear war with America was an option because America would recoil in horror after the loss of one city while China had the toughness to prevail despite much heavier losses. It is in this context that North Korea’s war preparations and Russia’s friendly overtures to China must be viewed. A regional war in the Middle East involving U.S. forces might tempt China to launch an attack. The North Korean military buildup is significant in this regard as well. On Dec. 5 the U.S. government reminded the North Koreans that they had promised not to develop nuclear weapons. But the North Koreans, backed and supplied by China, have thrown defiance in the face of the Americans. After 1994 the United States gave a great deal of aid (especially food and fuel aid) to North Korea on the basis of Pyongyang’s promises. Now that North Korea has broken those promises, true to Communist form, tensions are on the rise. Last week the United States government described the situation in North Korea as “very serious.â€� As if to make matters worse, the North Koreans recently admitted to having operational nuclear weapons. In October they admitted to secretly enriching their uranium stockpile for the construction of additional nuclear weapons. Sino-Russian relations lie at the core of the emerging Far East crisis. Conventional analysts may think this an odd fact, but nothing seems to have changed in the region since the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, except that China and North Korea are stronger than ever and armed with mass destruction weapons – and Russia is working closely to build up China’s military potential. According to Dr. Alexandr Nemets, writing in Newsmax, Russian President Vladimir Putin has decided “to use all means and tools for the expansion of weapon exports to China.â€� Russia’s defense industry is now tied to China’s military, and is China’s leading supplier of advanced weapons. Last month the Chinese and Russian foreign ministers, along with President Putin, decided to transform the Shanghai Cooperation Organization into a military bloc. (This organization combines the former Soviet states of Central Asia with China and Russia.) Russia is absolutely committed to modernizing the Chinese armed forces, and has promised to deliver shipments of SU-30 MKK fourth generation Russian fighters to China. The list of Russian military items being shipped to China is very large, and very worrisome. (6) (1) Pravda, “Beijing Waiting for U.S.-Iraq War?â€� http://english.pravda.ru/columnists/2002/11/26/39994.html (2) Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough, Washington Times, “Inside the Ring,â€� http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021129-7413878.htm (3) Bill Gertz, Washington Times, “China's Arms Sales, Stance on Taiwan Chill Talks With U.S." http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021210-81002548.htm (4) Edward Timperlake and William C. Triplett II, Red Dragon Rising: Communist China’s Military Threat to America (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 1999 ), p. 117. (5) Bill Gertz, The China Threat: How the People’s Republic Targets America (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2000), p. 189. (6) Alexandr Nemets, “From Bad to Worse,â€� http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/11/27/163850.shtml Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-12-24 01:25:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat China donates $2.5m to Palestinians Jang ^ | 12-12/2002 BEIJING: China has donated US$2.5 million to Yasser Arafat's Palestinian National Authority to repair houses destroyed by Israeli forces, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Wednesday. Xinhua said the agreement was signed in Gaza city on Tuesday by Palestinian Planning Minister Nabil Shaath and China's representative to the Palestinian authority, Wu Jiuhong. "China has been supporting the Palestinians economically and politically since the early 1960s," Wu was quoted as saying. He said China will exert "every possible effort to help improve the life of the Palestinian people." China has traditionally backed Palestinian calls for a homeland and criticized Israeli military operations against Palestinian civilian and political targets. However, Beijing also tries to appear evenhanded in its dealings with the region, calling on both sides to abandon violence and negotiate a peace settlement. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-12-24 01:26:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat CHINA OPENS PANDORA'S NUCLEAR BOX The Jamestown Foundation ^ | December 10, 2002 | Thomas Woodrow The transfer and sale of Chinese-origin nuclear weapons and missile technologies has started a spiraling cycle of proliferation with grave consequences for security in South and East Asia. Beijing has made nuclear and missile transfers directly and indirectly through proxy states such as Pakistan and North Korea, disseminating through them to other nations including Syria, Iran and Libya. This Chinese-led proliferation has kick-started a nuclear arms race involving India, Pakistan and North Korea. Japan, South Korea and Taiwan will soon join in, to be inevitably followed by Iran, Syria and others. China's direct and indirect assistance to North Korea is especially worrying, as Pyongyang is designing an intercontinental-range ballistic missile with a nuclear mission to target the United States. In October 2002, North Korea revealed that it was continuing to secretly develop nuclear weapons despite promising not to do so as part of its 1994 agreement with the United States. The nuclear weapons technology involved--including large numbers of centrifuge machines to produce weapons-grade uranium--has its origins in Chinese assistance to Pakistan's nuclear programs. It seems most unlikely that Islamabad would have passed on Chinese-origin nuclear technology in such quantities to North Korea without Beijing's knowledge and consent. Chinese technicians working in Pakistan's nuclear and missile facilities would have notified Beijing in any event. China has long historical links with North Korea's missile programs. The Chinese themselves have typified their relationship with North Korea as "closer than gums and teeth." In the 1970s, North Korea received Chinese missile technology of Soviet design. This assistance was furthered by the joint development of the Chinese DF-61, a 1,000 km-range nuclear missile that was to be turned over to Pyongyang. Although this program ended in 1978 when its Chinese sponsor fell from favor, by that time North Korea had acquired valuable design assistance from the Chinese. This assistance helped Pyongyang reverse-engineer a version of the Scud missile it had purchased from Egypt in 1976. North Korea arranged for Iranian funding of its indigenous Scud B missile program in the mid-1980s; these links with Tehran have continued to the present day. North Korea also served as a conduit for Chinese transfers of Silkworm anti-ship missiles to Iran in the late 1980s to avoid U.S. censure of Beijing. One 1988 transfer reportedly included eighty Chinese Silkworms and forty North Korean Scud-Bs as part of the same shipment. Although Beijing has stepped up its political and economic relations with South Korea, there is evidence of ongoing military cooperation with North Korean missile and nuclear programs. In 1997, a "joint team" of Chinese and North Korean technicians was reportedly sent to Iran to assist in Tehran's ballistic missile efforts. The Iranian Shahab-3 and Shahab-4 missiles are direct beneficiaries of North Korean and Chinese missile programs. North Korea likely has used the Iranian missile tests for its own missile program development to circumvent Pyongyang's "promise" not to conduct missile launches (the Shahab-3 is the No Dong; the planned Shahab-5 is the Taepodong-2). There is other evidence of Chinese assistance to North Korean missile programs. A 1993 test launch of the 1,000-km range No Dong missile from North Korea evidently involved no telemetry, reportedly a signature of some Chinese missile tests. In 1994, a missile mockup of the long-range Taepodong-2 appeared to resemble the Chinese CSS-2 intermediate-range ballistic missile. A 1995 press report claimed that some U.S. intelligence officials believed China was both assisting North Korea to develop a family of long-range ballistic missiles and training some 200 Korean missile engineers in China. That family of long-range missiles is, of course, the Taepodong, which Pyongyang successfully launched in August 1998--ten years before the CIA believed possible--on a trajectory that carried it over Japan to impact near the Hawaiian Islands. The miniaturization of a nuclear package, advanced guidance components and stage separation mechanisms are critical to North Korea's efforts to develop a nuclear-capable Taepodong-class missile with a range to target the United States. These are the areas where Chinese assistance is likely occurring, possibly under the guise of satellite-launch assistance. Beijing's willingness to sell and transfer critical components of WMD technology makes China directly or indirectly a key component of the global proliferation of nuclear and missile technology. While Beijing may have had its political reasons for assisting Pakistan and North Korea, in doing so it has opened the Pandora's box of a regional nuclear arms race. The Indian Defense Ministry has publicly stated it sees China as India's primary strategic threat; New Delhi is designing its longer-range Agni missiles specifically for nuclear deterrence of China. Faced with ongoing North Korean and Chinese nuclear and missile efforts, Japan will undoubtedly activate its own nascent nuclear weapons program and start to devote some of its launches from Kagashima for military purposes. South Korea already has a half-hidden missile program underway. Taiwan developed medium-range missiles in the 1980s and was well on its way towards a nuclear capability when the United States pressured it to stop some twenty years ago. Taipei, too, likely will rethink its need for a nuclear deterrent. The nuclear race is also spreading to Iran, Syria, Libya and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia may be funding much of Pakistan's missile and nuclear efforts and could become a nuclear power literally overnight through an airlift of missiles. Why has China continued to proliferate in the face of such obviously negative consequences? By spreading WMD technology throughout Asia, Beijing is only helping to create the regional instability it claims it wants to avoid, and is fulfilling its own paranoia of encirclement as Asia becomes increasingly wary of Beijing's willingness to throw its economic and military weight around. China's mistakes can be partly attributed to simple Han hubris, especially in its relations with India, which Beijing regards as an inferior culture. Mostly, however, it is political blundering, spurred on by shortsighted greed, which has led China to start an arms race it did not want. China armed Pakistan to the nuclear teeth without considering the Indian response. It assisted North Korea, either directly or indirectly, seemingly without concern that this might cause Japan to rethink its nuclear option and more fully embrace the U.S. NMD initiative. Perhaps Beijing plans to use Pyongyang as a lever against Washington in the event of a decision to launch an attack against Taipei. In any event, China's rampant proliferation of WMD has created an arms race that cannot now be stopped. Beijing will soon reap the rewards of its ill-considered policies as India, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan accelerate or reactivate indigenous missile and nuclear weapons programs. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-12-24 01:27:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat US at odds with China over Taiwan SECURITY: In high-level military talks, the US said China's missiles were a destabilizing force in the Taiwan Strait, while China blamed US weapons sales By Charles Snyder STAFF REPORTER IN WASHINGTON WITH AP Wednesday, Dec 11, 2002,Page 1 The US complained to China on Monday about Beijing's military buildup across the Taiwan Strait during a day-long military consultative meeting in Washington, the first such meeting since the EP-3 incident in April last year, and the highest-level military-to-military exchange between the two countries since George W. Bush became president. The two sides apparently did not discuss Chinese President Jiang Zemin's reported recent offer to reduce the number of missiles targeting Taiwan if the US scaled back its arms sales to the country. The talks resulted from the October summit between Bush and Jiang and represent an effort to improve bilateral relations in the wake of Sept. 11. "They were real discussions. They were not just stilted set pieces," Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith told reporters after the talks. "We came away with some additional understanding of the personalities on the other side and the ideas on the other side." On Taiwan, however, the talks were not so harmonious. "We said that we thought the [Chinese missile buildup across from Taiwan] is threatening and appears to be designed to, you know, coerce and intimidate, and that is not the right approach to reducing risks and tensions regarding Taiwan," Feith said. But Feith refused to comment on reports of a possible US-China deal to reduce arms on both sides of the Strait. He also said that the US plan to sell Taiwan diesel submarines and other advanced weapons systems "didn't come up." There have been reports that during the summit Jiang suggested the missiles-for-arms-sales exchange, reports apparently confirmed recently by Chen Chien-jen, the head of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Washington. "There is no damage done to the Taiwan people by missile deployment," Liu said at a regular briefing, answering a Taiwanese reporter's question. "The Chinese side has the right to military deployment in its own territory. What we need to fend off is Taiwan's independence forces, Liu said. "The Chinese side's position on US arms sales to Taiwan is consistent: We oppose it under any pretext. It is a violation of China's `one China' policy and damages bilateral relations," Liu said. In Washington, Feith said that the proposal itself had not come up, "but the topic of China's missile buildup across from Taiwan did. We raised it." He said the topic came up "in the context of discussing actions that do not contribute to the stability of the area." While no sort of quid pro quo came up, Feith said, "The Chinese commented about the US defense relationship with Taiwan when we commented about the Chinese missile build-up across from Taiwan. That's fairly standard." Feith headed the US side in the day-long discussions. The Chinese side was headed by General Xiong Guangkai, the deputy chief of the Chinese general staff, and the man who several years ago was quoted as threatening to take out Los Angeles if the US came to Taiwan's defense against China. Feith said that Taiwan "headed" the issues of disagreement between the two sides in the talks. "On Taiwan," he said, "the US reaffirmed our position on Taiwan. Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, China did not renounce the use of force to resolve the Taiwan conflict," he said. He made the comment a day after Beijing released its latest biannual report on its defense structure and policies, in which it again refused to renounce the use of force. The report, titled "China's National Defense in 2002," stridently condemned Taiwan independence forces and said China "will not forswear the use of force." "China's armed forces will unswervingly defend the country's sovereignty and unity, and have the resolve as well as the capability to check any separatist act," the report said. Feith declined to respond to that statement. Holding up a copy of the report, he said that he had been handed the document only a few hours earlier by the Chinese delegation, and had not had a chance to read it. The talks covered a range of issues including North Korea's nuclear buildup, Iraq, weapons proliferation, China's military modernization and regional stability. Chinese officials also presented a detailed proposal for military-to-military contacts with the US, Feith said. He said it was too soon to offer a US reaction to the Chinese proposals. The Pentagon wants the exchanges to be more than just port calls and photo opportunities, Feith said. "If the exchanges are structured properly, they will serve our interests, our common interests, providing insights, to reduce the possibility of mistakes, of misunderstanding." Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-12-24 01:28:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat China begins stealth fighter project Space Daily ^ | 12-10-2002 | LONDON (AFP) China begins stealth fighter project: report LONDON (AFP) Dec 10, 2002 China is developing a "heavyweight" fighter aircraft with stealth characteristics, the current issue of Jane's Defence Weekly reported Tuesday, citing a senior Chinese aviation source. Shenyang Aircraft Co. has been selected to head research and development of the fourth-generation fighter, the industry news magazine said, quoting the source from the China Aviation Industry Corp. I. The development of engines and weapon sub-systems for the fighter -- tentatively dubbed the J-X, and with some of the design traits of the stealthy US F/A-22 warplane -- has been underway for some time. China Aviation Industry sources would not speculate on when the fighter might make its first test flight, but Jane's said a debut could be expected around the end of the decade. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-12-24 01:28:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat N. Korea seeks aid from China on nukes THE WASHINGTON TIMES ^ | December 9, 2002 | Bill Gertz North Korea is trying to buy a chemical from China used in the production of nuclear-weapons fuel that U.S. intelligence officials say is a sign the communist government in Pyongyang is continuing to secretly develop nuclear arms, The Washington Times has learned. North Korean government agents were tracked by U.S. intelligence to several Chinese companies that make the chemical, known as tributyl phosphate, or TBP, said officials familiar with classified intelligence reports. "This shows they are moving ahead with their uranium [nuclear-weapons] program," an intelligence official said. The chemical has commercial uses, but U.S. intelligence agencies believe the North Koreans want the TBP as part of the uranium-based nuclear-arms development program, which the CIA estimates is about two years away from being able to produce fuel for nuclear bombs. The TBP "will be used to turn spent [nuclear] fuel into weapons-grade uranium," the official said. A CIA spokesman declined to comment. The Chinese companies involved in the North Korean chemical deal were not identified. However, Chinese companies have been sanctioned by the Bush administration at least three times in the past year for similar weapons-related sales to Iran and Pakistan. Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence agencies also have detected recent activity at North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear facility that may signal the communist government in Pyongyang is preparing to restart the reactor, which was shut as part of a 1994 agreement, an intelligence official said. A State Department intelligence bureau report made public last month stated that North Korea has not reloaded the 5-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon and had stopped construction of larger 50-megawatt and 200-megawatt reactors at the site. "It is not producing fuel at the fuel fabrication facility at Yongbyon, and it has forgone reprocessing spent fuel," the bureau said in written answers to questions from the Senate intelligence committee. North Korean government officials in October confirmed U.S. intelligence reports that the government is developing uranium-based nuclear arms, despite promises to freeze nuclear-weapons development under the 1994 agreement. The disclosure led the United States to cut off fuel oil shipments last month. The oil was meant to help North Korean energy shortfalls until the electrical-power-generating reactors are built during the next several years. North Korea responded to the cutoff by announcing that the 1994 accord was nullified. Asked about the North Korean nuclear-arms program on Thursday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he discussed the issue with South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jun during meetings at the Pentagon. North Korea's continuing efforts to build nuclear weapons in violation of arms agreements will be a topic of discussion in talks in the region by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who is visiting the South Pacific this week. Mr. Armitage will make stops in South Korea, Japan, Australia and China. On Friday, the State Department announced that a year-end meeting of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization would be postponed until next month. The meeting of the organization, which deals with energy issues in North Korea, had been scheduled to discuss how the United States, Japan and South Korea would respond to North Korea's nuclear program. The Bush administration is waiting until after South Korea holds presidential elections, set for Dec. 19, before deciding how to deal with the growing nuclear showdown with the North. The administration is especially concerned that the candidate of the ruling Millennium Democratic Party, which has taken a conciliatory line toward the North Korean nuclear-arms program, will be elected. Diplomatically, the administration is working within the 41-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group to curb sales of weapons goods, including TBP, to North Korea. "There's no question but that the situation in North Korea is very serious," Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters last week. "They have violated several agreements and proceeded on a very dangerous course." Nuclear-arms specialists say TBP is used in purifying uranium and also can be used for making new plutonium fuel at the Yongbyon nuclear facility. TBP also is used for reprocessing spent plutonium fuel. Leonard S. Spector, deputy director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif., said the reported North Korean chemical dealing could mean several things. "Depending on their timing, these activities could signal that, in response to the new confrontation with the United States, North Korea is getting ready to exploit the demise of the Agreed Framework," Mr. Spector said. The 1994 Agreed Framework was supposed to have halted all work on North Korea's nuclear weapons in exchange for the United States, Japan and South Korea providing the North with two nuclear-electrical-power reactors. Mr. Spector said the North Koreans may be sending signals through the attempted purchase of TBP as "a way for Pyongyang to turn up the heat a little, without going to the brink." Mr. Spector said he believes that as long as North Korea allows nuclear inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at the Yongbyon nuclear facility, "the North Koreans want a deal, not a blowup." North Korea announced last week that it had rejected a request from the IAEA to inspect its nuclear facilities, including those at Yongbyon. The international nuclear agency announced Nov. 29 that North Korea should immediately permit nuclear inspections and "give up any nuclear-weapons program, expeditiously and in a verifiable manner." "The [North Korean] government cannot accept the Nov. 29 resolution of the IAEA board of governors in any case and there is no change in its principled stand on the nuclear issue," North Korea's central news agency said, citing a Dec. 2 letter from Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun. President Bush had said North Korea is one of three "axis of evil" states. The others are Iraq and Iran. The CIA released an unclassified assessment of the North Korean nuclear-arms program last month. The agency concluded that North Korea could build several plutonium bombs right away and add one bomb every year until 2005 if the Agreed Framework collapses. Beginning in 2005, North Korea could begin large-scale production of nuclear weapons — up to 50 bombs a year. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2002-12-25 16:18:00 216.196.170.17 Re: The China Threat Clark, Let me just say thanks for actually taking the time to thoroughly read the Ground War thread! It is a bit of a relief to meet a Clark that isn’t stone deaf! LOL. I think you summed it up nicely when you said: quote: China can only be dealt with in one way, counter every move they make, resist, with force, every act of aggression, annihilate them if they attack us directly and, most importantly, make sure they have no doubts about our will and ability to do so. It just doesn’t look like that’s the way things are or will be handled. People are too infatuated with the money market that China supposedly presents. Rick, Thanks for posting all those stories! Saves me a little bit of time. Here’s the latest on China: - A Conversation With Friends, Part I - A Conversation With Friends, Part II - Al Gore\'s Stealth Trip to China - Amnesty Says Two Chinese Internet Users Were Executed - Beijing Cracks Down On Internet Users - Beijing Happy With Increased China-U.S. Military Ties - Book On Chinese Nuke Spying - Bush Must Not Encourage Jiang Zemin - ChiCom General "Nuke The US" Xiong Here For US-China "Defense Talks" - China Has Surveillance Base In Myanmar, India Claims - China Involved In Pakistan-North Korea Nuke Deal: Experts - China Pushes Homegrown (Computer) Chip - China: The World\'s Factory - China To Build Trust In New Security Policy - China To Replace US As World\'s No.1 FDI Recipient - China Welcomes US Proposal To Cut Non-Agricultural Product Tariffs - China, Iran Share Missile Know-How - China\'s PLA Enlists Capitalist Competition - China\'s Security Stance - China\'s Unsuccessful Missile Diplomacy - China\'s War Preparations - Chinese General Told Threat Against U.S. Unacceptable - Chinese Stealth Fighter Plans Revealed - Chinese-Box Approach To International Conflict - Drudge: Chi-Com General Who Threatened Los Angeles Refusing To Meet With Condi Rice - Drudge: Condi Rice Rebukes China\'s Xiong On Nuke Threat To L.A. - God and China - Gold Rush Starts In Beijing - Gore In Funding Flap In Red China: Ambassador Holbrooke Defends Ex-V.P. - Intrigue Surrounds Gore Trip To China - Hawks Press Bush On Hong Kong Security Law - High-Tech Rail Line Key To Shanghai\'s Mega-City Dream - Hong Kong Under Threat - Hour of Delight? Or of Bitterness? - Is China\'s Missile Offer Genuine? - Israel Helping China Build New Fighter Jet - North Korea, Pakistan, China - New Missile Threat to America - Overseas Chinese: How Powerful Are They? - Panel To Probe China\'s Nuclear-Related Sales - Pentagon Study Finds China Preparing For War With U.S - Red General and the First Lady - Shanghai Set To Become Plane Manufacturer - Shenzhou-4 Blastoff Within Fortnight - [Before 1 Jan \'03] - Sino-US Trade Imbalance Should Be Solved Through Development - The Dictatorship Of The Proletariat - The First Cloning Superpower: Inside China\'s Race To Become The Clone Capital Of The World - The US Wants China To Reconsider - U.S. Admiral Due in Beijing for Military Exchange - U.S. and Chinese Sign Agreement on Technology-Based Economic Relations - U.S. Concerned Over China\'s WTO Progress - U.S. Fears China Won’t Live Up To WTO Duties - U.S. Kicks Off Taiwan Submarine Competition - UN Official: China Becoming a \'People Superpower\' - US Activists Boycott Goods Made In China U.S. Refuses Chinese Missile Deal - US Says It Won\'t Sell Out Taiwan For Support - US-Taiwanese Military Relations: Strategic Ambiguity - Warships, Subs Are In The Pipeline For Taiwan - Xiong Guangkai To Attend China-Us Vice-Ministerial Defense Consultation Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-12-30 02:47:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat 2002 Report # 20 November 20, 2002 THE REAL CHINA SCANDAL The American public first learned in 1999 that the People’s Republic of China had acquired classified data on seven U.S. nuclear warheads plus several intercontinental ballistic missiles. For many, China’s successes recalled the Soviet penetration of the World War II Manhattan Project. A former CIA spy catcher, Paul Redmond, ranked the damage above that caused by FBI agent Robert Hanssen and CIA’s Aldrich Ames, both long-time Soviet spies. Redmond argued that whereas they had severely damaged our intelligence capabilities, Chinese nuclear espionage could enable China to threaten our obliteration. Unlike the Hanssen/Ames cases, however, the elite media have downplayed Chinese nuclear espionage. In a way, it was reminiscent of the efforts of the left to refute the evidence that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and more recently J. Robert Oppenheimer, the top scientist in the Manhattan Project, had helped the Soviet Union get what was supposed to be our most carefully guarded secret-how to build an atomic bomb. In the Chinese spying case, much of the media have downplayed the seriousness of nuclear espionage and have not demanded that those responsible be found and brought to justice. After the Chinese nuclear espionage story broke on March 6, 1999, National Security Advisor Samuel Berger and Energy Secretary Bill Richardson repeatedly confirmed the losses on tele-vision. Berger said on Meet the Press, “There is no question that they’ve [the Chinese] benefitted from this.â€� Richardson said on CNN Crossfire, “Yes, we know for a fact that the missile technology secrets came from the Los Alamos nuclear lab.â€� The CIA published a declassified version of an assessment that confirmed that the Chinese had stolen U.S. secrets on nuclear warheads and missile reentry vehicles. And the “Cox Reportâ€� further expanded these revelations in late May 1999. Yet, by the end of summer, the Clinton White House was celebrating the disappearance of the story from the media. The New York Times had “scoopedâ€� most other media outlets by exposing the Clinton administration’s mishandling of the investigation and the need for security reforms. The White House relied primarily on the Washington Post to knock down the espionage story. While the Times coverage has been harshly criticized, the Post’s reporting has escaped scrutiny altogether even though its reporting shifted the coverage from the spy story to allegations of racism and ethnic profiling. Walter Pincus and Vernon Loeb covered the story for the Post. Loeb, the junior partner, was relatively new on that beat. Pincus’s career with the Post stretched back to 1975. Prior to that he had served as an investigator for Senator J. William Fulbright, D-Ark., on the Foreign Relations Committee, and then spent three years as editor of the New Republic. Pincus is part of the “activist media,â€� where opinions and solutions often substitute for facts. He once said at a conference that it was his job to “cure something we find to be wrong.â€� Until the late 1980s, he focused on nuclear arms control; “activismâ€� on this beat generally meant supporting arms control agreements regardless of the impact on U.S. national security. He co-wrote and helped produce anti-nuclear television documentaries in the 1980s at the height of the “nuclear freezeâ€� campaign. His articles consistently warned of dire consequences should the U.S. abrogate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and he has blamed the U.S. for North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Cozy With The CIA Pincus has had a long relationship with the CIA. Herbert Romerstein, a veteran investigator of Soviet subversion, disinformation and espionage, says Pincus and Gloria Steinem attended a Communist International Youth Festival in Vienna in 1959, with funds provided by the CIA. The CIA financed at least one more trip for Pincus in 1960. He has said that he rejected a job offer from CIA. During the Clinton years, Pincus enjoyed access to high-ranking CIA officials. He consistently portray-ed the Agency’s leadership in the most favorable light-as long as that leadership came from within the Democratic Party. He has been particularly kind to George Tenet, a Clinton appointee who, has been held over by George W. Bush. In mid-May 2002, in the midst of widespread criticism of the Agency’s performance before 9/11, Pincus portrayed increases to the intelligence community’s budget as indicative of the “growing confidence Congress and Bush have placed in CIA Director George J. Tenet.â€� During the CIA-FBI “leak warâ€� over which agency’s mistakes were most responsible for the 9/11 disaster, Pincus repeatedly portrayed Tenet and the CIA in the most favorable light. The Pincus-Tenet relationship probably dates back to the mid-1980s. Tenet got his start in Washington as a Capitol Hill aide to Senator John Heinz; after Heinz’s death, he moved to the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, working for the ranking member, Senator Patrick Leahy. Tenet moved up to become staff director when the Democrats regained control of the Senate and David Boren took over the chairmanship of the committee. Boren and Tenet ran many of the Senate’s Iran-Contra investigations, portrayed as a Republican scandal. Pincus wrote stories about the CIA’s involvement in the scandal, based apparently on a steady stream of leaks from the Democrats. A Friend Of Bill’s Pincus has close personal links to the Clintons. His wife, Ann, is a native of Little Rock and, for a time, his son, Ward, was a reporter for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He claims an “association with Arkansans over the past 30 years,â€� and says that through these connections, he and his wife befriended the late Vincent Foster. They were among the “family friendsâ€� who gathered at Foster’s home on July 20, 1993 after he was found shot to death in Ft. Marcy Park. Pincus was the first to suggest that Foster had cracked under the pressure of his job as Deputy White House Counsel. None of his co-workers had seen any sign of depression, and President Clinton had said, “we will never knowâ€� why he killed himself. Six days after his death, a forged note suggesting he was depressed was allegedly found in his brief case. It had been searched previously. That same year, Ann Pincus became a high-ranking Clinton political appointee at the U.S. Information Agency. Later, when USIA was folded into the State Department, she became a senior official in State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. His other son, Andrew, became General Counsel of the Commerce Department in 1997, just as the campaign finance scandal was unfolding. Beginning that year, Commerce came under increasing fire for liberalizing high-technology exports to China, especially satellites, allegedly in return for contributions to the Democratic National Committee. Pincus wrote a number of articles refuting those allegations that were similar to his later coverage of the Chinese nuclear espionage scandal. An official at the Washington Post described Pincus as “a friend of Bill's.â€� He said that the couple were frequent guests at Camp David and had attended formal White House dinners for visiting foreign dignitaries. In 1995,“Reliable Source,â€� the Post’s gossip column, reported that the Clintons had attended a dinner party at the Pincus home. Despite the obvious conflict of interest, the Post assigned Pincus to cover two of Clinton’s most damaging national security scandals. The President benefited greatly from this friendship. Walter Pincus had written one of the earliest stories on Chinese espionage in 1999. The headline read, “U.S. Cracking Down on Chinese Designs on Nuclear Data.â€� The story had all the basic facts, but Pincus was careful to shield Clinton from any criticism. He would later say that he had considerable difficulty persuading his editors to publish this article. But after the New York Times picked up the story on March 6, 1999, Jackson Diehl, then the Post’s assistant managing editor for national news, pressed Pincus and Loeb to find a different angle on the story. Initially, their coverage stuck to three basic themes. The Three Themes First, they consistently wrote that the Chinese espionage, if indeed any had occurred, was of little value to the PRC nuclear weapons program. Government assessments of the espionage’s contribution to the development of Chinese nuclear forces or the potential impact on U.S. national security were all based on “worse,â€� later changed to “worstâ€� case scenarios. Second, they put the blame on long-standing security vulnerabilities at the Energy Department’s nuclear labs, the scene of many of the Chinese intelligence successes. A White House report issued in mid-summer 1999 had delivered a devastating but deserved critique of the Energy Department’s security record over the past two decades. The report mildly rebuked the Clinton administration for not reacting sooner, but praised its effort to correct the security problems. Pincus and Loeb claimed that the Clinton White House had been the first to mandate reforms of Energy, which was a half-truth at best. Late in the first President Bush’s term, some measures were taken to reform security after an early Chinese espionage case had been uncovered at one of the labs. But these measures were brushed aside when Clinton took over in 1993. Third, they portrayed this as yet another in a string of partisan Republican efforts to “getâ€� Bill Clinton. News of the scandal began to unfold just after the Senate had failed to convict Clinton on impeachment charges. At one point, Pincus wrote that the allegations were only coming from “some members of Congress,â€� whom he blamed for “seriously strained U.S.-Chinese relations. This despite the recent U.S. bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, a mistake that was widely attributed to bad CIA intelligence. Convenient Anonymous Sources Throughout, Pincus and Loeb relied almost exclusively on “anonymous sourcesâ€� to debunk the Chinese espionage allegations. Loeb later claimed that he had discovered numerous “people in the Clinton administration who had first-hand knowledge of the case and at Los Alamos who had information on the case were dubiousâ€� about these allegations. Since Sandy Berger and Bill Richardson were both publicly confirming that espionage had occurred, it is not clear who Loeb was talking to, at least in official Washington. They repeatedly cited the doubts and misgivings of “senior officialsâ€� or “senior intelligence officials,â€� who were never quoted on the record or identified by name. They quoted “senior U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials [who] say that they may never solve the mystery of how China learned about miniaturized warheads.â€� A “three-year FBI probe had produced no hard evidence of espionage,â€� according to unnamed officials. The Cox Report: Dead On Arrival In late May, Congress released a declassified version of the Report of the Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People’s Republic of China, better known as the Cox Report. The Cox Report provided a devastating indictment of successive administrations for their failures to detect and deter Chinese military espionage. The report was particularly critical of the Clinton administration for failing to act decisively once it learned of Chinese nuclear espionage. Within two days of its publication, however, the Cox Report nearly disappeared from the national media. The White House had successfully employed a media strategy that almost completely deflated the report’s impact. The White House had received a highly classified version of the report in early January. National Security Council officials chaired a series of inter-agency meetings to develop a game plan intended to limit damage to the administration once an unclassified version was released. These officials had government classification experts consume months in endless disputes with the Congress over the public release of information in the report. Meanwhile, the White House was steadily leaking selected details to the press in order to take the steam out of the Cox Report. The White House also had the intelligence community develop its own damage assessment for publication well before the release of the Cox Report. It even issued a press release announcing the assessment without informing CIA Director Tenet. When the assessment was completed in early April, its results were revealed at the National Press Club by Robert Walpole, a CIA national intelligence officer, who spoke on background. At the press briefing, he handed out an unclassified summary that concluded, “China obtained by espionage classified U.S. nuclear weapons information that probably accelerated its program to develop future nuclear weapons. This collection program allowed China to focus successfully down critical paths and avoid less promising approaches to nuclear weapons design.â€� (Emphasis added) But the Post didn’t consider the CIA’s confirmation of Chinese nuclear espionage worthy of front-page treatment. On page A4, Pincus and Loeb repeated the CIA’s judgments, but qualified them by emphasizing that Walpole had said it would be “several yearsâ€� before CIA would know “whether the espionage ‘had a significant impact on [PRC] programs.’â€� And it continued to underscore the “partisanâ€� nature of the controversy by quoting Senator Bob Kerry (D-Neb.) saying that the White House “has not got a bad track record in responding to this problem. They’ve done things to reduce the risk.â€� Bill Gertz of the Washington Times has written that the White House warned reporters not to be too hard on the administration once the Cox Report was released. The White House promised to leak classified data that would discredit any coverage it considered overly critical. Rep. Chris Cox later claimed that 70% of the classified information in the original report had been released to the public, but Pincus and Loeb still dismissed the report as being based on “worse-case (sic) con-clusions.â€� They cited a “senior officialâ€� who said the Cox “panel accepted opinions not shared by the U.S. intelligence community about the use of U.S. designs in a new Chinese warhead.â€� They also reported that the Cox Committee had relied on a single document obtained from the Chinese that came to be known as the “walk-in report.â€� “Senior officialsâ€� told them that the whole case had been predicated on that document. They wrote that “senior intelligence officialsâ€� said that the document had been deliberately leaked to the U.S. by the Chinese. That “debate ragedâ€� on Capitol Hill as “intelligence professionals voiced concernâ€� over the supposed reliance on one document. Predictably, Pincus and Loeb cited former CIA officers, like Ambassadors Donald Gregg and James Lilley, who questioned the reliability of the walk-in document. Neither had reviewed it nor knew anything about its origins. By asserting that the Cox Report had been based on that single intelligence document, they cast suspicions on the overall credibility of the report. The Rebuttals Rep. Chris Cox (R-CA) and Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), the chairman and ranking member of the select committee, protest-ed the Post’s coverage in a letter to the editor of the Post. In particular, they questioned Pincus and Loeb’s reliance on “unnamedâ€� sources to challenge the credibility of their report. The congressmen wrote, “There is no question about the authenticity of the U.S. nuclear weapons design dataâ€� in the Chinese “walk-in report.â€� They emphasized that other classified sources supported claims of Chinese acquisitions of U.S. design information. Cox and Dicks concluded, “The People’s Liberation Army has successfully tested its knock-off version of the world’s most sophisticated nuclear design. And it got it right virtually immediately. The debate over whether the PRC stole design information for the W88 is over: it did.â€� The Post published the letter on Memorial Day. Post columnist Jim Hoagland agreed with Cox and Dicks. He had no trouble comprehending China’s intent in providing the document to the U.S. He wrote, “China wants to deter Washington in the event of a Taiwan Straits crisis.â€� Hoagland said, “That may be why China has been so obvious in the way it conducted its nuclear espionage, even as it publicly insists the spying never happened. The Cox report shows it did.â€� After the Cox Report’s publication, Pincus and Loeb returned to the CIA’s mid-April damage assessment report to underscore supposed differences in the two reports. Pincus wrote in mid-June that, in contrast to the Cox Report, the CIA believed that “China’s technical advances could have come not just from espionage, but from a wide range of other unclassified sources and ‘the relative contribution of each cannot be determined.’â€� But Pincus’ assertions were specious. No one involved in the investigations, including the authors of the Cox Report, had argued that China’s advances had come about solely from espionage. All understood that the Chinese collected information from many different sources, all of which were components of PRC intelligence operations. The first paragraph of the Cox Report chapter dealing with PRC nuclear espionage echoed the intelligence community damage assessment. It said, “The PRC intelligence collection program includes espionage, review of unclassified publications and extensive interactions with scientists from the Department of Energy’s national weapons laboratories.â€� No Secrets Stolen? By mid-summer, Congress and the administration began to issue reports documenting the results of several investigations into the scandal. On August 5, for example, Senators Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) and Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) of the Government Affairs Committee issued a statement on the administration’s handling of the espionage investigation. In his write-up, Pincus claimed that the statement “notes that it is still unclear whether any secrets really were stolen.â€� Pincus’s August 6 article was titled “China Spy Probe Bungled, Panel Finds, Senators Say U.S. May Never Know if Atomic Secrets Were Lost.â€� Twenty days later, the Post published a letter to the editor from the two Senators rebutting Pincus’s characterization of their conclusions. They rejected his claim that they were uncertain “whether any secrets were really stolen.â€� They wrote, “We did not say this,â€� and “We treated it as a given that U.S. intelligence officials had correctly concluded that Chinese intelligence stole design information on the W-88 warhead.â€� Printing this letter was the only correction or retraction made by the Washington Post. Playing The Race Card In early August, Pincus and Loeb switched tactics. While continuing to denounce the Cox Report and ignore the evidence of Chinese nuclear espionage, they now reported that racism and ethnic profiling had been behind the espionage allegations all along. In short, they launched a good, old-fashioned Washington smear campaign. Pincus became the first reporter in the elite media to allege that ethnicity had played the decisive role in the identification of Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee as an espionage suspect. Pincus reported that the Thompson/Lieberman statement, cited above, had concluded that Lee’s race and ethnicity had led investigators to single him out in 1996. Senators Thompson and Lieberman had identified three factors that had led investigators to Lee. In their letter to the Post, however, they charged that Pincus had “inventedâ€� a fourth: “that the Lees ‘were Chinese American.’â€� They wrote: “Let the record be clear: The evidence we have seen and heard provides no basis for the claim that the initial DOE-FBI inquiry focused on the Lees because of their race. Only much later in the process, once Mr. Lee had already been identified as the chief suspect, did the investigation consider the Lees’ ethnicity-and then only because, according to the FBI’s counterintelligence experts, Beijing’s intelligence actively tries to recruit Chinese American scientists working in sensitive U.S. facilities.â€� Once again the Washington Post printed the letter, but did not make any other effort to correct the misleading article. The Damage Is Done Now the smear campaign was in full bloom. During the month of August, Pincus and Loeb hammered away on the supposed role of racism and ethnic profiling in the case. The Post published two editorials and six Pincus and Loeb articles, all with the same message: Wen Ho Lee was singled out solely because he was of “Chinese descentâ€� and, consequently, this whole case had been driven by racism and ethnicity. To further the campaign, they repeatedly cited two Energy Department “insiders,â€� whose credentials and credibility were highly questionable. One had been disciplined for his failures in the case and told reporters he was trying to clear his reputation. The Post quoted this “sourceâ€� in at least twenty different articles in 1999 and 2000. The other passed a classified memo to the Post. Pincus and Loeb misquoted the memo, deliberately or otherwise, in an effort to show that there had been no basis for investigating Wen Ho Lee. The Post succeeded in burying the Chinese espionage allegations in a flurry of “revelationsâ€� about racism and ethnic profiling. Pincus and Loeb had “reframedâ€� the story and, henceforth, the national media followed their lead and never seriously addressed the espionage allegations again. The White House game plan had worked brilliantly. By this time, even the leftist media had figured out their strategy. Writing for Salon.com, Jake Tapper described it as “spoon-feeding information to the press and controlling which parts of the story get the most ink and air time.â€� But the strategy can’t work without sympathetic, compliant reporters and editors. President Clinton had a ready-made ally in Walter Pincus and the Washington Post. What You Can Do Send the enclosed cards or your own cards or letters to Bo Jones, Publisher of the Washington Post, and FBI Director Robert Mueller , and to Ms. Sibel Edmonds, another FBI employee who has been fired for having the courage to call attention to serious wrongdoing by FBI employees with whom she worked. http://www.aim.org/ Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2002-12-30 02:47:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat newsmax.com Sunday, Dec. 29, 2002 10:35 a.m. EST Powell to Stephie: Your Boss, Not Mine, Let North Korea Have Nukes Appearing on ABC's "This Week" Sunday morning, Secretary of State Colin Powell challenged host George Stephanopoulos over the former Clinton aide's contentions that his old boss had managed to keep the North Korean nuclear crisis in check while the Bush administration had bungled the situation. Discussing the standoff over Pyongyang's decision to reopen old nuclear reactors at the rogue state's Yongbyon nuclear facility, the former White House communications director argued that Clinton forced North Korea to back down. The exchange went like this: STEPHANOPOULOS: In fact, the Clinton administration said that if the spent [nuclear] fuel was reprocessed that would be a red line that couldn't be crossed. POWELL: It was crossed. During the Clinton administration the North Koreans had nuclear weapons. That was our intelligence estimate then, it's our intelligence estimate now. And in fact, the Clinton administration did have a declaratory policy that if anything else happened at [North Korea's nuclear facility at] Yongbyon they would attack it. (End of Excerpt) Moment earlier, Stephanopoulos cited complaints that Bush's hard line toward North Korea had contributed to the crisis. STEPHANOPOULOS: I want to show something that Senator John Kerry said the other day about the administration's policy. What he said [was]: "What happened in North Korea is predictable and totally anticipated based on this administration's complete avoidance of a responsible approach to North Korea in over a year and a half. It is the absence of diplomacy, it is the absence of common sense that has brought this on." How do you respond to Senator Kerry? POWELL: Well, John Kerry is running for office. And I disagree with the senator as much as I respect him. The fact of the matter is that this [nuclear] program was not started during the Bush administration. It was started during the previous administration. Back in 1998 and 1999, the intelligence shows clearly that North Korea had embarked on a program of enriching uranium. And so, we inherited this problem. (End of Excerpt) In fact, a November 1999 congressional report warned that the "Agreed Framework" negotiated with North Korea by the Clinton administration had given Pyongyang the capacity to produce 100 nuclear bombs per year. The study was undertaken by the House North Korea Advisory Group, chaired by Rep. Benjamin A. Gilman, R-N.Y. Members of the panel included Rep. Doug Bereuter, R-Neb., then chairman of the Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, Rep. Porter J. Goss, R-Fla., chairman of Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and Christopher Cox, R-Calif., then chairman of the Republican Policy Committee. With more than a year left in President Clinton's term, the Advisory Group cautioned that the deal that was supposed to derail Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program had instead backfired. "Through the provision of two light water reactors [LWRs] under the 1994 Agreed Framework, the United States, through KEDO, will provide North Korea with the capacity to produce annually enough fissile material for nearly 100 nuclear bombs, should the Democratic People's Republic of Korea [DPRK] decide to violate the Nonproliferation Treaty [NPT]," the Advisory Group warned. The report explained: "If the 1994 Agreed Framework is implemented and two LWRs are eventually built and operated in North Korea, the reactors could produce close to 500 kilograms of plutonium in spent reactor fuel each year; enough for nearly 100 bombs annually if North Korea decides to break its obligations and reprocess the material." Officials in Pyonyang acknowledged in October that North Korea had indeed broken its obligations under the Clinton accord and are now rapidly proceeding with a full-blown nuclear weapons program. The Advisory Group further cautioned: "Although the 1994 Agreed Framework was essentially aimed at eliminating North Korea's ability to make nuclear weapons, there is significant evidence that nuclear weapons development is continuing, including its efforts to acquire uranium enrichment technologies and its nuclear-related high explosive tests." In one of the Advisory Group's most chilling observations, the report warned that since the implementation of the Clinton accord, North Korea had made significant progress in developing an intercontinental ballistic missile fleet capable of targeting the U.S. with weapons of mass destruction: "In the last five years, North Korea's missile capabilities have improved dramatically. North Korea has produced, deployed and exported missiles to Iran and Pakistan, launched a three-stage missile [Taepo Dong 1], and continues to develop a larger and more powerful missile [Taepo Dong 2]. "Unlike five years ago, North Korea can now strike the United States with a missile that could deliver high explosive, chemical, biological, or possibly nuclear weapons. Currently, the United States is unable to defend against this threat." The report also featured a bar graph that shows a direct correlation between increases in Clinton administration aid and North Korea's enhanced ICBM capacity. The Advisory group also contended that the "Agreed Framework" had made North Korea "the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid in the Asia-Pacific region." "In an astonishing reversal of nine previous U.S. administrations, the Clinton-Gore administration, in 1994, committed not only to provide foreign aid for North Korea, but to earmark that aid primarily for the construction of nuclear reactors worth up to $6 billion," the House report noted. To read the full Speaker's Report by the House North Korean Advisory Group, go to: http://www.house.gov/international_relations/nkag/report.htm Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2003-01-06 01:49:00 216.196.170.132 Re: The China Threat China Threat news: - China Says Economy Grew 8.0 Percent in 2002 - China\'s GDP Hit 1.23 Trillion US Dollars in 2002: NBS - China Reports US$620 Billion In Trade For 2002, Rise Of 21 Percent - PLA Navy: Marine Corps - US: Boeing, Hughes Helped China Illegally - Selling Beijing The Rope - U.S. Firms Helped China With Nukes? - Taiwan: U.S. May Join War Games - China Concerned Over Plan For U.S. Officers To Join Taiwan War Games - US To Deliver Advanced Missiles To Taiwan - What If Democracy Fails In Taiwan? - US Reduces Price Of Amphibious Vehicle Contract - Taiwan Report Predicts Rise In Aggression By China - Taiwan Keeping Old Subs Afloat: Island Still Waits For New Vessels Promised By U.S. - Taiwan Chip Companies Make Big Investment In China - Chip Production Moving to China - China Develops Biotechnology And Bioindustry Rapidly - Japan To Pay China Y150 Mil Over N Korean Spy Ship Salvage - Just Another Chinese City [Hong Kong] - Israel Freezes Arms Exports To China - China Criticizes US Request For Israel To Curb Sales Of Military Technology - China Steps Up Protest Over Senkaku Islands - China\'s Cyber Crackdown - Ethan Allen Opens First Store in China - Flying Without Wings: Shanghai\'s High-Tech Maglev Train A Smooth Ride - China To Build Second Transrapid Maglev To Hangzhou - China Aiming To Join Space Club - Final Space Test A Success, Says China - China To Send Man Into Space This Year - China Could Send A Human Into Space In Second Half Of 2003: Official - China Launches Fourth Unmanned Spacecraft - China: \'Sacred Vessel\' Flying Normally - Photos: China Launches Fourth Unmanned Spacecraft Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2003-01-15 17:16:00 216.196.171.120 Re: The China Threat Some interesting things going on with China… It appears that China has begun some large war games – China Launches Massive War Games . These war games are odd in that they are being carried out at a time when China doesn’t usually hold them. They usually practice in the Spring but oddly they are holding them in the middle of winter. It is also curious how this coincides with Russia sending warships to the Gulf. And no mention of such huge events in the mainstream press… And some other news on China: - Chinese Missile Surprises West (1) - Chinese Missile Surprises West (2) - China’s Rapidly Growing Threat To World Security - Cupertino Man Arrested For Selling Missile System Technology To China – A deadly problem still running rampant. - China\'s "Tsushima" Anticarrier Strategy - Clinton Scandal Returns: Foreign Donor Faces Charges in U.S. – Ties to the PRC - Harry Wu Exposes China\'s Nazi-like Genocide - Fall In Charges And Tariffs Sparks Boom -- In China - China\'s Exports Leap In 2002 - China Scientist Blasts Charges Against U.S. Firms Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2003-01-24 09:25:00 216.196.174.65 Re: The China Threat Some China Threat news: - President (Of Taiwan/ROC) Reaffirms Sovereignty – This is sure to cause some waves! - Backdrop Hides `Made in China\' Labels - China Plans First Manned Space Launch In October: Official - China Ready To Sign Next Contract For Su-30s - China Says Position Similar To France On Iraq - China Summons Japanese Ambassador Over Disputed Islands - China\'s Military Going Hi-Tech - Illegal Immigrants At Centre Of International Probe - Minister Claims Chinese Nationals Are Part Of International Smuggling Ring - Cisco Accuses China\'s Huawei of Copying Software - Clinton and Chinese Missiles - Clinton\'s China Policy Fattened War Machine - EU/Hutchison/ST Telemedia/Global Crossing -2: $250M Deal - Ex-Los Alamos Scientist Called Spy For China (1) - Ex-Los Alamos Scientist Called Spy For China (2) - Harry Wu: How America Can Tame China - Heads Roll At Los Alamos - Taiwan Invested US$66.8b In China, Says CBC - Taiwan\'s Leak Of Secrets Annoys US - The Road Back To China - Two Silicon Valley Cases Raise Fears of Chinese Espionage - US Troops To See Hankuang (Taiwan Military) Drills Malsua (Moderator) 2003-01-24 09:47:00 216.6.139.106 Re: The China Threat And I will likely have to spend a considerable amount of time in mainland China in 2003. Joy. -Mal Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2003-02-17 18:13:00 216.196.175.27 Re: The China Threat Alright, I’ve got a lot of news articles for this area! - China Quietly Gets Ultra-Cutting Edge Advanced SU-30MKK Fighter Bombers From Russia – And Russian A-50 AWACS equivalent! - More Russian Weapons Go To China - Beijing Develops New Tactical Aircraft - China Tests Medium-Range Missile (With Mirvs To Foil US Defences) - Chinese MIRV Test Successful - China Ramps Up Missile Capability - Chinese Peacekeeping Mission Heads for Congo – Interestingly, there has been a bit of an Ebola outbreak there recently. - China to Aid U.N. Peace Mission in Congo - A Chinese Puzzle As Everyone\'s A Winner - Arrests Raise Concern Over Tech Spies(China) - Beijing Aims To Be Big Shot In Arms Exports - Beijing Joins Paris, Berlin And Moscow On Iraq Stance - Bush Sees Economic Rebound, Prods China - China Consults Pakistan On Anti-Terrorism - :rolleyes: - China Enacts Law Extending Its Control – They are claiming that the 200 mile Exclusive Economic Zone is now their property. - China Jails U.S.-Based Dissident For Life - China Outstrips US As Top Exporter To Japan - China Secretly Shipping Cuba Arms – An older article I happened upon. - China Stands Firm On Iraq Action - China Stands With France, Germany, Russia On Continued Inspections In Iraq - China To Send Man Into Space This Fall, With Sights On Moon: Report - China Vows To Push Ahead With Its First Manned Space Flight - China\'s Economy Is No "House of Cards" - China\'s Electronic Strategies - China\'s Military Taking Giant Steps Forward - China\'s naval expansion alarms Taiwan President - Chinese Aliens Flock To O\'Hare - Chinese Computer Chips Closing Technical Gap - Chinese Soldiers In The Panama Canal! LIVE Webcam! – The first in an old but interesting series of threads on Free Republic. VERY long. - Chinese Soldiers In The Panama Canal! LIVE Webcam! - Thread 2 - Chinese Soldiers In The Panama Canal! LIVE Webcam! - Thread 3 - Chinese Soldiers In The Panama Canal! LIVE Webcam! - Thread 4 - Chinese Soldiers In The Panama Canal! LIVE Webcam! - Thread #5 - Chinese-American Political Figure Killed - Chip Industry\'s Roads Lead To China - CIA Bids To Improve Its Chinese - Clinton and China Armed Iraq - Clinton\'s China Scandals - Computer Worm May Be Terrorist Test – Or perhaps a Chinese test… - Corporate China\'s Dollar Diplomacy - F.B.I. Recruits Chinese Students in U.S. - FBI Seeks Data From Chinese At U.S. Schools - ICT Condemns China\'s Execution of Tibetan After Closed Trial, Urges Formal Protest from U.S. - India Taking A More Positive View Of China - Manufacturers Find Themselves Increasingly in the Service Sector – And guess where all those manufacturing jobs are going! - Missile Technology Sent to China (1) - Missile Technology Sent to China (2) - (Zimbabwean President) Mugabe Signs Land Deal With Chinese To Tackle Food Crisis - North of Beijing, California Dreams Come True – First thing that popped into my head was the Taiwanese airfield that China reconstructed to practice attacking and using. Wonder if this is similar… - Relations Between U.S.-Taiwan At Two-Decade High: Top Envoy - Report: China to Continue Manned Space Launch - Retired Los Alamos Lab Deputy Director Dead From Gunshot - Shanghai\'s Pudong Reports 16.7% GDP Growth in 2002 - Taiwan On Alert Against Any Chinese Invasion During Iraq War - China\'s New Space Launcher Is Also Its Newest Strategic Missile - The China Threat: How the People\'s Republic Targets America (Conclusion: An American China Strategy) - U.S. Jury Indicts China Pair In Trade Secret Theft - U.S. Seeks Partnership With Mainland (China) - U.S. Spurns Taiwan Request For Show Of Support - US Defence Industry Pushes For Taiwan Deal (China) - US Trade Rep Zoellick to Press China on WTO Issues - Washington Should Be Wary Of China - Will There Be A Nuclear Space Race Between America And China? Betterman (Member) 2003-02-17 18:31:00 195.92.67.67 Re: The China Threat and I won't be doing any work today Ryan Sean Osborne (Member) 2003-02-17 22:24:00 68.84.219.44 Re: The China Threat Why is there no global anti-war movement against Communist Chinese miltary threats against Taiwan??? Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2003-03-18 15:38:00 216.196.171.166 Re: The China Threat Here’s the articles I have on China: - Chinese in at Port of Los Angeles - Global Double Crossing - Deal Gives China Access to Top Secret CIA, FBI Communications - Security Concerns Delay Chinese Buy Of Bankrupt Telecommunications Giant Global Crossing – A very faint glimmer of hope remains! - How Beijing Gets U.S. Defense Plants - Arms for China – A Clinton Legacy - Asia Seeks Answer to China\'s Ascent - Beijing Ruins Hong Kong\'s Liberties – What an absolute surprise! - Chasing Chinese Students - China Accuses Californian Of Sabotage - China And Russia Oppose Iraq Attack - China Army Looks To Technology - China Buys Another Piece of Big Caspian Sea Oil Field - China Companies Hutchison Whampoa (Global Crossing) and PCCW Move In On US Telecommunications – Global Crossing Part 2! If it keeps on at this pace, they will have all our communications assets tapped. - China Develops New Type Of Nuclear Reactor - China Fits Into Bush\'s \'Axis Of Evil\' - China Introduces Execution Vans - China: Iraq War Opposition Will Prevail - China Loves The Buena Vista (Castro Provides Chinese Military Spying Stations In Cuba) - China Makes Great Progress in Weaponry Development - China \'Not Giving Promised Access To American Farmers\' – More trade deficit, just what the US needs! - China Plans for World Domination--Taiwan First – Stumbled across this by accident. - China Plans Three-Phase Moon Exploration - China Rejects U.S. Appeal on North Korea - China Sets Sights On Moon Mission - China Urges US to Open Direct Dialogue with North Korea - China Warns Australia Over Joining U.S. Missile Defence Shield - China Warns US Not To Send Wrong Signals To Taiwan - China Works to Put Astronauts in Orbit, the Moon and then Mars - China, North Korea and the Congo - China-Iraq Ties - Military Assistance for Oil - China\'s First Astronaut Revealed - China\'s Jiang Retains Control Of Military Under New President - China\'s New President Long Groomed For Top Post - China\'s Rise In Asia: US Concerns - China\'s Subs Lead the Way - Chinese Dissidents Branded As Terrorists – I’m a little surprised it took this long. - Chinese Scientists Refute US Claims on Rocket Data Transfer - Chinese Sold Iraq \'Dual-Use\' Chemical - Evolving Ground Force Threat to Taiwan - Fidel Castro Expresses Astonishment At China\'s Changes - Fidel Castro Meets With Chinese President In Beijing - Friction Builds Over Beijing\'s Olympic Revamp - Hong Kong Bishop: Vatican Willing To Give Up Taiwan For China - Hu Jintao Becomes China\'s New President - Hu Jintao on Taiwan Issue - India At The Heart Of Chinese Entrapment – Actually, the most interesting part of the article, “The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is building a 1500-mile military railroad that would enable China to destroy strategic targets in the United States, India and Japan the moment it rail-bases its Inter-continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), says William C Triplett II in a report published by The Jamestown Foundation.â€� - Iran Seeks WMD Help From China, North Korea - Is The Iraq/North Korea Crises Another China Plot Against USA? - Israeli Arms Exports to China of Growing Concern to U.S. - Latest US Aircraft Harassment by Red Chinese Part of Continuing Pattern – An article from December. - Made In China, Hurting At Home - Microsoft Will Give China Access to Windows Code - Online Discussion with Russian Foreign Minister – Another one of those things that makes you go, “Hmmm…â€� - President Jiang Meets Bill Gates - Red China Uses Similar Tactics To Pyongyang - (Spy Brian Patrick) Regan Convicted of Attempted Espionage – Another candidate for the firing squad or hanging if I had my way… - Seven Charged With Trafficking US Missile, Jet-Fighter Parts To China - Space Official in Beijing Reveals Dual Purpose of Shenzhou - Spook Mountain: How US Spies On China - Super Vision Awarded $41,200,000 In China Technology Theft Case – Yeah, and China is going to pay. :rolleyes: - Taiwan Investments In China At New High - Taiwan Plans Low-Altitude TMD System, Says Minister - Taiwan Wants To Build Subs Ordered From US - The Importance Of Central Asia To China - Top-Level Communist Wen Jiabao Named China\'s Premier, Replacing Zhu Rongji - U.S.-China Relations To The Test - US Fines Space Firms Over China - US May Take Dispute Over $803B ($103B USD) Trade Surplus To WTO - US-China Trade Gap Hits Record, Irks Manufacturers - Wen Jiabao Elected China\'s PM - Yankees Come Back, Panama Says And since our friend China has such a huge fleet of cargo vessels (600+), I believe that this article is certainly relevant: - Ship Ahoy, What Evil Lies in the Cargo Holds Now, if only 3% of the cargo containers entering the US are inspected, what is in that other 97%? Especially those from China? Star*Man (Member) 2003-03-19 03:20:00 192.146.101.11 Re: The China Threat quote:Why is there no global anti-war movement against Communist Chinese miltary threats against Taiwan??? Why don't we invade china to liberate their people from chinese oppression? Why don't we stop buying 90% of our goods from China and thus we are the real ones (each of us) who are arming and building up their Military might. Phil FiordAdministrator (Member) 2003-03-25 06:13:00 68.69.22.209 Re: The China Threat Global Crossing, Iraqi Defenses and the Chinese Connection http://www.newsmax.com ^ | March 25, 2003 | Charles R. Smith There is one Iraqi weapon system with U.S.A. stamped on it; the NATO code-named Tiger Song air defense system. Much of Tiger Song is U.S. made fiber-optic network systems sold to China by the Clinton administration. The fiber-optic Tiger Song air defense network was installed in Iraq during the 1990s by China in violation of the U.N. ban on weapons sales to Baghdad. Tiger Song is a distributed network and it is similar to the Internet, allowing Iraqi mobile radars and missile units to link into the network from pre-positioned fiber optic sites. Ironically, the Bush administration has so far denied an even greater sale of sensitive U.S. fiber-optic systems to China. The Defense Department opposes the sale of Global Crossing to Chinese billionaire Li Ka-Shing and his Hutcheson Whampoa company for obvious national security reasons. Although, the U.S. Defense Department opposes the sale of the fiber-optic giant Global Crossing to Hutcheson Whampoa, Li Ka-Shing is fighting back. Bush defense advisor Richard Perle, who was hired to advise Global Crossing on security to satisfy the U.S. government's concerns, conceded that the Chinese Army is in business with Hutcheson Whampoa providing military communications for the PRC and that China has provided fiber-optic systems to Iraq. "I am not surprised," he stated. "I do not trust the Chinese government on these matters. They have sold dangerous things to Iraq and other nations." "It was very clear that the previous Global Crossing proposal was not going to meet U.S. government requirements. The U.S. government is concerned that the Hutcheson ownership will give them the ability to do injury to U.S. national security. Hutcheson Whampoa will now end up with 20% ownership. I have been retained to help Global Crossing find a structure to protect U.S. national security," said Mr. Perle. LI KA-SHING As this reporter has previously written, Li Ka-Shing has a history of helping the Chinese military erect communications networks using U.S. made equipment. For example, in 1989 Li Ka-Shing raised $120 million to buy a HUGHES built communications satellite for AsiaSat. AsiaSat is also a front company for the People's Liberation Army (PLA). According to Aviation Week and Space Technology, AsiaSat is part owned by the Chinese Army unit COSTIND or the Commission on Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense. The AsiaSat Hughes satellite regularly carries "military communications" traffic for PLA units and Chinese military owned companies. A 1996 report written by then U.S. Ambassador to China James Sasser alleges that the Chinese Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (MPT) and Chinese billionaire Li Ka Shing were both directly involved with the PLA in financing the communications networks for the Chinese army. The report also states that the PLA was directly involved in the so-called "civilian" Chinese fiber optic communication systems. Sasser's report noted that the PLA actively worked on a Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (MPT) fiber optic network that the Clinton administration stated was "civil" for the House National Security Committee. "For example," wrote Sasser, "in laying long distance fiber optic lines for the MPT's telephones and digital data network, the PLA has provided soldiers to do much of the work. The PLA cadres are considered disciplined and hard working. Once the cable has been laid, the MPT typically allocates some of the bandwidth to the PLA." In 1997, the Rand Corporation wrote a secret report on the "Chinese Defense Industry" and it also included a section on billionaire Li Ka Shing and his business with the Chinese Army. The Rand report was obtained in a successful federal lawsuit against the Commerce Department. The Rand Corporation report highlights Li Ka-Shing's direct connections to the Chinese military. According the Rand report, "Hutchison Whampoa of Hong Kong, controlled by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka Shing, is also negotiating for PLA wireless system contracts, which would build upon his equity interest in [Chinese army] Poly-owned Yangpu Land Development Company, which is building infrastructure on China's Hainan Island." U.S. and allied forces are now fighting a Clinton-era mistake made in 1994 allowing the fiber-optic systems to be sold to China. The same Tiger Song fiber optic system is now sending the commands of the Iraqi military to fight our soldiers. The Chinese Army would love to get its hands on Global Crossing. It is clear from previous sales of such U.S. made systems to Li Ka-Shing that the Chinese Army will benefit from that technology. It is just as clear that - if given the opportunity - the Chinese Army will use Global Crossing technology and assets against the national interests of the United States. RUSSIAN WEAPONS In the past few days, the Axis of Weasel has been caught supplying weapons and support for the maniac in Baghdad. Our Russian friend, Vladimir Putin has been caught red-handed supplying weapons to Iraq. U.S. State Department sources confirmed that Russia had indeed sold a wide variety of banned arms to Iraq as recently as one or two days before the allies struck. The Russian equipment included a variety of night vision gear, GPS jamming equipment - included software and Russian engineers who have continued to work inside Baghdad - and a number of AT-14 Kornet anti-tank missiles. The Russian AT-14 missiles are advanced, laser guided, weapons and are considered very dangerous. But, the U.S. Air Force noted that the Russian jamming equipment is not very effective. The main problem with the Russian GPS jamming equipment is that it is also a radio transmitter, literally saying, "bomb me". According to U.S.A.F. Major General Victor Renuart, allied air forces have targeted several of the Russian GPS jammers and actually struck one with a U.S. JDAM GPS guided bomb. The U.S. has issued a formal demand to Moscow to stop the sales and explain. Moscow has issued several lame excuses that they have no control over arms companies based inside Russia. IRAQI CHEMICAL WEAPONS Saddam Hussein rose to power backed by Russian weapons and Russian money. Saddam still owes Moscow over $8 billion for the arms he purchased from Russia. The primary Iraqi chemical weapons are VX nerve gas and mustard gas, a blistering agent, both obtained from Russia. Interestingly, some sources still claim that the source of Iraqi chemical weaponry is the U.S.A. These sources claim that during the mid-1980s the U.S. transferred chemical weapons technology to Iraq. I find this information incorrect and totally out of line with the current Iraqi weapon inventory. Iraq chemical weapons have previously been deployed on classic Russian made systems. According to "Russian Military Power" published in 1982, "It is known that the Soviets maintain stocks of CW (chemical weapons) agents." The two primary Russian chemical weapons in the 1982 Soviet inventory were the nerve agent "VX" and "blistering agents - developments of mustard gas used so effectively in World War I." Iraq obtained Russian delivery systems and the same inventory of Russian made chemical weapons at the same time. The fact is that U.S. made chemical weapons might not work when loaded into Russian made systems. Iraqi SU-22 Fitter attack jets have been armed with Warsaw Pact designed bombs filled with chemical weapons. Iraq used these Russian jet fighters to drop chemical weapons on Iranian troops during the Iran/Iraq war. Iraq tried to use these SU-22 jets during the 1991 Gulf war and was foiled by the allied air superiority. Other Russian weapons found with chemical weapons include the FROG-7 missile, 122mm rockets, 152mm artillery and the M-1937 82mm mortars. Curiously, all the Iraqi artillery missiles, rockets, shells and mortar rounds, filled with chemical weapons are of Russian design. The only exception to the Russian connection is the recent attempts by Iraq to modify its force of French made Mirage F-1 jets to carry chemical weapons. The State Department has a wonderful video of an Iraqi Mirage jet testing a chemical weapons sprayer. For those who still remain skeptical, take note that one does not modify a multi-million dollar fighter jet to spray French perfume. The Vichy government of Jacques Chirac may deny the arms sales to Baghdad but the weapons in Iraqi hands show that Paris and Moscow have sent more to Saddam than Perrier and Russian vodka. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2003-04-11 11:40:00 216.196.168.184 Re: The China Threat Some news on China: - Expose In Japan Press On Chinese Media/Journalists Covering War – A great article detailing how China is using the press to spy on our military operations in Iraq! - China Readies For Future U.S. Fight – Okay, all those surprised… Raise your hand! - China Steps Up Preparation For U.S. Conflict - China Venture into US Telecommunications - US Review of Global Crossing Deal to Go Past March - China Criticizes US \'Rights Abuses\' - China Demands End to Attack on Iraq - China Details Space Safety Measures for Manned Missions - China Develops Artificial Bone with Nano Technology - China In Surprise Move On Russian Ports – Now this is big news! - China Injects $3.1 Million Into Serbia\'s Health Sector - China: Jiang Zemin Still Calling The Shots - China: New Leadership Same Old, Same Old... - China Puts Forth Proposals for Disarmament – Yeah, all the while they develop and build road-mobile ICBMs. :rolleyes: - China Ready To Back Any Measures To Stop Iraq War - China Strongly Calls for Immediate Stop of Military Actions Against Iraq - China To Monitor All Net Use - China To Set Up Another Nuclear Power Plant In Pakistan - China Watches The War And Waits - China: Who Are the Real Criminals? - :rolleyes: - Chinese Experts On Military Actions In Iraq - Feds: Chinese Hack Attacks Likely - China Calls For Immediate End To Military Action Against Iraq - Global Crossing Alert: Democrat Seeks Inquiry On Bankrupt Firm\'s Adviser - Iraq, Testing Ground for US Hi-tech Weapons – An interesting perspective from China. - Jiang: China, France Should Strengthen Cooperation - Kuwait Says Missile Was Chinese - \'Silkworm\' Suspected in Kuwaiti Blast - Missile Explodes Near Kuwait City Mall [Chinese Silkworm Cruise Missile] - Mugabe Gives Seized Land To Chinese Company – Things that make you go “Hmmm…â€� - Perle\'s Connection to Global Crossing - Red China and US Telecommunications: Pentagon Adviser Is Also Advising Global Crossing - The China-Iraq Connection: Baghdad Continued To Work On Building Missiles - The Choice of China\'s Diplomatic Strategy - The Significance Of China\'s Export Of Rocket Technology To Turkey - Torture of Christians in China - US Senate Panel Plans Look at Global Crossing Sale - Why China Isn\'t Helping Disarm North Korea And some big news on the recent capture of some spies working for China: - Chinese-American Double Agent Arrested in L.A. - Ex-FBI Agent Faces Charges in China Spy Case - Ex-FBI Agent Resigns Post at Nuclear Weapons Lab - Ex-FBI, Chinese Lover Arrested In Spy Case - Smith-Leung Spy Ring Has Tie To Lawrence Livermore What makes this case big is that this woman spying for China was, in fact, a major player in the West Coast Republican Party. What was that about: quote: 15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States. I hope that people realize that this Communist subversion is not the joke some claim it is. I suppose that it is much more comforting and simple to tell ones’ self how Russia and China are just too weak to do anything to us… Also, I thought that some here would be interested in seeing China’s newest fighter concept. It is, of course, a stealth aircraft. I don’t know much about it outside of that. Sorry. It does bear an uncanny resemblance to the F-22, wonder why… :rolleyes: Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2003-04-21 13:35:00 216.196.175.95 Re: The China Threat Articles on The China Threat: - Alleged Chinese Double Agent - Prosecutors Say Rich Socialite Is A Flight Risk - China Analyst Calls For Dropping Technology Export Controls - China Supports Gulf States’ Call For US Pullout - China Surges Economically While America Falters - China Will Get World\'s Largest Fleet of Transoceanic Communications Cable Ships – Part of the Global Crossing Deal China is trying to close on. - F.B.I. Spy Case Highlights Problems With Informants - FBI Convulsed By Spy Story Of Sex And Lies - In China Trade, The Joke Is On The American Public, In Particular On US Workers - Sex and Espionage in the FBI - Spy Suspect May Have Told Chinese of Bugs, U.S. Says – I guess the US was behind the bugging of Jiang’s presidential jet! - US And China Have The Worlds Largest Economies (PPP) According To The World Bank - US Backs Away From Criticizing China - Why Bush\'s Success In Iraq Is A Setback For Beijing Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2003-04-29 11:03:00 216.196.175.95 Re: The China Threat China Troubles quote: "China Troubles" by J. R. Nyquist China is burdened with a massive population, a backward countryside and a repressive communist government. Despite so many problems, China’s communist leaders continue to play dangerous games with their country’s future. In order to accomplish its military objectives, China is presently using organized crime and a sophisticated network of agents to infiltrate Canada and Mexico while simultaneously neutralizing FBI counterintelligence. At the same time, a mysterious new illness has appeared in China. Since the public has been focused on the Iraq War, many Americans missed the Katrina Leung story and the FBI’s dismal, though typical, performance. China certainly has problems, but penetrating America and embarrassing American security officials is not one of them. Katrina Leung, 49, was a socialite, a Republican activist in California and an FBI informant for almost two decades. In her work for the FBI, which involved gathering information on China, Leung collected around $1.7 million from grateful FBI officials. She must have been highly trusted. That trust, however, has come to an end. Leung was recently arrested and charged with being a longtime Chinese double agent. The details are rather juicy. It appears that Leung seduced and manipulated her FBI handlers, enjoying sexual relations with at least two FBI officials. She photocopied classified FBI counterintelligence documents and transmitted them to the communists in Beijing. She was given access to secrets she never should have known about. FBI agent James J. Smith, one of her handlers, was also arrested. He had been part of the investigation into illegal Chinese funding of the 1996 Democratic presidential campaign. A search of Leung’s home has yielded classified documents. Her case illustrates the vulnerability of American counterintelligence and American society in general. Her interactions with Republican politicians, like former Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan, gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon and Rep. David Dreier, ought to raise more than a few eyebrows. How much compromise and corruption did she spread? How deep did it go? Related to this, there is a story developing out of Canada about Chinese subversion and infiltration that is remarkable. Former Foreign Service officer Brian McAdam is alleging that Chinese agents have corrupted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Canada’s immigration services. According to McAdam, “China seeks to convert Canada into a highway for attacking the United States.â€� McAdam says that China is using organized crime to subvert Canadian law enforcement and border control. He alleges that Chinese organized crime groups have a treaty with the communists in Beijing for this purpose. In other words, the Chinese intelligence services are coordinating their moves with Chinese organized crime. Along with suspended RCMP Cpl. Robert Read, McAdam alleges corruption among high-ranking officials in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and External Affairs. (See also FreedomSite.org .) In 1992 McAdam discovered that Chinese crime groups had penetrated Canada’s immigration computer system. The matter was investigated at the time, but the results of the investigation led to a cover-up instead of corrections. McAdam was sidelined for his efforts. Robert Read of the RCMP was suspended and charged with “service offensesâ€� for his attempts to uncover Chinese penetrations. Spies and criminals, however, are not the only things jumping from China to Canada. A highly infectious new disease, called SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), has entered Canada from China. Researchers say that SARS is 78 percent identical to sections of genes found in the common cold. Unlike the common cold, the virus’s fatality rate is 4 percent. If it were to infect a quarter of the population of China it would kill 13 million people. If SARS spread globally more than 60 million people could die. The economies of affected regions are already anticipating trouble as people are afraid to travel or attend events at crowded public places. On Monday China announced another four deaths and another 109 cases of the disease. A total of 1,959 cases have been counted in China, along with 89 deaths. The number of cases appears to be doubling every two weeks. Within six months the number of cases could exceed one million. Worldwide 3,861 cases of SARS have been reported with 217 deaths. Previously the World Health Organization criticized China for covering up the extent of the initial outbreak. When the outbreak first began there were reports of medical personnel dying from the disease, including prominent physicians. The Canadian press is reporting that SARS, after claiming its 14th victim in Canada, has infected medical staff despite the protection of gloves, gowns, masks and eye shields. (See Canada.com ) It appears that the virus has the ability to spread by way of objects, not merely persons. This means that maximal medical precautions may not offer complete protection to those working with infected persons. The CDC has told Canadian officials that the SARS virus can remain viable on surfaces for up to 24 hours. Due to the virus’s apparent movement through the Hong Kong sewer system, Chinese authorities are worried that cockroaches can transmit the disease. Undoubtedly, this is a virus that continues to surprise the experts. Despite similarity to the coronavirus family, SARS is absolutely novel. Instead of affecting the young and old in disproportionate numbers as most flu viruses, it strikes young adults with uncharacteristic frequency. Autopsies show that the virus can cause the lungs to hemorrhage, as happens in cases of hemorrhagic fever (e.g., in cases of Ebola). A Times of India article dated 12 April offers a chilling though paranoid addendum to the story: “A top Russian medical expert says SARS could be Chinese bio-weapon.â€� Professor Sergei Kolesnikov, a member of the Russian Medical Sciences Academy, has stated that SARS is a hybrid of two viruses – mumps and measles – that can only be produced in a laboratory. According to the Times of India, Kolesnikov told a conference in Irkutsk, Siberia, that China’s silence about the outbreak is a tip-off. He added that the speed of transmission, the unprecedented infectious qualities of the virus and its severe toxicity lead to the inference that SARS may have spread from a Chinese military research facility. If you want to find a cure, suggested Kolesnikov, “look at where it originated.â€� (See also Express India ) Russia is the motherland of paranoid thinking. It is a rule of thumb that every thief is fearful of having his goods stolen. A technocratic elite that itself is engaged in dirty business – i.e., in the development of biological weapons – is bound to assume that other governments are doing exactly the same. An AFP story out of Moscow, dated April 11 (see AP/Yahoo ) presents the headline, “Deadly pneumonia could be a biological weapon.â€� Moscow’s chief of epidemiological services, Nikolai Filatov, also thinks SARS is man-made. According to Chinese researchers the virus mutates rapidly so that the development of a vaccine will not be easy. (See Financial Times ) It has also been reported that communist officials in Beijing have attempted to prevent Chinese medical researchers from publishing their findings about SARS to the world. One Chinese research institute went ahead and posted its findings without official permission. It is hard to say how this virus will affect China. Asia is deeply concerned. North America is yet to see this level of concern, though Canadian hospitals seem unable to contain the virus as yet. Another great article from Mr. Nyquist. Some great information on how China is infiltrating Canada. A topic that is hard to get good information on… Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2003-05-07 07:14:00 216.196.171.46 Re: The China Threat Not sure how many heard about the recent news of China’s loss of a Ming-class submarine. The situation surrounding its loss is odd to say the least. First, it was a submarine with a crew of 45-50 and there were 70 on board. Second, all 70 were lost but the sub had not sunk and was able to be towed back to port. Third, this is a diesel-electric sub and not a nuke so how do 70 people die manning their positions (certainly not from rad poisoning). There are a only a few things that could have killed everyone but left the sub floating: -Outside air source for diesel engines cut off suffocating the crew. One problem with this though… The crew would have noticed the increased vacuum and would not have sat idly by at their positions to suffocate. Ask any old submariner who served on diesels what it is like to have the snorkel shut and the engines continue to run. Your eyes, ears, and lungs feel like they are going to pop. Plus, there are usually safety interlocks on the diesel engines to shut them off if a certain amount of vacuum inside the sub is reached. -Exhaust leak/malfunction. If the exhaust port was clogged, had a leak, or shut and the shut off failed, the crew could have suffered from CO poisoning. There are usually CO detectors that sound an alarm if the levels are too high. So either there were no detectors and alarms, they were malfunctioning, or this isn’t what happened. -Sea water got into the batteries. This is the most likely of all. When sea water mixes with the acid in the storage batteries, it forms chlorine gas. Since the sub was found on the surface the diesels were presumably running. And since the engines were running, the chlorine poisoned air was most likely quickly circulated on the sub since the diesels are used to move air. Chlorine poisoning would have killed everyone on board fairly quickly. Some have said that SARS could have caused them all to die. Despite the danger posed by SARS (and the mysterious nature of the illness), it wasn’t SARS. SARS is not that fast acting nor would it have left everyone dead at their posts. In any event, here are a few articles on the situation: - Dozens Die On Chinese Sub - Chinese Sub Down. 70 KIA - Cause Of Submarine Disaster Is Mystery (China Took 2 Weeks To Disclose) - Diesel Engine May Have Sucked Out Submarine Oxygen - Submarines: The Cause Of Chinese Sub Crew Deaths And some news on the Global Crossing deal. Thankfully it is good news! - Global Crossing Sale Under Scrutiny - Hutchison (Stock) Falls With Global Crossing Deal On Rocks - Source: Hong Kong Investor Likely To Pull Out Of Global Crossing Deal - U.S. Widens Probe of Hutchison\'s Global Crossing Bid Unfortunately, I don’t share some people’s optimism about HW just dropping the deal. With such a strategic advantage on the line, they will fight (and bribe) tooth and nail to get this to pass. The only way that it will be blocked is if the government prevents it. And with President Bush being as optimistic about relations with China as he is, I don’t know if that will happen. As Lenin said: "The Capitalists will sell us the rope we hang them with." And for other China news: - Rail-Mobile ICBMs Enter Chinese Arsenal – How many heard about this great news? - [Warren] Buffett\'s Berkshire Hathaway Raises PetroChina Stake – More Western investment in China. - Accused Double-Agent Met 2,100 Times With Chinese Officials(Chinese Influence On U.S. Elections ) – Words fail me… - China Takes Credit for US North Korea Talks - Chinagate II: Time For GOP Action - Duped Again by Communist China - GPS, Galileo And The China Factor – Very interesting… - India, China Seek Ways To Enhance Ties - Tale Of Sex And Spies Leaves FBI With A Chinese Puzzle - The Tradeoff Of Trade With China: Jobs - U.S., China Ties May Gain Even as Korea Talks Stall Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2003-06-29 23:45:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat Congress looks at China threat Taipei Times ^ | 6.30.03 | Charles Snyder Congress looks at China threatBy Charles Snyder STAFF REPORTER IN WASHINGTON Monday, Jun 30, 2003,Page 1 Seven members of the US House of Representatives, including a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, have introduced legislation in the House demanding that China dismantle the hundreds of ballistic missiles it has deployed across the Strait aimed at Taiwan and renounce the use of force against Taiwan. If China does not eliminate the missiles, the resolution says, President George W. Bush should authorize the sale to Taiwan of the Aegis anti-missile system, "which would enable Taiwan to defend itself against the threat of a missile attack by China." The legislation, which is a non-binding "sense of Congress" measure, also states that "the future of Taiwan should be determined peacefully and with the express consent of the people of Taiwan." The measure rejects any administration move to accept an offer made by then Chinese president Jiang Zemin (江澤民) in talks with Bush last October to withdraw missiles in exchange for a reduction in US arms sales to Taiwan. The legislation was spearheaded by congressman Robert Andrews, a Democrat, and by Joel Hefley, a Republican who is vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Other sponsors include David Wu of Oregon, the first Taiwan-born member to be elected to Congress. The bill was referred to the House International Relations Committee, which under chairman Henry Hyde has been more than willing to help Taiwan legislatively. But it came just as Congress was going home for a week-long Independence Day holiday, so no action is likely before the middle of next month. Noting that for more than a half century a close relationship has existed between the US and Taiwan which "has been of enormous economic, cultural and strategic advantages to both countries," the bill calls Taiwan a "full-fledged democracy" and an "ally of the United States" which has extended humanitarian aid to Afghanistan and support for the Iraq war. It describes China's deployment of more than 400 short-range ballistic missiles as a threat to Taiwan's security and cites the US commitments under the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 to maintain Taiwan's defense security. The resolution says that "grave concerns exist concerning the deployment" of the missiles, "which threaten security and stability in the Taiwan Strait." It calls on Bush to "direct all appropriate United States officials" to raise this with China and "seek a public, immediate and unequivocal renunciation from the leaders of the People's Republic of China of any threat or use of force against Taiwan. "China should dismantle the missiles that threaten Taiwan, otherwise the President should authorize the sale of the Aegis system to Taiwan," the bill says. In April 2001, when Bush agreed to a massive weapons sale to Taiwan, he pointedly excluded the Arleigh-Burke-class destroyers equipped with the sophisticated Aegis system after China reportedly objected to the sale, reportedly drawing a "red line" between the Aegis and any other weapons system Washington was considering in the deal at the time. Original Link Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2003-06-29 23:48:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat China and Biological Warfare Federation of American Scientists ^ | various | various http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/china/cbw/ Chemical and Biological Weapons China is widely reported to have active programs related to the development of chemical and biological weapons, although essentially no details of these programs have appeared in the open literature. China is believed to have an advanced chemical warfare program that includes research and development, production and weaponization capabilities. Its current inventory is believed to include the full range of traditional chemical agents. It also has a wide variety of delivery systems for chemical agents to include artillery rockets, aerial bombs, sprayers, and short-range ballistic missiles. Chinese forces have conducted defensive CW training and are prepared to operate in a contaminated environment. As China’s program is further integrated into overall military operations, its doctrine, which is believed to be based in part on Soviet-era thinking, may reflect the incorporation of more advanced munitions for CW agent delivery. China has signed and ratified the CWC. On 30 December 1996 the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress China ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention [CWC]. Previous, dual-use chemical-related transfers to Iran's chemical weapons program indicate that, at a minimum, China's chemical export controls are not operating effectively enough to ensure compliance with China's CWC obligation not to assist anyone in any way to acquire chemical weapons. In March 1997 Israeli authorities arrested an Israeli businessman, Nahum Manbar, for allegedly selling Chinese chemical weapon components to Iran. On May 21, 1997, pursuant to the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991, the US Government imposed trade sanctions on five Chinese individuals, two Chinese companies, and one Hong Kong company for knowingly and materially contributing to Iran's chemical weapons program. These individuals and companies were involved in the export of dual-use chemical precursors and/or chemical production equipment and technology. The Chinese companies were the Nanjing Chemical Industries Group (NCI) and the Jiangsu Yongli Chemical Engineering and Technology Import/Export Corp. In 1939 the Japanese army established the Unit 731 germ-warfare research center in Harbin, where Japanese medical experts experimented on Chinese, Soviet, Korean, British and other prisoners. China possesses an advanced biotechnology infrastructure as well as the requisite munitions production capabilities necessary to develop, produce and weaponize biological agents. Although China has consistently claimed that it has never researched or produced biological weapons, it is nonetheless believed likely that it retains a biological warfare capability begun before acceding to the BWC. China is commonly considered to have an active biological warfare program, including dedicated research and development activities funded and supported by the Government for this purpose. There is essentially no open source data on the subject of Chinese BW activities, and many legitimate research programs use similar, if not identical equipment and facilities. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2003-06-29 23:51:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat GPS, Galileo and the China factor Asia Times ^ | 5.2.03 | John Berthelsen GPS, Galileo and the China factor By John Berthelsen Does Europe need to spend US$3 billion to duplicate the United States' 28-satellite Global Positioning System, the satellite system that is designed to tell anyone with the right receiver exactly where he is located on Earth? Apparently so, to the manifest irritation of the US government. That irritation is starting to ratchet up with word that the European Union is asking the Chinese government for help in creating its system, called Galileo. The Chinese are weighing various options, but it is widely believed that they will join the Europeans in creating Galileo, which would by 2008 loft a constellation of 30 satellites 23,000 kilometers into the sky to give Europe its own satellite navigation network. "It's national pride, it is nothing but national pride," fumed an aide to US Representative Dave Weldon, a Republican congressman who oversees the funding of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). "The Europeans feel they are vassals of the United States in respect to space power." Both the Chinese and the Europeans see Galileo as yet another counterweight, no matter how small, to the overwhelming technological superiority of the United States. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, there has been no remotely comparable force. US aerospace, sea and land power seem unassailable, with the United States alone now spending more money on defense than the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) nations plus Russia, China, Japan, Iraq and North Korea combined. An EU spokesman also said Galileo has been designed and developed as a non-military application, unlike the US system. And, unlike GPS, which was in essence designed for military use, he said, Galileo provides a "possibly higher degree of precision" as required by modern business, something that causes US officials to snort with derision. They point out that GPS, used in the recent Iraq war by the military to locate targets, among other functions, performed well beyond the needs of nearly any commercial system. The Europeans have long sought to counter US technological supremacy in aerospace, through the French Ariane space program, for instance, since the 1960s. That evolved into the European Space Research Organization (ESRO), the precursor of the European Space Agency, partly to combat the so-called "brain drain" of scientists from Europe owing to the explosive development of science in the United States. European pride was on the line even then, with the French threatening to quit the ESRO in 1970 unless it reduced its purely scientific programs in favor of developing an applications satellite program. As long ago as 1984, the United States' space budget was already six times that of France, 11 times of that of Germany and 11 times that of Japan. Likewise, Airbus Industrie, which now threatens Boeing for world dominance in the aircraft industry, was set up by France, Germany and England to offset US supremacy in air transport. In 1960, there were 17 manufacturers of commercial aircraft in the West. By the late 1980s, there were three - Boeing, McDonnell Douglas and Airbus. Today, there are two, with both the Europeans and the Americans complaining that the other side is subsidizing aircraft production through various hidden means. The Europeans have also spent decades and billions of dollars in various attempts to counter US jet-fighter superiority. The European Union, in a news release dated March 26, said that if Galileo were to go forward, it would approve the project "strictly as a civilian enterprise", a reference to the fact that GPS was originally developed by the US as a military system. Others indicated it would ensure that if the US GPS system were disabled by a terrorist attack, Galileo could fill in. Some EU officials, however, have privately characterized Galileo as a thinly veiled attempt to subsidize Europe's aerospace industry further. For its part, the US government says it sees "no compelling need" for Galileo because GPS should be able to meet the needs of the global user community for the foreseeable future. The government, according to Ralph Braibanti, director of the State Department's Space and Advanced Technology Staff, continues to operate, maintain and provide GPS signals free of user fees for civilian use across the world. "It's not immediately obvious why users in Europe and elsewhere would pay voluntarily for Galileo services when they can get the GPS signals for free," Braibanti said in a written statement. "Galileo's basis positioning service (Open Signal) will offer the same capabilities as GPS today and will also be free of charge," the EU spokesman countered. "Added-value service, especially for areas where human lives are at stake such as in aviation, will have to be paid for. Today's GPS cannot be used for these kinds of applications. Moreover, there is no guarantee that GPS, or a modernized GPS, will remain free of charge for all times." Presumably through clenched teeth, the Americans have proposed an agreement on GPS-Galileo cooperation. In a news release in February, Braibanti said that if Europe goes ahead with Galileo, the United States "would be interested in cooperating with Europe to ensure that it is interoperable with GPS". The US government has held a virtual monopoly on space positioning since it developed GPS as a military device. It has since developed into a commercial vehicle for surveying as well as keeping track of vehicles, aircraft, ships, or even herds of cattle. Satellite radio navigation enables any individual to determine his precise position down to one meter. Other commercial uses are speed control, aid for the disabled and elderly, public works, customs services for the location of suspects and border controls, and search and rescue. The EU says it has recognized the commercial possibilities, inviting more than 500 industry leaders from across the world to an EU briefing in Brussels on March 18 as potential investors and users. "The business case is questionable," said the Weldon aide. "It is a jobs program, a high-tech jobs program. They are going to charge when GPS is already up there for free. The US government is picking up the tab for GPS because the military paid for it. It was not envisioned as a civilian system. When it was opened up for civilian applications, it had already been bought and paid for." Certainly, EU member governments had threatened to balk in December because of the cost of Galileo. Unanimous backing is necessary. At a meeting in Brussels, a majority of the 15 EU ministers said they needed another three months to decide whether to spend the 450 million euros ($495 million) needed as seed funding. The United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Germany have expressed reservations for various reasons. France and Italy are fervent backers. However, the EU leaders have been reluctant to finance the project without guarantees of private backing. Even after it is up and running, it will cost an estimated 220 million euros a year to run it. Enter the Chinese, who have been asked to come up with an estimated $200 million to help defray costs. A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, DC, declined comment on the issue. "We know negotiations are going forward," he said. "But we don't have much information at this point." Nonetheless, then-premier Zhu Rongji as long as two years ago said China would like to become involved on a variety of levels, including for satellite navigation in non-transport areas such as geodetic surveying, agriculture and fisheries. A working group between the EU and China was set up in 2001. China's minister of science and technology, Xu Guanhua, met German Transportation Minister Kurt Bodewig in Berlin in August, and other officials have met since. "The Chinese are involved because they could benefit from a lot of technological knowledge the Europeans have and the Europeans benefit because the Chinese have got the money," said the Weldon aide. "They will have a hand in it, they are a fledgling space power, they will learn a lot." However, China will not have equal rights with Europe in respect to Galileo's planned Public Regulated Services, according to Spacenews, a Washington, DC-based publication devoted to aerospace and technology. The service is an encrypted signal to be used by government authorities for both military and civil purposes. Originally, the Public Regulated Services unit was to be placed on a part of the radio spectrum that was planned for the GPS military code, which angered US officials concerned that it was a threat to future US and NATO military operations. The Europeans have since settled the issue with international frequency regulators. The Europeans argue that the US still has the right to jam GPS frequencies, and perhaps Galileo frequencies as well, during time of war to prevent enemy use of satellite navigation for weapons guidance or troop navigation. "I don't think that is a real concern," said Weldon's aide. "Would we deny a NATO ally use of the service during time of war? We would be helping to defend an ally." Sean Osborne (Member) 2003-06-29 23:53:00 192.172.8.18 Re: The China Threat In case you guys have not noticed none other than J.R. Nyquist has taken up the issue of a probable invasion of the US mainland by Russia and China. He has come away with what appears to be a favorable review of Glbranson's "The Silent Invasion" tome. There are now numerous threads on the possibility (or certainty) of a ground war in the USA that have made their way into the forum at The Final Phase. Interesting reading. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2003-06-29 23:53:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat Is China Bound to Explode? Business Week ^ | MAY 5, 2003 | Mark L. Clifford THE NEW CHINESE EMPIRE And What It Means for the United States. If you want to understand why China's government has engaged in a massive cover-up of the severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic, read Ross Terrill's The New Chinese Empire. The book, of course, was in the can long before SARS erupted, presenting Beijing's leaders with their worst crisis since the 1989 Tiananmen massacre and its aftermath. But the pattern of paternalistic posturing, blatant lying, and dismissive slapping-down of anyone who questions official truth follows a pattern common in China for two millenniums. It is just this imperial attitude and its relation to the range of current problems that Terrill analyzes so cogently. The past quarter century has been a time of undeniable achievement for China. Rapid economic growth has lifted more than 200 million people out of absolute poverty and given hundreds of millions more a lifestyle that their parents could barely imagine. Society, too, has opened up in important ways: No longer does the state decide where citizens live, work, or send their children to school. As a result, China's many outside boosters have become confident that, in a decade or two, economic and social progress will automatically lead to a more open political system. Don't be fooled, warns the author. China's humming factories may make it the world's leading workshop, but its political system is a dinosaur. An ancient, autocratic tradition of realpolitik known as Legalism has fused with the Leninist structure of the ruling Communist Party to produce a brittle political setup that is incapable of the change that China's more modern economy and society demand. One way or another, Terrill contends, the day of reckoning -- possibly a violent one -- is drawing nigh. Terrill joins a long line of observers, including lawyer Gordon Chang and journalist Joe Studwell, who have argued that China's communist regime is doomed. The author is a former "friend of China," as the country's government terms those who are sympathetic to the regime. He first traveled to the country more than 30 years ago. What makes Terrill stand out among other China pessimists -- and what makes up the bulk of this volume's nearly 400 pages -- is his solid analysis of China's past 2,000 years, and of that history's relevance today. Among the symptoms that the Chinese regime is "dysfunctional in the world of nation-states," Terrill says, is its clinging to the ways of empire. Over the years, the author shows, China has used its moments of strength to grab neighboring territory, from what is now Yunnan province to Tibet and Xinjiang. During periods of weakness, China bided its time, disguising frailty as power. To awe their subjects, the mandarins falsely maintained that leaders ranging from Britain's King George III to Muslim warrior-king Tamerlane were paying tribute to them. Today, the state continues to turn weakness into strength -- for example, convincing many foreigners, including some Americans, that in both business and diplomacy, they need China more than China needs them. China remains, in Terrill's telling, an "empire of theatre and presumption," a country that is "deeply corrupt, politically unstable, yet extremely ambitious." Like the empires of old, the Communist state today has a deeply ingrained sense of its right to rule, and doesn't see the necessity for democratic processes. Where rulers once claimed to have the mandate of heaven, the Chinese Communist Party says its dictatorial mandate comes from history. The SARS cover-up supports Terrill's indictment of Beijing. Yet strains are growing between the need for economic growth and integration into the wider world -- and the necessity for repression. China's citizens are ever more confident and ever less willing to defer to the government. Investors, both foreign and domestic, want the certainty that the rule of law can bring. And they need the free flow of information that lubricates a modern market economy. Such demands are anathema to the party. Says Terrill: "Beijing is trying to do something impossible -- combine a market economy and Communist paternalism -- and the resulting strains will not go away." Terrill excels at analysis of the past, but his sense of where things go from here is less persuasive. Believing that "for the coming years, politics is destiny," he offers seven possible scenarios for the future that downplay cultural and economic developments. One possible outcome, he suggests, involves a party fracture followed by a military takeover. There is little discussion of the notion that China could evolve into a pluralistic, democratic society, as Taiwan and South Korea have done in the past 15 years. Nor is there much analysis of the pressures for change brought about by China's turn to a more market-oriented economy and its entry into the World Trade Organization. Terrill may not have a great crystal ball. And the book's subtitle, What It Means for the United States, bears little relation to the book and seems like a marketing gimmick. However, his refusal to be blinded by the facade of economic and social progress makes this a valuable work. Although no one can predict what will take place, by looking at China's past, Terrill has provided an excellent road map for understanding its future. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2003-06-29 23:54:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat Don't bet on China confronting N Korea http://www.taipeitimes.com ^ | May 19, 2003 | Sushil Seth Even when the US is at the zenith of its power, things don't seem so easy and smooth. For example, a small and impoverished country like North Korea is proving a hard nut to crack. Its brinkmanship on the nuclear question is a serious constraint on US power, for fear that things could get out of control with dire consequences all around. Even if one were to discount North Korea's nuclear deterrent (it is believed to have a couple of atomic bombs, with more in the process), the sheer scale of its conventional military power, in terms of threatening South Korea and Japan, is scary. With its million-strong army and an array of weapon systems from artillery to missiles, Seoul is within easy reach. And Japan is a missile target. South Korea is understandably nervous, with much of the blame for igniting the crisis directed at Washington. As Elizabeth Economy and Eugene Matthews point out, "Anti-US sentiment in South Korea is at its highest level since the country's founding in 1948. Most South Koreans believe that the United States does not appreciate the danger it [South Korea] confronts on a daily basis from North Korea, and they see America's recent harsh rhetoric as having exacerbated that danger, by increasing the North's sense of isolation and paranoia." There is also a pervasive sense of danger in Japan. The Japanese probably regard it as the most dangerous scenario since World War II. There is a growing political constituency favoring militarization, including nuclear weapons. Taken to its logical conclusion, its ripple effects in the region are too horrible to imagine. In other words, the crisis on the Korean Peninsula requires urgent resolution. But it is increasingly realized that a pre-emptive strike is not a feasible proposition because of its unpredictable consequences. The scale of human and material destruction is too grim to contemplate. This leaves diplomacy as the preferred alternative. Diplomacy has two facets: coercive and persuasive. Both require international cooperation. Regarding the first, UN-approved international sanctions are the obvious course. Pyongyang, though, has raised the stakes by declaring that it would regard sanctions as a declaration of war. In any case, with China effectively ruling out a Security Council-approved sanctions regime (with its veto), it might not come to that. Any attempt to cobble together a sanctions regime outside the UN will have to reckon both with Pyongyang and Beijing. Regarding persuasion, China is again the crucial factor. And it won't work unless Pyongyang is clear about the alternative. Beijing, therefore, would need to forewarn Pyongyang that unless it abandoned the nuclear path, it would be on its own. Considering Pyongyang's overwhelming dependence on Beijing for its economic lifeline (thin as it is), China has considerable leverage over its "brotherly" communist neighbor. Why isn't China then exercising this leverage? Beijing contends that it is quietly working on Pyongyang to see reason. And feels hurt that it is not getting the credit it deserves. Without Beijing's restraint, it is implied, things could get worse. In other words, Beijing indeed is contributing to regional stability through its tact and statesmanship. China is thus coming out in the region as a responsible power, a counterweight of sorts to US "brashness." Though exasperated at times with China's unwillingness to put the necessary pressure on North Korea, Washington believes that Beijing is -- or should be -- concerned about Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions. This is the conventional wisdom. And it is not working. Therefore, it might be necessary to go beyond the conventional straitjacket to explore other possible explanations. China fancies itself as an alternative superpower. But the US is not keen on competition. Indeed, it regards China as a strategic competitor. And under its new strategic blueprint it is determined to maintain its supremacy at any cost. According to the National Security Strategy of the United States of America, "The United States must and will maintain the capability to defeat any attempt by an enemy to impose its will on the United States." It adds, "Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military buildup in hopes of surpassing, or equalling, the power of the United States." No prizes for guessing where this message is directed. Beijing is quite aware of its limitations and has scrupulously avoided confronting the US politically and militarily. Indeed, it has forged cooperation with the US against terrorism. For the foreseeable future, China has no hope of competing with the US in raw power. But it certainly can tap into other areas to erode the US position and is steadily doing it. It has lately been projecting a benign and responsible image among its Asian neighbors. With ASEAN countries, it has entered into a framework agreement to promote free trade over 10 years. The lure of China's vast market is being dangled before these countries feeling the pinch of the US economic slowdown, notwithstanding the fact that it is much more competitive with its regional neighbors in terms of markets and investments. Beijing has also been seeking to appear reasonable over the South China Sea islands issue and development of its resources. Similarly, at the recent SARS summit of ASEAN countries in Bangkok, Beijing agreed on regional cooperation to confront the epidemic. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao made quite an impression with his sense of humility by admitting that much needed to be done. China's charm offensive in Asia has won it considerable goodwill, at a time when the US is preoccupied with terrorism, Iraq and the Middle East in general. Above all, it has made an impact with its softly-softly approach on North Korea. An impression is thus created that without China's steadying and restraining hand, the North Korean crisis could easily explode. More remarkably, even Washington sets store by Beijing in resolving the crisis, believing that Pyongyang's intransigence will eventually exhaust China's patience in favor of concerted international action for its downfall. But it might not turn out that way. North Korea is China's diplomatic trump card to maintain and promote its great-power ambitions. It has promoted Beijing's credentials as a peacemaker of sorts by its hosting US-North Korean negotiations. And it is being suggested by some Chinese analysts (with official nod, no doubt) that, at some point, if North Korea were to continue being difficult, Beijing would have to disabuse their mind of "the illusion that China will support them whatever they have done." Washington would like to believe this. But will it happen? It is difficult to be categorical. But if Kim Jong-il were to cave in or be overthrown with Chinese involvement, US global domination will be even more entrenched. It is not a prospect that Beijing would like to be part of. NickM (Member) 2003-06-30 11:57:00 12.111.167.100 Re: The China Threat No kidding. Communist coutries do not work at loggerheads to each other, despite surface appearences. Nick (who has read Golytsin) Cspace (Member) 2003-07-30 23:35:00 216.242.4.172 Re: The China Threat China Adds to Missiles Aimed at Taiwan, Pentagon Says quote:July 30 (Bloomberg) -- China is on a path to increase by half over the next few years the number of short-range ballistic missiles arrayed against Taiwan, a Pentagon report says. China has about 450 CSS-6 and CSS-7 missiles facing Taiwan across the South China Sea. That number is expected to grow by 75 a year ``over the next few years,'' the report said. The missiles are mobile and have ranges of 372 miles (600 kilometers) and 186 miles (300 kilometers), respectively. ``As Beijing increases the accuracy and lethality of its conventional ballistic missile arsenal, a growing and significant challenge is posed to U.S. forces in the Western Pacific, as well as to allies and friends, including Taiwan,'' the report said. The report is the second unclassified assessment of China's military by the Bush administration. Aside from the missile trend, it rehashes the earlier document. That report described a Chinese policy of intimidating Taiwan by the threat of missiles, Soviet-built submarines and blockade or invasion. That policy continues, said the new document. Taiwan was taken over by the Nationalist Party after the party lost control of China to the Communists in 1949. China still considers the island a breakaway province and reuniting the two remains a centerpiece of Chinese foreign policy. A 1979 U.S. law requires the U.S. to offer Taiwan the weapons it needs to defend itself against China. Argument for Missile Defense The disclosures may provide ammunition for advocates of a robust U.S. missile defense program that would include allies such as Taiwan and Japan in a regional system of air-, sea- and grounded-based defenses. The report also could add pressure to improve Taiwan's air defense systems with modern weapons such as the Lockheed Martin Corp. and Raytheon Co. PAC-3 anti-missile system that saw its first action in the recent war in Iraq. Taiwan this month formally requested its first batteries of PAC-3s, according to a report in Jane's Missiles & Rockets Report. ``All of China's known short-range ballistic missile assets are believed to be based in the Nanjing Military Region opposite Taiwan,'' and ``the accuracy and lethality of this force is increasing,'' says the ``Annual Report on the Military Power of the People's Republic of China.'' Israeli Sale Disclosed Among other disclosures, the Pentagon said China ``has procured from Israel a significant number of Harpy anti-radiation systems.'' The Harpy is a kamikaze drone produced by Israel Aircraft Industries Ltd. that's equipped with anti-radar sensors and a bomb capable of attacking Taiwanese air-defense radar. The drone would dive into a radar station. The Harpy was used during July 2002 Chinese military drills in the region opposite Taiwan, according to press reports but the Pentagon had not previously confirmed the Israeli sale. ``The Harpy detects, attacks and destroys enemy radar emitters, hitting them with high accuracy,'' IAI says on its web site. ``It effectively suppresses hostile surface-to-air missiles and radar sites for long durations, loitering above enemy territory for hours.'' The drone is already in use with several air forces, IAI said. The report also strengthened a warning in last year's report that China is expected to acquire within the decade ``a significant'' airborne early-warning capability similar to the U.S. AWACS airplane. The U.S. in 2001 stopped Israel from selling one of their versions to China but the communist government continues to pursue the technology, the report said. ``The technical ability could exist for these aircraft to display a coordinated air picture, with the capability to command and control airborne assets,'' the report says. This capability combined with aerial refueling aircraft could give China the potential to launch combat missions over a wide area in the Pacific, the Pentagon said. New Weapons Systems The report said China also is developing or procuring weapons systems under a program known as ``Assassin's Mace'' to ``counter intervening U.S. forces.'' The report didn't elaborate. China is now assessed to have deployed Over-the-Horizon Sky- Wave radar that could target large U.S. aircraft carriers, the report disclosed. The report repeats an earlier assessment that China is developing CSS-6 variants that could employee Global Positioning Satellite navigation to allow attacks of Taiwan and Okinawa. The new report also repeats U.S. assessments that China's reported $20 billion defense budget put it closer to $65 billion and could increase four-fold by 2020 in real terms. FYI, CSpace Cspace (Member) 2003-07-30 23:37:00 216.242.4.172 Re: The China Threat Pentagon says China refitting missiles to hit Okinawa quote:China is modifying short-range mobile missiles to target U.S. forces in Okinawa and is sharply increasing the number of missiles aimed at Taiwan, according to the Pentagon's latest annual report on Chinese military power. "Beijing has greatly expanded its arsenal of increasingly accurate and lethal ballistic missiles and long-range strike aircraft that are ready for immediate application should the [People´s Liberation Army] be called upon to conduct war before its modernization aspirations are fully realized," according to the report released yesterday. The Chinese are working on a medium-range missile that will give Beijing the ability to launch attacks against the 25,000 U.S. troops deployed on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa. The new missiles also will be able to hit Taiwan from bases farther inland from the Chinese coast, the report said. Currently, all of China's short-range CSS-7 and CSS-6 missiles are deployed in the Nanjing military region, located across the Taiwan Strait from China. The new CSS-6s will "employ satellite-aided navigation to enable attacks against both Okinawa and Taiwan." China now has deployed 450 short-range missiles and the force will grow by more than 75 missiles a year, the report said. Last year's report said China had 350 CSS-6 and CSS-7 missiles within striking range of Taiwan and that the Chinese military was adding 50 a year. The missiles pose "a growing and significant challenge ... to U.S. forces in the western Pacific, as well as to allies and friends, including Taiwan." Regarding the threat to Taiwan, the report states that China could use "decapitation" attacks against the island using missiles, aircraft or an amphibious assault. "China's efforts to develop coercive military options present challenges not only to Taiwan, but also to other countries in the region such as the Philippines and Japan," the report said. China also is beefing up its long-range nuclear missiles. Along with building new intercontinental ballistic missiles, China may abandon its pledge not to be the first to use nuclear arms in a conflict. Beijing is "reconsidering" how it would use nuclear weapons "against U.S. forces in the region," the report said. The report also warns that China is building up its "information warfare" forces in preparation for a conflict over Taiwan, which President Bush has vowed to defend from Chinese attack. Beijing has adopted a new strategy of what Beijing military planners call "assassin's mace" arms — advanced weapons designed for use against U.S. forces. Current "assassins maces" that could trump advanced U.S. weapons include fighter bombers, submarines, antiship missiles, and mines that could attack U.S. aircraft carriers. "Chinese doctrine continues to emphasize surprise, deception, and shock effect in the opening phase of a campaign," the report said. China's military buildup has led the Pentagon to quietly build up its military forces in the Pacific in recent months. Attack submarines have been deployed in Guam, along with stockpiles of air-launched cruise missiles. Bombers also have been moved to the region to deal with either a conflict in Korea or possibly a war over Taiwan, defense officials said. China continues to build up its military in utmost secrecy. Its military spending is estimated to be many times greater than the official estimate of $20 billion annually, the report said. Based on observation of U.S. forces in the 1999 conflict in Kosovo, China has adopted an air-defense system called "Three Attacks and Three Defenses," that calls for attacking stealth aircraft, cruise missiles and helicopters and defending against precision bombing and missile strikes, electronic warfare and enemy reconnaissance, the report said. China also watched U.S. Special Forces and increasingly mobile U.S. military forces operate in Afghanistan and Iraq, the report said. The report states that China's leaders believe Communist Party rule would be undermined if the military loses a future war over China. Strategically, China's communist leaders are using a Leninist approach in an attempt to influence "those who oppose and those who support China's interest's abroad." "Once China's leaders make the distinction between friend and foe, they can develop and tailor [propaganda] themes to counter opposition and advance their overall agenda," the report said. "Moreover, such distinctions position China to reward 'friends' abroad, or alternatively, punish 'enemies' to enhance its own position in the balance of power." The report, required by a provision of the 2000 defense authorization law, includes other details of China's buildup, such as: •New fighter aircraft made indigenously as well as purchases of Russian Su-30 and Su-27 fighter-bombers. •Purchase of eight new Kilo submarines from Russia, along with antiship cruise missiles for the subs. China also is purchasing two Russian Sovremeny warships. •Development of advanced weapons, including lasers, radio-frequency bombs and anti-satellite weapons. FYI, CSpace Cspace (Member) 2003-07-31 23:20:00 216.242.4.172 Re: The China Threat Follow-up from yesterday's reports. China Slams Pentagon Report on Threat to Taiwan quote: BEIJING (Reuters) - China denounced a Pentagon report on Friday accusing it of deploying growing numbers of ballistic missiles aimed at Taiwan and said Washington was making excuses to sell advanced weapons to the island. "The motive is to foment public opinion and excuses to sell advanced weapons to Taiwan," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement when asked to comment on the Pentagon's annual report on Chinese military might. "The Chinese side expresses its strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition." On Thursday, Defense Minister Cao Gangchuan used the occasion of Army Day to underscore the mantra of the mainland's communist rulers that they would not tolerate any attempt to prevent reunification with the island. "Realizing the complete reunification of the motherland is the common desire of all Chinese people, including Taiwan compatriots," Cao said in comments carried by the People's Daily, the Communist Party's mouthpiece. "We have the determination and the ability to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity," Cao said during celebrations to mark the 76th anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army. "We will never allow anyone to separate Taiwan from China in any way," said Cao, a vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission and who sits on the Communist Party's elite Politburo. China is boosting military spending and deploying increasing numbers of ballistic missiles to prepare for a possible conflict in the Taiwan Straits aimed at bringing the island to its knees before the United States has time to intervene, the Pentagon said on Wednesday. The White House said on Thursday that China's build-up of ballistic missiles capable of striking Taiwan could destabilize the region, and added it was prepared to sell the island weapons to defend itself. Since China and Taiwan split at the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, Beijing has threatened to attack if the democratic island declared independence or dragged its feet on reunification talks. FYI, CSpace Sean Osborne (Member) 2003-08-03 22:31:00 192.172.8.18 Re: The China Threat China is targeting US forces Based in Japan. Consider this as one in a continuing series of "heads-up" warnings. Pentagon says China refitting missiles to hit Okinawa By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES China is modifying short-range mobile missiles to target U.S. forces in Okinawa and is sharply increasing the number of missiles aimed at Taiwan, according to the Pentagon's latest annual report on Chinese military power. "Beijing has greatly expanded its arsenal of increasingly accurate and lethal ballistic missiles and long-range strike aircraft that are ready for immediate application should the [People´s Liberation Army] be called upon to conduct war before its modernization aspirations are fully realized," according to the report released yesterday. The Chinese are working on a medium-range missile that will give Beijing the ability to launch attacks against the 25,000 U.S. troops deployed on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa. The new missiles also will be able to hit Taiwan from bases farther inland from the Chinese coast, the report said. Currently, all of China's short-range CSS-7 and CSS-6 missiles are deployed in the Nanjing military region, located across the Taiwan Strait from China. The new CSS-6s will "employ satellite-aided navigation to enable attacks against both Okinawa and Taiwan." China now has deployed 450 short-range missiles and the force will grow by more than 75 missiles a year, the report said. Last year's report said China had 350 CSS-6 and CSS-7 missiles within striking range of Taiwan and that the Chinese military was adding 50 a year. The missiles pose "a growing and significant challenge ... to U.S. forces in the western Pacific, as well as to allies and friends, including Taiwan." Regarding the threat to Taiwan, the report states that China could use "decapitation" attacks against the island using missiles, aircraft or an amphibious assault. "China's efforts to develop coercive military options present challenges not only to Taiwan, but also to other countries in the region such as the Philippines and Japan," the report said. China also is beefing up its long-range nuclear missiles. Along with building new intercontinental ballistic missiles, China may abandon its pledge not to be the first to use nuclear arms in a conflict. Beijing is "reconsidering" how it would use nuclear weapons "against U.S. forces in the region," the report said. The report also warns that China is building up its "information warfare" forces in preparation for a conflict over Taiwan, which President Bush has vowed to defend from Chinese attack. Beijing has adopted a new strategy of what Beijing military planners call "assassin's mace" arms — advanced weapons designed for use against U.S. forces. Current "assassins maces" that could trump advanced U.S. weapons include fighter bombers, submarines, antiship missiles, and mines that could attack U.S. aircraft carriers. "Chinese doctrine continues to emphasize surprise, deception, and shock effect in the opening phase of a campaign," the report said. China's military buildup has led the Pentagon to quietly build up its military forces in the Pacific in recent months. Attack submarines have been deployed in Guam, along with stockpiles of air-launched cruise missiles. Bombers also have been moved to the region to deal with either a conflict in Korea or possibly a war over Taiwan, defense officials said. China continues to build up its military in utmost secrecy. Its military spending is estimated to be many times greater than the official estimate of $20 billion annually, the report said. Based on observation of U.S. forces in the 1999 conflict in Kosovo, China has adopted an air-defense system called "Three Attacks and Three Defenses," that calls for attacking stealth aircraft, cruise missiles and helicopters and defending against precision bombing and missile strikes, electronic warfare and enemy reconnaissance, the report said. China also watched U.S. Special Forces and increasingly mobile U.S. military forces operate in Afghanistan and Iraq, the report said. The report states that China's leaders believe Communist Party rule would be undermined if the military loses a future war over China. Strategically, China's communist leaders are using a Leninist approach in an attempt to influence "those who oppose and those who support China's interest's abroad." "Once China's leaders make the distinction between friend and foe, they can develop and tailor [propaganda] themes to counter opposition and advance their overall agenda," the report said. "Moreover, such distinctions position China to reward 'friends' abroad, or alternatively, punish 'enemies' to enhance its own position in the balance of power." The report, required by a provision of the 2000 defense authorization law, includes other details of China's buildup, such as: •New fighter aircraft made indigenously as well as purchases of Russian Su-30 and Su-27 fighter-bombers. •Purchase of eight new Kilo submarines from Russia, along with antiship cruise missiles for the subs. China also is purchasing two Russian Sovremeny warships. •Development of advanced weapons, including lasers, radio-frequency bombs and anti-satellite weapons. Pentagon Says China Refitting Missiles To Hit Okinawa Sean Osborne (Member) 2003-08-07 02:14:00 192.172.8.18 Re: The China Threat Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan To Destroy America -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I have just acquired a copy of the book Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan To Destroy America. This book is the english translation by the Pan-American Publishing Company, Panama City, Panama of the orginal work (Unrestricted Warfare) by two young generation, yet senior, Colonels of the Peoples Liberation Army. It was first printed in Beijing by the PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House in February 1999. here is the oft quoted excerpt from page 122 of the book: Quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Whether it be the intrusions of hackers, a major explosion at the World Trade Center, or a bombing attack by bin Laden, all of these greatly exceed the frequency bandwidths understood by the American military...This is beacuse they have never taken into consideration and have even refused to consider means that are contrary to tradition and to select measures of operation other than military means." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Three years prior to September 11, 2001. Here are the forms of "total warfare" identified that China or its surrogates must engage in to defeat and destroy the enemy, specifically the United States of America and its allies. Financial Warfare: attack the banking and stock markets, manipulate the value of targeted currency. Smuggling warfare: sabotage the target nation by flooding its market with illegal goods and pirated products. Cultural warfare: influence the culture by imposing your own cultural viewpoints. Drug warfare: flood the taget with drugs and breakdown the society by their use. Media and fabrication warfare: manipulate foreign media by compromising or intimidating journalists, gain access to the targets airwaves, impose proaganda. Technological warfare: create technology monopolies by setting standards independently in vital technologies in peace and wartime. Resources warfare: control scarse natural resources or manipulate their access and market value. Psychological warfare: impose your own national interest by domination the target nations own perception of its strengths and weaknesses. Network warfare: dominate and subvert information systems. International law warfare: join international or multinational organizations in order to subvert their policies and the interpretation of their rulings. Environmental warfare: weakening or subjugating the target nation by despoiling or altering its natural environment. Economic aid warfare: control a targeted country by through aid dependency. Thus we have asymmetrical total warfare at all times and in perpetuity until the target nation is vanquished There is a section in this book which is of keen interest and concerns China's al-Qaeda Connection. In June 2002 The Washington Times reports that US intelligence confirms that before the September 11 attacks China's military provided training for Afghanistan's taliban and its al-Qaeda supporters. I wonder if the Chinese PLA version of Unrestricted Warfare was one of the textbooks of instruction. I do not doubt it. As I read and digest this book I will comment on what I come across in this thread. If anyone else here has this book, please add your comments and observations. And yes, the CIA, DIA and other US national security departments were provided copies of this translation prior to September 11, 2001. Here's some other avenues of pursuing this book and other vital information (yes, I am engaging in my own version of Information Warfare ). Massive amounts of data are available here: Chinese PLA Doctrines Index Direct Links: http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/china/doctrine/unresw1.htm http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/china/doctrine/unresw2.htm http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/china/doctrine/WEBRES3.htm http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/china/doctrine/WEEBRES4.htm And this from a general web search... PAPER TIGER OR 'UNRESTRICTED WAR' By William Markiewicz The book 'Unrestricted War', written by Colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, tries to answer this question: How does a relatively weak country like China stand up to a power like the United States? Among the ways they would deal with such an adversary are terrorism, drug trafficking, environmental degradation and computer virus propagation. "Unrestricted war is a war that surpasses all boundaries and restrictions," they write at one point. "It takes military and nonmilitary forms and creates war on many fronts. It is the war of the future." Colonel Wang said in an interview: "War has rules, but those rules are set by the West. If you use those rules, then weak countries have no chance. But if you use nontraditional means to fight, like those employed by financiers to bring down financial systems, then you have a chance." Colonel Qiao suggested that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic should have attempted to deal with NATO attacks by slipping a terrorist group into Italy and attacking NATO air bases. Terrorist bands also could have attacked population centers in Germany, France and Belgium, he said. Open but discreet termination The West has destroyed its own 'war rules' in Yugoslavia and was ready to destroy all of Yugoslavia. Few besides the Yugoslavs would have noticed. NATO launched its air attacks on Serbia in front of the blinded world masses who simply could not associate NWO and its NATO with terrorism, allowing the perpetrator to 'get away with murder.' Psychologists know that people see mostly what they're ready to see. In what is called 'the Magellan Syndrome' the Indians couldn't see the mighty ships at anchor on their shores because in their mental universe there was no place for such ships. We also read about Indians who told escaped slaves that they were 'the first white men' to show up in this region. As they had never seen a black man before, anyone who was not Indian had to be white. How many of us seeing the elephant 'Jumbo' flying with his ears would believe our own eyes? Collective visions exist, yes, but again, only for people who are predisposed to see them. Never would a Muslim or a Jew have a vision of Christ for example. In a hypothetical war with China, would the USA show more restraint than it did in the heart of Europe? Attacking the civilian population by air as in Yugoslavia, levelling everything on the ground and calling it collateral damage, is the most efficient and cynical possible form of terror. Drug trafficking and computer virus propagation are minor tactics which may annoy the mighty adversary without affecting the outcome of the war. All the terrorist groups gathered couldn't cause even a small part of the damage caused by an all powerful air force. NATO means business and fights to win. Anything the weak can do the strong can do limitlessly. Therefore 'unrestricted war' in the final account may turn against its initiators. Poker Kamikaze versus bombs Unrestricted war, meaning the field terrorism proposed in the book, is a weakness which disguises itself as force, and weakness impresses only if it's embodied in those who are ready to die. The Numancia, Massada, Warsaw Uprisings, gave the message that those who were going to die would be deadly first. The Kamikaze horrify; people are afraid of those who are not afraid to die. They are scared already by the fact that they themselves cannot be scary. Democracies have less stamina than dictatorships because they must answer to their citizens. But, to take advantage of this, Kamikazes would have to be in great numbers like attacking ants or hornets and this kind of death by choice will always be reserved for a few desperados. Therefore the West probably will never run the risk of being exposed to such a poker game. http://www.vagabondpages.com/september99/tiger.html Here's an excerpt from the World Socialist Web Site Quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- An article in the Washington Post last Sunday revealed that discussion has already taken place in military circles in China over its limited defence capacities in a decade of aggressive US military interventions. Colonel Wang Xiangsui, who co-authored with Colonel Qiao Liang a book entitled Unrestricted War, was quoted as saying: “The country that studied the Persian Gulf War the most was not America, but China. The military studied all the weapons systems and all the strategy, but we two think that China cannot follow the US model. We are much poorer than the United States. So we think that China needs to begin to adjust the way it makes war.â€� Reflecting the thinking in Chinese military circles, Wang and Qiao draw the conclusion from NATO's attack on Yugoslavia that China confronts a similar threat over areas it either controls or claims. “If today you impose your value systems on a European country, tomorrow you can do the same to Taiwan or Tibet,â€� Wang said. The two officers propose that China plan future strategies including computer viruses, media and financial warfare, to try to deal with the vast technological superiority of the US and other major powers. Beijing is attempting to upgrade its weaponry. It recently announced the purchase of 72 advanced Sukhoi-30 fighters from Russia at the estimated cost of $US2 billion in a deal that will also permit the manufacture of 250 more in China. On August 2, in a move calculated to increase the pressure on Taipei, China announced that it had successfully test fired a new long-range ground-to ground missile—the Dong Feng-31—capable of carrying a 700 kilogram warhead about 8,000 kilometres. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The links to fas.org above is Unrestricted Warfare by PLA Col.s Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui in its entireity. minus the forward by Al Santoli and the Translators notes to the CIA, etc and a brief preface. The book is now the doctrine of the Peoples Liberation Army. Phil FiordAdministrator (Member) 2003-08-08 00:45:00 68.169.170.128 Re: The China Threat http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/B656343.htm 07 Aug 2003 17:14:03 GMT China moves to draw U.S. into space arms talks -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Robert Evans GENEVA, Aug 7 (Reuters) - China, in a clear move to draw in a reluctant United States, announced on Thursday it was ready for talks on preventing an arms race in space even if they were not specifically aimed at a binding treaty. The surprise announcement, following what diplomats said was a high-level decision in Beijing this week, was billed by a Chinese envoy as a major compromise aimed at injecting life into the long-stalled Geneva Conference on Disarmament (CD). Russia, which like China had earlier argued -- in the face of U.S. refusal -- for formal negotiations on a global agreement barring weaponry from space, hailed the Chinese shift and told the 65-nation forum it would be ready to join in. Both powers, known to be deeply concerned over U.S. plans for a "Star Wars Mark II" National Missile Defence system (NMD), said they hoped the move would clear the way for talks on space arms and other disarmament issues to get under way soon. Just a week ago in an obvious reference to NMD they told the CD, currently holding a three-months summer session, that the danger of "weaponisation" of outer space was growing and had to be tackled promptly. There was no immediate response from the United States. Its envoy did not take the floor at Thursday's session of the United Nations-sponsored CD -- where some of the major disarmament treaties of the Cold War period were negotiated. Under the administration of President George W.Bush, Washington has insisted that it must have the right to deploy a system like NMD to defend itself against "rogue states" and terrorists who might acquire ballistic missiles. RETURN FOR HELP But senior CD diplomats said China and Russia appeared to be stepping up pressure on the United States to at least talk about the issue -- perhaps in return for their help in the global "war against terrorism" and in the North Korean crisis. "Perhaps they feel that there are some signs the Bush administration is beginning to realise that it needs friends and that it cannot continue to pursue a unilateral path on all issues," said one envoy, who declined to be identified. Making the announcement, China's ambassador Hu Xiaodi told the CD on Thursday that his country was demonstrating "immense flexibility" in dropping its demand for formal negotiations on a space arms pact, which have been in the air for a decade. The decision had been taken to try to break the six-year deadlock in the CD, where the last pact completed was a wide-ranging nuclear test ban treaty in 1996 and which has since been the scene of diplomatic squabbling. Discussions on space weapons, under a new programme proposed by five former CD chairmen, would take place alongside talks on nuclear disarmament, on banning production of fissile material for nuclear weapons, and on how to guarantee non-nuclear states would not be targets for nuclear attacks. Sean Osborne (Member) 2003-08-08 03:37:00 192.172.8.18 Re: The China Threat Phil, Good article above. The Russian and Chinese have a very big problem with US dominance in space. Star Wars Mk II scares the hell out of them because they understand that who ever controls space can also control the ground under it. Currently the US is decades ahead of anyone else in controlling and networking the Battlespace. We hold the strategic high ground and our enemies can't stand it. I want to address something that my initial post above on Unrestricted Warfare mentioned. In the introduction to the book Al Santori writes: quote:" Unrestricted Warfare suggests that war with the U.S. can begin with bribing American officials to gain their objectives. The art of buying off politicians in foreign governments did not begin with "Chinagate" and China's apparent bribes to Bill Clinton, though the incidents are perhaps the most egregious of public treason in the history of our republic. The Chginagate scandals first surfaced in 1997, when it was published, and confirmed by U.S. sources, that president Clinton had legally authorized the transfer of America's most guarded ballistic missile technology by the Loral Corporation, though there was evidence that the technology was first illegally transferred. Before the Clinton authorization, China's missiles were wildly inaccurate, wit ha greater likelyhood of exploding soon after launch than upon reaching their targets. But with the assistance of President Clinton, China now has missiles as accurate as ours. In return, President Clinton's 1996 campaign recieved, according to the FBI, more than $10 million in illegal Chinese donations... Perhaps the authors of Unrestricted Warfare were cognizant of the success of Chinese payments to President Clinton when they advocated bribery as a form of total war." This backs up my contention that the PLA has been at war with the US since 1996. It also and reinforces what I and others have been saying for a very long time, Bill Clinton betrayed this country completely. Malsua (Moderator) 2003-08-08 14:55:00 216.6.139.106 Re: The China Threat quote:Originally posted by Sean Osborne: Phil, Good article above. The Russian and Chinese have a very big problem with US dominance in space. Star Wars Mk II scares the hell out of them because they understand that who ever controls space can also control the ground under it. Currently the US is decades ahead of anyone else in controlling and networking the Battlespace. We hold the strategic high ground and our enemies can't stand it. I want to address something that my initial post above on Unrestricted Warfare mentioned. In the introduction to the book Al Santori writes: quote:" Unrestricted Warfare suggests that war with the U.S. can begin with bribing American officials to gain their objectives. The art of buying off politicians in foreign governments did not begin with "Chinagate" and China's apparent bribes to Bill Clinton, though the incidents are perhaps the most egregious of public treason in the history of our republic. The Chginagate scandals first surfaced in 1997, when it was published, and confirmed by U.S. sources, that president Clinton had legally authorized the transfer of America's most guarded ballistic missile technology by the Loral Corporation, though there was evidence that the technology was first illegally transferred. Before the Clinton authorization, China's missiles were wildly inaccurate, wit ha greater likelyhood of exploding soon after launch than upon reaching their targets. But with the assistance of President Clinton, China now has missiles as accurate as ours. In return, President Clinton's 1996 campaign recieved, according to the FBI, more than $10 million in illegal Chinese donations... Perhaps the authors of Unrestricted Warfare were cognizant of the success of Chinese payments to President Clinton when they advocated bribery as a form of total war." This backs up my contention that the PLA has been at war with the US since 1996. It also and reinforces what I and others have been saying for a very long time, Bill Clinton betrayed this country completely. Sean, while I agree that the PLA may be at war with us, the people in the mainland are idjits. The Army is made up of those folks. These are the same folks who blow themselves up in firework factories regularly. In fact one blew up last week. A regular occurance. The Chinese people have none of what any American would call "Common Sense" -Mal Phil FiordAdministrator (Member) 2003-08-08 15:21:00 68.169.170.128 Re: The China Threat Geez, Mal, it's funny you mention "Common Sense" as that has been topical in my office as of late in communications we make. Good call btw. I too echo the reality of the PLA being in a quiet stance of unofficial war. I see it constantly on probes to my computer that are blocked. The IP's come from various regions in China including the province that the more recent outbreak of disease is found to have originated from. These probings are odd to me for we know that China regulates the useage of the net internally. I must go thru my logs sometime and post some of these IP's. Of course I saved a detailed record. Malsua (Moderator) 2003-08-08 16:41:00 216.6.139.106 Re: The China Threat quote:Originally posted by Phil Fiord: Geez, Mal, it's funny you mention "Common Sense" as that has been topical in my office as of late in communications we make. Good call btw. I too echo the reality of the PLA being in a quiet stance of unofficial war. I see it constantly on probes to my computer that are blocked. The IP's come from various regions in China including the province that the more recent outbreak of disease is found to have originated from. These probings are odd to me for we know that China regulates the useage of the net internally. I must go thru my logs sometime and post some of these IP's. Of course I saved a detailed record. Phil, as a note, while it is thought that China controls internet access, I found NO, that is Nada, not one, not any restriction on internet access. This is from the mainland. I was on any number of various connections, not one was blocked. For a hoot, I entered "Falun Gong" in the google search engine. I found their main website. I was leaving that hotel the next day so hopefully they didn't get a jack booted thug invasion. heh. China's only hope to keep down a peasant invasion is to keep them stupid. Only a select few ever get to see western TV and the internet so it's not much of a problem to them. -Mal Cspace (Member) 2003-08-15 06:14:00 216.242.4.172 Re: The China Threat Not sure if this has been brought up before in the China Threat Thread. I'm still trying to learn about all the Chinese and Russian subterfuge before I participate too much in these threads. But, I found this today, and thought it should be posted. Nanotechnology Threatens America quote:On Aug. 7, I spoke on "The Bert Lee [Radio] Show” in Arizona about the expected ability of nanotechnology, being developed in China since 1986, along with at least six other postnuclear fields, to destroy the Western means of nuclear retaliation and thus to eliminate Mutual Assured Destruction, that is, to disarm the West. The host of the show introduced me generously, but then objected to whatever I said with remarks like "But Professor, how come you know this and our entire political establishment does not?” I would reply: "You mean our entire political establishment does not want to know this.” After half an hour of such exchanges, four listeners called, and three of them (75 percent) agreed with me. I will quote their astute remarks in one of my next columns. The fourth of these four listeners also asked me to explain the strategic advantages of nano power over nuclear power, and this is what I said: Nuclear (and thermonuclear) power can "burn” a city, but it cannot "burn” an ocean, the atmosphere or a continent. Hence the principle of Mutual Assured Destruction, on which world peace has rested. A nuclear country has means of nuclear retaliation – submarines deep under water, underground missiles, and bombers on duty high in the air. They all carry nuclear charges, and none of them can be destroyed by a nuclear attack. If attacked by nuclear weapons, a nuclear country activates its means of nuclear retaliation, and these destroy the attacker. Yes, Mutual Assured Destruction! Nano power does not burn, explode or irradiate. It passes in between atoms and molecules, and "destroys from within” all means of nuclear retaliation, be it submarines, underground missiles or bombers, together with their nuclear charges. I receive e-mails from nanotechnologists expressing approval and good wishes, as well as inquiring about nanotechnology in China. In other words, we are no longer a few lonely custodians of the nanotechnological truth; our ranks are growing, and here I want to make public, with the author's permission, Britt Gillette's highly stimulating e-mail to me of Aug. 1. He graduated magna cum laude with distinction from James Madison University in 1999, and has been educating the public on the civilian benefits and the supernuclear geostrategic danger of nanotechnology. His nano sci-fi "Conquest of Paradise” I hope to review in my column. Following is his remarkable e-mail to me: "I enjoyed the opportunity to read your article "The Mind of an American Specialist in Nanotechnology.' I am intimately familiar with the plethora of policy challenges the free world will face with the emergence of [weaponized] molecular nanotechnology, and have read Mark Gubrud's "Nanotechnology and International Security' on several occasions. I agree with your conclusions, and I am disheartened by Mr. Gubrud's naivete in relation to geopolitical realities. "Like many within the nanotechnology community, Mr. Gubrud fails or refuses to recognize the inherent dangers of nanotechnology's development. Since the prospect of two nanotechnic powers locked in confrontation would almost certainly lead to unparalleled planetary destruction, many apologists simply present the solution of "a single global regime' as an answer to the problem. Like Mr. Gubrud, such people fail to mention the wide array of cultural and ideological values that make such an international alliance unworkable at best. In addition, such advocates fail to address what measures will be taken to check the power of "a single global regime.' For a nanotechnic dictatorship cannot be defeated from within. I am also sorry to read that Mr. Gubrud replied to your inquiries in the manner in which he did. "I suggest that instead you contact Dr. Eric Drexler, author of "Engines of Creation,' which, ironically, and probably coincidentally, was published in 1986 – the year you cite as China's inauguration of Project 863. In light of his past comments, Dr. Drexler is quite wary of the potential negative consequences of this probable superweapon. In addition, Mr. Chris Phoenix of The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology is a person grappling with similar questions in regard to the policy implications of molecular nanotechnology, and I recommend him as a person you should contact. [Coincidentally, a warm letter from Chris Phoenix, director of research, came in response to the column "The Mind of an American Specialist in Nanotechnology”.] "I was drawn to your article because you're the first person I've ever seen on a mainstream website to deal with the topic of "Superweapon #3' in the realistic near-term, rather than as an ambiguous creation "decades in the future.' I ardently believe "Superweapon #3' will be a molecular assembler, and I have since 11 September devoted myself to the task of educating others in regard to its potential dangers. Your article today prompted me to go back and read through your NewsMax archives. All I can say is "Keep up the good work!' "One article I read [WorldTribune, "Proof Positive of Post-Nuclear Weapons in China and Russia”] dealt with the comments of a Mr. William Stroupe, who stated the following: "It does intrigue me that if one could possibly down the crucial technological assets of the West in one fell swoop, without the use of nuclear weapons, then world domination on the part of the attacker would surely result. But how could this possibly be done, from a technological standpoint?' "Such a prospect of world domination could easily be achieved with the creation of a molecular assembler – a device capable of breaking and creating the chemical bonds between atoms and molecules. Since a molecular assembler is by definition able to self-replicate, the first could build a duplicate copy of itself. Those two then become four, become eight, and so on. ... This compounding capital base could lead to a massive and decisive force within days. As Eric Drexler described in his book, "a state that makes the assembler breakthrough could rapidly create a decisive military force – if not literally overnight, then at least with unprecedented speed.' "To answer to Mr. Stroupe's question, such a device is capable of rapidly manufacturing and deploying billions of microscopic/macroscopic machines at relatively little cost. These machines could comb the oceans for enemy submarines and quickly disable the nuclear arsenals they carry. Similar acts of sabotage could be carried out simultaneously against land-based nuclear facilities and conventional military forces in a matter of hours, if not minutes. "The race to build a molecular assembler, if won by China, will result in a worldwide nanotechnic dictatorship, and I appreciate your efforts to call attention to this important subject. We are certainly at a crucial juncture in history, not unlike 1938 and its nuclear scientists who foretold of the atom bomb. This time, we cannot afford to be caught sleeping. "Currently, I am working on a fictional account of a future nanotechnic arms race in a novel scheduled for a January 2004 release. The premise revolves around the shortsightedness of America and its reluctance to take advantage of its current technological and economic advantages. If you're interested, I'd love to get your feedback before publication. "I hope you continue to press forward with informative articles. I've enjoyed reading them.” FYI, CSpace Sean Osborne (Member) 2003-08-15 20:04:00 68.84.219.44 Re: The China Threat Hmmmm...nobody has posted it yet...so I will. It seems that the MSBlast, W32SAN worm/trojan originated in... you guessed it ... the Peoples Republic of China. More later. Malsua (Moderator) 2003-08-17 22:14:00 208.249.136.2 Re: The China Threat quote:Originally posted by Sean Osborne: Hmmmm...nobody has posted it yet...so I will. It seems that the MSBlast, W32SAN worm/trojan originated in... you guessed it ... the Peoples Republic of China. More later. Sean, The answer may be a bit more mundane than "The Chicoms did it!" While I don't put it past them, there is a much more likely root cause as to why these attacks originate in China. A large bulk of the software installed in China is bootleg. The chinese get on the net and get in vast data pirate networks. They download and install whatever they want...including nice little helper applets that turn their computers into zombies. Most of them don't run AV software and most don't have any firewall of any sort. This makes it a ripe breeding ground for exploitation. That attack coming from China may have originated from anywhere. Russia and Isreal seem to have alot of talent and alot of idle hands. -Mal J.H. v.d.Laar (Member) 2003-08-18 00:06:00 64.186.205.136 Re: The China Threat On the subject of nano-tech, the August issue of NASA's Tech Briefs magazine has an article about nano-tech, including The Center for Nanotechology at NASA Ames. I didn't see any of the Aug. articles linked, though. http://www.techbriefs.com/nano/ http://www.nasatech.com milton (Member) 2003-08-18 08:37:00 65.94.114.137 Re: The China Threat China puts air force and navy generals in key posts By tapping officials with air and coastal warfare experience, it is positioning itself for any battle over Taiwan Strait The Straits Times August 16, 2003 By Oliver Chou CHINA has stepped up preparations for any battle over the Taiwan Strait by moving several generals with experience in air and coastal operations to key positions. According to reports, Lieutenant-General Zheng Shenxia, 61, chief of staff of the air force, was recently appointed president of the Academy of Military Sciences, the top think-tank on military strategy. He is the first airman to head the academy since it was founded in 1958 by the late Marshal Ye Jianying. Analysts believe this reflects an increased emphasis by Beijing on improving research and planning for airborne operations rather than traditional ground force movements. The implications are obvious: Should hostilities break out over the Taiwan Strait, it is the air force and navy of the People's Liberation Army that will do most of the fighting. Just as significant is the appointment of Lt-Gen Pei Huailiang as the new commandant of the National Defence University, another top military institute. For the past 13 years, the 62-year-old veteran had served in two of the three military regions along China's south-eastern coastline - three years as deputy chief of staff in the Nanjing command in the early 1990s, and a decade as deputy commander of the Jinan military region. Analysts believe it is this extensive experience at the front line with Taiwan that accounted for his latest appointment. He is expected to help reshape the strategic thinking of successive batches of senior officers who attend the university. Apart from Lt-Gen Zheng and Lt-Gen Pei, a number of other senior officers were also rotated recently through key jobs in Nanjing, Jinan and Guangzhou - the third of the military regions along the coastline facing Taiwan - as well as the national command in Beijing. For example, Lt-Gen Ye Aiqun and Lt-Gen Xiong Ziren of Guangzhou were named deputy commander and deputy commissar of Nanjing region while Major-General Liu Zhongxing, former commander of the Guangxi-based Seventh Air Corps, is now head of Jinan's air force. Observers say the shuffling is to enhance inter-region and inter-services coordination, all in preparation for any fighting over the strait. The ultimate aim is to have a mix of top officers in each of the three regions facing Taiwan, including one with vast experience in airborne operations. In the event of war, all three regions become one well-coordinated theatre. Take Nanjing military region, for example. Its commander Zhu Wenquan has been there for years but political commissar Lei Mingqiu, the second-in-line, is from Guangzhou. Lt-Gen Ye and Lt-Gen Xiong are the two new deputy chiefs moved in from Guangzhou while a third deputy commander, Lt-Gen Ma Diansheng, is the former commander of the 15th Airborne Corps under Guangzhou. Completing the Nanjing line-up are commanders of the East Sea Fleet and the regional air force, Vice-Admiral Zhao Guojun and Maj-Gen Liu Chengjun, who rank as ex-officio deputy chiefs. It may be noted that Maj-Gen Liu was a new appointment from within the Nanjing air command, filling in the vacancy left by his boss Ma Xiaotian, who was promoted as vice-commander of the air force national command. Analysts believe these appointments have strengthened Beijing's command and control over the regions. It is no coincidence that the incumbent chief of the general staff Liang Guanglie was formerly commander of the Nanjing command [URL= http://www.cuttingedge.org/news_updates/nz1104.htm] http://www.cuttingedge.org/news_updates/nz1104.htm[/URL] are they getting ready? how old are the chinese comanders? can they stay on a post more than say 5 years? milton (Member) 2003-08-18 08:45:00 65.94.114.137 Re: The China Threat China puts air force and navy generals in key posts By tapping officials with air and coastal warfare experience, it is positioning itself for any battle over Taiwan Strait The Straits Times August 16, 2003 By Oliver Chou CHINA has stepped up preparations for any battle over the Taiwan Strait by moving several generals with experience in air and coastal operations to key positions. According to reports, Lieutenant-General Zheng Shenxia, 61, chief of staff of the air force, was recently appointed president of the Academy of Military Sciences, the top think-tank on military strategy. He is the first airman to head the academy since it was founded in 1958 by the late Marshal Ye Jianying. Analysts believe this reflects an increased emphasis by Beijing on improving research and planning for airborne operations rather than traditional ground force movements. The implications are obvious: Should hostilities break out over the Taiwan Strait, it is the air force and navy of the People's Liberation Army that will do most of the fighting. Just as significant is the appointment of Lt-Gen Pei Huailiang as the new commandant of the National Defence University, another top military institute. For the past 13 years, the 62-year-old veteran had served in two of the three military regions along China's south-eastern coastline - three years as deputy chief of staff in the Nanjing command in the early 1990s, and a decade as deputy commander of the Jinan military region. Analysts believe it is this extensive experience at the front line with Taiwan that accounted for his latest appointment. He is expected to help reshape the strategic thinking of successive batches of senior officers who attend the university. Apart from Lt-Gen Zheng and Lt-Gen Pei, a number of other senior officers were also rotated recently through key jobs in Nanjing, Jinan and Guangzhou - the third of the military regions along the coastline facing Taiwan - as well as the national command in Beijing. For example, Lt-Gen Ye Aiqun and Lt-Gen Xiong Ziren of Guangzhou were named deputy commander and deputy commissar of Nanjing region while Major-General Liu Zhongxing, former commander of the Guangxi-based Seventh Air Corps, is now head of Jinan's air force. Observers say the shuffling is to enhance inter-region and inter-services coordination, all in preparation for any fighting over the strait. The ultimate aim is to have a mix of top officers in each of the three regions facing Taiwan, including one with vast experience in airborne operations. In the event of war, all three regions become one well-coordinated theatre. Take Nanjing military region, for example. Its commander Zhu Wenquan has been there for years but political commissar Lei Mingqiu, the second-in-line, is from Guangzhou. Lt-Gen Ye and Lt-Gen Xiong are the two new deputy chiefs moved in from Guangzhou while a third deputy commander, Lt-Gen Ma Diansheng, is the former commander of the 15th Airborne Corps under Guangzhou. Completing the Nanjing line-up are commanders of the East Sea Fleet and the regional air force, Vice-Admiral Zhao Guojun and Maj-Gen Liu Chengjun, who rank as ex-officio deputy chiefs. It may be noted that Maj-Gen Liu was a new appointment from within the Nanjing air command, filling in the vacancy left by his boss Ma Xiaotian, who was promoted as vice-commander of the air force national command. Analysts believe these appointments have strengthened Beijing's command and control over the regions. It is no coincidence that the incumbent chief of the general staff Liang Guanglie was formerly commander of the Nanjing command [URL= http://www.cuttingedge.org/news_updates/nz1104.htm] http://www.cuttingedge.org/news_updates/nz1104.htm[/URL] are they getting ready? how old are the chinese comanders? can they stay on a post more than say 5 years? Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2003-09-16 04:10:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat (Ummm... yeah, right... deny, deny, deny.... Satellites can see all though) China denies troop build-up on borders Xinhua News Agency ^ | 9/16/2003 BEIJING, Sept. 16 (Xinhuanet) -- China on Tuesday denied it was building up troop numbers on its borders with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and Myanmar. Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan said China was replacing its armed police with military troops along the two border areas in a reform of border administration. Kong was responding at a regular press conference to reports that China replaced its armed police with military troops along the Sino-DPRK and Sino-Myanmar borders, and to journalists'questions on the timing and intent of the action. He said replacement of the armed police, who originally defended the two borders, had begun early this month. In order to unify the land border administrations, China decided to replace the armed police with Chinese People's Liberation Army troops. The replacement, which had been a long time in preparation, was complete, Kong said. Enditem Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2003-09-16 04:13:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat China 'sends 150,000 troops to N. Korean border' AFP ^ | SEPT 15, 2003 China has deployed up to 150,000 troops on its border with North Korea to deter Pyongyang's nuclear build-up and contain mounting violence from rogue North Korean soldiers, a report here said yesterday. Five divisions of Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) troops had been deployed in Yanbian Korean autonomous prefecture, bordering North Korea, since last month, an unidentified security source in China was quoted as saying by Hong Kong's Sunday Morning Post. Large troop movements and new military barracks had also surfaced in the border towns of Hanchun, Tumen, Kaishan, Sanhe and Baijing, while air force jets had frequently been seen flying over the capital Yanji, 40km from the border, the report added. But Mr Kong Quan, China's Foreign Ministry spokesman, last Tuesday refused to confirm or deny the reported deployment of PLA troops. Hong Kong's Chinese-language Sing Tao Daily had earlier reported that three PLA units - each with 50,000 troops, including armoured divisions - had been deployed along the 1,400km border. The paper quoted a Chinese Foreign Ministry source as saying the move was aimed at deterring North Korea from continuing its nuclear build-up and pressurising Pyongyang into holding talks with the United States. The Sunday Morning Post said residents of Yanbian prefecture also believed the PLA troops were there to halt the violent crimes such as murder allegedly carried out by North Korean soldiers. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2003-09-16 04:14:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat (Remember the plane that was FORCED out of the sky by the Chinese??? Keep reading. We should have blown that plane off the map after our folks were out of it.) Navy: China Likely Has U.S. Spy Secrets AP via The Las Vegas Sun ^ | September 11, 2003 | ROBERT BURNS The crew of a Navy spy plane that landed on China's Hainan Island in April 2001 after colliding with a Chinese fighter jet did not destroy all classified materials aboard, and it is "highly probable" that some fell into Chinese hands, Navy investigators concluded. The report, which was released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by Jane's Defense Weekly, blamed the Chinese fighter pilot for the collision and did not fault the Navy crew for failing to complete the destruction of classified information aboard the EP-3. Specifics about the classified materials were deleted from the released version of the report, and the report did not address the possible impact of any compromise of official secrets. "The destruction of classified material was accomplished while the aircrew was probably still in shock from the aircraft collision and the subsequent rapid descent of the aircraft and with very little time prior to landing," the report said. It also found that "destruction of all classified materials onboard did not occur," and concluded that "compromise by the People's Republic of China of undestroyed classified material on PR-32 is highly probable and cannot be ruled out." PR-32 was the mission designation of the U.S. plane. Materials classified as confidential, secret and top secret were, as a matter of normal practice, carried aboard the plane in papers, magnetic tapes, computer disks and computer hard drives, the report said. The incident on April 1, 2001, caused a deep rift in U.S.-Chinese relations, made worse by China's decision to detain the 24 American crew members for 11 days and not permit the United States to fly the damaged EP-3 off Hainan Island. Instead it was removed in pieces and reassembled in the United States. The Bush administration severed military-to-military relations with China, although limited ties have since been renewed. The EP-3 crew belonged to Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron One, based at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, Wash. The investigation report said they were fully qualified and ready for the mission. The EP-3 is designed to conduct reconnaissance and collect electronic signals intelligence. The Chinese F-8 fighter had intercepted the Navy plane and was maneuvering dangerously close to it as they flew over the South China Sea in international airspace. On a third close approach, the Chinese pilot lost control and slammed into the Navy plane, according to the report. The Chinese plane was ripped in half. The pilot was never found and is presumed to have perished. After the fighter struck the Navy plane's No. 1 propeller, causing the U.S. plane to shake violently and snap-roll to the left at about a 140-degree angle of bank, the aircraft commander gave the order for the crew to prepare to bail out. The plane was descending at a rate of 4,000 feet per minute until it reached an altitude of about 15,000, where it leveled off. Procedures do not require that destruction of classified material begin in that situation. After the No. 1 engine was shut down and the plane became more controllable, the crew was directed to "prepare to ditch," meaning they would stay with the plane as it went down. Although not required at that point, the crew began to destroy classified material, the report said. Some was jettisoned out a hatch, and equipment was smashed with an ax and other hard objects such as metal containers. Upon landing at a military air base on Hainan Island some remaining classified papers were shredded. The Chinese military ordered the Americans off the plane and took control of it. The investigation report said the crew had hidden some classified materials on the plane and hand-shredded some papers. "Therefore, compromise of undestroyed classified material is highly probable," it concluded. --- Associated Press writer John J. Lumpkin in Washington contributed to this report. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2003-09-16 04:16:00 140.32.120.18 Re: The China Threat U.S. Must Keep Eye on China Military Build-Up Tuesday , September 09, 2003 | Melana Zyla Vickers With all the difficulties facing U.S. forces in Iraq, it’s easy to forget that the challenges there are modest compared to those a big military power could throw in the American direction. Yet a little-noticed recent report by the secretary of defense to Congress serves as an alarming reminder that China (search) isn’t wasting any time building up militarily while the U.S. is otherwise occupied, and that the north Pacific power could present a formidable military challenge if in the future it became an outright foe. Even as the Bush administration asks Congress for billions more in Iraq funds, it needs to keep focused on big-ticket, long-term investments that will prepare the military for a future, major military threat -- whether it be China or another power. Among the areas of advancement for China, whose annual spending on defense is estimated at $45-$65 billion, and rising by 17 per cent annually: New means of projecting power beyond its borders: China has some 450 short-range ballistic missiles already deployed. It is expected to add about 75 missiles per year over the next few years, the report to Congress says. All China’s missiles are believed to be targeted at Taiwan. (search) In addition, China is replacing all 20 of its intercontinental ballistic missiles -- capable of reaching the U.S. -- with longer range versions. China is also working on a submarine-launched ballistic missile, the Pentagon report says. Anti-access, or the ability to prevent U.S. vessels’ access to certain areas, or prevent aircraft access to airspace: China’s first two Sovremennyy class guided missile destroyers (search) from Russia have been integrated into the naval fleet, the report says. It also says that China is buying two more from Russia. China has built a diesel electric sub and has bought four Kilo-class diesel subs (search) from Russia, with orders for eight more. China has produced a new nuclear-powered attack sub class called the Type 093 SSN (search), according to the report. In addition, China has plans over the next 10 years to acquire from Russia -- or develop with Russian help -- double-digit surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) (search) for a highly advanced SAM air defense system. Counter-space measures against satellites, other targets: China may have high-energy laser equipment that could be used to develop ground-based anti-satellite weapons, the report says. Information warfare: Chinese info warriors stress computer and network warfare (search) and electronic security systems, among other things. The report says they have an “unusual emphasis on a host of new information warfare forces instead of the “information superiorityâ€� and other approaches used in the U.S. In addition, information-warfare (search) reserve units in several Chinese cities are developing “pockets of excellenceâ€� that could eventually expand to form a corps of “network warriorsâ€� to defend China’s information and telecoms networks while uncovering weaknesses in those of other countries, the report says. The Pentagon needs to continue investing -- and in some cases begin investing -- in capabilities that will give the U.S. the upper hand, and that will allow the U.S. to target enemy systems that cam be moved around and hidden, that are kept deep inland and out of current U.S. reach, and those that target space. Among the investments the U.S. needs most: A long-range, stealthy bomber: Currently, the U.S. has only 16 long-range stealthy B-2 bombers. The House Armed Services Committee has shown strong interest in supporting a new bomber program. Ideally, the fighter-obsessed Pentagon will quit dragging its feet and support a new long-range, stealthy bomber A.S.A.P. Only such an aircraft could penetrate enemy airspace, reach its target deep inland from a long distance away, and deliver the kind of payload that would be necessary. A long-range, stealthy reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV): The U.S. has long range UAVs but not stealthy ones. Only a UAV with long range and stealth could operate in an environment where there are double-digit SAMS and which it had to fly to from a base far away, such as Guam, to a target deep inland. More converted Trident subs: The cruise missiles (search) fired from converted, stealthy Trident submarines would be highly effective at hitting enemy targets without the enemy knowing whence the strike came. Even more effective would be faster, ballistic missiles fired at the targets. The idea of equipping the Tridents with those missiles should be explored, and a few more Tridents (search) should be converted to this missile application also. Stealthy, long-range transport for special forces: If commandos need to operate behind enemy lines in a future, that enemy being China, only an aircraft that can fly from a base out of Chinese missile range and that can avoid Chinese air defenses will succeed in depositing the soldiers in country. The special forces don’t have such aircraft, and the Pentagon needs to invest in some. Space defenses: These might include the means of taking out enemy ground-based lasers and of finding and disabling enemy micro-satellites. The U.S. has no such capabilities right now. All that’s a tall order. But it’s essential that even as Iraq pulls at the Pentagon’s resources, it stay focused on the long-term competition -- because that’s what Beijing is doing. Melana Zyla Vickers, a columnist for TechCentralStation.com, is also a senior fellow at the Independent Women's Forum. She is a former editorial-board member of USA Today, Canada's The Globe and Mail and The Asian Wall Street Journal, and a former editor at the Far Eastern Economc Review. She has a master's degree in strategic studies and economics from Johns Hopkins University's Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. Sean Osborne (Member) 2003-09-19 02:30:00 192.172.8.18 Re: The China Threat I urge all Americans to boycott all mainland Chinese products. China is not a captalist country, nor does it engage in free-market capitalism. All indusrty belongs to the State and is controled by the State. China is a communist country, an enemy of the United States which sells its goods in capitalist nations. The profit from those sales go directly into the Chinese military buildup. We Americans in large measure hold the purse strings to the Chinese military's well-being. It is in our interest to keep tight control on how much currency the Chinese military has to play with. Here is an article from yesterdays (18 SEP 03) Washngton Times (Bill Gertz) on how the US Government is now making it easy for us not to buy Chinese-made goods. Another word for this is Economic Warfare. U.S. Tags China With Stiff Penalties By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES The State Department has imposed economic sanctions on China for its sales of missile technology, State Department officials said yesterday. "These are the strongest sanctions we've ever imposed on China," said one official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. The sanctions were imposed on the government-run conglomerate Norinco and will ban all export licenses on controlled U.S. goods to China. That ban prohibits launches of U.S. satellites on Chinese rocket booster. Additionally, the sanctions triggered a provision of the Arms Export Control Act that could lead to a ban on imports of a large number of Chinese goods into the United States. All of Norinco's products are banned from entering the United States under the new sanctions. But more severe sanctions that cover other major Chinese companies were waived for one year and could be triggered if China continues to permit its companies to sell missiles to rogue states, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Those sanctions could cost China "billions" of dollars in lost sales, one official said. "These sanctions invoke the Helms amendment," the official said. "In this case what it does is that it prevents the U.S. government from issuing any type of export license to a variety of products, including satellite launches." The 1991 Helms amendment to the arms-control act, named after Sen. Jesse Helms, North Carolina Republican, punishes nations with nonmarket economies, such as China, by extending sanctions to all companies. Invoking the amendment restricts sales to the United States of all goods that could be used in building missiles, including aircraft, electronics, and space systems or equipment. No details of the missile-related sale were made public and the identity of the missile-goods purchaser was not identified. The sanctions were announced in public documents sent to the Federal Register that will be published in today's edition of the official announcement bulletin. It is the third time in four months that China was hit with sanctions for violating U.S. laws regarding the spread of weapons of mass destruction and missile-delivery systems for those weapons. Norinco also was sanctioned in May and July. The additional sanctions are an attempt to target a company that U.S. officials have labeled a "serial proliferator" that China's government refuses to rein in. Norinco is one of China's largest state-run manufacturers and U.S. officials have estimated that recent sanctions will cause the company up to $100 million in lost U.S. sales. The weapons sanctions come amid mounting pressure from the Bush administration on China for trade and financial practices. A CIA report to Congress released in March stated that, "Chinese entities remain key suppliers of [weapons of mass destruction] and missile-related technologies to countries of concern." Norinco was punished in May with stiff penalties for selling missile-related goods to Iran's Shehid Hemmat Industrial Group, the state-owned defense contractor that builds Iran's short- and medium-range missiles. Norinco was caught selling specialty steel used in Iran's missiles in October 2002. The specialty steel sale was upsetting to U.S. officials because it took place two months after Beijing announced new export regulations aimed at curbing missile-technology sales. China's government denied the sale took place and denounced the sanctions as an attempt to hinder China's economic growth. In July, Norinco and five other Chinese companies were hit with U.S. sanctions under the 2000 Iran Nonproliferation Act for selling chemical, biological and nuclear arms and missile materials to Iran. Norinco has been identified as a China's third-largest manufacturer and its products are distributed through numerous U.S. discount retailers. Link to the Above zwergnase (Member) 2003-09-19 03:51:00 80.129.160.177 Re: The China Threat quote: I urge all Americans to boycott all mainland Chinese products. o.k. good idea, but how do you manage that, given the amount of products manufactured there? BTW, most taiwanese companies maintain factories on mainland china producing the bulk of taiwan products also there, paying taxes to the red chinese, employing their people. So you`d have to include the ally taiwan as well in the boykott.. Sean Osborne (Member) 2003-09-19 03:58:00 192.172.8.18 Re: The China Threat quote:Originally posted by zwergnase: [QB]o.k. good idea, but how do you manage that, given the amount of products manufactured there? [QB] It's a very simple process. The consumer needs only to look on the packaging of the product. If it is from the PRC is will say "Made in China". If it is from Taiwan is will say "Made in Taiwan". If the label say Made in China don't buy it. If the label says Made in Taiwan buy it. zwergnase (Member) 2003-09-19 04:02:00 80.129.160.177 Re: The China Threat quote: If the label says Made in Taiwan buy it. like i said before: the bulk of Taiwan products comes from Mainland as well.. zwergnase (Member) 2003-09-19 04:18:00 80.129.160.177 Re: The China Threat quick search turned up: quote: From virtually no hi-tech industrial foundation, Taiwan now stands as the most important PC, IC and Telecommunication manufacturing base, the fourth largest producer of hi-tech hardware products in the world. The third largest producer is Mainland China, in which about 70% of its hi-tech products are manufactured by Taiwanese investment. Taiwanese investment in Mainland produced roughly equal amount of products quote: Although the two countries do not formally recognize each other, Taiwanese companies are rapidly opening factories on the mainland and working to persuade their government to relax a host of regulations to allow even greater expansion. Taiwanese companies, for instance, are not permitted to move notebook or semiconductor manufacturing facilities to mainland China because of national security laws. Technically, Taiwanese companies are not even in China. Instead, they form shell corporations in the Cayman Islands and funnel investments to China. That's starting to change, though. "By the end of this year, the People's Republic of China will have an opportunity to take over Taiwan in terms of IT products," said Victor Tsan, director at the Institute for Information Industry, an analyst organization. Taiwan looks to China to grow high-tech operations Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2003-10-09 00:09:00 63.186.1.121 Re: The China Threat Travel agent leaks State secret The Australian ^ | October 9, 2003 | Catherine Armitage http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,7506297%255E13762,00.html CHINA plans to launch a man into space, or maybe even two or three, next Wednesday at 6am - at least according to the travel agent with exclusive rights to market tours to watch the historic launch. It's supposed to be a state secret, but anybody who responded to advertisements placed by the China Aviation International Travel Service in two Beijing newspapers this week was let in on it. "The launch is scheduled on the 15th. It's still a secret," said a tour salesman. Just under 4000 yuan ($700) buys a return flight from Beijing to the remote Gobi desert launch site in Inner Mongolia, four nights' accommodation in a four-ish star hotel and a seat to watch proceedings from 8km away on October 15. "You can't get closer in case something happened. Oh, please excuse me for saying unlucky words," said the tour agent, who gave his name as Xiong. Fear of failure and the fact it is a military mission has shrouded the project in secrecy. There was speculation the launch would be held during the top leaders' annual planning session, which runs for four days from this Saturday. An event that will propel China into the exclusive club of nations to have achieved manned space flight is seemingly too important a propaganda opportunity for the leaders to miss. According to Chinese media reports, President Hu Jintao and former president Jiang Zemin will be viewing from 7km away. "It's of great significance, a milestone of our probe into the unknown field," said Wu Zhe, deputy principal of the Beijing University of Aeronautic and Astronautic Science and Technology. Dr Wu said the mission had the same political significance as "two bombs and one satellite", a phrase used by Chinese to refer to their Cold War development of atomic and hydrogen bombs and the first Chinese satellite. Andy G (Moderator) 2003-10-09 00:59:00 209.216.94.49 Re: The China Threat Rick, Off-topic post here, so taking my chances, but sis you happen to catch last night's show about the original creation and staffing of NASA? Rather than spotlight the obvious heroes, the astronauts, it focussed on the other heroes, the engineers that made it happen. What a bunch of guys! And they were all 22/23, still wet behind the ears but balls to the wall. Heck of an inspiration. Somehow I don't see that happening again, and that's a crying shame. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2003-10-09 04:11:00 63.186.32.58 Re: The China Threat Sorry Andy, I was rather busy the last few days and haven't seen any television lately. Here's how busy I've been.... http://www.nato.int/docu/comm/2003/10-colorado/0310-colorado.htm http://www.nato.int/ http://www.nato.int/docu/update/2003/10-october/e1007c.htm Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2003-10-09 04:11:00 63.186.32.58 Re: The China Threat China in Danger of Overheating, Say Economists FT.com ^ | 10/8/2003 | Richard McGregor China's economy may be growing much faster than official economic statistics suggest and is in danger of overheating, according to an emerging consensus among foreign and local economists. The economists say a surge in investment, bank lending, construction and car manufacturing has put the Chinese economy on course to grow at about 11 per cent this year, well above official forecasts of just over 8 per cent. "Right now, it is as high as it has ever been," said Jonathan Anderson, of UBS, in Hong Kong. Using the bank's own system for measuring Chinese gross domestic product, Mr Anderson said third quarter growth was running at 14.2 per cent and would be close to 11 per cent for the year, once the slower rural economy and other factors were taken into account. Few of the economists believe that the present growth rate is either sustainable or desirable for the central government, which is now tightening credit in an attempt to rein in credit growth. UBS's view is broadly backed by some of China's best-known economists, including Wu Jinglian, of the State Council's Development Research Centre, and Zhang Jun, of Fudan University, in Shanghai. Mr Wu said at a recent seminar that China's growth for the first six months of 2003 was more than 10 per cent, compared with the official figure of 8.2 per cent, and was likely to beat the government's whole-year forecast. Prof Zhang agreed that the official figures were understating growth, saying the figure for GDP (news - web sites) could be "bigger than people have expected". China's official GDP statistics have long been criticised as inaccurate because they do not measure significant parts of the economy, use outdated methods and rely on questionable provincial data. Local officials, used to meeting targets set in a command economy, have consistently reported growth rates that outstrip the national average. The inconsistencies were most glaring during the late 1990s, when official statistics recorded high-speed expansion at a time of falling energy consumption, weak jobs growth and declining prices. This year, however, most leading economic indicators are pointing steeply upwards. Exports, property and cars accounted for about one third of the economy in terms of their value-added contribution to GDP, said Andy Xie of Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong, and all three were growing by more than 30 per cent. "One third of the economy is growing by about 30 per cent - that's about 10 per cent already," he said. Power consumption, one of the most important independent indicators of Chinese GDP growth, was up by 15 per cent so far this year compared with 2002, Mr Xie added. China's growth rate this year is especially fast in the light of the crisis over severe acute respiratory syndrome, which brought travel and much retail activity to a standstill. Malsua (Moderator) 2003-10-09 06:06:00 216.6.139.106 Re: The China Threat quote:Originally posted by Sean Osborne: [QUOTE] If it is from the PRC is will say "Made in China". If it is from Taiwan is will say "Made in Taiwan". If the label say Made in China don't buy it. If the label says Made in Taiwan buy it. Being a bit tardy in response on t his one, I just would like to state my observation. Having visited a number of factories in mainland China. Many of which were textiles, I saw name brands that are not titled "made in China". 90% of the manufacture of these goods, shirts, NFL jerseyies, Pierre Cardan, etc type of stuff. People on the floor in these places were making these things. They were even sewing tags on them that said "Made in India, Made in Indonesia, Made in Thailand and one biggie that struck me "Made in France". All this coming straight out of the depths of Guangdong. Tags are a joke. At least "The Great Wall Mart" is mostly honest(75%+ comes from China), pretty much no one else is. -Mal Wallis (Member) 2003-10-09 08:33:00 132.61.176.6 Re: The China Threat Allow me to back you up on this one Malsua. When I was working proprietary infringements, I had to investigate several Korean companies that were making/selling clothes, often knock-offs. Their factories were located in China. And the labels read exactly what you wrote AND near-perfect, if not perfect, labels of the copyright holders the Koreans were copying. Malsua (Moderator) 2003-10-09 08:47:00 216.6.139.106 Re: The China Threat quote:Originally posted by Wallis: Allow me to back you up on this one Malsua. When I was working proprietary infringements, I had to investigate several Korean companies that were making/selling clothes, often knock-offs. Their factories were located in China. And the labels read exactly what you wrote AND near-perfect, if not perfect, labels of the copyright holders the Koreans were copying. Yup, agreed. My only other contention is that these were sold as "ORIGINALS". -Mal Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2003-10-09 22:47:00 63.186.9.192 Re: The China Threat In other words, gentlemen, China IS attempting to gain economic funding from the very people they want to defeat. You made our case for us. (shrugs) Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2003-10-09 22:48:00 63.186.9.192 Re: The China Threat CHINA: The Dragon’s Dawn: China as a Rising Imperial Power strategypage.com ^ | August 28, 2003 | Geoffrey Cain http://www.strategypage.com/fyeo/qndguide/default.asp?target=CHINA.HTM CHINA: The Dragon’s Dawn: China as a Rising Imperial Power August 28, 2003: The Dragon’s Dawn: China as a Rising Imperial Power: Possessing a brutal history of foreign invasion, rape, and occupation by expanding Asian empires, most notably the Mongols under Genghis Khan, modern China has developed a sense of cultural pride through feelings of ethnic revenge and in notions of national expansion. Such an upsurge in patriotism can essentially be seen in such factors; however, in order to fully understand China as a rising power, other aspects of growth must be considered within its full international context. Increasing Defense Expenditures and Territorial Expansion In 2000, China increased its defense spending to 13 percent of its gross domestic product, followed by another augmentation to 17 percent in 2001. One analyst observed that recent purchases by Chinese generals tend to “emphasize power-projection forcesâ€� to apply military power “at a distance.â€� Though the actual reasons are decreed as protective measures by the Chinese government, some correlation can be drawn to recent maneuvers, such as its claim of 80 percent of the South China Sea, which is against international law, and by its direct colonialism over the Paracel and Spratly Islands, also in possession of Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam. A former Philippines defense minister called this a “creeping invasionâ€� when asked to comment on its possible ramifications. China has also laid claim to the Philippines’ Mischief Reef and has established military installations on four other disputed reefs; moreover, has been a notable increase in Chinese naval traffic around the Philippines’ territories that makes many countries “uneasy that China may want to resume the imperial status it had in earlier centuries,â€� according former Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. Furthermore, the Japanese government has reported that Chinese military vessels sail into Japanese waters approximately 20 times per year. This has prompted the Japanese Defense Ministry to begin a massive project for mapping its coastal seafloor to observe China’s growing fleet of submarines. This is not to mention that Japan moves 70 percent of its crude oil and fishing through the South China Sea, of which China has called for the “immediate eviction of foreign military vessels or vessels owned by foreign governments and used for noncommercial purposes that violate the laws and regulationsâ€� of China. The People’s Republic is currently gaining a number of territories through aged treaties as well, such as Britain’s Hong Kong in 1997, Portugal’s Macau in 1999, and some former Russian territories in 1997. In 2000, China forged a pact against terrorism, drug czars, and Islamic radicalism and has been helping Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan with security problems. Some analysts believe that this is a move to establish more authority in Asia and challenge the traditional U.S. dominance since World War II. This can be seen in an ancient Confucian tenet that calls for leading by example, not by force. China as the “Middle Placeâ€� The Chinese have traditionally seen themselves as the center of the world due to their history of occupation by foreign invaders. In fact, the Chinese word for “Chinaâ€� is Zhong Guo, which literally means “Middle Place.â€� In addition, the Great Wall symbolizes its sense of being besieged, as it had been conquered by the Mongols under Genghis Khan (1167-1227 A.D.), the Yuan Dynasty under Kublai Khan (1260-1368 A.D.), and by the Manchu Dynasty (1911 A.D.) from a northern invasion after the reestablishment of Ming control. It has also been under the de facto control of Japanese, European and American commercial imperialism throughout the 1900s. As one Chinese general puts it, “This was a period of humiliation that the Chinese can never forget. This is why the people of China show such strong emotions in matters concerning our national independence, unity, [and] integrity of territory and sovereignty.â€� According to the Chinese government, the U.S. is worried about Chinese economic and political growth, and thus is trying to encircle it with bases and alliances. Chinese nationalists point to its recent support of India (because China has been giving blueprints for nuclear arms to Pakistan), its recognition of Vietnam, its sales of F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan, its support of Japan as an economic powerhouse, and its support of a unified Korea under Seoul. Likewise, U.S. bases in Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan gives them evidence to support their cause against Western dominance, according to one Tsinghua University professor. It should be noted, however, that China supported the war in Afghanistan. The Taiwan Dilemma It can be asserted that China’s extravagant claims over the South China Sea are part of a plan to ultimately unify with Taiwan. James R. Lilley, former U.S. Ambassador to China, stated, “[Uniting with Taiwan] would end what China feels to be a blockade on its abilities to control its surrounding seas.â€� To them, Taiwan appears to be a Western military stronghold that is impeding its cause of Asian dominance. Moreover, China sees Taiwan as its own territory from its profligate cultural history; that is, Taiwan was originally part of China before the Communist revolution, and the original government of China fled to Taiwan upon defeat. Both the Communist and the former government believed that there was one China, but they disagreed as to who was in control. Conclusion There is a high possibility that China will one day dominate Asia through its military, economic, and political influence. Its Confucian doctrine of leading by example is currently being supplemented by a slow military expansion into islands that are not highly visible on the world stage, thus not diverting much attention to its actions. Moreover, its nuclear weapons (though not numerous) act as a deterrent from the UN or the U.S. from taking multilateral action in the area. As Chinese General Mi Shenyu puts it, “For a relatively long time it will be absolutely necessary that we quietly nurse our sense of vengeance. We must conceal our abilities and bide our time.â€� -- Geoffrey Cain Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2003-10-09 22:50:00 63.186.9.192 Re: The China Threat CHINA: Bomb Shelters and PhDs October 6, 2003: China is offering 1,600 of its "fast track" military officers the opportunity to go to graduate school. The officers will get Masters and PhD degrees in technology areas useful to ongoing military reforms. Noting the success of a similar educational program in the US (which has been in place for nearly half a century), the Chinese want to make sure that the armed forces not only gets high tech weaponry, but has officers who understand the stuff and know how to use it effectively. October 2, 2003: The government announced it would build over a thousand large underground shelters to protect people from "earthquakes and major fires." The shelters would be equipped with water, communications equipment and other supplies. The shelters could also be used in case of a nuclear war, but the government announcement did not mention that. The government announcement also didn't mention that an underground shelter is the last place you'd want to be after a major earthquake (because of the aftershocks) and that such shelters for fires is, at the very least, odd. October 1, 2003: China put its first 200 plain clothes air line police into service. In teams of two, the police fly internal routes of Chinese air lines. Another 1400 such police will enter service in the next year. http://www.strategypage.com/fyeo/qndguide/default.asp?target=CHINA.HTM September 21, 2003: Taiwan and the US have set up a "hot line" (a secure and robust communications system between government officials in both countries.) The existence of this communications system was kept quiet until recently. The system implies that America would quickly come to the aid of Taiwan if China attacked, because such "hotlines" are only created to Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2003-10-09 22:53:00 63.186.9.192 Re: The China Threat China poses biggest threat to world trade Irish Independent ^ | 9/26/03 | Anthony O' Reilly http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=36&si=1053769&issue_id=9854 WORLD leaders are at last recognising that there are huge imbalances in the world economy that threaten its future stability. The Group of Seven statement, following the recent meeting of the International Monetary Fund, that exchange rates should be fixed by market forces reflects this concern. But what is the greatest cause of these imbalances? The willingness of the American consumer to carry on buying the products of the world and thereby sustain global growth? Or the economic and trading practices of what is - on some calculations - the world's second largest economy, China? China was not explicitly mentioned in the G7 statement. Neither did it figure large in the failed trade discussions in Cancun. But I believe that the growing manufacturing might of China is, in absolute economic terms, the issue. There is a real drama that will shape our futures taking place in China. China has the capacity, the willpower, the structure and the command economy to rip the heart out of manufacturing growth in Europe and America over the next two decades. Many see this as an opportunity, and the flood of international capital into China testifies to this. China is now the largest recipient of direct investment of any country in the world. Others will argue that China creates a real opportunity, both in terms of its own marketplace and by producing goods that represent a cap on inflationary pressures in the rest of the world, most particularly in the United States and Europe. All this is elevated on the altar of globalisation to a sort of inexorable movement towards a higher plane. Let me demur. If the headlong pursuit of Chinese expansion is allowed, it will pose a very serious threat to employment in Europe and the United States, and most particularly to the US elections in 2004. George Bush will have enormous difficulty in ensuring a real expansion in employment if the present growth of Chinese trade with the US, at more than $100bn per year in terms of its trade balance (or 25pc of its trade imbalance), continues unabated. With the flood of US capital - be it from Intel, Microsoft or any of the other major new-age companies - pouring into China, a great deal of US intellectual software and manufacturing skill is also being exported to China, but without any guarantees as to its subsequent expropriation. The Chinese have waited a long time for this day, and their day has come. They are hugely inventive; they are increasingly well educated (and the flood of well-equipped students from their universities testifies to this); they accept extremely low wages and allow environmental conditions that would not be tolerated in the West. And they protect their domestic market in a manner that even the Japanese can admire. Allied to these virtues are the vices of a society in change. In what has been a command society since 1949, the laws of property, contract and, particularly, the protection of intellectual property rights are still in their infancy. No one doubts that many in Beijing wish a level playing field, but the playing field is not level, and Western companies competing with them in their own markets will find a flexibility in their application of rules that would make the WTO blanch. WalMart, the US retailer, now has more than 300 permanent buyers in China, and last year imported $12bn of Chinese goods, with the commendable aim of keeping consumer prices down. But the consumers paradoxically are conspiring in their own demise - or at least the demise of their own jobs. If WalMart were a country, it would rank ahead of Great Britain and Russia in total imports. This indicates the staggering potential of China and its capacity to move quickly. Anyone who has visited Shanghai will find a city that is among the most modern and dynamic in the world. Its architecture, work ethic and sense of commitment have almost no equal - and it is a product not of free enterprise but of the command economy. The world has decided that the aims of the WTO are best served by including China and not imposing an undue degree of surveillance on its growing economy for a number of reasons - some good, some bad. The Beijing Olympics in 2008 will be one of these, and represents an opening of the Chinese market and mind to world influence. That, in itself, is excellent. The problem is the price that will be paid by the world in employment terms if China does not play the game the way the WTO wishes it to be played. The threat is clear. There are possibly 450 million Chinese in the manufacturing economy. There are 850 million people on the bench, waiting to get into the manufacturing and services sector. A company of which I am chairman, Wedgwood, is manufacturing in China a range of ceramics equal in quality and substantially lower in price than anything we could produce in Europe or the US. The Chinese have been magnificent in their co-operation, intelligent in their application of new technique, and hugely productive. This is the model of the future, and it is a frightening one. So, what is the answer? It must be a combination of many things, but two are key. First, the Chinese have to impose and police the laws of contract, property and intellectual property rights that we enjoy in the Western world. This has to be done in the most open and transparent way through their judiciary. The judiciary has to be freed from political obligation - something that will be extraordinarily difficult in China. Second and most important of all, the hugely undervalued yuan (renminbi) must be revalued upwards, not in one immediate leap, but gradually, determinedly and as a matter of policy. These policies will work to a gradual improvement in the entire world economy. Not to follow them would be to reignite the ghost of protectionism and the Smoot-Hawley import tariff in the United States, and a range of quotas and tariffs from other trading blocs, including of course the European Union. There has been, quite rightly, an outcry following Cancun at the way the developed world has subsidised its agriculture. Each country can advance special pleading in regard to its sectional interests, be it France protecting its farmers or Japan protecting its rice growers, for political and cultural reasons. We have to recognise that China is both the problem and the opportunity. Together, China and the West can build a huge, growing and more satisfying market that will bring benefit to all, particularly developing countries, if approached gradually, sensibly and legally. The converse is the death of globalisation - the erecting of frontier barriers, the rule of clubmanship and a slow death for worldwide free enterprise. Surely the choice is obvious. Let us make the next two years a time for decision in which China must play a most active part in policing its own economy and making it responsive to the needs of our global economy. If we fail to create a more level playing field for international trade, all of us - including China - risk losing the very thing that has so vastly increased global wealth. Sir Anthony O'Reilly is executive chairman of Independent News and Media Plc. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2003-10-09 22:56:00 63.186.9.192 Re: The China Threat http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200307/30/eng20030730_121242.shtml China: Japan has an Axe to Grind (China is stressing here, lol) Despite a last-ditch protest by all the opposition parties, Japan's Upper House approved a controversial bill on Saturday to send the Self-Defence Forces (SDF) to help rebuild Iraq. Under the new law, which is valid for four years, Japan will dispatch some 1,000 of its SDF soldiers to Iraq in October. Their role will be to provide logistics support to the United States and British forces in humanitarian relief, reconstruction efforts and peacekeeping operations. The new law, for the first time, enables Japan to send its SDF troops overseas to an occupied country where war has not yet officially ended at the request of the occupying authorities, and not the country's government. Tokyo defines the objective of the Iraq assistance law as helping bring stability and democracy to the war-ravaged country. But is there any specific need to utilize the SDF in the rebuilding operations, which is banned under the peace principles of its own Constitution, not to mention the justification for the US-led invasion of Iraq, a still hotly contested issue? Under Article 9 of its post-World War II Constitution, Japan "forever renounces war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force.'' This provision has been traditionally interpreted as prohibiting the nation from exercising the right to collective defence, including joint military operations with US forces and collective security activities, such as United Nations peace-keeping operations. During the Diet -- the Japanese parliament -- debate, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said SDF troops will stay clear of combat zones and adhere to the rules of the non use of force. With the US and allied casualties caused by guerrilla attacks in Iraq occurring almost daily, it will be difficult to distinguish combat from noncombat zones amid the volatile Iraqi situation. Furthermore, there is no assurance, for now at least, that the SDF personnel will not get bogged down in combat-like scenarios where lurking dangers could necessitate the use of force. The basic question, therefore, is what role the SDF should play? Koizumi reportedly told the Diet following the enactment of the Iraq law that a permanent law should be established to define the role of the SDF in its overseas peacekeeping operations. Since the end of the Cold War Japan has been expanding its military role overseas, in particular under the banner of fighting terrorism, since the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US. To build confidence among its Asian neighbours, Japan needs to rethink its security policies on expanding its international presence. (China Daily News) Cspace (Member) 2003-10-14 03:00:00 216.242.4.172 Re: The China Threat I don't know how or if this will change the China threat but here goes anyway... Chinese Endorse Constitutional Change quote:BEIJING - China's ruling communists closed a secretive four-day meeting Tuesday aimed at pushing ahead with market reforms and said a revision to the country's constitution had been endorsed — but didn't say what it was. Diplomats and foreign analysts have said they expected the plenary session of the Communist Party to endorse a constitutional amendment guaranteeing private property in a society that officially has banned the notion since it took power in 1949. "We should protect all kinds of property ownership — and private ownership as well," China Central Television quoted President Hu Jintao as saying. "We should expand our political reform." The official Xinhua News Agency didn't give any details, saying only that the plenum approved "a proposal on revising part of the country's constitution." Neither it nor CCTV said what the constitutional change was. Hu also spoke of the importance of re-employing workers in China's industrial northeast — a crucial political priority for the Beijing government, Xinhua said. Private property rights are a key demand of China's entrepreneurs, and such an amendment would certainly encourage more private investment and initiative — which the party needs to raise living standards and keep itself securely in power. The constitutional change was to be submitted to the National People's Congress, the country's nominal legislature, for approval, Xinhua said. Such a move is procedural, given the party's absolute authority in China. The change also could enshrine the political legacy of Jiang Zemin, the retired leader who invited capitalists into the party with a theory unveiled in 2001 called the "Three Represents." Jiang is believed to desire a mention in the constitution alongside communist China's founder, Mao Zedong, and economic reformer Deng Xiaoping. The meeting closed a day before the beginning of a launch window for China's first manned space mission. The events, timed so close together, appear arranged to play up the Communist Party's role in such a patriotic accomplishment. Hu has spoken of political reform before, but usually in the context of economic progress. Few expect the dictatorship to institute any kind of bold political reforms in the immediate future. Though Hu is at the top of both party and government, China is run by a small group of powerful party members who tread carefully toward the future. Xinhua also said the plenum endorsed a decision "regarding the improvement of the socialist market economic system." It didn't elaborate. Unlike the pomp and fanfare that accompanied last autumn's party congress meeting, this year's assembly of the leadership, a lesser meeting, was shrouded in secrecy and low-balled by the state-controlled media. The meeting came at a crucial time for China's new generation of leaders. While economic growth continues, millions of Chinese — particularly in the industrial northeast — are out of work. Rural poverty remains endemic. The leadership has spearheaded the notion of creating a "well-off society" that allows most Chinese to benefit from the experiment in market forces that Deng unleashed 25 years ago. But that has not happened yet for many Chinese, and keeping growth moving and prosperity on the rise is crucial to the party's progress and efforts to maintain one-party rule over an increasingly savvy society. The leadership headed by Hu, which was installed in a gradual generational transition in the past year, earned praise Tuesday from The New York Times. "One of this year's more encouraging developments has been the more nuanced and constructive diplomatic style of China's new leadership under President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao," the Times said in an editorial. While cautioning that such attitudes could change, the Times said China's new leaders "have regularly associated themselves with more pragmatic domestic policies and more responsible international behavior." FYI, CSpace Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2003-10-15 22:55:00 63.186.9.222 Re: The China Threat From: Strategic Forecasting Alert [mailto:alert@mail2.stratfor.com] Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2003 5:29 PM To: intelbrief@mail2.stratfor.com Subject: Full Stratfor Analysis: Net Assessment: Former Soviet Union -- In Search of Revival ................................................................. Net Assessment: Former Soviet Union -- In Search of Revival The states that once comprised the Soviet Union continue to decline on all levels: Temporary economic successes cannot halt a downslide that began during the final years of the socialist republic. Moscow alone is trying to generate momentum toward regional revival through stronger ties with Europe. There appears to be a growing consensus in Moscow that not only is it impossible to retreat further geopolitically, but also that to survive as a regional power and to be able to defend its vast perimeter, Russia must pursue at least a modestly expansionist policy. Given the weakness of all erstwhile Soviet states, including Russia, the door is open for outside powers to step up pressure on the region. The United States, Europe, China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Islamic militant groups are all expanding their political clout there. The future of all the former republics will depend on whether Russia, the only post-Soviet heavyweight, can pull them out of the quagmire. Given the region's history of repeated revivals under challenging circumstances, the former Soviet Union (FSU) just might have a chance to retain its status as a global player with which to contend. Potentially Valuable but Tough Terrain Geography has been more of a liability than an advantage for the FSU. To begin with, the fact that the post-Soviet space occupies what might be the world's most strategic location has made it an arena for fighting for thousands of years. The sheer vastness and the ethnic diversity of the region make foreign relations difficult to manage. The fact that many neighboring states and distant powers alike have diverse, often conflicting, agendas in the region only adds to that challenge, as does the need to protect thousands of miles of borders. On the positive side, however, it is hard for an outsider to conquer such a vast territory -- a fact that Napoleon, Hitler and others learned too well and too late. The climate itself threatens the former Soviet republics' chances of ever attaining the standards of productivity and economic efficiency seen in developed countries. Its location in the northern latitudes means that most industries must exert greater effort than more southerly countries to produce or extract a unit of any product. For this reason, Russian and even Caspian oil exploration, extraction, refining and transportation are doomed to be significantly more costly than in the Middle East. Although Russia has access to three oceans, it lies too far north to succeed as a sea power: Most of its seaports and naval bases are iced in for months at a time. Thus, sea powers such as the United States and Britain always will have an advantage over the FSU, including Russia, in naval power and, therefore, in projecting global power. Is It Good To Be Rich in Resources? The post-Soviet space is probably the world's richest region in terms of natural resources. Someday, its combined estimated oil and gas resources might surpass those of the Persian Gulf. Ukraine's black soils are unparalleled as arable land; the future of the world's timber and wood-processing industry is tied to vast territories covered with taiga -- seemingly endless virgin coniferous forests -- in eastern Russia. And if clean, drinkable water eventually becomes the world's most precious commodity, Russia could draw upon Lake Baikal, the world's deepest lake, in eastern Siberia: It contains more potable water than all of the world's other lakes combined. Used effectively, any one of these natural resources has the potential to make the state or group of states that owns it a powerful world player. So far, however, the former Soviet republics have done a poor job of taking advantage of them. Although the high price of oil has helped keep the economies of the oil-rich states in the region afloat for the past several years, little can be said about positive effects of the abundance of natural resources in the post-Soviet space. On the contrary, the former Soviet republics have chosen to implement more complicated means of production in virtually all sectors, with poor efficiency across the board. Also, although plentiful minerals and other resources have the potential to attract outside investment and, in turn, to boost local economies, they also could attract foreign governments seeking to control those -- thus potentially adding to the region's security risks. Conflicts among former Soviet states over resources located along shared borders, such as in the Caspian Sea, are also possible. Tensions already exist among some Central Asian states over scarce resources such as water, electricity and gas. Twelve Years of Decline Overall, the former Soviet republics have made no meaningful economic or geopolitical advances since the fall of the Soviet Union about 12 years ago. In fact, many of them resemble developing nations. In Russia, living standards, among other economic measures, have dropped to "Third World" levels. For the former Soviet states, shipping ever-increasing volumes of oil to the West is bringing their economic status closer to that of Equatorial Guinea than to that of the United Arab Emirates: The profits are not being used to raise living standards, nor to build up other industrial sectors. Russia and the other former Soviet republics are simply very weak and on the slow but sure path to further decay and possible collapse. Russia alone has gained a measure of economic security, thanks to the high price of oil, but it remains very vulnerable, since global oil prices are beyond Moscow's control. Foreign investment, meanwhile, remains too low to spur the economy -- a situation that will endure until legal and economic reforms can improve what is now a somewhat chaotic environment. Investment in production, especially in the manufacturing sector, is dropping steadily. Businesses suffer a chronic shortage of capital, and while real production (except in the energy sector) dwindles, imports rise. All exports other than those of natural resources are falling. Within the decade, the production facilities comprising the bulk of what the former republics own will become too old to function. This situation is serious, since thus far virtually no new facilities and equipment have been built to replace them. It is not only the Russian economy that is in decline. So too is the country's population, which is shrinking by almost 1 million people per year. The ailing infrastructure; failing social system; rising drug use; growing incidence of AIDS, tuberculosis and other diseases and people-trafficking, slavery and other such problems all contribute to what is a systemic crisis. The military-industrial complex, too, is being downsized: In 2004, the government will reduce spending on the military-industrial complex by half the amount requested by the Defense Ministry and planned by the Cabinet. In Russia, the flight of natural and human resources as well as capital -- to the tune of $30 billion per year, according to Interpol sources -- is a steady trend. Corruption and organized crime have reached epic proportions: In 2003, 93 of the Duma's 450 members reportedly were under criminal investigation at the time of their election, and many had criminal records. For now, parliamentary immunity has put a halt to all investigations. According to documents circulated within the Duma, Russian officials gain $40 billion through corruption. There are about 10,000 organized crime groups that, having divided the whole country into various territories, take "protection" money from state and private enterprises and from foreign businesses. A source on a Russian legislative committee on internal law enforcement and security says that 16 percent of police officers are paid by criminal groups to participate in illegal activities, such as extortion and fabricating or closing criminal cases. The situation is mirrored throughout most of the former Soviet republics. The Russian Federation: More Splintering? The Russian Federation runs the risk of breaking up into smaller entities. If Russia eventually loses the war in Chechnya -- or if that battle drags on for too long -- separatists in other parts of the country likely will rally, eventually spelling the end of the federation. The potential for secession is developing in Dagestan and in other Muslim-dominated republics in the North Caucasus. There is also a chance that the Kuril Islands and the Kaliningrad region might have to be turned over to other countries. However, the surest sign that the Russian federation might split up is the fact that regions with ethnic-Russian majorities show tendencies toward secession. These include Primorsky Krai -- which encompasses Vladivostok -- Magadan and Sakhalin Island. Moldova is still not united, Georgia is breaking apart and Azerbaijan is dealing with secessionist movements among its ethnic minorities. In Ukraine, the political divide between the west and the rest remains serious, resulting in the possibility that the country might split apart along the former Russia- Austria border. The idea of a "Commonwealth of Independent States" remains mostly just that: a concept. The only organization for integration that still has a chance to succeed is the Eurasian Common Economic Space, which comprises the four most geopolitically important republics in the region: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. Pressure Builds From Outside Given the region's state of weakness, external players are looking to fill the power vacuum. These include the United States, Europe, China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Islamic militants. The United States has become the most influential foreign power in the region, with Russia now second. China is building influence in Central Asia and is slowly expanding economically and demographically into the Russian Far East. Ankara has made strides in relations with Central Asia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Moldova. Although the threat in Russia from Islamic militants is immediate, the U.S. push into the post-Soviet space remains the long-term strategic challenge for Russia, Belarus and Turkmenistan. Moscow and Washington do not see eye-to-eye on some key foreign and security policies -- including matters such as Iraq -- and they likely will have disagreements in the future. Therefore, NATO's eastward expansion and the stationing of U.S. forces in several former Soviet states could undermine Russia's national security. Nevertheless, Moscow's strategic nuclear arsenal, while it exists, guarantees that Washington, Beijing and other world players will not completely write off the country. Meanwhile, among the other former Soviet states, the struggle to decide between alignment with Russia and the United States is being replaced by the challenge of deciding between a pro- European and a pro-U.S. course. Because of fresh ties with Paris and Berlin and its serious disagreements with Washington on important security and foreign policy matters, Moscow is steering more decidedly toward greater alignment with the European Union; the other former Soviet republics are trying to befriend both camps. Weak Borders The Russian Federation cannot survive for long under current conditions. The combination of continued economic and social decline, the likelihood of political fragmentation and the growing pressure from external players eventually will lead it to repeat the fate of the original Soviet Union. If Russia loses the war in Chechnya, its disintegration as a federation is all but assured. Russia has not been able to cut off supply lines to Chechen militants from two sources: organized crime groups from the former Soviet republics and Wahhabi Muslim organizations originating in the Middle East. These lines of supply will remain functional until Russia retakes control of some of the predominantly Muslim regions of the former Soviet Union. In particular, Moscow has to regain some control over Georgia and Azerbaijan, through which supplies flow to Chechen militants. Only this would guarantee that Russia would not lose the war in Chechnya. Russia's long and porous southern border, which lacks natural barriers and defense fortifications, currently cannot be defended: Islamists from the Middle East and Central Asia easily surf through sparsely populated Kazakhstan and directly into Russia, from the Volga Region to Siberia. And these groups are working to coordinate their efforts: The Islamic Movement of Turkmenistan was recently formed, along the lines of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Also, another global Islamist group, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, has become the most popular radical group among the Central Asian populace. Russia's western borders, 80 miles from St. Petersburg and 240 miles from Moscow, are also poorly protected and easily penetrated by foreign spies, militants and other destabilizing elements. And if a major conflict with NATO were to erupt in the future, Russia would not be able to defend its capital, which lies close to the western border. What Path Will the Republics Take? Given all of these factors, it is likely that whoever is in power in Moscow will try to reverse the decline and restore some degree of influence within the former Soviet Union -- not necessarily by depriving the republics of independence but by reinstating some degree of Russian influence and control. Stratfor sources indicate that within the Russia national security establishment, a consensus is emerging that not only is there no way to retreat further geopolitically without risking the state's long-term cohesiveness, but also that Russia's borders are not defensible under current circumstances. The general notion gaining ground is that to survive as a regional power, Russia should pursue at least a modest expansionist policy. Of course, Russia and the region as a whole still have the potential to regain some ground economically, politically and in terms of self-defense. Russia still has great intellectual potential, as well as a history of quickly spearheading the turnaround of its military-industrial complex -- even though its civilian sectors might lag far behind. Russian weapons systems, even some that were merely test versions, rank among the world's best. The former Soviet states so far have made little effort, overall, to reverse their fortunes, although Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to lead an effort to regain some of his country's former prominence. His efforts do not imply that the general orientation toward the West and the implementation of market reforms will be reversed -- or at least not now, when the major changes being attempted are reining in the oligarchs and building closer ties with Europe. The trick for Moscow lies in reforming or removing the oligarchs without upsetting the only recently obtained re-entrance of foreign capital and technology into the state's economy. The oligarchs and the so-called New Russians, who have stashed billions of dollars in Western banks and have bought Western properties and businesses, are not helping the economies of their home countries. The rest of the populace in the former Soviet republics lacks the capital to make meaningful positive changes in their economies. The struggle between those who prefer the status quo -- the oligarchs are among them -- and those who want to see change is beginning to take shape in some of the former Soviet states. In Russia, it is taking the form of confrontation between oligarchs and Putin, who is supported by some in the national security establishment. The government seems to support the combination of open-market policies and state capitalism to offset what is called the "wild market" preferred by the oligarchs. The populace by far supports this fledgling policy, although it is not yet clear how far Putin will pursue it. For many Russian citizens, the struggle for revival ties into a slowly growing perception that external forces, particularly the United States, are subjugating the country. Putin and his inner circle represent a moderate faction of those trying to revive the country as the regional hegemon, but more radical ideas do exist among the opposition in Russia and in other former Soviet republics. Among the radicals, hope for integrating and reviving the former Soviet states lies in Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Polls by the Russian Federal Security Service -- the results of which remain unavailable to the public -- indicate that if presidential elections were held in a united Russia and Belarus this year, Lukashenko easily would win -- precisely because of his radical approach toward restoring the former might of the old Soviet Union. ................................................................. 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Cspace (Member) 2003-10-24 04:40:00 216.242.4.172 Re: The China Threat Who is General Cao? quote:Next week, the White House staff has to make a decision: Is there any political risk in having your boss' picture taken with the Communist Chinese military officer most associated with the proliferation of nuclear, chemical, biological and missile proliferation to terrorist countries over the past 20 years? PLA Gen. Cao Gangchuan, Communist China's defense minister, will be visiting the United States beginning tomorrow. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has to see him; he's the official host. But the real question everyone wants answered is whether Gen. Cao is going to make the Oval Office. Beijing and its Washington collaborators are making a big push for Gen. Cao to see President Bush. There is precedent here, they argue, because President Clinton had invited the last Chinese defense minister to the White House even though that one had been in operational control of the PLA forces who killed so many Chinese young people at Tiananmen Square. Gen. Cao is the PLA's weapons guy. He buys them, he makes them and he sells them. On the weapons selling side, he began as a staffer in the late 1970s, worked his way up to deputy division chief, division chief and then chief of the PLA's notorious "Office of Military Trade" by the early 1990s. From then on, with patronage from the Deng family, his career took off and under one title or another he has been the PLA's leading weapons official ever since. Let's look at the record of Gen. Cao's arms-smuggling exploits: • In the 1980s, PLA companies were busy selling Silkworm missiles to Iran. • In 1990, a Chinese arms company was caught busting the U.N. arms embargo on Iraq by smuggling rocket fuel. • In January 1990. the Chinese and Iran signed a 10-year "military technology transfer agreement." • In 1990, Sen. Joseph Biden, Delaware Democrat, pressed the State Department to explain PLA assistance to the Libyan chemical weapons complex. • In 1991, British Intelligence discovered the Chinese were secretly building a nuclear weapons plant in Algeria. • In 1992, CIA Director Robert Gates told Congress Syria was seeking chemical and biological warheads from China. • In 1993, CIA Director James Woolsey named Chinese military companies as the leading poison gas suppliers to Iran. • In 1994, German intelligence stopped another sanctions-busting Chinese rocket fuel export bound for Iraq. • In 1994, the Wall Street Journal reported that America's Defense Intelligence Agency found Communist China was secretly assisting North Korea's long-range missile programs. • In 1995, Defense News quoted from a CIA report detailing the PLA's extensive efforts to give Iran an indigenous missile capability. • In 1995, South Korean intelligence reported China's Commission on Science and Technology for National Defense (COSTIND) was training hundreds of North Korean missile engineers. • In 1996, China signed a $4.6 billion arms deal with Iran. • In 1997, German intelligence reported Chinese military companies were building a major poison gas plant in Iran. • In 1997, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright pressed Beijing twice on Chinese arms sales to Libya that were in contravention to the U.N. sanctions. • In 1997, Mrs. Albright revealed that Chinese military companies had transferred germ warfare-making equipment to Iran. • In 1999, ABC News reported Syria was receiving Chinese medium-range, mobile-launch missile technology. These are just representative samples. A true account, just from unclassified materials, would be book-length. In 1996, the CIA told the Congress that Communist China was the world's leading proliferator of Weapons of Mass Destruction, and so it remains. Since President George Bush took office in January 2001, the U.S. Government has sanctioned Gen. Cao's arms companies about 40 times for serious WMD and missile smuggling to terrorist countries. Just last month, the State Department dropped the Helms Amendment (named for former Sen. Jesse Helms) on Communist China's leading arms company for repeatedly smuggling missile parts to Iran. Beijing's Foreign Ministry is screaming that will cost them billions of dollars in U.S. sales. During all this time, Gen. Cao has been at "Ground Zero" on Chinese proliferation. He has done more than any other Chinese official, military or civilian, to make the world a more dangerous place. If he had a nickname, it would truly be "General Proliferation." Foreign defense ministers come and go in Washington almost every week. None of the defense ministers from Asia have rated an individual meeting with President Bush in the Oval Office. This includes Japan, South Korea, the Philippines or Thailand, where we have formal military alliances of longstanding. It would certainly send the wrong message for Gen. Cao to be welcomed to the White House when our closest friends and supporters have not. It is said that if you must sup with the devil, do so with a long spoon. FYI, CSpace Cspace (Member) 2003-11-11 23:36:00 216.242.4.172 Re: The China Threat China threat to Japan? Japan\'s Navy Spots Chinese Submarine Off Coast quote:TOKYO -- The Japanese Navy says it's spotted a Chinese attack submarine off its coast. The 2,000-ton Ming-class vessel was traveling on the surface through a strait about 25 miles off the southern coast of Japan's main island. It was in international waters but it's the first such sighting so close to shore. Japan said it doesn't know what the sub was up to and hasn't said whether it plans to seek an explanation from China. hmmm... CSpace Phil FiordAdministrator (Member) 2003-11-14 00:49:00 68.69.22.210 Re: The China Threat China spies arrested in Taiwan quote:Two Taiwan men arrested for spying for China 14.11.2003 - TAIPEI - Taiwan has arrested a military intelligence officer and his retired colleague on charges of spying for the island's archrival, China. A statement issued by the Defence Ministry late on Thursday said Tseng Chao-wen, 58, who retired from the Military Intelligence Bureau 15 years ago, was suspected of working for China's national security authorities to collect information in Taiwan. Tseng had gained access to classified information through bureau officer Chen Sui-chiung, 55, the statement said, without giving details on the secrets the two had gathered. The statement made no mention of Chen's rank and job responsibilities, but said Tseng was mainly responsible for educational training and administrative work when he was in service. "The damage has been effectively brought under control," the statement said. Taipei and Beijing have been spying on each other since a split at the end of a 1949 civil war. Beijing considers Taiwan a breakaway province and has vowed to attack the democratic island of 23 million if it declares independence or drags its feet on unification talks. Last September, Taiwan prosecutors indicted a retired serviceman, his wife and their navy sergeant son for spying for China, in the island's most notorious espionage scandal in nearly 50 years. In Taiwan's most famous spying scandal, a vice defence minister was executed in the early 1950s for providing China with the island's combat plans. Beijing executed a major-general and a senior colonel in 1999 for spying for Taiwan. - REUTERS Cspace (Member) 2003-11-19 02:12:00 216.242.4.172 Re: The China Threat China is now stating that the 'use of force' may be unavoidable IF Taiwan continues to seek Independance. China Warns Taiwan Against Independence quote:BEIJING - In unusually strong language, China ratcheted up the rhetoric against Taiwan in remarks published Wednesday and threatened that "the use of force may become unavoidable" if the island's leaders pursue independence. The warning from Beijing came as Taiwan prepares to elect a new leader in March. President Chen Shui-bian, running for office again, has won over more voters since he came up with plans for a new constitution and a law on referendums that could conceivably lead to citizens voting on Taiwanese independence. Wang Zaixi, a top mainland official who deals with the Taiwan issue, said curbing any efforts the island makes toward independence is the ultimate goal of the mainland, which will go to war if necessary. "If the Taiwan authorities collude with all splittist forces to openly engage in pro-independence activities and challenge the mainland and the one-China principle, the use of force may become unavoidable," Wang was quoted as saying in China Daily, an English-language newspaper with a wide foreign audience. Separatists will "pay a high cost if they think we will not use force," said Wang, vice minister of the Taiwan Affairs Office of China's Cabinet. "Taiwan independence means war." Wang, who was speaking at a seminar on cross-straits relations, also tempered his remarks by adding that "the people of Taiwan are our brothers and sisters. We are not willing to meet at the battleground." The Chinese Cabinet's Taiwan Affairs Office in Beijing had no immediate comment on Wednesday. The Mainland Affairs Council in Taipei was silent hours after Wang's remarks were published — a rare move from a normally responsive government. The United States, which has relations with China but supplies arms to Taiwan, called for calm. "The United States continues to urge Taiwan as well as the People's Republic of China to refrain from actions or statements that increase tensions or make dialogue more difficult to achieve," the U.S. Embassy in Beijing said in a statement. "The United States does not support Taiwan independence." Beijing has long threatened the use of force against Taiwan if it formally declares independence, but rarely so dramatically. The two sides split amid civil war in 1949, and Beijing insists that Taiwan belongs to China and must accept eventual unification. But the language, the strongest in years, was unusual even in that context. Yan Anlin, a professor with the Shanghai Institute of Taiwan, said China has been forced to underscore its position in recent weeks. "China's message to Taiwan is very clear: Independence is intolerable," Yan said. "Both Chen Shui-bian and his party should know that Beijing had no other choice but to warn Taiwan's leaders because of Chen's recent remarks on independence." In his speech at a seminar on cross-straits relations, Wang also condemned Chen's introduction of a new constitution and referendums as "extremely dangerous behaviors." Chen is using campaign tools "to get himself re-elected and to push our Taiwanese compatriots to the brink of conflict with the motherland," Wang was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua News Agency. When Chen ran for president in Taiwan in 2000, he was the candidate that Beijing disliked most because his opposition party had called for independence. Then-Premier Zhu Rongji warned Taiwan voters that a Chen victory could lead to war. Bruce Jacobs, a professor of Asian languages and studies at Monash University in Victoria, Australia, said China risked doing itself more harm than good with its saber-rattling. "Every time they've made threats, the people of Taiwan have voted against what China wants," he said. He added: "What's happening in Taiwan is major change. The leaders and the people are exploring different options for a future. ... They're moving away from a sense of China." Last month, Beijing condemned Taiwan's leaders for flirting with independence but stopped short of threatening war. On Tuesday, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said the U.S. government would deploy sufficient force in the Asia-Pacific area to lower tensions between China and Taiwan. He also offered assurances that President Bush (news - web sites)'s administration would provide Taiwan with "sufficient defense articles for her self-defense." The United States closed its embassy in Taiwan in 1979 when it cut formal ties and recognized China. But Washington has also implicitly promised to help the island defend itself and is Taiwan's biggest arms supplier. "We have full faith that the question of Taiwan will be resolved peacefully," Armitage said. FYI, CSpace Phil FiordAdministrator (Member) 2003-12-09 13:59:00 68.69.22.249 Re: The China Threat More on China and prisoners... LINK quote:China trains 'net police' Correspondents in Washington DECEMBER 03, 2003 CHINA'S communist authorities are training "internet police" to trace political dissidents using the world wide web to evade state censorship, exiled dissident Xu Wenli claimed today. Despite the releases of three "cyber-dissidents" in recent days, Beijing has opened up a new front against online dissent, Xu warned in a speech in Washington. "Before they used to sentence people because they spoke to a newspaper abroad or spoke to VOA (Voice of America)," said Xu, through a translator. Recently, dissidents had been jailed simply because they were using the internet to disseminate or read political views, he said. "Lately people who have gotten online have been arrested and sentenced," he said. "A lot of students are training as internet police online to censor articles. This is a very dangerous signal for us." Chinese Internet dissident Liu Di, who used the online name Stainless Steel Mouse, was released from Qincheng Prison on parole on Friday after spending a year behind bars. Also released in recent days were Li Yibin, 29, who ran a website called Democracy and Liberty and Wu Yiran, 34, a graduate of Shanghai's Jiaotong University. The cases drew widespread attention both in and outside of China as a reflection of the government's policy to severely curb any political opposition to the ruling Communist Party on the Internet. Liu was apparently jailed after posting several articles on Chinese Internet sites satirising the government and the Communist Party's alleged refusal to protect the freedoms of speech and the press as stated in China's Marxist constitution. Human rights activists say that despite the release of the three dissidents, scores more people remain behind bars for Internet-related offences in China. Xu was released on medical parole in China late last year from a 13-year jail sentence handed down for subversion in 1998 and went into exile in the United States. He had previously been imprisoned for his political beliefs for some 16 out of 20 years, enjoying only a brief period of freedom between 1993 and 1998. Phil FiordAdministrator (Member) 2003-12-09 14:06:00 68.69.22.249 Re: The China Threat http://apnews.myway.com/article/20031210/D7VB65P00.html Unbelievable... Bush sided with the Chinese over Taiwan. Or so it seems. I would say that GWB really just kept the table open, but I still wonder about this matter. China is a threat and it is proven. quote:Bush Warns Taiwan on Independence Dec 9, 7:03 PM (ET) By GEORGE GEDDA WASHINGTON (AP) - With visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao at his side, President Bush sent a strong warning to Taiwan on Tuesday not to take any action toward independence that could cause new tensions with Beijing. "We oppose any unilateral decision by either China or Taiwan to change the status quo," Bush said when asked about a planned March 20 vote in Taiwan on China. "And the comments and actions made by the leader of Taiwan indicate that he may be willing to make decisions unilaterally to change the status quo, which we oppose." The planned March referendum, coupled with a changing international situation, has led Bush to speak in harsher tones to democratic Taiwan as he pursues a deeper relationship with authoritarian China, particularly on security issues. Bush apparently senses that an unstable situation in the Taiwan Strait could be dangerous, particularly with U.S. forces stretched thin because of Iraq and with a potentially explosive situation in North Korea. The planned referendum would ask the people of Taiwan if the government should demand China's withdrawal of hundreds of missiles pointed at the island. U.S. officials believe the vote could push Taiwan closer to independence. In Taipei, the capital, Foreign Minister Eugene Chien said: "The United States doesn't want our referendum to affect the stability in the Taiwan Strait. We fully understand this." He spoke Monday in response to news accounts quoting a U.S. administration official as criticizing Taiwan's referendum plans. Wen stopped short of repeating the military threats that China has leveled at Taiwan in response to the referendum. He did accuse Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian of using democracy as an excuse to pursue independence, saying the president was using the referendum "to split Taiwan away from China. Such separatist activities are what the Chinese side can absolutely not accept and tolerate." Bush reaffirmed the long-standing U.S. view that there is only one China, and differences between the mainland and Taiwan, which Beijing considers a rebellious province, should be resolved peacefully. The United States, under the Taiwan Relations Act, has pledged to defend Taiwan if it is attacked by the mainland. No administration has ever spelled out precisely under what circumstances it would use force. Bush took office almost three years ago intent on pursuing a more pro-Taiwan policy than President Clinton. Just weeks after becoming president, Bush said he would do whatever it took to protect Taiwan against a Chinese attack. Bush and Wen met for about 40 minutes and later had lunch at the White House with aides. Outside, about 50 members of the Falun Gong protested China's ban on the spiritual movement several years ago. One demonstrator carried a banner saying, "Falun Gong: an ancient meditation practice based on truthfulness, compassion, tolerance." Earlier, during an arrival ceremony on the South Lawn that featured a 19-gun salute, Bush gently chided China on human rights and Beijing's economic policies. "The growth of economic freedom in China provides reason to hope that social, political and religious freedoms will grow there as well," Bush told Wen. "In the long run, these freedoms are indivisible and essential to national greatness and national dignity." China joined the World Trade Organization two years ago. The administration has been pushing Beijing to speed up market-opening measures and relax controls on its currency, which it contends make Chinese exports unfairly cheap on world markets. "We recognize that if prosperity's power is to reach into every corner of China, the Chinese government must fully integrate into the rules and norms of the international trading and finance system," Bush said. Wen acknowledged the U.S. trade deficit with China - projected at $120 billion for this year, which would be the largest ever with any country - and said he was carrying a proposal to help ease it. He gave no details. No issue has brought the United States and China together more than North Korea. Both countries are eager to see a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula, although the Bush administration's public passion for achieving that goal dwarfs that of China. In August, China served as host for six-party talks aimed at achieving North Korean disarmament and is playing a key role in trying to arrange for a second, and perhaps decisive, round. As an increasingly powerful neighbor of North Korea and chief donor of economic aid, China is ideally positioned to push the process. An intense diplomatic effort is under way to work out a statement under which North Korea would commit itself to dismantle its nuclear programs in exchange for security assurances and economic benefits. Bush said North Korea was discussed extensively at the meeting, but he gave no details. To some, it seemed incongruous for Bush to side with the unelected leaders of China instead of the elected leaders of Taiwan. John Tkacik, an Asia expert at the Heritage Foundation, said it was inconsistent for Bush to deliver a pro-democracy foreign policy speech a month ago only to "tell people of Taiwan they can't elect a president who reflects their will." Malsua (Moderator) 2003-12-15 00:55:00 208.249.136.2 Re: The China Threat All of us here at Anomalies that were paying attention knew a year ago that the Chinese built the Iraqi air defense systems and were helping Iraq keep it up. Now it's in a major newspaper. -------- Officer says China aided air defenses LONDON — Chinese military advisers played a key role in helping Iraqi air defenses withstand coalition air strikes in the months preceding Operation Iraqi Freedom, an Iraqi colonel says. Lt. Col. al-Dabbagh, whose revelations about Saddam Hussein's battlefield weapons of mass destruction capabilities were revealed exclusively last week in the Sunday Telegraph, said he worked with a number of Chinese air-defense specialists during 2002 and the early part of this year to devise methods to stop coalition air strikes from destroying Iraq's air defenses. "They arrived in the spring of 2002," said Col. al-Dabbagh, who commanded an air defense unit in Iraq's western desert. "They were personally greeted by Saddam and seemed very happy to be in Iraq. A couple of them even grew moustaches and wore [Arab scarves] around their heads so that they would look more like us." Saddam is believed to have made a secret military deal with Beijing — which opposed the Iraq war at the United Nations Security Council — in late 2001 after allied warplanes, which were then patrolling the no-fly zone in southern Iraq, attacked and destroyed several Iraqi radar installations. "Saddam went absolutely crazy," Col. al-Dabbagh recalled. "He said, 'If we don't do something fast there will be no radar left in Iraq.' " Initially, the Iraqis recruited about a dozen Serbian air-defense specialists, who were each paid $100,000 a month to help devise a method to protect Iraq's air defenses from attack. But their contract was terminated when their attempts to devise a mobile radar system failed because they could not find a truck large enough to carry the equipment. According to Col. al-Dabbagh, the Chinese were more successful and devised a sophisticated decoy device that directed missiles fired by allied warplanes to the wrong targets. "The Chinese device only cost $25, but it was very successful," said Col. al-Dabbagh. "The American pilot would return home thinking he had hit three of our radar units, when in fact all he would have hit were three $25 decoys." Col. al-Dabbagh, who is now in hiding in Iraq after death threats following last week's revelations, said Saddam was delighted with the device and personally thanked the Chinese technicians, who performed an Oriental dance in honor of the dictator. Malsua (Moderator) 2004-01-20 09:53:00 216.6.139.106 Re: The China Threat For what it's worth. It looks like I'll be headed back to China on the 31st of this month. That may get pushed a few weeks due to certain shipment schedules. Also contingent is that my Visa comes back in time and I'm confident that it will. I'm told that in the 6 months or so since my last visit, I won't be able to recognize the area around our factory due to the volume of growth that has occured in Fuyong. That's going to be astonishing. China is definately an economic tiger. I also intend to note attitudes and such as there's been some tension in the near term past between China and the USA. Should prove interesting. I'll probably get an evening at the Kowloon night market. Anyone want any cheap junk? Lol. -Mal Cspace (Member) 2004-01-27 03:03:00 216.242.4.172 Re: The China Threat France Makes Headway in Push to Permit Arms Sales to China quote:PARIS, Jan. 26 — France pushed the European Union on Monday to lift a 14-year ban on weapons sales to China and succeeded in putting the issue on the organization's agenda for the spring. "The hope is that it will happen in April," said a French diplomatic official after a meeting of European Union foreign ministers in Brussels. He noted, however, that several influential European countries favor maintaining the ban. The embargo was imposed in response to the Chinese military's killing of pro-democracy demonstrators near Tiananmen Square in 1989. The United States imposed a similar embargo. But France and Germany have both argued that China has made sufficient strides since then in reforming its government and economy to warrant the resumption of weapons sales. "When you look at the countries subject to similar E.U. sanctions, the question is whether China should be in the same company," the French official said. Besides China, the European Union maintains weapons embargoes against Myanmar, Sudan and Zimbabwe. But France's effort, coming as the country received the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, with a lavish ceremony, was derided by some officials, who argue that China's human rights abuses remain too glaring to overlook. "A desire to curry favor with the Chinese president during his state visit to France is no excuse for rethinking a long-standing European policy rooted in principle," Graham Watson, head of the Liberal Democrats in the European Parliament, said in a statement. In fact, France stands to benefit handsomely if it succeeds in ending the arms embargo. China, the world's fastest-growing major economy, has one of the largest defense budgets in the world and is spending heavily to modernize its armed forces. Because of the Western arms embargoes, the country has been largely restricted to buying Russian military hardware in recent years. But Beijing has a long list of items it would like to buy from Europe, particularly French Mirage fighter jets and German stealth submarines. The European Union foreign ministers agreed Monday to reconsider the ban and referred the issue to a panel of experts. But there was no indication that there would be substantive progress before the next summit meeting at the end of March as France would like. The Netherlands, for one, has a standing parliamentary resolution that keeps the ban in place until there is clear evidence that human rights in China have improved. Even Germany, which in December joined France in calling in principle for an end to the embargo, indicated Monday that the time was not yet ripe. "The German government does not feel ready now to lift the ban," the Reuters news agency quoted Germany's foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, as saying. There is some concern that lifting the embargo now would add a destabilizing note to Beijing's relations with Taiwan, already strained by a plan put forth by Taiwan's president, Chen Shui-bian, to hold a national referendum in March on whether to demand that China remove missiles facing the island and renounce the use of force. China maintains that Taiwan is a province under its sovereignty and that the island's political separation from the mainland is a historical anomaly left over from the country's 1949 civil war. Beijing demands fealty to that position by all countries with which it maintains relations. President Jacques Chirac dutifully repeated his country's commitment within hours of Mr. Hu's arrival in Paris on Monday. "France is attached to the principle of there being one China," Mr. Chirac said when Mr. Hu raised the issue at the start of a four-day state visit, according to the French president's spokeswoman. France has pulled out the stops for Mr. Hu's visit, lighting the Eiffel Tower red — China's national color. France is the only European country Mr. Hu is visiting on his four-nation tour, which will continue in Africa. FYI, CSpace Malsua (Moderator) 2004-02-13 13:01:00 216.6.139.106 Re: The China Threat quote:Originally posted by Malsua: For what it's worth. It looks like I'll be headed back to China on the 31st of this month. I'm back! Heh. I put my pictures up and indeed...around my factory there's about 6 new buildings going up. Friggin amazing. This link goes to about 8 megs of pictures. -Mal Mal\'s China pics Malsua (Moderator) 2004-03-09 14:27:00 216.6.139.106 Re: The China Threat I'm headed back to China this Friday 3/12/04. I suspect even more growth will have occured in the past month. I'll try to compare and contrast images. My suggestion is thus...if you ever get a chance to go to Hong Kong, or the Great Wall, do it. Otherwise China isn't somewhere all that great. -Mal Lazarus Starr (Moderator) 2004-03-09 15:14:00 24.10.195.167 Re: The China Threat Have a safe trip Mal. See you when you get back. Your frequent flyer miles must really be stacking up by now. lol -Laz Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2004-03-13 16:57:00 66.161.247.117 Re: The China Threat Mal, I never got a chance to say thanks for the very interesting pictures! Have a safe trip by the way! And on the news front… More activity by our Communist buddies down in South America! China Interfering In Salvadoran Election, Salvadoran President Flores Charges quote: With polls showing the race tightening in El Salvador's March 21 elections, President Francisco Flores accused China in an interview of intervening in his country's affairs by aiding leftist presidential candidate Shafik Handal. In addition, Flores told The Miami Herald that Handal's Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front has been receiving large caches of weapons in recent weeks from Latin American leftist groups that he declined to identify. He said the FMLN may use these weapons to create chaos, and thus discourage a large turnout on election day. Flores' government-backed right-of-center candidate Tony Saca is leading in the polls, but analysts say a small turnout could badly hurt his chances. The followers of Handal, a former guerrilla commander whose group laid down its weapons in a 1992 peace agreement, are widely seen as committed voters who are almost sure to vote on election day. "If Shafik Handal were to win, El Salvador would abandon the system of economic and political freedoms, and adopt the Cuban model," said Flores, one of Latin America's leaders who has been most critical of Cuban strongman Fidel Castro. "Today, the FMLN is in hands of the Communist Party." Senior FMLN officials admit to having received campaign donations from China, but deny the charges that they tried to import weapons. And Handal, in a recent interview, said he would significantly strengthen ties with Cuba if elected, but rejected allegations that he wants to copy the Cuban model in El Salvador. According to the Salvadoran government, China's Economic Cooperation Center, a branch of the ruling Communist Party, has delivered two containers filled with computers, cameras, 76,440 FMLN-emblazoned T-shirts, caps and other trinkets to the Handal campaign. The first container arrived Nov. 26 at the Salvadoran port of Acajutla, and the second one arrived in early January, Salvadoran officials say. Sigfrido Reyes, an FMLN congressman who heads the party's international affairs department, concedes that the items in the containers were a "donation from the Chinese Association of Friendship with the Peoples." He said the group "has relations with the Chinese government, but isn't part of the government." Reyes added that Taiwan is known to make large campaign donations to friendly political parties, although he said he cannot prove that the Saca campaign has received such help. El Salvador is among a few countries that do not have diplomatic relations with mainland China, but with Taiwan. While the containers were originally documented as purchases by the FMLN campaign, their real value is millions of dollars, way above that declared in customs documents, Salvadoran officials say. "This (Chinese support) is an intolerable interference in our country's internal affairs," Flores said. Regarding the weapons, Flores said shipping documents show that a cargo of 288 guns found in a Salvadoran airport warehouse was bound for the FMLN-controlled municipality of Mejicanos. The seven-box weapons shipment had left Jan. 28 from Porto Alegre, Brazil, and gone to Peru and Costa Rica before arriving in El Salvador, Salvadoran officials say. Flores said the weapons were for 300 people, far more than the number of security agents in Mejicanos. "That sounded alarm bells to me," he said. Reyes said the guns were marked as going to the Mejicanos municipality "because of a mistake in the labeling." He added that they were purchased by a private security firm, "and were never bought by the Mejicanos mayor's office, nor supposed to go there." "The president is making highly irresponsible statements," Reyes said. "The country's president is supposed to take some distance from the heat of the electoral race. He's supposed to serve all Salvadorans." A poll released March 1 by the Jesuit University shows that Saca, a former sports announcer turned businessman, has about 46 percent of the vote, followed by Handal with 25 percent. But skeptics note that Salvadoran polls have been wrong before, mainly because large numbers of Salvadorans don't show up to vote on election day. The FMLN has won El Salvador's last two congressional elections, and the last three mayoral elections in San Salvador, the capital. If no candidate wins 50 percent of the vote on March 21, the two leading presidential hopefuls will go to a runoff election in late April. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2004-03-13 17:13:00 66.161.247.117 Re: The China Threat I’ve also got two interesting pictures that I happened across on FR. The first is of the former Russian Varyag: It looks like she’s getting cleaned up fairly quickly. And these new boats: These would be Lanzhou-class DDGs, the equivalent to our Aegis-class DDGs. Also note the stealth characteristics incorporated into their design. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2004-03-13 17:30:00 66.161.247.117 Re: The China Threat And something interesting that I just so happened to come across on FAS. PLAN Project 9935 [Aircraft Carrier] - Version 1.2 (10 February 2004) (Note the recent date on this information.) quote: PLAN Project 9935 [Aircraft Carrier] Version 1.2 (10 February 2004) Section 1: General Characteristics: Full Load Displacement: 48,000 tons (stated) Standard Displacement: 44,700 tons (estimated from Orel data) Light Displacement: 35,000 tons (estimated from Orel data) Maximum Displacement: 52,750 tons (estimated from Orel data) Overall Dimensions: 288x71x9 meters (calculated from Gorshkov data) Waterline Dimensions: 254x33x9 meters (calculated from Gorshkov data) Flight Deck Dimensions: 288x67.5 meters (calculated from Gorshkov data) Angled Flight Deck Dimensions: 220 meters long (standard length); 6.5 degree angle Hanger Dimensions: 144x68 meters = about 9,800 sq. meters (estimated from Orel data) Draft: 9 meters nominal, 10 meters maximum (same for all classes in design series) Full Speed: 28 knots (stated; confirmed by calculation from Gorshkov data) Machinery: Type: Geared Steam Turbines driving 4 shafts (same for all classes in series) Machinery: Turbines: 4xRussian TU-12 55,000 hp maximum (49,750 hp sustained) Machinery: Boilers: 8xRussian KVG-4 turbopressurized (640 kg/cm sq., 500 deg. C) Machinery: Total SHP: 220,000 hp maximum (199,000 hp sustained) Ski Jump: 15 degrees, 2 runs of 105 meters and 1 run of 170 meters (estimated from Orel data and from model of class) Arrester gear: 3 wire, 14 meter spacing Catapult: 1 (on angled deck) about 85 meters long of about 30 tons capacity (estimated from model of class and maximum weight of Su-27 aircraft family) Hanger Capacity: 30 Su-27 class aircraft (stated to be “30-40â€� but calculated lower from hanger deck dimension estimate and aircraft data) Note 1 Air Group: 30-40 (stated) See Section III [No evidence of dedicated air groups forming] Anti-Shipping SSM: 8xUnknown. (stated) Probably YJ-12. Possibly C-803 in lead unit. Point Defense SAM: 8xLY-60N (Aspede) mountings, 24 missiles each (2 per quarter) Point Defense Guns: 12xType 69 Twin Gatling Guns (3 per quarter, 5 km range) Early Warning Radar: Russian Top Pair 3D MR-800 Voskhod Air Search Radar: Russian Top Plate 3D (dual radar antenna, back to back) D/E band Surface Search/Air Search Radar: Type 363 E/F band Surface Search Radar: Type 364 (ESR 1) I band; Navigation: 2xDecca 1290 I band Aircraft Control Radar: 2xFly Trap B G/H band; Tacan: Cake Stand Target Acquisition Radar: 2xRussian MR 700 Frecat Fire Control Radar (Missile): 4xChinese LL-1 Fire Control Radar (Gun): 4xChinese GDG-775 (radar/tv/laser/ir) directors Passive ECM/ESM: Type 826 plus 2 PJ-46 decoy launchers and 8 Chaff launchers Laser Warning: 6xHalf Cup Active ECM: Type 984 I band jammer; Type 985 E/F band jammer SATCOM: Thomson CSF Tavitac Sonar: DUBV-23 (hull mounted search and attack, medium frequency) (PLAN standard) Note 1: The hanger has four tracks for moving aircraft (same for all classes in series) Type 9935 Page 2 Section 2: General Description: Project 9935 is probably based on a Russian Nevskoye Design Bureau design contracted for in 1994. An article published in China says that the final design was made by Hudong Shipyard, Shanghai in 1999. The ship is a modified Russian Admiral Ghorshkov carrier “to Chinese specifications.â€� The ship is scaled up only about 6%. Significant changes are the mounting of all PRC point defenses and associated fire control systems, the mounting of a steam catapult on the angled flight deck, and modification/updating of the electronic suite. The Chinese article says that formal authorization to build a carrier was made in 1992. This apparently refers to legislation passed in that year which authorized “two aircraft carriers.â€� Three covered graving docks were constructed at Shangahi and eyewitness reports indicate all three now have carriers building in them. Another source says the lead ship launched in 2002 and was expected to complete about 2004. The Chinese article says the lead ship should “commissionâ€� in 2006 and that a “battle groupâ€� should form “by 2010.â€� These appear to be very conservative dates. Evidence strongly suggests that these ships are intended to be a technical surprise in several senses, including initial operating dates. The 2006 date is more realistic for the first carrier group. All three ships could be operational with battle groups by 2008-2010. The Chinese article says that maintenance facilities have been built at Shanghai, Dailan and Zhejiang. From this, and PLAN organization, it appears each fleet will be allocated a single carrier. The operational concept of these aircraft carriers differs from that of other nations. Aircraft carriers are not seen as the “coreâ€� of the fleet. Rather submarines are. Instead, carriers have a primary fleet defense mission: to provide air and anti-submarine defense for surface forces, especially amphibious flotillas and logistic convoys. There is a significant secondary offensive strike mission, indicated by the mounting of SSMs and also inherent in the ability of fighter-bombers to carry offensive weapons. However, it appears that the carriers are not intended for distant power projection operations in the sense US CVNs are. Designed to operate near PLAN bases, they are to be offshore aviation platforms for a mainly land based naval air force. [See Section 3 below]. This may mean the aviation staying power of these ships is much greater than would normally be expected if they operated dedicated air groups. Further, in the absence of the need to buy aircraft and train crews for them, the unit cost of the carriers is lower than otherwise would be the case, while the cost of lost maintenance assets is also less, should a carrier be sunk. This is an imaginative, but very reasonable, application of naval air power to the essentially regional requirements of the PLAN. Project 9935, Page 3 Section 3: Air Group Concept: There is no evidence that dedicated air groups are forming for the PLAN carriers. Nevertheless, the capacity to be building three ships simultaneously was created by construction of three covered graving docks at Shanghai. At the same time, all PLAN fixed wing fighter and attack pilots have been required to “carrier qualifyâ€� on a mock up of the flight deck of HMAS Melbourne. Given this mock up is at a PLAAF base, it may be that PLAAF pilots also have been practicing deck landings. The investment in the carrier project also involved building maintenance facilities, purchase of foreign aircraft carriers for study and the purchase of foreign aircraft carrier designs from Spain and Russia. These investments, combined with the reported laying down of actual hulls, combine with the lack of newly-formed air groups for the ships to imply that existing air units will be assigned to them. In this context, the description of an “air groupâ€� for the new carriers is an entirely operational concept. Actual aircraft compliment will be determined by mission requirements and availability. But since “availabilityâ€� is in the context of the fleet, as reinforced by other fleets and even by the air force or army aviation corps, it should result in a much greater likelihood even a large mission requirement can be met. Further, the ability to operate on a sustained basis should be much greater than would be possible for any air group dedicated to the ship. It is probably useful to understand the direction in which Chinese air force organizations are moving. Aircraft are organized by types, with fixed wing combat aircraft mainly assigned to air divisions, while rotary wing and specialized fixed wing machines are assigned to independent squadrons. For fighter/attack types, air divisions are typically subdivided into two (formerly three) air regiments, which is the operational unit. Each regiment has two (formerly three or four) “flying unitsâ€� with a nominal compliment of 10 aircraft, and a “maintenance unitâ€� which actually “ownsâ€� all the aircraft of the regiment. In practice, a flying unit will operate 2, 4 or 8 aircraft, as required by a mission. Because the flying unit has 30-50% more pilots more than its nominal size requires, it is even theoretically possible a 12 aircraft mission could be flown. PLAAF regiments also include a “training unitâ€� which operates dissimilar as well as similar machines, including turbo-prop trainers on which unlimited flying is permitted. The PLAN appears to have concentrated training assets in a single air division, and it is not clear if there is also a training unit in each regiment. But in both cases, navy and air force fighter/strike air divisions with newer combat aircraft operate two air regiments each of which has two flying units (squadrons). A normal full scale regimental strike would involve up to 16 aircraft. This is the practical limit in the PLAN, because often the regiment only has 18 machines. But PLAAF regiments have 24 machines, so strikes of 20 or 24 aircraft are theoretically possible, especially on initial missions in any conflict. Helicopters tend to operate singly or in small detachments, as required. Project 9935, Page 4 [Section 3: Air Group Concept, Continued] Project 9935 ships appear designed to facilitate operations by two flying units simultaneously, with up to six helicopters (fueled and armed) in deck park in addition. [The helicopter deck park is forward of the island structure. Helicopters in this location are stowed with rotors folded aft.] The ships have the ability to have two fighters in position for take off runs up the angled deck plus four aircraft parked beside the long island structure (photographic evaluation of Adm. Kuznetzov operations during evaluation operations with Chinese and Indian observers). There is sufficient deck for up to four additional machines aft of the island. At the same time, a different flying unit would have access to the angled flight deck, and its catapult. If operated in this mode, both elevators are unavailable for use, being used as additional deck park space. More normally, one flying unit, plus some helicopters, might be operating. Apparently it is normal to use only the aft elevator, as trucks or helicopters normally are parked on the forward one. Even so, it is apparent a single Project 9935 ship could have elements of two regiments embarked, one on the flight deck, one on the hanger deck. As described above, a regimental strike would normally involve up to 16 aircraft. A more typical operational aircraft compliment would probably involve a single regiment of fighter/attack aircraft. This would typically be 8 or 16 aircraft, depending on the mission requirement. One also would expect a compliment of 4-8 ASW helicopters, a detachment of 2 SAR helicopters and a detachment of 2 AEW helicopters. If the newest aircraft available to the Navy were assigned, one would expect the jets to be a carrier variant of the Su-30 (two batches of 20 ordered in 2003 for the PLAN) plus variants of the Ka-28 Helix. If older aircraft are operated, one might encounter J-6 (MiG-19), J-7 (MiG-21) or J-8 fighters (two engine mod of MiG-21), JH-7 (Chinese design) or Q-5 (mod MiG-19) attack aircraft, and Z-8 (Super Frelon) or Z-9 (Dauphin) helicopters. If Army Aviation Corps helicopters were embarked, the most likely would include Mi-181 transports and the attack variant of the Z-9. Section 4: Strike Operations: PLAN literature concludes that it takes 8 to 10 cruise missile hits to disable a US CVN. At the same time, they require an average of 4 cruise missile hits on half the escorts of the enemy battle group. To achieve this, they estimate 70 to 100 cruise missiles should be launched on three or more threat axis. If a carrier were to participate in such an attack, it and its escorts would launch 24-40 cruise missiles as one component while an air regiment would deliver about 32 cruise missiles on another axis. The remainder would have to come from surface action groups and submarines. It is very difficult to coordinate launching such multiple attacks simultaneously. The critical issue is detecting and tracking the enemy target task force. If this can be achieved, probably by satellite or MR aircraft, and if all elements of the attacking force could reach firing position before being engaged, this (Russian) attack concept is potentially effective. Project 9935, Page 5 Section 5: Possible Carrier Battle Group: With one carrier nearing commissioning and a second unit launched, it is noteworthy the PLAN operates 2 Sovremenny class DDGs and will obtain 2 more by 2005. This might imply an intention to form up 2 DDGs with area defense SAMs with each carrier battle group. However, note that, in spite of its SA-N-7 area defense SAM system, the Sovremenny is primarily a surface attack vessel. It is more likely the ships of this class will serve as flagships for surface attack groups which can also provided limited area defense SAM defenses for other naval surface units (e.g., amphibious ships and logistics task units). The should be expected to attempt to lead a group of surface attack ships in any coordinated attack on a major enemy task force. The Sovremenny’s supersonic SS-N-22 SSM is particularly formidable, and launched in a coordinated way with other SSMs (so that the missiles reach the prospective target about the same time), it might be particularly difficult to defeat them all. The PLAN is also building AAW ships of its own. The Guangzhou (052B) class DDGs, now appear to be fitted with the SA-N-12 medium-range SAM (8 fire control channels), from two standard SAM launchers (not VLS). Two of these ships (168 & 169) are building. Two Lanzhou (052C) class DDGs (170 & 171) are also under construction. These ships appear intended to use the HHQ-9 long-range SAM (48 round VLS) and phased array radars. Two more ships of this class (172 & 173) are authorized to begin construction in 2007. All these ships are built on essentially the same hull as the Luhu (052) class. They will all apparently use the Chinese C-803 SSM (a replacement for the Exocet like C-802), and will have the ability to combine these missiles with those from the carrier in a surface strike evolution. They probably will have a data link capability, so they could effectively form an integrated tactical team with a new carrier. Four of these ships should be operational by 2008, and all six by 2010, indicating one or two could be assigned to each battle group. In addition, the PLAN has 3 older ASW DDGs, 2 Luhu (052) and 1 Luhai (051B) class. They were built with the HQ-7 SAM (a Chinese variant of Crotale) and have a significant capability to operate 2 ASW helicopters. They carry the C-802 SSM (some reports indicate it may have been upgraded to C-803 standard). It is possible one of these ships might also be assigned to a carrier battle group. Older DDGs (051 series) of the Luda class, also equipped with the HQ-7, might be assigned, but they lack significant ASW capability and many do not carry current generation SSMs which would be tactically effective if combined with those on the carrier and her primary AAW escorts. China operates a large number of FFG guided missile frigates with marginal ASW capability. Some of these operate one or two ASW helicopters and are armed with HQ-7 SAMs. These include eight Jiangwei II (053H3), two of which may go to Pakistan if it can ever pay for them. There also are two Maanshan (054) class building (which may operate the newer Ka-28 Helix) and more will follow rapidly. Type 9935, Page 6 [Section 5: Possible Carrier Battle Group (Continued)] If this appreciation is correct, three carrier battle groups could form by 2008 using ships existing or building. Each would have one CV, one AAW type DDG (type 052B or C), one ASW type DDG (type 051B and 052), and two or more FFG (Jiangwei II or type 054). A Chinese language article says as many as 8 surface ships might be assigned to a carrier battle group. This is possible if fewer carrier battle groups are deployed, if the Russian DDGs are assigned to carrier battle groups, or if older ships are also assigned to them. The same article indicates as many as 4 submarines might be assigned to the battle group. This is possible, but coordination between surface ships and submarines is difficult. Nevertheless, Chinese military literature mentions tactics such as “decoy and ambushâ€� involving submarines. [In this case, an older Romeo class submarine maneuvers in a way likely to be detected – for example running diesel engines underwater as is normal when charging batteries – to attract an attack by a US SSN or Taiwanese attack submarine. A quiet Kilo, in ambush nearby, might be able to solve her fire control problem from the noise generated by the attack on the Romeo.] In a similar way, a carrier battle group might serve as “baitâ€� for a suspected US SSN, drawing her into an attack position at risk from a propositioned line of Kilos, unmoving and therefore almost undetectable. Such a tactic would not involve communications, if it were preplanned Be1isarius (Member) 2004-03-14 08:35:00 66.188.232.121 Re: The China Threat Interesting Article By the looks of it China could easily go exactly the same way Japan went before WWII began. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2004-03-15 15:02:00 68.170.105.101 Re: The China Threat Unusual Military Movements In Fujian, HK Daily Reports quote: 2004/3/15 TAIPEI, Taiwan, The China Post Staff With Taiwan's new presidential election and the first national referendum just five days away, the Hong Kong press reported that China has moved heavy military equipment into the southwestern province of Fujian. Quoting sources in Beijing and Fujian, the Chinese-language Sing Tao Daily reported that the People's Liberation Army has canceled all leave in Fujian and beefed up combat readiness for possible action if riots erupt in Taiwan. There were also unusual and increased movements of troops and heavy-duty trucks carrying equipment concealed under covers, which is rarely seen in normal times. Fujian is the Chinese province with the shortest distance from Taiwan and the major source for the immigrants who settled down in Taiwan from the mainland. The Hong Kong daily reported that when attending the People's National Congress in Beijing, both Jiang Zemin, former mainland leader and incumbent chairman of the Central Military Commission, as well as President Hu Jintao had held a separate meeting with representatives from the armed forces. Beijing's official Xinhua news agency reported that Jiang instructed the armed forces to "assiduously fulfill the missions of guarding national security and achieving unification." The Hong Kong paper said that Jiang had also told the troops to get ready for war anytime. Burned by negative effects in previous Taiwan presidential elections, Beijing has remained quiet about the election this time. However, it does not mean that China will not prepare to deal with possible drastic changes in the situation in Taiwan, according to analysts. China has always been a major factor in Taiwan's national elections. A major election strategy of Chen and former President Lee Teng-hui, who is fervently campaigning for Chen's reelection, is to rally support by arousing anti-Chinese sentiments and discrediting Chen's challenger, Kuomintang Chairman Lien Chan, and his running mate James Soong as taking sides with Beijing. Chen and Lee told voters that Lien and Soong represent "an alien regime" and they do not love Taiwan because they are not backing the president's referendum. An increasing number of people in Taiwan are worried that the controversies engulfing the referendum, including the voting procedures at poll stations, vote counting and verification of valid ballots, could spark disputes and even develop into riots on March 20. Analysts said the government's inability to settle such controversies could give Beijing a much-needed excuse to intervene in Taiwan if riots take place on the island. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2004-03-15 15:05:00 68.170.105.101 Re: The China Threat China And France To Conduct Joint Naval Drills quote: The navies of China and France begin joint naval exercises on Tuesday off the northern Chinese coast in what Beijing says will be the "most comprehensive" military drills with a foreign power by a fleet under the command of the People's Liberation Army. Although they are being conducted some distance from Taiwan, the exercises will take place just days before sensitive presidential elections on the island, over which China claims sovereignty. France angered Taiwan recently by strongly condemning President Chen Shui-bian's plan to hold a referendum on missile defence alongside Saturday's election, prompting Taipei to suspend top-level ties with Paris. France is also lobbying EU countries to drop the 15-year-old embargo on arms sales to China, imposed after the brutal 1989 suppression of pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing and other mainland cities. The exercises involve staging search and rescue missions, refueling exercises and tactical helicopter exchanges - a level above recent Chinese contacts with other visiting western navies, which have been restricted to routine drills and communication exchanges. Ju Xinchun, the captain of the Harbin, a guided-missile destroyer, said at the base of the North China Fleet of the PLA Navy headquartered in Qingdao, that the Chinese had much to learn from the history and combat effectiveness of the French. "The French navy is experienced, and we are eager to learn from them about their experience in coordination skills in joint exercises," said Mr Ju. Zhang Chu, an editor at International Outlook, a Shanghai-based magazine, said France had maintained strong ties through much of the 1990s with China's defence establishment, despite the arms embargo. "China wants to co-operate with traditional European powers, and France, as a stringent critic of the US, and a fervent advocate of lifting the arms embargo, was the country likely to take the initiative," Mr Zhang said. Andrew Yang, a defence analyst based in Taipei, played down the significance of the exercise's proximity to the Taiwan elections, saying the drills were similar to those conducted recently by the PLA Navy with the fleets of India and Pakistan. "It does not have direct implications for the situation in Taiwan," said Mr Yang, who said it was more a reflection of China's determination to forge ties with foreign fleets. Christine Allain, second in command of a French light frigate participating in the exercises, was quoted in China's press as saying that she was impressed by the skills of the Chinese naval officers and their "good command of English". The five-day tour is the 12th by French warships to China. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2004-03-15 15:16:00 68.170.105.101 Re: The China Threat The following is comprised of three different articles: Chinese Government Overtly Contacting US Congress to Influence Decisions of US Representatives quote: PRC Tries To Influence U.S. Congress' Stance On Taiwan China Post March 14, 2004 China's embassy in Washington D.C. has sent an e-mail to U.S. Senate aides urging them to dissuade members of Congress from supporting Taiwan's upcoming referendum, according to a report in Friday's Washington Times newspaper. The e-mail, apparently sent by embassy Counselor Niu Qingbao, is in response to an effort by Representatives Peter Deutsch, a Democrat from Florida, and Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican from California, to urge members of Congress to back the March 20 referendum. "We believe that you, the people of Taiwan have consistently demonstrated your passion for human rights, transparency, and the democratic process," the Times' article quotes the congressmen as writing. "Your 23 million citizens have earned the right to decide for yourselves the issues affecting your well-being and security," the letter continues. Deutsch, writing recently in support of President Chen Shui-bian's referendum noted: "The vast majority of the United States Congress is very supportive of the actions of the Taiwanese government in terms of putting a referendum to the ballot regarding the defense options that Taiwan has." While, a House resolution supporting the referendum was drafted, it is not likely to be adopted, according to Deutsch speaking at the Heritage Foundation recently. As this is an election year in the U.S. as well, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay apparently wanted to steer clear of a resolution on the controversial referendum when U.S. President George W. Bush has already scolded President Chen over the issue. The representatives' letter to their colleagues was designed to act as a petition and as a substitute for a resolution. In his e-mail, Niu expressed his "grave concern" over the representatives' letter in support of Taiwan's referendum, according to the Times. "As experts on foreign affairs, you know only too well that this 'referendum' has nothing to do with democracy and everything to do with abusing democracy as a cover for Chen's pursuit of 'Taiwan independence' and getting himself re-elected," the e-mail continues. Niu goes on to ask the Senate aides to "advise" their senators "against" signing the representatives' letter. Congressman Rohrabacher, a fervent support of Taiwan, speaking in favor of the referendum at a the Heritage Foundation recently said: "What's the big deal. If (Taiwan's people) want to have a vote, they should have a vote." And, Taiwan serves as a model for the mainland, he added. "Let's hope that some day the people of China will be able to vote on what they want to vote on too," he said. Taiwan has been highly successful in lobbying Congress and has widespread support in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. China's embassy in Washington increased the number of political officers in its Congressional Liaison Office to 26 earlier this year in a bid to more effectively influence members of Congress. -------------------- Chinese efforts to thwart support of Taiwan backfire By Charles Snyder STAFF REPORTER , IN WASHINGTON Sunday, Mar 14, 2004,Page 1 Taiwan supporters in the US Congress and the Chinese Embassy in Washington have mounted a war of words over congressional moves to endorse next Saturday's referendum, but the Chinese actions are apparently backfiring by convincing more and more lawmakers to sign a letter expressing US backing for the referendum, congressional staffers say. The congressional letter, which is being circulated by Representatives Peter Deutsch, a Florida Democrat, and Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican, was sent to House members Thursday morning. But even before that, Chinese Ambassador Yang Jiechi (???), hearing of the efforts, sent an e-mail letter to House members urging them not to sign the Deutsch-Rohrabacher letter. That action, aides to the two representatives say, piqued the representative's interest -- and perhaps resentment -- resulting in a flood of phone calls to the two authors even before the Deutsch-Rohrabacher letters reached the members' offices. The ambassador "is doing our legwork for us," an aide to Deutsch told the Taipei Times. Deutsch reacted sharply Friday to the Chinese letter. "The lobbying effort by China against my letter of support for the Taiwan people's democratic rights is chilling," he said in a statement. Despite the ambassador's efforts, "the United States must always stand by democratic principles. I call on the Bush administration to do the same." As a result, the letter, which a congressional aide said was originally "not meant to be a big deal," has blossomed into a major issue on Capitol Hill. Since the ambassador sent his e-mail "we have been receiving lots of calls," an aide said. And, although the letter signing effort was limited to the House, word of the effort has reached the Senate, and a number of senators have also called seeking to sign on. The idea of a letter arose after the Republican congressional leadership earlier this year refused to allow consideration of a resolution or bill formally committing Congress to backing the referendum. That, in turn, Taiwan's congressional supporters say, was because Bush opposed any pro-Taiwan legislation in advance of the election, in keeping with the administration's suspicion of the referendum, which Bush voiced last December after meeting with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (???). In the letter, addressed "To the people of Taiwan," the representative's say that "we believe that you, the people of Taiwan, have consistently demonstrated your passion for human rights, transparency, and the democratic process. "Your 23 million citizens have earned the right to decide for yourselves the issue affecting your well-being and security. You have earned the right to hold exclusive responsibility for determining the future of Taiwan and to exercise democratic processes. "This includes holding referenda free from intimidation or threat of force from any country including communist China." In a cover memorandum attached to the letter, Deutsch and Rohrabacher urge their fellow lawmakers that, "as we have in the past, the US must support the right of the Taiwanese populace to speak its mind through a peaceful voting process." It is not clear how many lawmakers have agreed to sign, but congressional staffers say that at this time they expect some 20 signatures. However, with the growing interest spurred by the Chinese e-mail, they say this could very well grow by the time in the middle of this week that they stop collecting signatures and try to circulate the letter in Taiwan. In his letter, Yang quoted Bush's comments after the Wen meeting, in which Bush voiced opposition to President Chen Shui-bian's (???) decision to hold the referendum as possibly changing the "status quo" in the Strait. He also quoted in part a subsequent comment by Secretary of State Colin Powell in which he said, "we don't see a need for these referenda." At the time, Powell also said that it was up to Taiwan to decide whether or not to hold a referendum. "President Bush and former President Clinton have all made it clear that the United States does not support `Taiwan independence,'" Yang claimed. Yang expressed "grave concern" over the congressional letter, and charged that Chen is using the referendum only for his own political gain. -------------------- Chinese Interference From Inside the Ring, Washington Times Niu Qingbao, an aggressive advocate of communist China at Bejing's embassy in Washington, has sent an e-mail to Senate aides urging them to warn their bosses against supporting Taiwan's upcoming referendum. At issue, is a "Dear Colleague" letter circulating in the House that calls on lawmakers to go on record supporting the island's March 10 voter referendum. The referendum calls for peaceful means to settle the China-Taiwan issue. "We believe that you, the people of Taiwan have consistently demonstrated your passion for human rights, transparency, and the democratic process," states the letter sponsored by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, California Republican, and Rep. Peter Deutsch, Florida Democrat. Addressed to the people of Taiwan, the letter adds, "Your 23 million citizens have earned the right to decide for yourselves the issues affecting your well-being and security." The Senate Republican Policy Committee is circulating the House letter in hopes of starting a similar message in the Senate. An aide said that interference by Mr. Qingbao is helping to spark interest. Mr. Qingbao's e-mail to Senate aides said, in part, "I have learnt with grave concern that Congressmen Peter Deutsch and Dana Rohrabacher have issued a public statement in support of the 'referendum' advocated by [President] Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan and are soliciting co-signature of other members. "As experts on foreign affairs, you know only too well that this 'referendum' has nothing to do with democracy and everything to do with abusing democracy as a cover for Chen's pursuit of 'Taiwan independence' and getting himself re-elected on the very day of March 20. "I thank you for your attention and hope you will advise your senator against cosigning this open statement should it come to your attention." Washington and Beijing adhere to the "one-China" policy, refusing to recognize Taiwan's independence. But President Bush has said the United States will come to the island's aid if China invades. Be1isarius (Member) 2004-03-16 07:34:00 66.188.232.121 Re: The China Threat Anyone ever read Tom Clancy's Debt of Honor? America and Japan had a joint naval exercise during which Japan attacked the U.S. navy. Maybe the French and Chinese will attack Taiwan or each other if the referendum there causes unrest that could lead to instability in Taiwan. quote: Ju Xinchun, the captain of the Harbin, a guided-missile destroyer, said at the base of the North China Fleet of the PLA Navy headquartered in Qingdao, that the Chinese had much to learn from the history and combat effectiveness of the French. I found that hilarious, what combat effectiveness has the French Navy had besides launching a few shells at beaches in Normandy while surrounded by American and British battleships? master p (Member) 2004-03-17 20:44:00 80.76.63.18 Re: The China Threat China drill before Taiwan poll France in joint military operations with China ??? History is unfolding exactly like it is predicted by ancient scriptures. Sean Osborne (Member) 2004-03-26 06:17:00 192.172.8.13 Re: The China Threat Communist China is threatening to intervene in Taiwan over the election unrest. Watch this closely... Be1isarius (Member) 2004-03-26 11:37:00 152.163.252.231 Re: The China Threat Any news about those naval exercises? I was thinking that the position of those exercises was perfect for invading South Korea, but we'd have seen flags come up in our intelligence agencies and the news, a troop build-up is hard to conceal, but I'm not sure how North Korea's millitary is set up on the DMZ. I hope China interferes, now would be a bad time for us, but also a bad time for them. They aren't ready to go to war with us, and our troops are fighting the terrorists. But all that means is that both sides would be unwilling to go to war with each other, and it might be possible for China to take Taiwan now, especially with internal turmoil. Sean Osborne (Member) 2004-03-26 11:52:00 68.38.16.227 Re: The China Threat quote:Originally posted by Be1isarius: I'm not sure how North Korea's millitary is set up on the DMZ. The last i saw reported on this is that 70-some odd percent of the North Korean Amry is currently south of Pyongyang and across the entire penninsula. zeroed*out (Member) 2004-03-26 17:03:00 154.5.232.2 Re: The China Threat quote:...I rather hope there will be violence so that the government will listen to us," said protester Chang Kun-lin. "The government is not afraid of the people. It's only afraid of old communists." China's Communist leadership tried to make sure Taiwan was afraid, saying it could not sit idly by before such turmoil. "We will not sit by watching, should the post-election situation in Taiwan get out of control, leading to social turmoil, endangering the lives and property of our flesh-and-blood brothers," Beijing's policy-making Taiwan Affairs Office said late on Friday.... http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=4676336&pageNumber=1 quote: Originally posted by Saen Osborne: Communist China is threatening to intervene in Taiwan over the election unrest. Watch this closely... If China decides to go into Taiwan citing civil unrest as an excuse to reclaim the island by force, do you see the US responding militarily, and this sitiuation escalating into a major military conflict. China may also feel our resources are spread to thin to commit to a large immediate response, one large enough to suppress any aggressive actions on thier part. Sean Osborne (Member) 2004-03-26 20:17:00 68.38.16.227 Re: The China Threat quote:Originally posted by zeroed*out: If China decides to go into Taiwan citing civil unrest as an excuse to reclaim the island by force, do you see the US responding militarily, and this sitiuation escalating into a major military conflict. China may also feel our resources are spread to thin to commit to a large immediate response, one large enough to suppress any aggressive actions on thier part. I think you answered your own question which the linked quote and the logic posted here. I agree, it is the perfect excuse the Beijing could use to justify intervention. I may be wrong, but I am not sure there is anything the U.S. can do to stop the Red Chinese from overrunning Taiwan. Our reaction might depend on Taiwanese reaction to Commie intervention in their affairs, which Red China sees as its own internal affairs. Bottom line... are we willing to risk Los Angeles and it's population to a potential Red China nuke strike if we interven on Paipei's behalf??? I think Beijing has been presented a golden opportunity and they will not waste it. Taiwain is toast. Any commie invasion of Taiwan will very closely mirror what the allies did on D-Day in Europe, I saw this in graphic form very recently. Lazarus Starr (Moderator) 2004-03-27 01:16:00 24.10.195.167 Re: The China Threat I believe you're right Sean. And I think Taiwan knows it too. They are at the mercy of China. The problem here is that if China does such they face trade restrictions worldwide that could cripple their economy. Not much of a sop but may be the only thing that has kept them from doing so up to this time. -Laz Be1isarius (Member) 2004-03-27 12:39:00 205.188.116.204 Re: The China Threat Sean, what do you mean about D-Day? I definitely don't see the U.S. intervening in Taiwan, it would take a draft and we can't do that in an election year. We would probably impose trade restrictions though. This is EXACTLY what happened with Japan in WWII. They invaded much of Asia and then we put a trade embargo on them if they wouldn't stop and they were forced to either go to war with the U.S. and Britain to take the rest of Asia or pull out and resume trade with America. The former was better economically and allowed them to save face, but it also carried a massive risk which turned out to work against Japan. The "Ground War in the U.S." discusses what could be a Chinese "Pearl Harbor": A systematic taking and destruction U.S. millitary base in our nation, and IMO the Panama Canal which is controlled by a Chinese company(read Chinese Government), that would delay an American naval attack which China(and potentially Russia) could prepare for while eliminating other foes(like South Korea). Communist Asia could probably take most of the continent before America could launch a sufficient counter-attack. India, I think, is the wild-card it would be powerful enough to scare China a bit, especially if it launched it's own imperialist attacks(against Pakistan for example which conveniently happens to be at the border of Afghanistan). Europe is another factor. I expect the EU would break up over this if China was acting alone, but if Russia were in it they would probably attack Russia as the two powers are currently competing for member nations[Commonwealth of Nations(former U.S.S.R.-a few republics) vs. the EU]. Europe would probably beat Russia, but it would be close because of politics, language, cultural, and millitary barriers that exist within the EU that would make it difficult to fight a major war despite it's technological advantages. Would it go nuclear? I doubt it unless China got desperate after a long struggle on it's own land(which itself is unlikely as China would probably capitulate before it comes to that). I doubt America would use nukes unless it was to end the war with China immediately. Russia might use nukes as it has the ability to survive a nuclear attack better than probably any nation, but for some reason I doubt it would come to that. China is in the same position as Japan was in WWII and they may very well choose the same path of action. Sean Osborne (Member) 2004-03-28 03:01:00 68.38.16.227 Re: The China Threat quote:Originally posted by Be1isarius: Sean, what do you mean about D-Day? Be1isarius Just this graphically illustrated similarity. I think you'll find this a very interesting display of .gifs and text. Taiwan vs Normandy The Allied assault on Normandy in June 1944 (D-Day) was the largest amphibious operation in military history. A Chinese attack across the Taiwan Strait would present a remarkably similar geographical scope, though the correlation of forces would be far less favorable for the attacking force. "U.S. imperialism, Soviet revisionism and the reactionaries in the world are all paper tigers. Armed with Mao Tsetung Thought, the Chinese people and the Chinese People's Liberation Army are invincible. We are determined to liberate Taiwan! We are determined to defend the sacred territory and sovereignty of our great motherland!" Ninth National Congress of the Communist Party of China April 24, 1969 "Some people have made some calculations about how many aircraft, missiles and warships China possesses and presumed that China dare not and will not use force based on such calculations. ... those people who have made such calculations and who have made such conclusions do not understand and do not know about the Chinese history. The Chinese people are ready to shed blood and sacrifice their lives to defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the motherland." Premier Zhu Rongji Thursday, March 16, 2000 D-Day Normandy 06 June 1944 Assault Forces 176,000 amphibious troops three airborne divisions 10,000 aircraft 136 warships [BB, C, DD] 3,000 landing craft 2,000 other ships Taiwan 2000 15,000 amphibious troops three airborne divisions 3,300 combat aircraft 60 warships [DD, FF] ~300 landing craft D-Day Normandy 06 June 1944 Defending Force 400 aircraft ~50,000 troops [six divisions] no naval presence Taiwan 2000 490 fighter aircraft 220,000-troops 40 warships [DD, FF] Air Situation Attacking force had air supremacy many months prior to amphibious assault. Attacking force would have to obtain air supremacy prior to amphibious assault. Intelligence Luftwaffe flew no reconnaissance flights over the coastal regions of Great Britain during the early months of 1944. Germans mounted no air reconnaissance during the first five days of June, because of bad weather. American intelligence satellites overfly the area a dozen times every day. quote:I definitely don't see the U.S. intervening in Taiwan, it would take a draft and we can't do that in an election year. Unless of course the Communist Chinese Peoples Liberation Army makes good on their threat to nuke Los Angeles. quote:We would probably impose trade restrictions though. Yup, I agree. Red China's WTO membership notwithstanding quote:Would it go nuclear? If the US intervened on Taiwan's behalf China would have to go nuclear as this would not be a limited engagement geographically. They would see the necessity to stop the US immediately and that would dictate the use of nuclear weapons imho. quote:China is in the same position as Japan was in WWII and they may very well choose the same path of action. The differences here are glaring. Japan was not in a strategic alliance with Russia during WWII as Red China is today (ie: the contiguous land mass that exists between Red China and the Russian federation), and the nuclear genie did not exist for either side in the years leading up to the onset of the Pacific portion of WWII. Cspace (Member) 2004-04-26 00:05:00 216.242.4.172 Re: The China Threat Chinese diplomats rush past lab guards quote: Two Chinese diplomats, away from their Los Angeles consulate improperly, recently sped their vehicle past a Los Alamos National Laboratory guard post near classified facilities in what U.S. officials think was an intelligence mission, The Washington Times has learned. The diplomats, identified as Hua Yu and Bo Lai, were on an intelligence-gathering mission that is raising new worries of Chinese nuclear spying against the United States, according to U.S. officials familiar with the incident. According to an incident report, the diplomats sped a white Ford Escort past a guard post at the New Mexico facility at about 2:30 p.m. on Feb. 26. Security guard Joseph Chavez was at the post at the time and reported that the car "ran his post at a high rate of speed," the report said. The white Escort, rented in Colorado, was stopped a short distance from the post by three Los Alamos security police on Pajarito Road. The diplomats were questioned, and their car was searched. Mr. Hua and Mr. Bo identified themselves as Chinese diplomats posted to the consulate in Los Angeles. "At this point, we briefed the gentleman on the fact that Pajarito Road was closed to the general public, and [they] were escorted out of the area," the report states. Kevin Roark, a spokesman for Los Alamos, confirmed that the incident took place and said no apparent compromise of security occurred. Pajarito Road also is the site of two sensitive facilities, Mr. Roark said. One is the Critical Assembly Facility known as Technical Area-18, and the other is the Plutonium Research Facility, known as Technical Area-55. Both facilities are used for classified nuclear-weapons activities at Los Alamos, part of the Energy Department's nuclear-weapons program. "They were asked for identification. They were briefly questioned as to what they were up to. Their vehicle was searched, and after that, they were promptly escorted off the road," Mr. Roark said. He declined to comment on whether the FBI was notified. An FBI spokesman could not be reached for comment. A State Department official said the Chinese diplomats did not notify the department's Office of Foreign Missions before the visit to Los Alamos, a violation of U.S. rules. Chinese diplomats are barred from traveling outside a 25-mile radius of their embassy or consulate and must obtain permission from the State Department before any other travel. Xiao Mei, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles, said the two diplomats were visiting New Mexico in preparation for the visit to Santa Fe by a Chinese official. Miss Xiao said she did not know whether the two men had gone to the Los Alamos laboratory, but they might have been trying to visit a museum at the facility. "We all know this is a sensitive area," she said. "But the museum is public." Los Alamos was the scene of a major U.S. nuclear-spying scandal in the late 1990s when Chinese-American nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee, who worked at Los Alamos, was accused of supplying nuclear secrets to China. Mr. Lee denied being a spy but was convicted of mishandling classified information, including top-secret computer tapes that were never found. A CIA damage assessment later concluded that the Chinese had obtained secrets on every U.S. nuclear warhead, including the W-88, a small warhead that U.S. intelligence thinks has been copied for use on China's new short-range and long-range missiles. U.S. officials said the incident involving the two diplomats was an intelligence-gathering mission, with the men probably testing Los Alamos security to see how guards react. Such information is useful for other intelligence-gathering activities, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The diplomats also might have been trying to recover material left by an agent or planning to meet with an agent, the officials said. Mr. Roark said the guard post was one of several recently added to the Los Alamos complex as part of post-September 11 security upgrades. It was the second time in the past six months that Chinese diplomats based in Los Angeles ended up in legal trouble. Late last year, a Chinese official posted to the Los Angeles consulate was charged with speeding as he drove more than 100 mph in San Bernardino County. The incident resulted in a diplomatic protest note being sent to the Chinese Embassy in Washington. One U.S. official said Washington expelled neither that Chinese official nor the two diplomats in the Los Alamos incident because of concerns that doing so would trigger expulsions of U.S. intelligence personnel in China. A classified U.S. intelligence report produced in 1998 stated that China was one of the most aggressive intelligence threats against U.S. nuclear facilities. "China represents an acute intelligence threat" to the Department of Energy, the report said. "It conducts a 'full-court press' consisting of massive numbers of collectors of all kinds, in the United States, in China and elsewhere abroad." The report noted that Chinese intelligence gathering at the nuclear-weapons laboratories usually involves exploiting "natural scientist-to-scientist relationships." "Chinese scientists nurture relationships with national laboratory counterparts, issuing invitations for them to travel to laboratories and conferences in China," it said. U.S. officials said there has been no change in the report on Chinese activities targeting nuclear facilities. FYI, CSpace Be1isarius (Member) 2004-04-26 09:03:00 68.112.201.26 Re: The China Threat That is also consistant with a "pearl harbor" type attack on U.S. millitary bases that was the focus of the thread on border security. This could be checking of perimeter defenses, which are probably light. n45ny (Junior Member) 2004-05-15 20:30:00 12.221.6.6 Re: The China Threat I am moving to Beijing for a year due to work in September. Should I be scared of the possibly Chinese-American war, or glad I am escaping 4 more years of Bushy and his military-state tactics? Perhaps I should join the Chinese Army as a translator with my 140 IQ and mastery of the English language? Malsua (Moderator) 2004-05-16 02:56:00 216.6.139.106 Re: The China Threat Here's an interesting take on China's coming financial meltdown. -Mal ---------- Alarm bells ringing on bankrupt China By Christopher Whalen © 2004 Insight/News World Communications Inc. Financial and political analysts have been predicting the demise of China's economic miracle for months now, but the latest policy shift by the Federal Reserve toward a more restrictive interest-rate posture has caused the alarm bells to ring from Hong Kong to Wall Street. The rebound of the dollar that began in February has taken the pressure off other central banks, particularly the Bank of Japan, to sop up the fiat greenbacks printed by the Fed, thus placing added upward pressure on U.S. interest rates. By no accident, April was the worst month for emerging market debt in years. More expensive dollar credit means the end of speculative booms in markets such as China, whose economy has grown to account for 10 percent of global trade. Wen Jiabao, China's prime minister, promised "resolute" measures to rein in excessive economic growth, while assuring investors that Beijing would seek to orchestrate a "soft landing," the Financial Times reports. Like Alan Greenspan at the Fed, China's communist bureaucrats have used excessive credit and investment to boost short-term economic activity, but at a dire cost in terms of future inflation. Indeed, there is great debate whether China's economy is growing or is just pumped up with cheap dollars - money proffered by the latest generation of credulous gringos. Many Bush administration officials remind Insight that China is a corrupt, chaotic country where the central government has only a tenuous grip on events, especially in the interior of the country. Local Communist Party officials loot private companies and banks with impunity, leaving all investors - foreign and domestic - at terrible risk. Foreign banks and investors, meanwhile, are providing a critical source of foreign exchange to bolster China's authoritarian rulers, who use fantastic claims of economic performance to entice new financial and direct investment from abroad. This reporter always keeps in mind a comment of liberal economist Lester Thurow to an investment conference in Hong Kong a few years back when the MIT sage observed that China's economic statistics were so remarkable as to be unbelievable. Few of the investment-banking types in the audience appreciated the full import of Thurow's remarks, but the bottom line is that economic data from China is even less reliable than the politically biased economic and labor statistics that emanate from Washington. For example, China's National Bureau of Statistics reports annualized growth of 9.7 percent for the first quarter of 2004, a problem the Bush administration wishes it had. China claims to have expanded its economy at a brisk pace; 9.1 percent growth for all of 2003 and a 9.7 percent annualized growth rate for first quarter of 2004. The good news is that these numbers may indeed reflect the increase in economic activity caused by foreign dollar inflows, but the bad news is that these levels cannot be maintained, experts tell Insight. China's statistics agency reports that investment in fixed assets in the first quarter ran 43 percent ahead of the previous year's levels. "The scale of investment in fixed assets is too large and growth is too fast," a National Bureau of Statistics spokesman told Pacific News Service. Officially, consumer prices rose 2.8 percent in the quarter, but observers in Hong Kong tell Insight that the actual rate of inflation in the major Chinese cities is running at 20 to 30 percent above annual rates. Indeed, even the International Monetary Fund said last week that China's economy is "overheating." "By definition, a shock is something that catches us by surprise," wrote Walter Molano of BCP Securities in a missive to his clients, mostly investors who follow his research on Latin American economies. "We expect a shock from Asia, but we do not know how, when and why," he said. Molano warns that the Chinese economy is badly overheated and that the rise in the inflation rate well into double digits is creating factors that will decelerate the pace of Chinese economic growth. Nevertheless, he argues, "the rampant corruption and the weakness in the banking sector suggest that the controlled adjustment could manifest itself into a hard landing." Such a scenario, Molano writes, "would ricochet immediately into Latin America." A drop in the much noted Chinese demand for commodity products, he continues, "would coincide with a large increase in production" to accommodate the market's expectations that China's voracious appetite for everything from U.S. grain to steel is insatiable. "The result would be downward gap in commodity prices, thus affecting the balance of payments for most of the region. Unfortunately, this could coincide with a rise in U.S. interest rates, creating a more worrisome situation for Latin America." The torrid growth rates observed in China during the last several years have been a bonanza for investors and exporters, but the prospect of a sudden drop in China's demand for everything foreign implies that the Chinese central bank may need to allow the country's currency to fall. The restrictive measures put in place so far by China's authoritarian government have not yet reduced the economic surge, but there are indications that the vast speculative boom in China is nearing an end. In Hong Kong, the South China Morning Post reports that prices for just about every local asset class began heading south simultaneously. Commodities, currencies, H shares on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and even every equity bear's safe haven - gold - are tumbling, while the U.S. dollar has experienced a sudden rejuvenation. Meanwhile, there is growing evidence that the economic constraints felt by millions of Chinese, which caused the central government to embrace a "great leap forward" via hyper economic expansion in the first place, are causing social instability, the dark menace that has followed China's history. Keith Bradsher of the New York Times describes how a flotilla of Chinese warships sailed slowly down the length of Victoria Harbor in early May "in a rare show of force that comes as democracy advocates here say they face growing intimidation by Beijing." He continues: "Two guided-missile destroyers, four guided-missile frigates and two submarines displayed China's military strength for the first time since the territory was handed over by Britain in 1997. It marked a distinct change of tactics by Beijing. The Chinese military has been a nearly invisible presence here for the last seven years. Soldiers are required to wear civilian clothing when they leave their bases, and the main base is tucked away on an island at the harbor's western end. But today, residents here watched as a submarine sailed past the downtown Bank of China tower, designed by I.M. Pei. Sailors in dress whites lined the sides of the destroyers and frigates, and some gave friendly waves to workers on a passing tugboat." If astute financial observers are correct and China's economy experiences another sudden "adjustment," particularly via a currency devaluation, the political ramifications may be even more important than the financial fallout. While China has hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign reserves, the imbalances in its economy, surging imports and losses hidden within corrupt banks and state-owned companies could easily wipe out these assets several times over. But then again, it is impossible to say for sure whether the financial statements of China's central bank are any more truthful than the other statistics produced by the nation's communist government. So far, the Bush administration has been too distracted by the Iraq mess to notice that the world's largest nation is on a collision course with the wall of financial reality. The White House refused, for example, to confront China over its manipulation of its currency (thus fueling the present boom) and suppression of worker's wages (thus artificially suppressing visible inflation), in essence encouraging Beijing's self-destructive economic course. While the Bush administration likes to kid itself into thinking that China can be coaxed into embracing market norms via a policy of "engagement with leverage," say savvy China watchers, if recent history is any guide China's financial implosion is likely to confirm the market's worst fears. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2004-05-20 03:34:00 69.161.216.141 Re: The China Threat China News - President Promotes Russian Ties - 110 Years - But No Great Leap Forward - A Booming China Challenges U.S. - A Brain Gap With The Red Chinese - A "Crisis" Made in Beijing - A Time For Less Talk, More Action On China - A US-China Space Race Could Mean Trouble - A Wink at China Inc. - Aegis Approved for Taiwan - After Our Industries Exit, Then What? - After Years Behind the Scenes, Chinese Join the Name Game (Buy American Brand Names) - Alleged Chinese Double Agent Indicted - AMD To Help Power Supercomputer In China - America Helps China Put A Man In Space - An American Prisoner in China - Are We Serious About China? - Asia: China Eyes Comprehensive Security - Asian Leaders Find China a More Cordial Neighbor - At Issue: Trade Deficits With China - Be Wary of China - Beijing Acquiring "Credible Military Options" Against Taiwan: Pentagon - Beijing \'Front\' Companies Spying On U.S. - Beijing Lowers Entrance Age For Military Service - Beijing Reaffirms Position on Diaoyu Islands, Taiwan - Beijing Spells It Out: It Decides Who Rules Hong Kong - Beijing Warns That Taiwan Referendum Could Lead to War - Beijing\'s Ambitions And The Panama Canal - Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway On Track - Bethlehem Steel Ceased To Exist At 11:59 P.M. (12/31/03) - Legendary Steelmaker Passes Into History - Beware China\'s Fifth-Column Efforts - Bush Accuses China Of Manipulating Trade - Bush Admin Imposes Safeguards Against Chinese Textiles - Bush Ban on Chinese Imports - Bush Expected to Press China on Currency - Bush Opposes Repeal of NTR With China, Evans Says - Bush Sends Stern Warning To Taiwan Over Independence Moves - Bush Signs Myanmar Import Ban Legislation - Bush to \'Deal With\' China Currency Issue - Bush, China\'s Hu to Meet Next Week in France - Bush\'s Bottom Line in Asia - Trading Black Hawks for Support - Business Leaders Say China\'s Role As Manufacturing Base Here To Stay - Cabinet Releases Analysis Of China\'s Military Threat - Cabinet Says Computers Under Attack (China Cyber Attacking Taiwan?) - Calif Garlic Farmers Cede Decade-Long Battle To Chinese Exports - CEOs\' China Syndrome – Jobs - Cheap Labor at America\'s Expense: 3.3 Million U.S. Jobs Moved Offshore By 2015 - Cheap \'V-Dragon\' (Computer Chip) May Revolutionize China - Chen Shui-Bian\'s Independence Stance May Trigger War - Chen Stands Up To Bush - Chen Tells China He May Revoke `Five Noes\' Pledge - Chicom Sub Accident Shrouded In Mystery - ChiComs, North Korea Are Missile Conduit To MidEast - China - Internet Activist Li Zhi Arrested for Subversion - China - Moon Fly-By To Soar By 2007 - China Accelerates Navy Building - China Accords Red Carpet Welcome For Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee - China Again Warns Taiwan on Move Toward Independence - China and Long-Range Asia Energy Securities - China and Southeast Asia - China and Taiwan Step Up pressure in Fight over Pacific Nation - China Angry At US Missile Report - China Arrests A Dozen Roman Catholic Priests, Seminarians; Demolishes Church - China Arrests Dozens of Prominent Christians - China Blocks US Checks On American Dual Use Goods - China Blunt on U.S.-Taiwan Stance - China Boosts Military Spending To Build High-Tech Weapons - China Calls For End To European Arms Embargo In White Paper On Sino-EU Ties - China Calls On United States To Stay Out Of Hong Kong\'s Affairs - China Claims A Big Win Over Taiwan - China Daily: Moon Probe To Blast Off In 3 Years - China \'Deeply Regrets\' US Possible Import Restrictions - China Denies CIA Accusations Over Pakistan Weapons Program - China Denies US Charge Of Selling Weapons Technology To Iran - China Detains American, New Zealander - China Developing `Paralysis Warfare\' - China Develops First Solid-Fuel Launch Vehicle - China Develops Its First Solid-Fuel Satellite Rocket - China Engineers Its Next Great Leap - China Expands Missile Proliferation To Mideast - China Getting Ready for Severe Blitzkrieg - China: Going Global - China Has 496 Ballistic Missiles \'Aimed At Taiwan\' - China Hikes Military Budget 11.6 Percent - China In Space - China In Space: Military Implications - China Is Biggest Security Threat - China Launches Experimental Satellite, Lauds Space Progress - China Launches First Manned Space Flight - China Launches Its First Manned Space Mission - China Launches Satellite, Plans 10 More by End-2004 - China Linked To Iraq Bio-Weapons - China Looks Beyond LEO As It Outlines Lunar Ambitions - China Never Beats Around the Bush - China Nixes US Congressional Trip - China Now Warns Of Trade Harm From US Furniture Probe - China Offers Technology To Provide Clean Water - China Official Uses Profanity In Discussing Taiwan Election - China Plans Airborne Unit Near Taiwan Strait - China Plans Giant Step This Week - China Plans More Missions, Space Station - China Plans To Put Own Version Of Hubble Space Telescope In Place By 2005 - China Plans to Put Two People Into Space in 2005 - China Plans To Send Three People Into Space - China Plots Showdown with U.S. over Taiwan - China PM Warns Taiwan Over Vote - China Points Finger At U.S. For SARS - China Poses Trade Worry as It Gains in Technology - China Proud Of Having Maritime Exercise With Pakistan: Xiu Ji Wen - China Rediscovers Technology - China Rejects \'US Ruse To Sell Arms\' - China Releases New-Look Mao Songs - China Rents Kazak Land For Farmers - China Reportedly Building 3 Aircraft Carriers - China Rushes To Pull Down Atoll Satellite Tracker (On Tarawa) - China Seeks Free Trade Deal With Taiwan - China Sends Man Into Orbit, Entering U.S.-Russian Club - China Shuts Down Newspaper - China Space Program Shows Careful Development - China Space Shot A Warning For West - China Spy Case Prompts FBI to Review Intelligence Sources - China Stakes Claims on Overseas Taiwanese - China Stiffs Bush as Its Global Ambitions Rise to New Heights - China Strives To Be Player In Chipmaking - China Sustains Demand For Nickel Imports - China Tells U.S. To Get Its Own House In Order - China Threatens Taiwan Anew With Force - China Threatens U.S. With Higher Import Tariffs - China Tightens - The Beginning Of The End Of Global Reflation? - China To Export Fighter Jet Rivaling US\' F-16 - China To Fund Standardized Tests In U.S. Schools - China To Give Rs 30 Billion For Pak Nuclear Plant - China To Help Pakistan Build Second Nuclear Power Plant - China to Participate in Galileo Satellite Program - China To Seek Russian Oil - China To Sell Second N-Plant To Pakistan - China Tries to Ease Concerns Over Planned Plutonium Processing Facility - China Turns The Tables - China Under U.S. Scrutiny As Trade Anger Grows - China Unveils Olympic Logo - China: Use Of Force May Be \'Unavoidable\' Against Taiwan - China Warns Taiwan With Military Exercises - China Warns U.S.: War or Peace - China, Europe Launch Satellite to Track Space Storms - China, Mexico Establish Strategic Partnership - China, Pak Hold Talks On Defence Co-Op - China, Russia Anchor Trade Ties - China, Russia to Build Joint Oil Pipeline - China, Russia, 4 Central Asian Nations Meet to Forge Closer Links - China, U.S. Tit-For-Tat Trade Spat Grows - China, U.S. to Share Banking Information - Chinagate Scandal Deepens - China\'s Compitalists: Worst Of Both Worlds - China\'s Computer Chip Market Hits US$24.99b In 2003 - China\'s Cyber-Crackdowns: Beijing\'s Repression Worsens - China\'s Detente Strategy - China\'s Development In High-Tech National Defence Strategy - China\'s Economic Boom Hits Home - China\'s Factories Aim to Fill the World\'s Garages - China\'s First Lunar Steps Outlined In Sydney IAU Presentation - China\'s First Taikonaut Gets A Promotion - Media Blitz Highlights Math Skill - China\'s Growth Races Ahead - China\'s Hu Hails SARS Fight As Victory For Communist System - China\'s Industry Output Up 17.9 Percent In November - China\'s Industry Surges 16.2 Percent in First Half of Year - China\'s IT Output To Lead The World By Year 2010 - China\'s Military Set For War With Taiwan (Plus A Threat To US) - China\'s Navy Floats A Warning To Taiwan (US & Japan Too) - China\'s New Frontier - China\'s Oil Use Is Changing World Energy Markets - China\'s Premier To Tackle Bush Over Taiwan And Bra Taxes - China\'s Red Flag Linux To Step Onto Global Stage - China\'s Wen Clear Message for Bush - China\'s Wen To Get 19-Gun Salute, "Spectacular" Pomp From White House - China-Taiwan Arms Race Quickens - China Trade: Increasingly High Tech, Increasingly Head-to-Head - Chinese `Spy\' Really Was, US Finds - Chinese Astronaut Says Space Food Tastes \'Great\' - Chinese Caught Trying To Bug Israeli Embassy - Chinese Companies With Ties to Military Encircle U.S. - Chinese Defense Minister Visits Pentagon - Chinese Envoy Set For U.S. Nuke Talks - Chinese Factories Turn Up Heat in October - Chinese Fleet\'s First Visit To Guam -- Heart Of US Forces In The Pacific - Chinese General May Visit Bush - Chinese Launch Could Signal New Space Race - Chinese Leaders Give Full Backing To Hong Kong\'s Tung - Chinese Leaders Set Out Wish List - Chinese Manned Space Launch (Live Thread As Situation Develops) - Chinese Military Capabilities Study - Chinese Military Ready For "Necessary" Casualties Over Taiwan - Chinese Missile Tests Could Prompt Taiwan Split - Chinese Missiles Called Destabilizing - Chinese Missiles Target US Cities, Thanks To The Clintons And Media Treason - Chinese News Agency Subsidiary Acquires U.S. Financial News Company - Chinese Officials Warn US Of Future Strife - Chinese Owners Remaking Murray (Lawn Mower Company) - Chinese Premier Visits Wall Street, Meets US Business Leaders - Chinese Premier Warns U.S. Against Further Trade Barriers Against Chinese Products - Chinese Spies Get Free Pass - Chinese Spying and the White House - Chinese Star Wars - Chinese Students Suspects In Espionage - Chinese Territorial Assertions: The Case of the Mischief Reef - Chinese Views of Future Warfare - Chinese Yuan Irks U.S. Business - Chinese, Pakistani Naval Forces Conduct Joint Exercise - Christians Sent To Chinese Labour Camps: Report - CIA Sees China, Pakistan N-Link - CIA\'s Director Warns Taiwan Over Politics - Clinton Administration Gave China Top Nuclear Secrets - Clinton Gave China Chips for Nuclear War - Clinton Helped China Spy on US - Clinton Lifts U.S. Port Restrictions On Red China Ships - Coalition: Industry Jobs Are Vanishing - Communist China Conducting Effective Economic War Plan - Communist China Greets UK Prime Minister - Communist China\'s Hu Seeks Boost As Mao Disciple - Computer Virus Brings Down Train Signals - Congress Must Accelerate Pressure on China Trade - Contribution By Chinese Scientists In US Mars Explorations Notable - Cooper-Atkins Shipping Thermo Division To China - Corporate China Raids S. Korean High-Tech Companies - Countdown to Shenzhou - Crisis In Manufacturing: Firms Complain About Unfair Competition From China - Criticism Of China Policy Grows Among GOP Ranks - Dell Sets Sights on China Server Top Spot - Deutsche Bank Wins Approval To Trade In China Securities Markets - Electronics Maker Kemet to Cut 650 Jobs -- Relocates to China, Mexico - Establishing "One China" Policy Could Be Peaceful or Forceful - EU Hails China\'s EU Policy Paper - EU Viewed By China As World Power To Rival US - Everyone Appeases China - Expert Says Chinese \'Killer Satellites\' May Pose Serious Threat to U.S. - Experts: China Has An Eye For African, S. American Oil - F.B.I. Informant Is Charged With Copying Secret Papers - FBI: China Has 3000 Espionage “Frontâ€� Companies In U.S. - FBI Knew About Alleged Double Agent Sources: Leung Was Exposed 12 Years Ago - Feeling The Heat - Flood Of Auto Parts To Come From China - For Many Chinese, America\'s Allure Is Fading - Ford Announces China Expansion Plan - Ford Plans $1 Billion China Plant in Nanjing - Ford To Construct 2 Plants To Build Chinese Market - Foreign Officials Impressed By Chinese Marine Corps - France Sidesteps Human Rights Concerns And Forges Strategic Alliance With China - French Arms for China - GE Touts Products To Chinese Premier - General: China Preparing Space War Against U.S. - General Motors Plans Expansion to Launch Cadillacs in China - General Motors to Export $1.3 Billion of Vehicles to China Over Two Years - General Xiong (Guy Who Threatened To Nuke LA) Working On Sino-Japanese Cooperation - Germany To Sell Top Nuclear Plant To China - Global Crossing - Foreign Government Ownership Of US Telecoms Advances One Step Further - Global Crossing Deal Meets Stiff Resistance - Global Steel Shortage Forces 66% Climb In Prices Since June - GM Awaits Go-Ahead On Big New China Investment - GM Exec Says China Will Drive Industry Growth - Goldman\'s Hu Is `Quintessential Insider\' on Chinese Economy - Hands Off, China Tells G7 on Eve of Talks - Has The U.S. Lost Its Manufacturing Edge? - HK Tycoon Li Confirms Bid To Rescue Air Canada - Hong Kong Bishop Says China Hasn\'t Changed - Hong Kong Has Long Fight Ahead - Hong Kong Is Victim Of China\'s Treachery - How America Lost Its Industrial Edge - How China Stole Our Nuclear Secrets While Slick Willie Slept - How The Chinese Helped Iraq Fight The US - Hu And Jiang Struggle For Primacy - Hu Cancels Annual Party Retreat - Hu Digs in on China Exchange Rate - Hu in Moscow on First Foreign Trip as China Leader - Hu Jintao\'s Very Offensive Speech - Chinese "President" Makes Claim To Australia - IBM To Launch Linux Technology Center In South China - If Northrop Wins Contract, It Won\'t Build Taiwanese Subs In Newport News - Computer Virus Strikes State Department - Illegal Chinese Immigrants Irk Taiwan - Impact Of U.S.-China Trade Relations On Workers, Wages, And Employment Pilot Study Report - Independence Day - India And China In Naval History - India And China\'s Public Courting - Industry Official: U.S. Manufacturing Will Never Be The Same - Inside The Ring - China\'s Missile Tests - Inside The Ring- China Tensions - Intel Plans Chip Plant In China\'s Hinterland - Interview with Chinese President and Secretary General of the Chinese Communist Party Hu Jintao - Island Nation, Home to Key Chinese Tracking Station, Sides with Taiwan - IT Giants Fingered Over Links To China - Japan To Deploy Own \'Star Wars\' Missile Defence - Japan Wary Of China\'s Debut At G-8 - Japan, US To Boost Military Ties - Jobs Or Free Trade? It\'s A Tricky Trade-Off - Lawmaker Criticizes Global Crossing Sale - Libyan Arms Papers Are Linked to China: Nuclear Secrets Passed Through Pakistan - Loral (Bernard Schwartz) to File Chapter 11 - Loral Loses Satellite Scheduled to Be Sold - Lower Import Prices Haven\'t Lifted Living Standards After All - Mainland Ports Poised To Overtake Hong Kong (China) - Man Back In U.S. After Chinese Prison Term - Mao Zedong Thought In Chinese University Students\' Eyes - Maoist Revival Challenges Reform Efforts - Mao\'s Business - Media In China: The Door Slams Shut - Meet The World’s Newest Rap Superstar … Chairman Mao - Microsoft China Says More Investment, Cooperation in China in 2004 - Missile Defence Risks China Backlash - Missing Keys At U.S. Nuke Labs - More Charges In China Spy Case - Motorola To Sign $2bn China Contracts - Mugabe Envisages Alternative World Order Headed by China - NASA and China Should Work Together, Apollo Moonwalker Says - Naval Aviation: Japanese Reviving Their Carrier Fleet - Needed: A Realistic Look at China Policy - Nepal Bows To China\'s Demands - New Chinese Missile Threatens U.S. - New Light Shed On Sino-Pakistani Nuclear Ties - Northrop Grumman Gains in Taiwan Submarine Contest - Now China Is Sending A Man Into Space. Why? - Oil Partners Move To Block Chinese From Caspian Project - Once Amulets, Chairman Mao Badges Still Influence China - \'One Country, Two Systems\' Under Fire - Oracle Opens Beijing R&D Center - Outsourcing: Make Way for China - Outsourcing To Cut 10% IT Jobs In US - Paul Craig Roberts: "Loss of Jobs in America" - Pentagon: China Gearing for Taiwan Attack - Pentagon Report: China\'s Space Warfare Tactics Aimed at U.S. Supremacy - Pentagon Sees Growing Chinese Threat to Taiwan - People Smugglers Target Bermuda - Chinese Man Arrested Last Month Admits Island Is A ‘Soft Target\' To Get Into US - Petition On Furniture Imports Submitted: China Could Be Subject To Anti-Dumping Duties - Politics silences Delhi on Myanmar (China Threat) - Powell Warns Against Taiwan Independence - PRC Blasts Hong Kong Leaders As \'Unpatriotic\' As Future Democracy Jeopardized - President Hu Calls For Speeding Up Talent Training - President Hu Meets Former US President (Bush) - Red China Further Erodes Hong Kong\'s Civil Liberties - Red China Launches First Homemade Aegis Destroyer - Red China Ramps Up Its Efforts to Influence Congress - Red China\'s FC-1 Fighter Enters Production for “Poor Countriesâ€� - Red Skies in Canada - Red Star in Orbit - Refusing China\'s Visa Demands - Report: China Sentences British Citizen to Life in Prison on Spying Charges - Report: Police Beat Christian To Death [Red China] - RICO Laws Becoming the Last Resort of American Workers - Rumsfeld Will Host Chinese Defense Minister in Pentagon Meeting (Military Exchanges) - Sale of Nuclear Plant to China Puts German Aide on the Spot - Sale Of Submarines To Taiwan No Longer On U.S. Priority List - Schröder Makes a Questionable Push for China - Schröder Supports Arms Sales To China - Schroeder Reported To Urge End Of EU Arms Embargo On China - Schumer Wants U.S. To Level China Playing Field - Sean Connery To Join Taiwan Protest Against China - Security Problems Persist at Los Alamos - Shenzhou Secrets: China Prepares for First Human Spaceflight - Singapore\'s Deal for Global Crossing Telecommunications - Sino-US Ties At A Peak, Says Powell - \'Smart-Bomb\' Technology Moving To China - Socialite Indicted in L.A. Spy Scandal - South America To Negotiate FTA With China - Space Operations: Make It Look Like An Accident - Specter Of China Faulted For Manufacturing Slump: Cost-Cutting Spiral Is Strangling Businesses - Spy In The Sky - State Department Says Computers Hit by Virus - Steel Prices Soar 66% In A World Market \'Gone Mad\' - Stolen Cars - The Nerve! The Pirates Of Shanghai Are Knocking Off Entire Motor Vehicles - Storm Brews As China Tackles Bush (Bush Meeting Today With Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao) - Strengthening Sino-Russian Ties - Sun Gets $291K Fine for Illegal Exports - Sun\'s McNealy Announces Linux Deal With Chinese Government - Supercomputing and China - Suspected Double Agent for China Freed on Bail - Taiwan - Let\'s Not Go The Way Of Hong Kong - Taiwan and China Semiconductor Industry Outlook – 2003 - Taiwan Arrests Suspected Spy - Taiwan Foreign Minister Chien Meets With Dick Cheney At US Think-Tank Forum - Taiwan Has Ability To Construct Subs, Consultants Report - Taiwan Is Falling, Part 1 - Taiwan Is Falling, Part 2 - Taiwan Legislature Passes Two Resolutions Calling On China To Remove Missiles - Taiwan Pres Candidate Supports \'Limited War\' With China - Taiwan President Stops Over In New York, Amid China Warnings - Taiwan Shows China Its Teeth - Taiwan Silent On Missile Capable Of Reaching Shanghai - Rumsfeld Meets Chinese Defence Chief - Taiwan Successfully Test-Fires AIM-120 Missiles In US: Report - Taiwan to Vote on China Missile Threat - Taiwan\'s President Tests China\'s Nerves, Threatens Sovereignty Vote In March - Taiwan\'s Vice President Cancels Stopover In New York - Tapping Huge Chinese Market Is A Priority For Armstrong Teasdale - The China Threat? - The Chinese Navy and Its Many Friends - The Chinese Perspective On The Daqing Pipeline Project - The Collateral Damage Of A Slowing China: Asia Looks Unprepared - The Explorer - The Fed Is In A Dangerous Game With China - The Great Awakening About China - The Greenback\'s Worst Enemy: China\'s Yuan - The Idiot\'s Guide to Chinagate - The Men In Black: How Taiwan Spies On China - The Rise Of China As A Security Linchpin - The Rise Of China Inc. - The Smart Money is on China - The Stealth Trade War - The U.S. President, Once Again, Rejects Import Sanctions Against China - Thomson (RCA), Chinese Firm Join Forces - TI CEO Sees Slow Rise For China - Top U.S. General Making Highest-Level Military Visit to China During Bush Administration - Trade Deficit Provides China With More Than Economic Advantages - Trade Deficit With China Just A Small Part Of U.S. Woes - Trade With China Is Heating Up As a Business and Political Issue - Trading with China - Trading with the \'Enemy\' - U.S, Asia Policy Needs to Address Both Security and Economic Concerns - U.S. And Allies To Search Ships For WMD (Open Sea Interdictions - China Warns Against It) - U.S. Cites Buildup Of China’s Missiles - U.S. Factories Hit By Rivals In China - U.S. Furniture Makers to Seek Protection From China Imports - U.S. Gives $15 Million To China For AIDS Fight - U.S. Imposes Tough Sanctions On Key China Exporter - U.S. Job Losses Blamed on China\'s Currency - U.S. Negotiating Limits on China Textile Imports, Official Says - U.S. Presses for Interim Steps from China on Currency - U.S. Prods EU On Arms Sales To China - U.S. Spy Guilty Of Illegal Export To PRC - U.S. Tags China With Stiff Penalties - U.S. Trade Deficit Hits Record in 2003 - U.S. Won\'t Rap China On Rights Abuses - U.S., China Affirm Nuclear Technology Exchange Safeguards - U.S., China Trade Tensions Escalate - U.S.-China Relationship Borders on Schizophrenic - U.S.-EU GPS Rivalry Puts Japan In Difficult Position - United States Penalizes Chinese Firm for Exporting Missile Technology - United States-China Economic Relations and China’s Role in the Global Economy - US: China Has Credible Taiwan Attack Options - US Concerned About Chinese Missiles - US Fails For First Time To Accuse Red China Of Human Rights Violations - US Ignores China Warning On Hong Kong, Repeats Backing For Democracy Reforms - US Lawmaker Vows Action On Trade Gap With China - US Losing Connection (Motorola in China) - US May Bargain With Chinese On Missile Reduction - US May Supply Taiwan With Aegis Missile System - US Must Check China\'s Militarism - US Naval Officers In Taiwan Over Submarine Deal - US Official Gives China Poor Grades On Trade - US Punishes Firms In Iran And China - US Ships Make Port Visit To China To \'Reduce Misunderstandings\' - US Split On China, But Realists Hold The Reins - US Takes Aim at Chinese TVs in Trade Row - US Threatens To Shut Out Chinese Exports - US To Give Missiles To Taiwan - US To Taiwan: Don\'t Provoke China - US Trade Panel OKs China Furniture Duties - US Urges China To Conduct \'Fair\' Two-Way Trade - US Wants To Inspect Tech Exports In China - US Will Not Make Taiwan Deal With China Over Korea - US-Made Air-to-Air Missiles Delivered to Taiwan - USS Kitty Hawk Strike Group Docks In HK - Vietnam Warns Taiwan Over Spratly Islands - Volkswagen to Launch Sedans Made in China Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2004-05-21 09:25:00 69.161.216.141 Re: The China Threat Budget Cars En Route From China quote: Their names are Solo, Deer, Leopard, Safe and Sing, and thousands of them are on a boat headed this way. U.S. car buyers will soon have a new option: very-low-priced Chinese cars, trucks and SUVs. Four Houston partners will be exclusive dealers for two major manufacturers of Chinese cars for the entire state of Texas, with the first dealership scheduled to open in the city this summer. China Motors of Texas will import automobiles made by Geely and trucks and SUVs made by Great Wall, China's leading manufacturer of such vehicles. Cars will sell in the range of $7,000 to $11,000. The manufacturers and dealers are hoping Americans will embrace these new import brands like they did the Toyota — as opposed to, say, the Yugo, a Yugoslavian import that came to the United States in 1985 with high hopes but flopped so badly it became the butt of jokes. Auto industry observers say that any consumer love affair with these Chinese products will not develop overnight, no matter how good the vehicles are. But Ken Rams, CEO of China Motors of Texas, is optimistic. "We feel the timing is perfect for this," he said. "Most of the other manufacturers have abandoned the low, entry level of the price market," said Rams, noting: "Chinese car makers are committed to becoming a world force." Geely and Great Wall are privately owned companies in mainland China. There will be 24 other China Motors dealers in 13 states. Rams gave some speculation on pricing. The Geely sports sedan, called Solo, will cost $10,888 fully equipped with leather seats, power windows, a remote control entry system, CD player and wood trim. A fully-equipped Solo sedan is $8,888. Some pickup trucks sell for $7,900, and subcompacts cost $6,900. The prices for the SUVs have not been announced. Geely offers 3-cylinder and 4-cylinder engines, made in China, as well as a V-6. Like a charming immigrant still learning the culture ( :rolleyes: ), the Web site for Geely USA offers some delightful car descriptions. For example, it notes that the Solo gives its drivers a special feeling, "making you relaxed and happy. Uneasy no! Lost, no! Fashionable life, and fashionable car!" As for the Geely sports car, the Leopard: "The infinite vital force and the excellent driving feeling heats up your endless enthusiasm in your blood vessels." Geely's U.S. operation is so new that the English version of the company's Web site still identifies the cars by their Chinese names: The Leopard is called the "Beauty Leopard," and the Solo goes by "Merrie" and "Haoging." How enthusiastic will Americans be for these Chinese vehicles? "There have been many successful foreign car arrivals in the U.S., but we also remember the Yugo," said Paul Taylor, chief economist for the National Automobile Dealers Association. The ability to inspire confidence in the durability of the vehicle and the availability of service networks are the keys to winning acceptance among American consumers, Taylor said. "The Koreans) dealt with it by giving very long-term warranties and low pricing," he said. Low-priced Korean vehicles like Kia and Hyundai compete mostly with used cars, Taylor noted. China Motors vehicles should appeal to consumers who want a new car and warranty at "a low, low price," said Brian Moody, road-test editor at Edmunds.com, a Web site for car buyers and sellers. The Chinese vehicles won't be competing with Japanese products because manufacturers like Toyota and Honda have moved up-market: "The Civic and Corolla were once bargain-basement priced, but they're not cheap anymore," Moody said. "Now it's Kias, Hyundais and the Dodge Neon that are among the very inexpensive products. That should be where the turf war is with the Chinese cars." Winning over car buyers will be an uphill battle for China Motors, Moody said. Their vehicles may be first-rate, he said, but they'll be entering a U.S. market where they're unproven, and car buying is greatly based on reputation. "Just ask people at Kia. The Kia Optima is a great value," Moody said, "but the public's perception of the car lags far behind the actual quality of the product." China Motors cars and trucks are made in China at new plants using state of the art technology, Rams said. All vehicles come with a free 36-month or 36,000-mile bumper-to-bumper warranty. For $495 the buyer can get 36 more months, Rams said. China Motors will have a service department, and any auto shop that repairs Japanese cars will be able to fix Chinese vehicles, said China Motors partner Ted Jonick. After opening the Houston dealership, most likely near The Woodlands, the partners plan to open a San Antonio operation, followed by the simultaneous openings of two more Houston dealerships and one Dallas showroom. Rams is a 42-year veteran of the car business. His Ford and Dodge dealerships were in California and Michigan. In 1985, he gave up cars for greeting card distribution and consulting. Over the past few years he'd been wanting to get back into the auto trade but said he could not find anything that had significant potential. Through the Internet he learned that Geely and Great Wall were headed this way, and he contacted the distributor. His other two partners are Randy Fernandez and Bill Kesler. David Shelburg, 75, is an executive the North American division of China Motors, based in Phoenix. His son David Shelburg Jr. is president of the company. The elder Shelburg was previously a dealer for American Motors, and going back much further, the Kaiser. He also helped bring the Subaru to the United States. Shelburg has visited the Great Wall and Geely factories, and he noted that at the plants, only women do fitting and finishing work on interiors because in China, he said, it is believed that women are more precise than men. If these cars catch on, they could pose quite a threat to sales of domestic autos. With a fully loaded (leather, CD, keyless, etc.) car going for under $11k it will be hard for domestic auto makers to counter it. Not to mention that with these prices, they will attract many people that would normally be looking at used cars. And since these are equipped with Toyota powerplants they can’t be complete pieces of crap… Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2004-05-21 09:36:00 69.161.216.141 Re: The China Threat China Gets More U.S. Secrets quote: Another un-ratified U.N. treaty has benefited communists at the expense of the U.S., thanks once again to the Clinton administration's 'legacy.' In yet another example of how the former president sold out America's security to Red China, a defense department official tells Insight magazine how the Clinton administration handed over technology in order to keep within the "spirit" of the controversial Law of the Sea Treaty. Senior strategic adviser Peter Leitner says giving away highly sensitive underwater technology -- which the Chi-Coms 'demanded' under the pretense of needing it for manganese mining on the ocean floor -- compromised American submarine movement and could help Beijing to run submarines undetected just off the coast of the U.S. "The quality of the side-scanning sonar, deep-ocean bathymetric equipment, cameras, lights, remotely operated vehicles and associated submersible technology provided them the capability to locate, reach and destroy, or salvage early-warning and intelligence sensors vital to our national security," said Leitner at a recent hearing. Leitner also said that the technology allowed our "chief potential military adversary" to map any area of the oceans or continental shelves to determine submarine routing schemes or where missile-launching or intelligence gathering submarines may operate undetected just off the coast of the U.S. "The ultimate nightmare would be a close-in, submarine-launched cruise-missile attack upon the continental U.S. to which we are completely vulnerable and defenseless." Leitner fought a "lonely battle" to keep the technology out of Beijing's clutches, to no avail. "The zealous advocates of the treaty in several government agencies saw to it that the technology was provided to the People's Republic of China so as not to undermine the "spirit of the treaty," said Leitner. Editor's Note: A Chinese military manual first noted that bin Laden could attack the World Trade Center - Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2004-05-27 11:25:00 69.161.216.141 Re: The China Threat Submarines: The Chinese Submarine Building Program quote: May 24, 2004: The Peoples Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) regards its submarine force as its first line naval force. Not without reason. Only the submarine force has nuclear powered ships. More importantly, Chinese submarines pose the most significant threat to hostile naval forces, especially U.S. Navy carrier battle groups. The Chinese submarine force is undergoing rapid conversion to modern propulsion, sensor and weapons technologies. At the same time, serious measures have been taken to reduce noise levels and increase the effectiveness of the crews. The elite portion of the submarine force is its nuclear powered ships. Submarines are officially "ships" in the PLAN, rather than "boats" as in other navies. The Chinese nuclear submarine force was long mainly a paper threat. The original half a dozen nuclear submarines (5 Han attack boats and a single Xia which is nominally a ballistic missile sub) were the most noisy nuclear submarines ever built. Worse, they had terrible problems with radiation leaks in the reactor coolant system. The first of these subs was completed in 1974, but not operational until the 1980s because so many design and construction flaws had to be corrected. During the 1990s, an extensive program was undertaken to rebuild them all. Rumored to have been re-engined with French reactors (replacing the original German ones). U.S. Navy intelligence believes that, instead, the entire reactor coolant system was rebuilt. The Chinese subs had their electronics and sonar systems replaced with French equipment, and three may have been fitted with C-801 Ynng Ji 8 (Eagle Strike) ASCM (submarine launched cruise missile). Interestingly, the single Xia class sub, although used for missile launch trials, has never deployed with operational ballistic missiles, and apparently has been added to the force as an attack submarine. Supporting this theory are reports indicating the JL-1 and JL-1A ballistic missile (designed for Xia) never entered mass production nor were warheads manufactured for them. Meanwhile, the first of the new 093 class SSN is nearing completion this year. A second of the 093 class has already been launched and two or more additional units are eventually expected to be built. These submarines, built with Russian technical advice, are similar to the Russian Victor III class. They have been modified to use the new Chinese land attack cruise missile (HN-3). The 093s are considered to be “very quiet.â€� A new missile submarine (type 094) has also begun construction. It is reportedly designed to use a sea based version of a land based ICBM (known as JL-2 in naval form). This missile could reach US targets from Chinese waters. Potentially more significant is the rapidly expanding conventional submarine force. Typical of PLAN programs, there are parallel domestic and foreign weapons systems. Most famous, perhaps, is the purchase of four Russian Kilo class submarines, including two of the more advanced Project 636 types. More ominously, China ordered an additional eight units of this class, for simultaneous delivery in 2006, and it appears all will be delivered by 2007. These are superb submarines, quieter than most of the world’s nuclear submarines (when not recharging batteries with their diesel engines), and outfitted with very good sensors and torpedoes. Less well understood are the newer domestic submarine classes. The first of these, called Ming, has completed production. But one of these boats was used to test a form of AIP (Air Independent Propulsion), and the final series of six was built to use the best sonar and torpedoes available and also reportedly use AIP. With a workable AIP, these subs could stay underwater for weeks, and be quieter than American nuclear subs. The other domestic class is the Song. Subject to protracted development, it required a substantial redesign, so that the first ships produced were considered a subclass, called Song I. There are now six Song II, all with AIP, and all fitted to fire the same ASCM as the later Han SSNs (YJ-8). Often reported to be fired from separate tubes, in fact these missiles are torpedo tube launched weapons. Taken together, these modern submarines represent a very significant capability. They are as quiet as the US Los Angelus class, and those with AIP do not have to use noisy diesel engines to recharge their batteries for weeks. The Song class subs are still building at a rate of one a year. Finally, the PLAN continues to operate significant (but declining) numbers of Romeo class submarines. Copied from a Russian design, those still in service have also had new French sonar equipment installed. There are about 36 of these ships, but only about 21 active duty crews to serve them. The PLAN does not associate a crew with a specific submarine. Crews live ashore and are assigned a sub for a given mission. The Romeo class submarines might be significant as minelayers, as bait for anti-SSN traps, and as threats to merchant shipping. A final note about the PLAN submarine force. Long thought to use inferior Chinese designed torpedoes, it is entirely equipped with Russian torpedoes. The Yu-1 torpedo is the Russian Type 53-51, the Yu-3 is the SET-65E, the Yu-4 is the SET-60, the Yu-5 is the TEST-71/96 and the Yu-6 is the Type 53-65 (which has been compared to the Mark 48). Only the newer boats are fitted to use the Yu-5 and Yu-6. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2004-05-29 08:16:00 69.161.216.141 Re: The China Threat New Chinese Jets Superior, Eagle Loses to Flanker quote: Charles R. Smith Wednesday, May 26, 2004 China is about to receive 24 advanced Sukhoi Su-30MK2 Flanker fighters from Russia. The new fighter jets are reported to be the naval versions of the Sukhoi Su-30MKK fighter. The new Chinese fighters are reportedly equipped with enhanced anti-ship strike capabilities including the Kh-31 Krypton supersonic anti-ship missile. China has already purchased 78 Su-27SK/UBK fighters and 76 Su-30MKK fighters from Russia, and is building 200 more Flanker jets under license from Sukhoi. The PLA Naval Air Corps will deploy the latest batch of Su-30MK2 fighters. The disturbing news from Beijing adds to recent bad news for the U.S. Air Force. According to an unreleased U.S.A.F. report, the F-15 Eagle - the most advanced U.S. fighter in service - is inferior to the latest versions of the Sukhoi Su-30 Flanker. The report covers a series of air-combat training engagements earlier this year between Indian air force Su-30MKs and F-15Cs from Elmendorf AFB, Alaska. The U.S. F-15s were equipped with the U.S. latest long-range, high-definition radar systems. During the air combat exercises the Su-30MKs and F-15 pilots were seeing each other at the same time with their radars, but the Indian pilots were getting off the simulated first shot with their AA-10 Alamo missiles and often winning the long-range engagements. Flanker Beats Eagle According to a Richard Fisher, a defense analyst and noted expert on the Chinese military, the Chinese Flanker fighters can beat the U.S. top jet fighters including the F-15 Eagle. "Since 1992 the Pentagon has known that in a close-in dogfight the Su-27 would smear the F-15. That year Russian Sukhois came to Langley AFB and showed us their stuff. What we appear to be learning from the recent exercise with India is that Russian radar, weapons and more importantly, tactics, have all reached a level in which the F-15 is on the verge of being outclassed in the long-range engagement as well," stated Fisher. According to a recent report by Fisher for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, the Chinese Flanker fighters are a real threat to Taiwan and the U.S. Fisher's report raised early alarm bells about the Chinese purchase of large number of the more advanced Flanker - the Su-30 multi-role strike fighter. "With the purchase of the Sukhoi Su-30MKK (Mnogafunctunali Kommercial Kitayski-Multifunctional Commercial for China) the PLAAF demonstrated that it had made a clear doctrinal commitment to acquiring multi-role attack fighters capable of "joint" warfighting. The Su-30MKK is the first PLAAF attack fighter capable of delivering precision-guided munitions in all weather conditions, and to use modern air-to-air weapons like the self-guiding Vympel R-77 (AA-12 ADDER) AAM," noted Fisher's report. "This upgrade program has the potential to rapidly increase the number of multi-role fighters in the PLAAF, conceivably adding up to 78 Su-27SK/UBKs and 200+ J-11s to the 100+ Su-30MKK/MKK2 multi role fighters. The prospect of the later was formidable enough. But the near-term prospect of nearly 400 Sukhoi fighters with ability to launch active-guided R-77s and anti-ship missiles like the Kh-31A on a single mission creates great pressure for a U.S. defensive response. Such a force poses a serious challenge to Taiwan's ability to maintain control over its own airspace as well as complicating U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy plans to come to Taiwan's defense if needed," states Fisher's report. New Chinese Missile Superior to U.S. Worse still is the fact that China is now developing an air-to-air missile considered to be superior to the U.S. AIM-120 AMRAAM missile. The self-guided AMRAAM is the main long-range armament for all U.S. fighter jets. The new Chinese Project 129 or PL-12 missile is a Sino-Russian collaboration drawn from the Russian AA-12 Adder and equipped with an indigenous Chinese high-power rocket motor. Unlike the Russian AA-12, the PL-12 will have better performance than early models of the U.S. AMRAAM missile. The PL-12 reportedly has a maximum head-on engagement range of 50 miles and a maximum speed of four times the speed of sound. The PL-12 is now in the final stages of development, with test firings against target drones scheduled for this year. Pakistan is seen as the first export customer for the PL-12. The PL-12 has alarmed U.S. defense sources who now consider it as the primary radar-guided air-to-air missile threat against American and allied aircraft. The new PL-12 missile, once married to the advanced Su-30 Flanker jets in the PLAAF, can dominate the skies over Taiwan and eventually Asia. The U.S. F-15 Eagle, first flown in the mid-1970s, is rapidly becoming vulnerable to these fifth generation weapons. F-22 Politics The U.S. Air Force answer to the new threat is the F-22 Raptor. The new stealth jet fighter is capable of dealing with both the Su-30 and the PL-12 missile because of its superior speed, agility, and its ability to hide from conventional radars such as those on the Su-30. The U.S.A.F. wants to buy up to 400 of the advanced stealth fighters over the next decade. "China's Sukhois are somewhat different from those sold to India in that they lack the latter's new BARS phased array radar and thrust vectored engines. But that's only slight cause for comfort, as China is in the midst of upgrading its Sukhoi fleet to enable carriage of the R-77 BVR AAM and attack munitions. Most co-produced Su-27SK/J-11 fighters are so upgraded. This means that very soon the U.S. air forces in Asia could be facing 200-300 multi-role BVR AAM capable Sukhois in the PLA Air Force," stated Rick Fisher. "This trend was apparent several years ago and the tragedy is that the Pentagon did not start sounding the alarm back then. As a consequence an important chance to bolster political support for the F/A-22 has been lost. Today there is still an unjustified reluctance to publicly link China's growing Sukhoi fleet to a now urgent need to produce the F/A- 22," noted Fisher. The F-22 Raptor has become a political issue with the current Democrat candidate opposing the stealth fighter. Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry voted against funding the F-22 at least five times, in 1995 and 1996. Additionally, in 1995 Kerry supported a deep cut in the F-22 Raptor by signing onto S. 151 "to reduce Federal spending by restructuring the Air Force's F-22 program to achieve initial operating capability in 2010 and a total inventory of no more than 42 aircraft in 2015." In June 1998, John Kerry voted for the Bumpers amendment to the U.S. defense funding for 1999 to drastically cut the F-22 program. In 1998 Senator Bumpers (D. Ark.) repeatedly voiced his opposition to the F-22 and offered legislation to cut the aircraft permanently. "We are buying all these fighters in spite of the fact that the intelligence community and everybody who knows anything about an airplane knows that there isn't a plane in the world - in France, in Russia, in China - that is even remotely comparable to our F-15 and our F-18 and there won't be, the CIA says, for 15 to 20 years. So what is the rush to judgment?" stated Bumpers in 1998. The vote by Bumpers and Kerry failed, and the funding continued for the F-22. The words of Senator Bumpers convinced others like Senator Kerry and Senator Kennedy to consider the threat to our pilots and our national defense would not develop for 20 years. Six years later the threat is already flying. Deterrence or War "The vicious circle of development delays, cost overruns, politically inspired number reductions and then reduced requirements are symptomatic of a crisis of leadership that will make war on the Taiwan Strait more possible, as America has lost a chance to put needed deterrent forces in place," stated Richard Fisher. "The U.S. needed the F/A-22 in the Pacific theater five years ago, so that by today it would be reasonably integrated into our total forces. America will need far more than the 277 F/A-22s our leaders our currently willing to buy, and they are long overdue in the force. They are indeed expensive, but their cost is puny compared to the price America will pay if it either has to fight a war on the Taiwan Strait, or should it even lose that war," concluded Fisher. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2004-05-29 09:43:00 69.161.216.141 Re: The China Threat I know this is about 88 pages long but, this is well worth the read. It gives a great picture of how China is rapidly modernizing its military and dealing with the obstacles it will face in doing so. Hope you’ve got some free time! The Impact Of Foreign Weapons And Technology On The Modernization Of China’s People’s Liberation Army quote: A Report for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission January 2004 by Richard D. Fisher, Jr. Center for Security Policy INTRODUCTION While the most recent phase of the modernization of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been a vast undertaking spanning two decades, a critical element feeding its success has been consistent access to foreign weapons and military technologies. Successful PLA modernization is also dependent upon ongoing reform of its doctrine, strategies, military-industrial policies, and training and personnel policies. But all of these ongoing reforms would be for naught if the PLA did not have the most modern and capable weapons. To be sure, a reliance on foreign military technology by the PLA is not an asset, but a recognition on the PLA’s part that its indigenous military-technical sector cannot meet the capability requirements being set by the PRC leadership. Over the 1990s, the PLA defense sector has had mixed to poor results in adopting and absorbing foreign military technologies. Ongoing reforms in the PRC defense industry sector that aim to strengthen market incentives and alliances are having some effect. But the failure of its own defense sector to make new indigenous systems is giving rise to a more popular half-step: importation of specific weapon components to fashion or to help complete new weapon systems of largely PLA design. However, the PLA is now the world’s largest buyer of foreign made arms; it is possible to see that these purchases are having some cumulative effects leading to potential new and threatening military capabilities. Access to foreign military technology, especially Russian weaponry, has allowed the PLA to begin to fashion capabilities which can wage war in the early 21st Century and create the basis for an ongoing military-technical modernization that will place increasing pressure on the United States to sustain deterrence in Asia. For example, weapon systems the PLA is acquiring will allow it to greatly impede a future U.S. attempt to rescue democratic Taiwan in the event of a PRC attack. Foreign military systems are also propelling what Taiwanese officials predict will be a “crossoverâ€� in which the military balance on the Taiwan Strait will start to favor the PLA after 2005. Foreign military technology may also allow the PLA to build new power projection capabilities by the early next decade. By exploring the ways in which foreign military technology is aiding PLA modernization, and the possible resultant dangers to U.S. national security, this report hopes to highlight the need for greater U.S. policy focus on the need to stem PLA access to more modern and dangerous technologies. While the United States has made clear its desire for peaceful relations with the Chinese people, the government of the PRC is actively preparing for a possible war with democratic Taiwan, as it continues to proliferate dangerous nuclear weapon and missile technologies to rogue regimes. It remains necessary for the U.S. to sustain its embargo of military technologies put in place in response to the 1989 massacre in Tiananmen Square. The U.S. should work with allies in Europe to explain the possible dangers if Europe ends its Tiananmen embargo in 2004. And as the U.S. was able to persuade Israel to end its sale of dangerous military technology to the PLA, it is necessary to make curtailment of Russia’s substantial arms trade a higher bi-lateral issue with Moscow. Objectives and Sources It is the objective of this report to list and assess the foreign sources, and the foreign military systems and technologies that are aiding the modernization of the People’s Liberation Army. Broadly, this report seeks to update an earlier attempt to assess the impact of foreign technology on the PLA by including much new information.[1] To contain this study, it focuses primarily on the most current period of foreign technology acquisition, the 1990s and beyond. It is divided into two parts: 1) an assessment of the countries selling military technology to the PLA and an assessment of their impact on PLA modernization; and 2) a detailed list of known weapons sold to or acquired by the PLA. As with the previous attempt, there are two basic impediments to this endeavor. First, the PLA seeks to deny information or transparency regarding its military to both Chinese citizens and to foreigners to a far greater degree than in the West. There is no such thing as a free press for military issues in the PRC. Indeed the PLA has a large press devoted to military and technical publications, but it is heavily censored. Second, those who sell military technologies to the PLA have an interest in concealing their relationship with, and sales to the PLA. The PLA usually demands it. While it is indeed possible to conduct research about foreign military sales to the PLA, it cannot be done with the degree of detail and rigor possible in democratic societies where far greater degrees of military transparency are required. As a consequence, it is often necessary to convey degrees of suspicion or simply to offer informed speculation. Often one must at least explore logical connections in the absence of hard data. If the PLA buys an aircraft, but little is reported about its weapons package, it is still necessary to explore possibilities for that weapons package. Or if the PLA buys one product from a company that specializes in several cutting edge military technologies, it is logical to assume the PLA has a broader rather than a narrow interest in that company. Nevertheless, open sources do not allow the compilation of a complete list of weapons acquired by the PLA. It is necessary to continue to monitor available sources for past and new developments Regarding Chinese-origin sources, the PLA itself has produced two White Papers on its military, but these offer only a very broad-brush picture of the PLA, with little to no data on capabilities and foreign purchases. In recent years, however, popular Mainland military publications have proven increasingly useful. And while it has to be balanced against other sources, the Chinese Internet has proved to be an increasingly useful tool for research. Quite often, patriotic Chinese are willing to place useful data on the Chinese-language Internet that makes its way into English-language PLA issue forums.[2] In addition, the PLA has slightly relaxed its approach to visual security. For example, over the Internet, it was possible at the very end of 2003 to view a picture of the first 2-seat version of the Chengdu J-10 fighter, and from mid-2002 to the present, it has been possible to monitor the construction of two new classes of PLA Navy destroyers and one new class of frigates. Regarding Western sources, since 1998, the U.S. Congress has required that the Department of Defense produce an annual report on PLA modernization.[3] Its breadth of detail serves to define the PLA for the world far more than any PRC publication. Additionally, there are authoritative consensus documents produced by the U.S. Intelligence Community. Though the State Department seeks to “water downâ€� these documents,[4] especially since 2002, they have been a useful source of data on broad and specific PLA modernization trends. These reports, however, do not provide the same level of visual and descriptive detail provided by the Soviet Military Power reports of the Reagan Administration. This perhaps reflects a desire not to depict the PRC as a systemic threat on the same level as the former Soviet Union; the Pentagon’s 2003 edition omitted the few useful pictures provided by the 2002 edition and did not repeat or update a very useful examination of Russian-PLA relationship. While guided by the Pentagon reports, this report seeks to provide far more descriptive detail about foreign weapons and systems contributing to PLA modernization. In addition, there is a vigorous interest in the PLA in major military trade publications and in the Russian media. Information from these sources provides the balance of data for this report. An increasingly useful source of data on PLA modernization has been trade shows, both in the PRC and other countries. When the PLA wishes to sell a weapon system, it is far more ready to provide useful detailed information than otherwise. This holds true for the Russians, who have provided the bulk of the PLA’s new military technology over the last decade. It is possible on occasion to get both PRC and Russian military industry officials to answer questions that would never be offered as open information in their respective countries. As such, military-commercial shows have proved useful to this analyst and to many other journalists who follow PLA modernization trends. The drawbacks to this kind of research are common to those faced by journalists. For example, it is often not possible to name a source of information in order to protect that source. PLA NOW THE WORLD’S LARGEST ARMS IMPORTER The impact of foreign technology on PLA modernization has been examined repeatedly during the 1990s and beyond.[5] In the mid-1990s, one well-regarded study concluded that “…China can only expect limited success in its efforts to improve its military capabilities through the acquisition of foreign military weapons and technologies….Quick breakthroughs in military capabilities are more likely to come about as a result of direct foreign purchases…but these are likely to be modest in quantity and quality…â€�[6] And during the mid-1990s, such a conclusion was warranted given that the PLA was experiencing some difficulty in absorbing new foreign weapons. At that time, the PLA was in the midst of enormous turmoil as it sought to undertake personnel reform, downsizing, comprehend new military trends and begin to create appropriate doctrine, tactics and training to properly utilize weapons that it had yet to acquire. In addition, the PLA defense industry sector, striving to sustain a goal of self-reliance, was unable to absorb new technologies and production methods needed to produce increasingly high-technology weapons. The purchase of foreign weapons was promoted by the PLA leadership but opposed by domestic defense industries that wanted that money for their programs. Nearly a decade later, however, it is possible to begin to consider a different set of conclusions due primarily to the fact that the PRC has sustained and increased its foreign arms imports. Estimating the amounts of PRC arms imports is at best an imprecise task. PRC sources offer almost no accounting for foreign arms purchases, indeed, it is thought that most foreign arms purchases are paid for by government budgets not part of the PLA’s publicly stated budget figures. However, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) notes that, since 2000, the PRC has been the world’s largest importer of weapons.[7] In 2001, its imports were calculated to exceed $3 billion, while in 2002, arms imports exceeded $2.3 billion. Total arms imports were calculated to exceed $11.8 billion from 1993 through 2002.[8] For illustration purposes, SIPRI’s figures are included in a chart below. SIPRI is the first to caution that its figures do represent actual totals. The U.S. Congressional Research Institute estimated that PRC arm imports were $3.6 billion in 2002 and “signed dealsâ€� to import $17.8 billion worth of weapons from 1995 to 2002.[9] [See Link For Accompanying Table] Instead of seeking marginal gains from foreign weapons purchases, it is now possible to conclude that the PLA is relying on very large foreign weapons purchases to achieve near-term growth in capabilities that it may determine are necessary, especially in relation to military-political requirements pertaining to Taiwan. The 2002 order of eight new Russian KILO submarines is a case in point. With this order, the PLA sought to exceed the 2001 U.S. intention to sell Taiwan eight new submarines by actually making sure Russia delivered, whereas the U.S. prospects for delivery were and remain unclear. But this purchase increased by 200 percent the number of KILOs slated for the PLA Navy. Wholesale purchases that are being used to seek major advances in capability are listed in the following chart. MAJOR ONGOING PLA WEAPONS PURCHASE PACKAGES -- 400 Sukhoi fighters by 2006, many upgraded for multi-role missions -- Thousands of Russian anti-air and precision ground-attack weapons for aircraft -- Many hundreds of Russian S-300 SAMs -- 12 Russian KILO submarines, 8 with CLUB long-range anti-ship missiles -- 4 Russian SOVREMENNIY class missile destroyers -- Russian weapons and electronics packages for three new classes of stealthy warships -- Russian 1-meter electro-optical and radar satellites -- Assuring access to Navsat signals by buying a partnership in the European GALILEO -- Second batch of 20 Russian Il-76 heavy transport aircraft Given PRC sustained economic growth rates, and the Pentagon’s estimation that annual PRC defense spending levels will increase beyond 2002 levels of $65 billion, it is possible that the PLA may be able to sustain its arms buying binge. The main recipient of the PLA’s spending has been Russia. During the December 2003 visit to Russia of PRC Defense Minister Cao Gangchuan, it was revealed by Russian sources that PRC arms purchases from Russia would exceed $2 billion in 2004.[10] This figure included previous and new arms deals, meaning that subsequent years hold the prospect for high amounts of arm purchases from Russia. Long before becoming Defense Minister in 2003, Cao Gangchuan has played a key role in the PLA’s foreign arms acquisitions and broad PLA weapons policies.[11] Beginning in the 1970s, he served in the Office of Military Trade of the General Armament Department (GAD), eventually rising to lead this office. Here Cao was responsible for selling PLA-made weapons, but in the 1980s and increasingly in the 1990s, he was buying foreign weapons. His education in Russia in the 1950s well-equipped him to manage the resumption of growing PLA-Russia arms sales and cooperation in the 1990s and beyond. The monies involved in this business and Cao’s political skills earned the favor of President Jiang Zemin. In 1998, he rose to become Director of the GAD and in 2002 he was publicly identified as the director of the PRC’s manned space program.[12] During the 16th Communist Party Congress in 2002, he was selected to be a Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission, and was soon afterwards named Defense Minister. Cao differs from his predecessor in that he will not be a largely ceremonial or political Defense Minister. He is apparently as involved in the military technical issues of PLA modernization as he was during his previous assignments. Cao was visible during the October manned space launch and was even referred to by astronaut Yang LiWei as “chief.â€� During his December visit to Russia, Cao toured destroyer and submarine shipyards in St. Petersburg, spent a day with Sukhoi observing upgraded fighter aircraft, and advanced a range of arms sales and technology cooperation issues. It can be expected that Cao will continue to exercise significant leadership over the PLA’s arms relationship with Russia and will help determine any new set of arms relationships with Europe should there be a formal end to its 1989 arms embargo. Impact on PLA Arms Industries: Making Pieces Fit Better There has long been tension between those in the PLA who demand new weapons as soon as possible and prefer to buy select foreign systems, and those who follow the historic desire by the PRC to strengthen self reliance, which emphasizes the interests of PLA subordinate defense industries over foreign weapons purchases. The middle ground for the PLA has long been to try to graft various foreign components into largely indigenous weapon designs to increase their capability, or to in turn produce a new generation of weapons. From the 1970s to the mid/late-1990s, there were many attempts to do this, largely with marginal success. Prominent examples include the Nanchang A-5 attack fighter, a radically re-designed Shenyang J-6 (MiG-19) turning a short-range, low-payload, clear-weather fighter into a short-range, low-payload, clear weather attack aircraft. In the early 1990s, the PLA Navy acquired two LUHU class destroyers, which for the first time combined U.S. and Ukrainian gas turbine engines and French SAMs, defensive electronics and command and control systems, and an Italian CIWS. There were integration problems and the ship’s performance, while an improvement for the PLA, was obsolete compared to neighboring navies. In addition, the early 1990s saw the PLA Navy encounter serious problems trying to marry disparate technologies into its first Type 039 SONG class conventional submarine. For most of the 1990s, indigenous fighter programs, be it the Shenyang J-8II, Chengdu J-10 or Chengdu Super-7/FC-1, encountered delays due to arms embargoes, funding issues and inability to decide on a foreign component or whether to make it themselves. As the mid-decade draws near, however, it is possible to assemble a different picture that appears to be one of improvement rather than stasis or decline. This conclusion follows from review of new PLA weapon systems in Part 2 of this study. The PLA has not lost its enthusiasm for seeking to graft foreign components onto new weapons systems in the absence of being able to design complete new weapon systems. The new twist is that, by early in this decade, the PLA is getting better at it. The solutions could be many and, while the individual stories of some weapon systems in the second part of this report will shed light on how weapons production has improved, there are reasons that can be listed here. One reason may be that the PLA has learned lessons on how to better use foreign expertise. A recent example of this is the seeming happy ending to the long-running saga of the Rolls Royce Spey turbofan engine co-production deal. This project started in 1975, but the PLA was not able to co-produce this engine in order to complete a much needed fighter-bomber, the Xian JH-7. In the late-1990s, when the PLA decided that it really wanted the JH-7 to succeed, it went back to Rolls Royce, and by 1999 cut a new deal. It purchased more used Spey engines to carry forward some JH-7 production, but also allowed Rolls Royce to make co-production work. The result is the new Qinling turbofan engine. [See Link For Accompanying Table] [See Link For Accompanying Table] Manufacturing Improves The PLA retains the ultimate goal of building its defense industries so that they become world-class defense technology innovators, rather than consumers of new ideas from elsewhere. One goal of the Shenyang 5th generation fighter program appears to be to indigenously develop and sustain all of its component parts. As the PLA assembles weapons with pieces from other countries, and gets better at this, it is also using its interactions with the West to generally improve its defense industries. But there remains widespread redundancy, overcapacity and slowness in applying design and manufacturing lessons available from the West. Greater rationalization in the defense sector is often impeded by companies that are able to gather political clout to ensure the survival of firms that should be allowed to fail. One area where such interaction may be having an impact is in fulfilling one goal of the broad 1998 PLA military-industry sector reforms to give greater play to market forces. Companies like Chengdu are apparently succeeding in developing fighters that may be competitive in foreign markets, in part through knowledge gained by interacting with foreign companies. Chengdu is also learning that transparency assists marketing. It is clear that Chengdu has judged that success in foreign markets is critical to company survival. It may need foreign revenues if the PLA decides to rationalize and cut back the number of aircraft manufacturers. Aircraft sector. Interaction with Western firms is having a positive impact already in the aircraft sector. In the 1989s this sector reflected older People’s War doctrines: multiple redundant design and production facilities dedicated toward making large numbers of relatively simple copies of 1950s Soviet fighter and bomber designs. Production methods were crude. Quality control was poor and as a consequence fighter unit readiness suffered.[13] However, by 2002 Russian sources were reporting that the PLA was making remarkable advances in its aircraft manufacturing. They noted that the production finish of Sukhoi J-11 fighters being co-produced at Shenyang were better than Russian-made fighters from KNAAPO. Such a turn around did not come fast or easy for the PLA, but that it is occurring is in part a consequence of extensive interaction with Western aircraft concerns.[14] Russia is perhaps having the greatest impact on improving combat aircraft design and manufacture. Shenyang has the deepest relationship with Sukhoi and KNAAPO, the dominant Russian aircraft concerns. Having purchased the co-production rights to the Su-27SK, Shenyang has learned enough to begin to add increasing PRC-made content to this fighter. Shenyang and Chengdu have purchased Russian advice to improve indigenous designs like the J-8II, J-10 and FC-1. There is very likely significant Russian help for the Shenyang’s and Chengdu’s 5th generation fighter designs. In addition, the Ukraine’s Antonov aircraft company is moving into a dominant position in helping develop, and perhaps in the future, co-produce new PLA heavy cargo transport aircraft. But other countries are aiding an improved PLA combat aircraft manufacturing capability. In 2002 a Russian source noted with some embarrassment that Shenyang J-11 fighters had a better production finish than KNAAPO-made fighters. He noted that much of Shenyang’s rapid improvement in J-11 manufacturing finish has been due to the import of modern production machinery from Russia, Japan, Sweden and even the United States.[15] For example, as of mid-2003 Sweden’s Avure Company had sold the PRC eight of its modern high-power presses to fabricate aluminum aircraft parts, three of which were going to the Shaanxi transport aircraft maker, and the Changhe and Harbin helicopter makers.[16] In addition, it appears that most Chinese aircraft manufacturers use French aircraft maker Dassault’s CATIA software that enables complex three-dimensional designs. Dassault has been selling its CATIA software in the PRC since about 1983.[17] A recent report credits computer aided design software with accelerating the building of Chengdu’s FC-1 fighter and the twin-seat version of its J-10 fighter. Design drawings for both fighters were delivered in six months, where as before the drawings for just the single-seat J-10 had required ten months.[18] It is also possible that PRC companies which do substantial sub-contracting assembly work for major aircraft makers like Boeing and Airbus are taking knowledge gained from this work and applying it to improve their combat aircraft manufacturing. For example, the Chengdu makes parts for the Boeing 757 and Airbus 319 airliners. Shenyang does sub contract assemblies for Airbus. The Xian Aircraft Corporation builds Boeing 737-700 vertical fins and Airbus A320 cargo access doors.[19] Sources who had visited Chengdu’s subcontract assembly lines had noted their proximity to the fighter production lines and that fighter parts they had viewed, in their opinion, benefited from assembly the line for the subcontract parts.[20] The PRC’s AVIC-1 aircraft consortium will likely gain far greater access to Western technologies via its new Advanced Regional Jet ARJ21 program. Revealed in 2002, the ARJ21 grew out of previous attempts to build competitive transport aircraft in the PRC. In the 1980s the PRC co-produced 33 McDonnell-Douglas MD-80 airliners, but PRC airlines preferred better-built less expensive foreign made transports to remain competitive. In the early 1990s there was an attempt to join with Airbus to build a new small airliner but the program faltered. With the ARJ21 AVIC-1 has succeeded in enlisting a long line of U.S. and European aircraft subcomponent producers to both co-produced their parts in the PRC or to purchase services.[21] Even if there are safeguards it can be expected that the PRC will learn a great deal about these components. And once the ARJ21 program is secure it is likely that AVIC-1 will start producing larger airliners that will compete in markets now dominated by Boeing and Airbus. In addition, like the Brazilian EM-145 regional jet, the ARJ21 provides an ideal platform for military missions. Like the EM-145, the ARJ21 could be modified with the ERIEYE-like phased array radar being developed by the PLA or with system to perform maritime surveillance missions. Shipbuilding. It is also increasingly apparent that after some delays, the PLA shipbuilding sector is benefiting from the reforms this sector implemented in the 1980s and 1990s to become globally competitive. But this process was slow. In 1997 the PLA launched a single LUHAI class destroyer. While it featured a modular superstructure and some stealth features, it had only a modest weapons and electronics suite. But by the turn of the decade PLA shipbuilding was put into high gear. In 2002-2003 the PLA produced two new classes of stealthy air defense destroyers, the first such ships dedicated to this task, a new class of stealthy frigate, series production of the improved SONG submarine, possibly two new large underway replenishment ships, and series production of an improved tank landing craft (LST). This bust of new warship construction was made possible by new modern production methods. The destroyers were all built sequentially in the Shanghai Jiangnan shipyard, demonstrating modular construction and very close quality control likely made possible by computers and precision machine tools. The new frigate is made in two shipyards. The Guangzhou yard uses a covered assembly line to connect very large modules built in nearby locations, a state of the art technique. The improved SONG is being made in two shipyards, facilitating a rapid build up for these two critical ships. COUNTRIES THAT SELL WEAPONS TO THE PRC Russia In a reversal of the late Cold War antagonism, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the new Russian Federation has emerged as the PRC’s principle source for advanced military hardware, military technology, military-technical training and advice. In mid-2002, the Pentagon reported that since 1990, figures for “signed agreementsâ€� could range from “$10 billion to $20 billionâ€� with actual deliveries ranging from “$7 billion to $10 billion.â€�[22] In 1999, annual Russian arms sales to the PRC jumped from about $1 billion to $2 billion, a figure that will be sustained in 2004. The Pentagon concluded in 2002 that “Russian arms sales are expected to have a significant impact on China’s ability to use force against potential adversaries such as Taiwan.â€�[23] The most recent phase in PRC-Russian relations began in August 1986, when then-President Mikhail Gorbachev made a surprising speech which contained strong overtures towards the PRC. Among other things, Gorbachev proposed cooperation in space exploration.[24] Following Tiananmen, the West’s shunning of the PRC’s military accelerated a military rapprochement with a newly impoverished Russia. Early in the 1990s, the PRC was able to drive hard bargains, getting the Russians to accept sub-standard “barter goodsâ€� in exchange for early shipments of weapons. By the mid-1990s, Russia’s pervasive need for hard currency forced a restructuring of their PRC military trade to a cash-basis. Early Russian reluctance to sell their most modern technology faded continuously during the 1990s so that now it is the Russians who are increasingly hard pressed to come up with “something newâ€� for Beijing. As already mentioned, in the late 1990s, the PRC started to double it annual arms purchases to the $2 billion level. This served to fund the purchase of large numbers of Sukhoi fighters, to sustain one and maybe two Sukhoi co-production agreements, a trebling of the number of KILO submarines and an unknown but believed high number of S-300 SAMs. In addition to purchasing advanced weapons, the PLA has been forced to learn—often the hard way—that new weapons require new doctrine, tactics, training and maintenance practices, or “software.â€� In many instances, the challenge of developing new “softwareâ€� has been more difficult for the PLA than buying new “hardware.â€� But the PLA is learning. For example, the PLAAF’s experience with the inadequacy of the single mission Su-27 air superiority fighter influenced a mid-1990s decision to acquire only multi-role combat aircraft in the future. To take full advantage of the advanced capabilities of the Su-27, the PLAAF had to formulate more aggressive training programs. Access to Russian technology from the Su-27 has influenced domestic aircraft programs. In the early 1990s, Chengdu had to modify its J-10 fighter to take advantage of access to the Russian Saturn Alyuka AL-31 engine also used by the Su-27. According to one report, Russia-PRC cooperation in space technologies pre-dates the break-up of the Soviet Union, beginning possibly in 1989.[25] During a December 1992 visit to Beijing, then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin was pressed by the PRC to begin cooperation in space technologies.[26] Space cooperation was early on the agenda for growing Russia-PRC cooperation, with efforts to formalize unconnected early cooperative programs in 1995.[27] By 1999, a Russian report noted that there were 11 joint space programs being implemented.[28] Perhaps sometime in 2000, a new bi-lateral commission was created to coordinate multiple bi-lateral space cooperation programs.[29] Cooperation was expanded in 2003 to cover new area in unmanned spacecraft.[30] There is an increasing emphasis on broader technology development cooperation, in which the PRC seeks to attract Russian technological investment in the PRC and the PRC also invests in high technology in Russia. In 1993, there were 300 Russian scientists on long-term defense-related programs, and by 2000, this number jumped to 1,500.[31] High technology development contracts between Russia and the PRC jumped from 35 contracts, totaling $11.7 million in 2001, to $20.7 million for 30 contracts in the first six months of 2002. [32] A 2002 PRC technology delegation visiting Moscow to advance these contracts included officials from “leading shipbuilding, nuclear energy, aerospace and defense industry companies.â€� [33] Long seeking to shift the balance of its military trade from hardware to technology, in December 2003, Defense Minister Cao Gangchuan made a special push to change this balance to 70 percent technology and 30 percent hardware. [34] Of note, the PLA wants to participate with Russia in joint sales to third countries.[35] This is significant in relation to a possible ending of Europe’s arms embargo. If this happens, the PLA will likely try to form new alliances with European arms makers as quickly as possible, thereby creating anxiety in Moscow. One way for Beijing to calm Moscow’s fears would be to craft more multi-lateral military programs. But to remain competitive with Europe, it is possible that Russia may become more eager to sell whatever it has that is new and more deadly. Ukraine While the Ukraine has probably only sold roughly $1-2 billion million in military products to the PLA over the last decade, it has been useful nonetheless. Since the break-up of the Soviet Union, Russian and Ukrainian military concerns have become more competitive, and the PLA has sought to take advantage of this. The Ukraine has been a source for space and missile technologies, conducting training for PLA astronauts, and possibly selling the PLA advanced liquid fuel rocket engines. The Ukraine is a principle source for air-to-air missiles for PLA Sukhoi fighters. In terms of naval hardware, after much effort, the PLA was able to buy the rusting hulk of a carrier VARYAG and tow it to Dalian in 2002. There it will teach PLA Navy engineers about Soviet era aircraft carrier technology. The PLA may remain interested in the quite capable Ukrainian SLAVA class cruise. In addition, the Ukraine contains top-notch electronic warfare specialists. It is in this area where the PLA is stepping out and investing to create new products. If reports are to be believed, it was PLA investment that allowed the Ukraine to create the feared KOLCHUGA passive radar. [36] The PLA is reportedly paying Ukrainian companies to develop a new naval phased array radar, which may be the new radar for the PLAN’s No. 170 class air-defense destroyers. [37] In such arrangements, the PLA likely owns the resulting new technology, as it most probably enables its engineers to absorb the knowledge of their Ukrainian mentors, strengthening their potential to produce a next generation product. Israel Even though Israel apparently has stopped its military exports to the PRC, it remains the second most important source of advanced military technology to the PRC due to its cumulative effect. Total estimates of the amount of Israel’s military exports to the PRC vary. SIPRI lists $162 million from 1993 to 2002, but in 1997, an Israeli official noted that Israel’s military sales to the PRC were approximately $10 million annually.[38] Another estimate for that same year notes Israeli arms sales to the PRC may have been as high as $30 million annually from 1979.[39] Notably, this trade was poised to leap by $1 billion, but the U.S. convinced Israel to cancel the sale of its sophisticated PHALCON AWACS aircraft in 2000. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the United States encouraged Israel to develop military technical ties with the PRC in order to indirectly aid PRC military modernization against the former Soviet Union. The formal go-ahead is reported to have come in 1979, when then-Defense Minister Ezer Weizman asked the late Israeli billionaire Shaul Isenberg to establish the Israeli-PRC arms trade.[40] During the 1980s, Israel offered the PRC its technology in the areas of tank weapons, anti-tank missiles, surface-to-air missiles, cruise missiles, military electronics and aircraft design. But by the 1990s, the Israel-PLA relationship became a matter of increasing concern for Washington, not just because of the sophistication of technology sold, but because some of the technology was of U.S. origin or made possible by access to U.S. weapon systems, and was subsidized by U.S. taxpayers.[41] Israel’s principle motivation for pursuing its arms relationship with the PRC was to support its arms industries, whose independence and competitiveness Israel requires for its own national security. However, some Israelis have suggested another motivation. Israeli officials claim that one benefit of its sale of LAVI fighter technology to China has been to prevent sales of surface-to-surface missiles to Israel’s neighbors.[42] However, in mid-1996, the CIA reportedly disclosed that China may have shipped “missile-related componentsâ€� to Syria.[43] And there is the larger question of PRC nuclear and missile proliferation and the dangers that has created for Israel. For example, the PRC has sold Iran both nuclear technologies that would contribute to its nuclear weapons program and missile technologies that have contributed to its long-range nuclear missile program. Furthermore, PRC missile technologies have been sold to Iran through proxies like North Korea. This occurred during the 1990s when the Israeli-PLA relationship was at its height. In the early 1990s there were two incidents that caused great concern in U.S., especially in intelligence circles. One was the suspicion that Israel had sold the PRC an example of a U.S. PATRIOT surface-to-air missile.[44] Israel strongly denied this charge and the U.S. is reported to have sent a team to Israel to investigate this transfer, but could not determine that Israel had sent a PATRIOT to the PRC.[45] However, a U.S. official has disclosed that indeed the PRC did obtain one PATRIOT missile in the early 1990s.[46] The leakage of U.S. track-via-missile to the PRC, though not as sensational as other military technology leakages, nevertheless constitutes a serious loss for the United States. The most famous PRC-Israel project has been the co-development of the Chengdu Jian-10 (J-10) 4th generation multi-role fighter. This project drew heavily on Israel’s Israeli Aircraft Industries LAVI advanced fighter, [47] which was terminated after the U.S. withdrew its financial and political support. In 2003, a Russian source who visited Chengdu in the early 1990s remarked that it was possible to view Hebrew language placards on the walls where work was being done on the J-10.[48] But the LAVI, in turn, drew heavily from U.S. technology, including some associated with the Lockheed-Martin F-16 fighter. U.S.-origin technology in the J-10 may include avionics, advanced composite materials and flight control specification.[49] As more details about the J-10 have surfaced, it is increasingly apparent that Chengdu pooled technology influences from Israel and Russia to make this new fighter. Though long in gestation, the J-10 may enter production in 2004, and could prove to be a capable multi-role fighter able to hold its own against many current U.S. fighters. But it was Israel’s attempt to sell its very advanced PHALCON phased array airborne radar to the PLA which finally mobilized a bi-partisan U.S. effort in the late 1990s to insist that Israel halt its exports of dangerous military technology to the PRC. Concern had been building since the deal was formalized at the Paris Airshow in 1997 that Israel would combine PHALCON with a Russian-supplied Beriev A-50 AWACS aircraft. The deal would have involved up to four aircraft for $1 billion.[50] The advanced capabilities of the PHALCON exceeded that of the U.S. E-3 SENTRY and would have severely threatened Taiwan’s air defense capabilities. The Clinton Administration, starting with President Clinton, began to press its concerns to Israel in November 1999.[51] The issue soon united both Democrat and Republicans in opposition, both in the Administration and in the Congress, and even among strong supporters of Israel.[52] Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak announced Israel’s cancellation of the deal during a U.S.-Israeli summit in July 2000. This cancellation caused a furor in Israel among the PHALCON sale’s supporters[53] and Israel was forced to pay $350 million in compensation to the PRC. But the PHALCON’s capabilities are still prized by the PLA and this perhaps is why, as recently as late 2001, China has persisted in trying to convince Washington to reverse its decision.[54] Since the cancellation of the PHALCON sale, the U.S. applied increasing pressure on Israel to curtail all sales of dangerous weapons to the PLA. In late 2000, a U.S-Israeli committee was reportedly created to review Israel’s sale of such technologies.[55] Nevertheless, such sales have surfaced. In 2002, it was reported that Israel sold a large number of its HARPY anti-radar drone to the PLA. [56] In early 2002, Israel was close to a sale for its AMOS small-bus communications satellite, originally designed for the Israeli military. But through 2002 and 2003, the U.S. apparently convinced Israel to stop its sales of advanced military technology to the PLA.[57] In mid-2003, the AMOS sale fell through and Israeli Aircraft Industries reduced their Beijing office.[58] A December 2003 report notes that Israel may be trying to revive some military-technical commercial ties that may focus primarily on counter-terrorism.[59] Given that there is little distinction between counter-terrorism capabilities and those required by Special Force units for assault missions, it is necessary for the U.S. to continue to monitor Israeli military commercial activities with the PRC. Europe In the late 1970s and into the 1980s, the Europeans jumped into the PRC arms market to compete with the U.S. and Israel. France and Britain were the leaders, followed by Italy, and then Germany selling mainly dual use items. Sweden also began an arms relationship. The 1980s saw several European countries sell military technology to the PRC as part of the anti-Soviet effort. However, most but not all of this commerce was curtailed by European Union sanctions in response to the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre. After the mid-1990s, Britain, France, Spain and Italy modified their interpretations of the 1989 sanctions to allow increasing “dual useâ€� technology to be sold to the PRC. Under this flag, Europeans have sold defense electronics and helicopter technology to the PLA. By the late 1990s, Beijing was putting heavy pressure on many European countries to end these sanctions and resume military technology and weapons sales. Seeing that its harangue could have effect, Beijing continued to press hard. Beijing scored by blocking a German reconnaissance satellite sale to Taiwan in 1999[60] and put sufficient pressure on Germany, and Spain in 2001 to 2002, to block the sale of their conventional submarine technology to Taiwan. During his August-September 2002 tour of Europe, former Premier Zhu Rongji explicitly called for Europe to resume military sales.[61] As U.S.-EU relations went from tepid to worse in 2002-2003, it appears that Beijing saw an opening to extract concessions from Europeans who were looking for stronger links to Beijing to take the place of those they were giving up with Washington. In June 2003, during a visit to Beijing, French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said, "We are working hard to lift the ban.â€�[62] Beijing began applying serious pressure in its release of a White Paper on PRC-EU relations, saying, “The EU should lift its ban on arms sales to China at an early date so as to remove barriers to greater bilateral cooperation on defense industry and technologies.â€�[63] This White Paper was released weeks before a high-profile Summit of EU leaders in Beijing in November. Then, in early December, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder called for the embargo to be lifted during a visit to the PRC.[64] Barely two weeks later, at an EU summit in Brussels, French President Jacques Chriac’s call for the end of the embargo was joined by Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Belkenende, Swedish Premier Goran Perrson and Chancellor Schroeder.[65] A summit statement later said that Foreign Ministers would “re-examine the question of the embargo on the sale of arms to China.â€�[66] Days later, the European Union Assembly adopted a resolution against lifting the embargo, citing the PRC’s threats to Taiwan,[67] but the advisory nature of this body means it cannot stop a lifting of the EU embargo on arms sales to the PLA in 2004. For the last few years, restrictions have been relaxing, especially regarding sale of space technology to the PLA. Britain, Germany and Italy have sold satellite technology to the PRC. The European space consortium Astrium has sought to sell manned space life support technology and has lobbied to allow the PRC to join the International Space Station.[68] A 2003 agreement to secure a PRC financial contribution to the future European GALILEO navigation satellite constellation marked a new high-point in space cooperation. By October, the PRC and the European Space Agency were reported close to completing a five-year space cooperation agreement that would cover “space science, Earth observation, environmental monitoring, meteorology, telecommunications and satellite navigation, microgravity research for biology and medicine, and human resource development and training.â€�[69] In conjunction with the mid-December EU summit, major European defense and aerospace companies called for an end to the embargo.[70] Their tone was set by EADS, which in early October signed a “strategic cooperation agreementâ€� with AviChina, an investment arm of AVIC II, that would involve the “the joint development, manufacturing and modernization of helicopters, regional aircraft and training aircraft.â€� Said an EADS spokesman, “We have been working with Avic II for 30 years. It makes perfect sense for us to become a strategic partner in AviChina.â€�[71] France During the 1990s, France maintained a quiet relationship with the PLA, continuing cooperation in the helicopter sector. But as the decade ended, France became the strongest advocate to remove the 1989 embargo. Once the embargo is terminated, France very likely expects to be rewarded with immediate military business. The French would have much to offer; they are active in almost every sphere of military-technical research and eager to support their military base through exports. In early 2002, French political and industry officials wanted to sell the PLA new imaging satellite technology.[72] France’s HELIOS II electro-optical imaging satellite, due to be launched in 2004, likely has a sub-1 meter resolution. An early candidate for sales might be the Snecma M-88 turbofan engine. This advanced high-thrust low-weight engine would be a good candidate for either incorporating into new training/attack fighter design or to serve as the basis for a long-term co-development program. France has had experience trying to graft its electronic systems into Soviet/Russian weapons, experience the PLA may find attractive. Some French official suggested selling the now-to-be-scrapped Clemenceau aircraft carrier in the mid-1990s and the French might now wish to sell aircraft carrier technology. This may even include technology associated with the RAFALE-M carrier version of the Dassault RAFALE 5th generation fighter. Germany Germany’s decision to support the lifting of the EU embargo likely has more to do with currying economic favor with Beijing and finding another way to distance itself from Washington. While it is difficult to imagine Germany selling actual weapons to the PLA, (it had trouble selling tanks to NATO ally Turkey), there are a range of dual use technologies that Germany would like to sell the PLA, to include space, electronic and fuel cell technologies. Germany is developing a radar satellite called SAR-Lupe, which will join the French HELIOS II to form Europe’s first independent intelligence and surveillance satellite network. Italy Italy will likely take advantage of the end of the EU embargo. Its main helicopter company, AugustaWestland, is a key partner with the PLA in developing its new medium helicopter. Sweden It appears that Sweden will support a European Union decision to end its arms embargo against the PRC. While Swedish governments have been among the most principled supporters of nuclear and conventional arms control, Sweden maintains a modern innovative arms industry which is very active in the international marketplace. Should the embargo end, Sweden would be able to offer the PLA a great deal of world-class weaponry but more importantly, the Swedes could convey hard-learned lessons in information integration, joint warfare and in rationalizing defense industries. During the 1980s, Sweden sold to the PLA a small number of its popular Haaglunds Bv-206 tracked military carriers, which are still operated by a PLA Army unit near Beijing.[73] There are suggestions that the PLA is developing a light-weight SAM based on the effective Swedish RBS-70.[74] It is not possible to find additional reporting on the possible sale of this missile. It is perhaps possible that Pakistan, which assembles the RBS-70, may have been a source for this technology. More recently, in 1997, Sweden sold two of its Combatboat 90E 9-ton Special Forces fast transport boats. These can carry 6-10 troops at speeds up to 40 knots.[75] Perhaps more intriguing is the possibility that Sweden sold the PLA a whole system or technology associated with the Ericcson PS-890 ERIEYE active phased array airborne warning radar. Again, it is not possible to find open reporting to substantiate this suspicion. However, Internet images of a Y-7 transport aircraft with a radar remarkable similar in shape to the PS-890, and then confirmation that there is an active program with a similarly shaped radar on a Y-8 transport,[76] at least serve to justify concern. If indeed the PLA did have the ERIEYE or a radar based on its technology, this would substantially improve its ability to prosecute air and naval operations against Taiwan. Britain While the UK will proceed much more with an eye to Washington than France or Germany, it is likely that British companies will take advantage of the end of the EU embargo. British military electronics companies quietly resumed marketing efforts in the mid-1990s, with Racal scoring with a sale of its SKYMASTER AEW radar. Rolls Royce’s success in completing its co-development of the SPEY turbofan indicates that British companies will make a stronger push to sell to the PLA. United States During the heyday of the 1980s, the U.S. was eager to compete for a share of the emerging PLA military technology market. U.S. sales successes included S-70 helicopters, counter-artillery radar, some torpedoes and the beginning of programs to upgrade J-7 and J-8 fighters. Additional items under discussion include PHALANX CIWS, co-production for a civilian model of the CH-47 heavy-lift helicopter, and co-development of a new main battle tank. The abrupt end for commercial sources of U.S. military technology after 1989, however, did not end PRC attempts to get it. In the 1990s, the PLA instead concentrated on seeking to exploit dual-use technologies and on exploiting business still permitted in the realm of commercial space launches. In addition, the PLA placed greater emphasis on obtaining U.S. technology via espionage. Via the latter, the PRC is accused of having obtained classified information pertaining to several U.S. nuclear warheads and neutron warheads. The PRC is believed to have acquired some U.S. Tomahawk components from Serbia or Afghanistan.[77] The PRC’s espionage effort is expected to remain intense. In August 2003, a report noted that “The FBI ranks China as the greatest espionage threat to the United States in the next 10 years to 15 years.â€�[78] There is a question, however, whether the U.S. government will come under increased pressure from U.S. industry sources to relax its arms embargo on the PRC, especially if Europe removes hers as expected. For a number of years, the U.S. helicopter industry has lobbied Congress and the Administration to ease export rules. These have been relaxed and there have been some sales of small helicopters. But there should be continued caution. Some helicopters that the U.S. industry would like to sell to the PLA, like the CH-47, are also used by Taiwan’s Army. It would take little imagination for the PLA to paint their CH-47s to resemble those of Taiwan and use them to infiltrate Special Forces units, enhancing their ability to achieve strategic surprise. FOREIGN IMPACT ON PLA MISSILE AND SPACE MODERNIZATION While the PLA has created a very large missile and space technology and manufacturing sector since the mid-1950s, it has also sought to improve its nuclear warhead, ballistic missile, cruise missile, surface-to-air missile, manned space and satellite capabilities with foreign technology. It has done so through espionage and through commerce in dual use or military technologies. Through the 1990s and early in this decade, access to foreign technology has increased PLA missile and space capabilities by helping the PLA to: -- Deploy new small nuclear warheads. -- Deploy new liquid fuel and solid fuel ICBMs capable of reaching the United States. -- Develop new long-range cruise missiles expected to be deployed by mid-decade. -- Achieve a manned space capability in about a decade, which is now being used for military purposes. -- Develop a modern space reconnaissance and surveillance capability. -- Quickly upgraded the PLA’s air defense capabilities. Modern Small Nuclear Warheads Before reviewing the debate over how the PLA was able to develop modern small thermonuclear warheads for ballistic missiles, it is necessary to establish one fact: the PLA does have new and smaller nuclear warheads for ballistic missiles. This known because the PLA has produced a new solid-fueled ICBM, the DF-31, which can only use a small nuclear warhead. The DF-31’s TEL was first displayed during an October 1999 military parade in Beijing. This DF-31 missile itself has only been displayed publicly in the form of a model of its space-launch vehicle version at the 2002 Zhuhai Airshow. But this model also indicates that it can only carry new small warhead. The Pentagon has assessed that the DF-31 will be deployed “before mid-decadeâ€� and The Military Balance contends one Brigade has been deployed.[79] This new warhead will likely arm other missiles expected to follow, the DF-31A, JL-2 SLBM and maybe even a possible multiple warhead version of the DF-5 Mod 2 ICBM. How the PLA was able to develop its new family of small nuclear warheads is a matter of some, but not a great deal of ongoing debate. On one side of the debate are two U.S. investigative bodies, one from the Congress and one largely led by Director of Central Intelligence. They both concluded that the PRC was able to use information from U.S. nuclear warheads to benefit the development of new PLA nuclear warheads, but differ slightly over where that information came from. A special Select Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, active from mid-1998 to mid-1999 and led by Congressmen Christopher Cox (R-CA) and Norm Dicks (D-WA), reviewed copious data provided by U.S. officials and organizations, and concluded that espionage was a major, but not the only way the PLA obtained data about modern U.S. nuclear warheads. A special “Damage Assessmentâ€� team led by then and still DCI George Tenet also stated that the PRC obtained information about U.S. nuclear warheads from “classifiedâ€� information but also gave emphasis to “contact with US and other countries' scientists, conferences and publications, unauthorized media disclosures, declassified US weapons information, and Chinese indigenous development.â€� [80] While there is also debate within the government over these matters, others, mainly outside the government, give much more credit to the PRC’s own abilities to overcome the many technical hurdles in miniaturizing thermonuclear weapons. A key element in this debate, however, was the contribution of a “walk-in,â€� or agent later determined to be controlled by PRC Intelligence, who in 1995 provided alarming data about their knowledge of U.S. nuclear warheads, including the most modern W-88. According to one U.S. official, the “Chinese text cited five key attributes of the warhead, including two measurements accurate to within four-hundredths of an inch.â€�[81] It is contended that this degree of detail could not have been determined simply by the PRC’s own means and that this intimate data on the W-88 served to help make possible the current generation of PLA small thermonuclear warheads. New Missiles Foreign technology has also been critical in the PLA’s modernization of its missile force. Foreign source technology has very likely aided the development on new liquid fueled ICBMs, and a range of solid-fuel missiles to include ICBMs, SLBMs, IRBMs and SRBMs. Some foreign technology has also been acquired to improve PLA cruise missile design. Such assistance is important to consider due to the very high importance the PLA has placed on its missile forces to advance its political-military objectives. An assured nuclear retaliatory capability is valued to order to deter other nuclear armed powers. But an assured strike capability is also valued to enhance PRC political deterrence of the United States should it decide to oppose a PLA attack on Taiwan. DF-5 Mod 2. For much of the 1990s civilian analysts assumed that the PLA was to replace its ponderous and vulnerable liquid-fueled ICBMs with a series of mobile solid-fueled ICBMs then under development. This assessment was sharply altered in 2002 when the Pentagon’s annual report on the PLA stated that “China is replacing CSS-4 Mod 1 ICBMs with longer range CSS-4 Mod 2s. The replacement of all the approximately 20 CSS-4 Mod 1s will be completed by mid-decade.â€�[82] The CSS-4, or DF-5 was first deployed in 1981. While some were reported to be deployed in silos, more were thought deployed in caves, to be taken out an erected and fired, a time-consuming exercise that could make them vulnerable to attack. A new version of this missile is very likely being deployed for two reasons. The first is that it serves to sustain production line activity and expertise for a class of missile that still forms the basis for the main PLA space-launch vehicle. The second and more important reason for deploying the DF-5 Mod 2 is that the PLA can incorporate improvements gained form interaction with foreign sources of knowledge and technology to improve its Long March 2 and 3 SLVs, which are direct derivations of the DF-5. And by doing so the PLA will have an ICBM in place that can better penetrate U.S. missile defenses planned for deployment in 2004. The DF-5 Mod 2 may better able to penetrate these defenses because, as the Pentagon noted in 2002, it may be the first PLA ICBM armed with multiple warheads.[83] The PLA has long been researching a multiple-warhead capability and demonstrated the launching of three satellites in 1981. But the PLA was judged by a U.S. Air Force report to have built a “technological bridgeâ€� to modern multiple warhead capability when it created a two-satellite launching “Smart Dispenserâ€� in cooperation with Lockheed and Motorola to launch IRIDIUM communication satellites.[84] And in 1998 a former PRC engineer with knowledge of this system stated that interaction with U.S. industry officials allowed them to complete the Smart Dispenser.[85] The DF-5 Mod 2 very likely has also benefited from interactions with U.S. satellite manufactures who are accused of having helped the PRC to improve the reliability of the Long March launcher in the wake of some expensive launch failures. It is also possible that the DF-5 Mod 2 has benefited from more direct purchases of missile technology and interactions with missile engineers from Russian and the Ukraine. New Solid Fuel Missiles. The PLA is likely to have sought access to Russian and Ukrainian technology for solid-fuel rocket technology as well. But one verified source of technology that is known to have improved one, and possibly all subsequent PLA solid fuel rockets came from the United States. Again as part of the IRIDIUM effort, the former Martin Marietta Company, now under Lockheed, helped the PLA improve its solid-fuel rocket engines by improving a satellite EPKM kick motor. According to a PRC engineer who was working on solid rocket engines at the time, the new data from Martin Marietta help them to end failures with the engine on the DF-21 IRBM.[86] Presumably this data also served to help improve all subsequent PLA solid fuel missiles, including the 8,000km range DF-31, now entering service, the 12,000km range DF-31A, expected later in this decade, the 8,000+km range JL-2 SLBM, expected by the end of the decade, and new solid fuel SLVs based on the DF-21 (KT-1), DF-31 (KT-2) and DF-31A (KT-2A). Cruise Missiles. While it has a large domestic cruise missile development sector, the PLA has sought foreign technology to accelerate development and deployment. The Pentagon has noted that development of land-attack cruise missiles for theater and strategic missions has a “relatively high development priorityâ€� [87] and Taiwanese sources expect new land attack cruise missiles (LACMs) will be deployed by 2005. Unlike ballistic missiles, which are controlled by the Second Artillery and the Army, cruise missiles could be employed by all the major services. Cruise missiles are attractive to the PLA because they can be built at one-third the cost of a ballistic missiles, meaning the PLA can afford to build more of them. In addition, PRC analysts believe that defending against cruise missiles costs nine times more than the cruise missile.[88] Their entry into the PLA this decade will add a new and powerful strike capability. And when employed on new nuclear submarines they will give the PLA a limited non-nuclear global power projection capability. Cruise missiles are designed and built by the Third Academy of the CASC, which employs about 14,500 technicians and workers in ten research institutes and two major factories. Key cruise missile related development programs include new ramjet engines for supersonic cruise missiles, and new efficient turbofan motors to extend the range of subsonic cruise missiles. Third Academy officials say that their cruise missile will use multiple guidance systems.[89] These could include terrain-contour-matching (TERCOM), inertial-gyros, and satellite-navigation. In addition, Chinese engineers estimate that an accuracy of 1-3 meters is possible with terminal homing systems based on CO2 laser, millimeter wave, and infrared imaging.[90] Future PLA LACMs may also incorporate stealth coatings or stealth shaping to inhibit detection. While the PLA has aggressively sought out foreign technology in order to build modern LACMs. Russia is believed to have marketed in the PRC its Raduga Kh-65SE, a 300km range version of the Kh-55 (AS-15 Kent) 3,000km range cruise missile. In addition, the PRC is reported to have invested in the development of Israel’s Delilah anti-radar drone into a longer range air-launched cruise missile.[91] The implication is that the PLA may already have Russian and Israeli cruise missile technology to assist their own program. The PRC is also believed to have acquired some U.S. TOMAHAWK cruise missile components from Serbia or Afghanistan.[92] Foreign technology is also serving to expand the usefulness of PLA IRBMs and SLBMs and cruise missiles. For the next several years, PLA IRBMs and SRBMs will constitute the main strike force for an initial PLA assault on Taiwan. In December 2003 the President of Taiwan stated that the PLA had 498 SRBMs alone, all directed at Taiwan. Previous U.S. estimates have noted the PLA could have 650 of these by 2005. With continued production and adding expected cruise missiles, the PLA could have about 1,000 or more missiles to use against Taiwan by the end of the decade. All of these systems are turned into more precise weapons by the PLA’s building of a greater military space capabilities, made possible in large part by foreign technology and assistance. Greater Use of Military Space The PLA controls all PRC space activities. To enable the implementation of new joint doctrines and to fully e INVICTUS (Member) 2004-06-01 01:35:00 192.172.8.18 Re: The China Threat Ryan, Check you regular email, I sent forwarded to you a CRITICAL message about the subject of this thread. If I get permission from anonymous I will also post it here. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2004-06-20 17:03:00 69.161.216.141 Re: The China Threat It seems that the situation in the Formosa Straight is simmering behind the scenes. I’ll have more articles on that shortly but first this… U.S. at War With Beijing, Reports Cite China as No. 1 Threat quote: Charles R. Smith Thursday, June 17, 2004 The U.S. government has cited China as the No. 1 threat to global security for the second time in less than a month. Both the Pentagon and the Commission on U.S-China Economic and Security Review cited Beijing as a major threat to U.S. national security. The two reports noted the growing military capability of China combined with its predatory economic policy is aimed directly at the United States. The latest report released by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission was approved by a "unanimous vote of all eleven Commissioners." According to the Commission China's co-operation on international security matters is "un-satisfactory." The Commission examined in depth the extent of ongoing co-operation between China and the United States on traditional national security matters, most particularly China's assistance in re-solving the North Korea nuclear weapons crisis. The Commission believes that China's performance in this area to date has been unsatisfactory, and we are concerned that U.S. pressure on trade disputes and other unrelated aspects of the relationship may have been toned down by the administration as a concession for China's hoped-for cooperation on this and other vital security matters." Economic War According to the report, China is deliberately using economic warfare against America to seek a "competitive advantage over U.S. manufacturers." "Economic fundamentals suggest that the Chinese yuan is undervalued, with a growing consensus of economists estimating the level of undervaluation to be anywhere from fifteen to forty percent. The Chinese government persistently intervenes in the foreign exchange market to keep its exchange rate pegged at 8.28 yuan per dollar, and through these actions appears to be manipulating its currency valuation," states the report. The Commission also noted that China is violating its pledges to the World Trade Organization and that U.S. investors may actually be investing in the PLA military expansion. "China has deliberately frustrated the effectiveness and debased the value of the WTO's TRM (Transitional Review Mechanism) which was intended to be a robust mechanism for assessing China's WTO compliance and for placing multilateral pressure on China to address compliance shortfalls." "Without adequate information about Chinese firms trading in international capital markets, U.S. investors may be unwittingly pouring money into black box firms lacking basic corporate governance structures, as well as enterprises involved in activities harmful to U.S. security interests," noted the report. Weapons for Oil The Commission report also noted that China continues to proliferate advanced weapons to many of its client states including North Korea, Pakistan, and Iran. In addition, China now appears to be willing to trade weapons for oil. "China's growing energy needs, linked to its rapidly expanding economy, are creating economic and security concerns for the United States. China's energy security policies are driving it into bilateral arrangements that undermine multilateral efforts to stabilize oil supplies and prices, and in some cases may involve dangerous weapons transfers," stated the report. "China has sought energy cooperation with countries of concern to the United States, including Iran and Sudan, which are inaccessible by U.S. and other western firms. Some analysts have voiced suspicions that China may have offered WMD-related transfers as a component of some of its energy deals," noted the Commission. New Weapons The Commission report also revealed that Russia has sold China a more advanced version of the deadly SUNBURN (3M83 Moskit) cruise missile. Nikolay Shcherbakov, adviser to the director general of the Altair Naval Scientific Research Institute of Electronic Engineering, is reported as saying that "we are supplying China with new-generation equipment. We have been allowed to supply MOSKIT supersonic antiship cruise missiles with twice the range - 240km instead of the existing 120." The Commission also noted a growing concern that China would use nuclear weapons to attack and defeat U.S. forces in the event of a war over Taiwan. "Recognizing the possible involvement of the U.S. military, the current scholarship on China's R & D finds that PRC strategists believe that a superior navy could be defeated through the disabling of its space-based systems, as for example, by exo-atmospheric detonation of a nuclear warhead to generate an electromagnetic pulse," stated the report. In addition, the Commission noted that China is pursuing an advanced laser weapon for use against Taiwanese and U.S. forces. "It has recently been reported that China has successfully developed a laser cannon with a range of more than one hundred kilometers and might have already deployed it in Fujian Province facing Taiwan." Shooting War in 2005 The Commission's report painted a deadly and growing picture of the Chinese threat with a possible conflict only a year away. "The China Affairs Department of the Democratic Progressive Party published a report on China's basic military capabilities in which it said that Beijing had developed a 'sudden strike' strategy to attack Taiwan. This story discussed a scenario in which an attack would consist of an initial seven-minute shock and strike missile barrage that would paralyze Taiwan's command system, followed by seventeen minutes in which Taiwan's air space will be invaded by fighter jets. Within twenty-four hours of the strike, 258,000 Chinese troops could be deployed in Taiwan. China's fast-growing military modernization and expansion is aimed at a possible war between 2005 and 2010, according to the report," stated the Commission report. In early June the Pentagon released a Congressionally mandated report on Chinese military developments. The Pentagon report outlined the double-digit increases in Chinese defense spending and major weapons purchases from Russia. China currently is third in total defense spending, behind the U.S. and Russia, with nearly $100 billion a year now budgeted for the PLA. The Pentagon report noted that the PLA double-digit increases are expected to continue through 2010. According to the report, the Chinese build-up of ballistic missiles has changed the balance of power in the Pacific, threatening to start a war over Taiwan. China currently has an estimated 550 short-range missiles opposite Taiwan. "China most likely will be able to cause significant damage to all of Taiwan's airfields and quickly degrade Taiwan's ground based air-defenses and associated command and control through a combination of SRBMs (short range ballistic missiles), land-attack cruise missiles, special operation forces and other assets," stated the Pentagon report. The Pentagon report noted that China is increasing its long-range missile capability and is expected to expand its inventory to 30 such missiles by the end of 2005. The Pentagon anticipates the Chinese long-range nuclear missile force will exceed 60 before the end of the decade. Nuclear War The Pentagon report also warned that Chinese military strategists are considering the use of nuclear weapons against U.S. and Taiwanese forces. According to the Pentagon, a nuclear weapon detonated at high altitude would create an "electromagnetic" shock wave that will disrupt U.S. communications and scramble sophisticated military computers. "PLA theorists who have become aware of these electromagnetic effects may have considered using a nuclear weapon as an unconventional attack option," stated the Pentagon report. Chinese authorities have reacted explosively to the recent reports, especially over the U.S. commitment to Taiwan. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao underscored the unstable nature of China's relationship by threatening to use military force to seize control of the tiny island nation. According to the official PRC news Xinhua, China will never tolerate "Taiwan independence", neither will China allow anybody to split Taiwan from the motherland with any means. "The Taiwan independence activities are the greatest threats to the peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait," stated Liu. The official PRC spokesman also asked the United States to stop selling advanced weapons to Taiwan under any pretenses and refrain from sending wrong signals to Taiwan. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2004-06-24 09:57:00 69.161.216.141 Re: The China Threat As I mentioned in my last post, the situation between China and Taiwan has been simmering quietly. Here are a few articles on what is going on: - China Links Taiwan Pro-Independence Forces To Terrorism, Falun Gong - Taiwan Freeway To Act As Military Runway - US Nudges Taiwan To Boost Defense Capabilities Against China The rhetoric and military exercises are definitely on the increase. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2004-06-24 09:58:00 69.161.216.141 Re: The China Threat China Military Space Power Advancing, Pentagon Reports quote: The Pentagon has released its yearly report to Congress on the current and future military strategy of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), including that nation’s active use of space. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) report -- Annual Report on the Military Power of the People’s Republic of China -- was made publicly available May 29. It takes a look at current and probable future course of military-technological development on the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the doctrine and probable evolution of Chinese grand strategy, security strategy, and military strategy, and of the military organizations and operational concepts, through the next two decades. Between 2003 and 2004, DoD has identified improvements in China’s military capabilities in a significant number of areas. For space, the report underscores Beijing’s advancement of military space capabilities "across the board", including reconnaissance, navigation, communications, meteorology, small satellite technology, and human spaceflight. Major Chinese space breakthroughs in 2003, as flagged by DoD, include: Launching and recovering of its first piloted space mission; Launching a new type of a geosynchronous orbit military communication satellite; Orbiting of a new type of film-based imagery satellite; Launching a prototype low Earth orbit communications satellite, a key step in China's development of mini-satellites; and Continuing efforts to investigate various means of tracking and defeating the space systems of potential opponents Anti-satellite to be fielded As part of on-going work in seek-and-hit space warfare -- termed "counterspace" in military parlance, China is expected to continue to enhance its satellite tracking and identification network. "Beijing’s only current means of destroying or disabling a satellite, however, would be to launch a ballistic missile or space launch vehicle armed with a nuclear weapon. Such weapons, however, risk collateral damage to ‘friendly’ space systems. According to press accounts, China can use probable low-energy lasers to ‘blind’ the sensors on low- Earth-orbiting satellites, although whether this claim extends to actual facilities is unclear," the DoD report notes. The Pentagon assessment cites a Hong Kong newspaper article in January 2001 that reported China had developed and ground-tested and would soon begin space-testing an anti-satellite (ASAT) system described as a "parasitic microsatellite." "This claim is being evaluated," the report says, adding that a number of nations, including China, are developing and proliferating microsatellite and nanosatellite technologies. China is clearly working on, and plans to field, anti-satellites, the DoD study claims. "Additional press reports and activities at several laser institutes suggest Beijing most likely will continue to pursue development of ground-based laser ASAT weapons and radars. China's current level of interest in laser technology suggests that it is reasonable to assume Beijing eventually could develop a weapon to destroy satellites." Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance In the military space arena, the newly issued DoD report contends that intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) systems "remains critical" to Beijing's military modernization program and supports the PLA’s local wars doctrine. ISR is also most likely one of the primary drivers behind Beijing’s space endeavors, the DoD report says. Identified by the DoD are Beijing’s ongoing space-based systems with potential military applications, hardware that includes two new remote-sensing satellites known as Ziyuan-1 and -2 -- the Chinese name for the China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellite. Launched in October 2003, Ziyuan-1B has an ability to resolve objects on Earth 62-feet (19 meters) in size. The two Ziyuan-2 satellites probably also are capable of collecting digital imagery and have a sun synchronous orbit with worldwide coverage and near-real-time download of imagery of most of eastern Asia to potential ground sites in eastern and central China. Beijing also tested a new film-based imagery satellite in late 2003, the DoD report explains. Using commercial satellites "China eventually can be expected to deploy advanced imagery, reconnaissance, and Earth resource systems with military applications. In the next decade, Beijing most likely will field radar and ocean surveillance satellites and also may deploy an improved film-based photoreconnaissance satellite," the report says. In the interim, the DoD adds, China probably will exploit commercial French, American, and Canadian remote sensing satellites, and various Russian satellite imagery systems. Beijing’s exploitation of space and acquisition of related technologies remain high priorities in terms of improving its intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance abilities. China is placing major emphasis on improving space-based reconnaissance and surveillance, including electro-optical, synthetic-aperture radar, and other satellite reconnaissance systems. These systems, when fully deployed, are expected to provide a regional, and potentially hemispheric, continuous surveillance capability, the DoD report explains. China has begun to embrace new satellite architecture emphasizing common satellite buses -- the basic hardware upon which sensors and other gear is attached. This approach to satellite construction is based on use of a standard, versatile satellite bus module, with minor modifications to accommodate various payloads. In addition to domestic development, the DoD appraisal adds, China probably will continue to use commercial satellite imagery and may seek to join an international consortium-owned constellation. Tapping into foreign technology The DoD review points out that China is cooperating with a number of countries, including Russia, Ukraine, Brazil, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Italy, to advance its objectives in space. China’s strategy for the developing world seeks to expand the scope and depth of its relationships, primarily as a means to secure access to natural resources and markets, but also to build influence and political support in multilateral bodies. For example, the DoD cites one Chinese observer who points to Beijing’s work with Brazil for satellite technology and with India for computer software. In addition to weapon components, Russia continues to cooperate with China for technical, design, and material support for numerous weapon and space systems. Over the past decade, Russia has been the primary source of foreign military technology, although China has also benefited significantly from transfers and sales of defense and defense-related technologies from Israel, France, Germany, and Italy. For the past 5 years China has sought to diversify its sources of foreign technology -- to include military technology -- in an effort to avoid over reliance on a single source for military technology and to reduce its dependence on the United States for dual-use and civilian technologies. Small satellites China is interested in electronic intelligence (ELINT) or signals intelligence (SIGINT) reconnaissance satellites. "Although all of these digital data systems probably will be able to transmit directly to ground sites, China may be developing a system of data relay satellites to support global coverage," the DoD report states. Furthermore, Beijing has acquired mobile data reception equipment that could support more rapid data transmission to deployed military forces and units. China is conducting extensive studies and is seeking foreign assistance on small satellites. They have already lofted a number of these satellites, including a scientific mission spacecraft, SJ-5 (Practice-5), in 1999 and an oceanographic research satellite, Haiyang (HY)-1 (Ocean-1), in 2002. At least two additional satellites in this series, HY-2 and -3, are expected in the future. Other missions for satellites of this class that Beijing eventually may field include Earth observation, communications, and navigation. In the arena of microsatellites -- small spacecraft that tip the scales at a little over 200 pounds (100 kilograms) -- China is also developing this class of spacecraft for missions that include remote sensing and networks of electro-optical and radar satellites, the DoD report observes. In this regard, the Pentagon points to a joint venture between China's Tsinghua University and Great Britain’s University of Surrey in building the "Tsinghua" system -- a constellation of seven mini-satellites with 164-feet (50-meter) resolution remote-sensing payloads. Russia launched the first satellite in June 2000. Later satellites in the series probably will have improved resolution. Linking land, sea, air, and space PLA theorists and planners, the DoD report says, believe that future military campaigns will be conducted simultaneously on land, at sea, and in the air, space, and the electronic sphere. Therefore, the PLA is improving its joint operations capabilities by developing an integrated C4ISR network, a new command structure, and a joint logistics system. In military lingo, C4ISR translates to Command, Control Communications, Computers (C4) Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR). Such a command network allows rapid passing of orders and information up and down the chain of command and moving intelligence to decision-makers at the national and war zone levels. "The PLA continues to upgrade its communication capabilities, which eventually will rival the most modern civil networks. Command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence (C4I) modernization and automation have been a PLA priority for nearly 25 years," the DoD report says. To improve this capability, China is "leveraging commercial information technologies to advance ambitious plans to create a high-technology electronic environment capable of supporting a modern military in both peace and wartime." According to DoD, China’s development and deployment of state-of-the-art ISR capabilities are uneven and will further complicate the PLA’s ability to train in a realistic joint warfare environment and ultimately to fight a modern battle. "Currently targeting is a problem; however, with the emphasis on space-based imagery and reconnaissance satellites, this likely will improve over the next decade." At what cost? The Department of Defense report stresses that deciphering the decision-making behind China’s military modernization is challenging, in large part because of the "extensive secrecy" surrounding Chinese security affairs and a "distinct aversion" to real transparency on the part of China’s leaders. "China’s leaders continue to closely guard and resist public revelation of basic information, such as the full amount and distribution of government resources dedicated to national defense or, as witnessed in 2003, details on the origin and incidence of infectious disease." While the full extent of China’s defense expenditure is unknown, the DoD believes that China’s total defense-related expenditures for 2003, "could be between $50 billion and $70 billion, making China the third largest defense spender in the world, after the United States and Russia, and by far the largest defense spender in Asia followed by Japan." Electronic copies of the report are available at: http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/d20040528PRC.pdf Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2004-06-24 10:01:00 69.161.216.141 Re: The China Threat China Spends Up Big On Military quote: The Pentagon believes China has more than 500 short-range ballistic missiles aimed at Taiwan, a number that is growing by about 75 a year, a senior Defense Department official said Friday. The missiles are become more accurate and lethal as well, and China's pace of deploying the missiles has surprised the Pentagon. "We have to some degree underestimated their intentions to produce and deploy the missiles," the official said. Five years ago the Pentagon believed China was deploying 25 a year, then raised that estimate to 50 a year, and has boosted it again to 75. Getting an accurate count of the missiles is difficult because they are mobile. "Every time we come up with an estimate ... they have met or exceeded it. I don't want to exaggerate our (inaccuracy), but they have never failed to disappoint us in that regard ." The official said it is not just the numbers of missiles that are deployed that are a concern. It is where they are deployed and what kind of missiles they are, and the national intent behind them. "If you are willing to devote those resources (to the project) it's a decision made at a very high level," the official said. "This buildup across the Taiwan Strait ... is not creating a more stable situation. It is creating an inherently less stable situation." He said the United States has delivered that message to Beijing repeatedly, laying the responsibility for the U.S. policy of arming and defending Taiwan at the Chinese government's feet. "As far as we are concerned, the problem in the first instance is caused by China," he said. The findings are included in the Pentagon's annual report to Congress on China's military power, which was delivered to Capitol Hill Thursday. Congress is in the throes of considering the Pentagon's $420 billion defense budget for 2005, the bulk of which is for traditional weapons systems designed to counter a threat like the one ascribed to China in the report. China is not limiting its growth to short-range missiles aimed at Taiwan. The Chinese military is in the midst of a multi-decade modernization and transformation across the board. "The breadth of that transformation is of note," said the official. "There are areas they could choose to ignore ... but we don't see any indication of that. It is comprehensive, well planned and well executed." The transformation program would create in China a "first-rate military force over a reasonable time frame, about 10 to 15 years," the official said. China's intentions for military power apparently extend beyond reuniting with Taiwan, by force if necessary. "I wouldn't necessarily put things exclusively in context of Taiwan. There's something much broader and much more fundamental here," the official said. Those aspirations are reflected in a dramatically larger defense budget for China. China announced in March 2004 a real increase of 11.6 percent in its budget, adding $2.6 billion to bring the total to $25 billion. The Pentagon argues, however, that number dramatically understates China's total defense spending. It does not include weapons research and foreign weapon purchases. Last year those categories boosted spending to between $50 billion and $70 billion to China's defense budget, the Pentagon estimates, making it the third-largest military budget in the world, overtaking Japan and coming after the United States and Russia. A large part of China's transformation comes from its appetite for buying foreign military equipment, a hunger fed by China's booming economy. "It's very important to note the basis of t his economy is allowing it to go out and buy whatever it needs to buy," The official said. He contrasted that with the former Soviet Union, which had the appetite but not the means. China's high-tech purchases are limited by a European arms embargo imposed after its 1989 massacre of pro-democracy protestors in Tiananmen Square. The European Union considered and then, under intense political pressure, rejected lifting the embargo in mid-April. "We routinely made it known we believe the arms embargo should remain in effect. If they lift the embargo, the net effect is China will be in a position to glean ... the dream of technology and exponential benefits." Even so, China has a major arms-trading partner in Russia and the former Soviet states. Since 1991, China has negotiated to buy some $20 billion in arms and actually received about $12 billion, according to the report. Russia, Ukraine and Belarus are the major suppliers. China has bought Su-27 and Su-30 fighters; AA-12 air-to-air missiles; SA-10, SA-15 and SA-20 surface-to-air missiles; Novator Alpha anti-ship cruise missiles; KILO submarines, Sovremenny destroyers and associated weapons. Last year alone, China spent $1 billion on 24 advanced Russian fighter aircraft. Space technology is one area where there has been leakage. Because much of the technology is dual use -- that is, it has some civilian applications -- China has been able to obtain satellite technology, particularly in the area of communications. Beijing's ambitions extend to space. Launching a manned aircraft last October was just the beginning, the official said. "We are going to see that program play out strongly," the official said. "They are not going for the prestige ... but for the capabilities." China is believed to have developed "parasitic microsatellites" that can attach to other nation's satellites and either put them out of commission or tap into the data they are collecting or transmitting. China is also believed to be developing lasers, one of which may be aimed at "dazzling" overhead satellites to blind them. The United States conducted a failed experimented with just such a laser several years ago. "China's current level of interest in laser technology suggests that it is reasonable to assume Beijing eventually could develop a weapon to destroy satellites," the report states. China's modernization is driven in large part by U.S.-led wars over the last 15 years -- first taking note of the efficacy of air power against massive ground forces in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and then the Kosovo war. America's reliance on ground forces in the recent war in Iraq, however, apparently has caused China to shift its thinking on that subject as well, particularly as it relates to a possible offensive against Taiwan, the report states. "The speed of coalition ground force advances and the role of special forces in (Operation Iraqi Freedom) have caused (People's Liberation Army) theorists to rethink their assumptions about the value of long-range precision strikes, independent of ground forces, in any Taiwan conflict scenario," the report states. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2004-06-24 10:05:00 69.161.216.141 Re: The China Threat China Waging War on Space-Based Weapons quote: What is China's position on space-based weapons? Considering the gap between what officials in Beijing say and what they do on the issue, it's hard to get a straight answer. But let's look at the facts. For some time now, China has spearheaded an international movement to ban conventional weapons from space. More than a year ago, the Asian superpower--joined by Russia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Belarus, Zimbabwe and Syria--introduced a draft treaty at the United Nations to outlaw the deployment of space-based weapons. But even as it tries to rally multinational coalitions and public opinion to oppose "the weaponization of space," Beijing quietly continues to develop its own space-based weapons and tactics to destroy American military assets. China's strategy here is to blunt American military superiority by limiting and ultimately neutralizing its existing space-based defense assets, and to forestall deployment of new technology that many experts believe would provide the best protection from ballistic-missile attack. Chinese security experts have a keen appreciation of America's space-based assets and how the military envisions using them in future conflicts. Strategists in the People's Liberation Army have studied our campaigns in the 1991 Gulf War, Kosovo, Afghanistan and this year's war in Iraq. They have observed our overwhelming superiority in the general field of "C4ISR" (command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance). More importantly, they have noted that our superiority in communication, reconnaissance and surveillance depends on what we have up in space. These lessons have convinced PLA military planners that America's strength can become our Achilles heel. If they can neutralize or destroy our space assets, American forces will lose a critical advantage, leaving them far more vulnerable to China's larger but less-advanced military. The importance the PLA attaches to space technology was stated most succinctly in a Dec. 12, 2001, article posted on the PLA Web site: "Whoever has control [or "hegemony"] over space will also have the ability to help or hinder and affect 'ground' mobility and air, sea and space combat." The article, dramatically entitled "The Weaponization of Space--A Call to the Danger," dutifully calls for the "peace-loving nations and peoples of the world" to oppose this weaponization. But a decade's-worth of technical articles in Chinese science digests discussing how to fight a war in space and analyzing U.S. strengths and vulnerability make it clear that Beijing has a long-running military program designed to challenge America's dominance in--and dependence on--space. China's Technology Research Academy, for example, has been developing an advanced anti-satellite weapon called a "piggyback satellite." The system is designed to seek out an enemy satellite (or space station or space-based laser) and attach itself like a parasite, either jamming the enemy's communications or physically destroying the unit. The PLA also is experimenting with other types of satellite killers: land-based, directed-energy weapons and "micro-satellites" that can be used as kinetic energy weapons. According to the latest (July 2003) assessment by the U.S. Defense Department, China will probably be able to field a direct-ascent anti-satellite system in the next two to six years. Such weapons would directly threaten what many believe would be America's best form of ballistic-missile defense: a system of space-based surveillance and tracking sensors, connected with land-based sensors and space-based missile interceptors. Such a system could negate any Chinese missile attack on the U.S. homeland. China may be a long way from contemplating a ballistic missile attack on the U.S. homeland. But deployment of American space-based interceptors also would negate the missiles China is refitting to threaten Taiwan and U.S. bases in Okinawa and Guam. And there's the rub, as far as the PLA is concerned. Clearly, Beijing's draft treaty to ban deployment of space-based weapons is merely a delaying tactic aimed at hampering American progress on ballistic-missile defense while its own scientists develop effective countermeasures. What Beijing hopes to gain from this approach is the ability to disrupt American battlefield awareness--and its command and control operations--and to deny the U.S. access to the waters around China and Taiwan should the issue of Taiwan's sovereignty lead to conflict between the two Chinas. China's military thinkers are probably correct: The weaponization of space is inevitable. And it's abundantly clear that, draft treaties and pious rhetoric notwithstanding, they're doing everything possible to position themselves for dominance in space. That's worth keeping in mind the next time they exhort "peace-loving nations" to stay grounded. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2004-06-24 10:07:00 69.161.216.141 Re: The China Threat Chinese Military Seeks Extra Funds And Faster War Footing quote: WASHINGTON - China's generals have stepped up efforts to seek approval from the Chinese Communist Party leadership for more funds and 'faster war preparation'. Their bid is in response to moves by Taipei to secure sophisticated weapons from the United States, CNN reported yesterday. Sources close to the People's Liberation Army (PLA) said the generals had petitioned President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao to speed up the reunification process with Taiwan - including by the possible use of military force. According to CNN, the petitions said Taiwan's pro-independence government led by President Chen Shui-bian was mapping out plans not only to defend the island against a PLA attack but also to launch a 'ferocious counter-attack' on big Chinese cities such as Shanghai and the newly built Three Gorges Dam. The generals also sought the earliest possible passage of the National Reunification Law now being drafted by China's National People's Congress. The law would facilitate nationwide mobilisation of manpower and materials for war as well as lay the foundation for the PLA securing more funds and other resources for the purpose of accomplishing national reunification. Meanwhile, former Chinese president Jiang Zemin, who retains his position as commander-in-chief, yesterday promoted 15 officers to the rank of full general, the official Xinhua news agency reported. The move, which could reflect efforts by Mr Jiang to consolidate his power base in the military, was marked by a ceremony in Beijing's secretive Zhongnanhai government compound. While the promotions were ordered by Mr Jiang as chairman of the Central Military Commission, they were announced by Mr Hu Jintao, his successor as president and his deputy at the commission, according to Xinhua. Mr Hu is expected eventually to take over as commission chairman, just as he assumed the presidency and the Communist Party leadership from Mr Jiang in a transition that ended early last year. The big question among observers is when will Mr Hu become commander-in-chief? They are also asking whether Mr Jiang will seek to delay the handover. Among the 15 receiving an extra star yesterday were well-known officers such as Ge Zhenfeng, deputy chief of the general staff, and You Xigui, director of the Central Guard Bureau. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2004-06-24 10:08:00 69.161.216.141 Re: The China Threat Pentagon: China Rethinking Its Strategies quote: WASHINGTON -- The speed with which U.S. ground forces captured Baghdad and the prominent role played in Iraq by U.S. commandos, have led China to rethink how it could counteract the American military in the event of a confrontation over Taiwan, the Pentagon says. The Chinese also believe, partly from its assessment of the Bush administration's declared war on terrorism, that the United States is increasingly likely to intervene in a conflict over Taiwan or other Chinese interests, according to the Pentagon analysis. "Authoritative commentary and speeches by senior officials suggest that U.S. actions over the past decade ... have reinforced fears within the Chinese leadership that the United States would appeal to human rights and humanitarian concerns to intervene, either overtly or covertly," said the Pentagon.. The assessments are in an annual Defense Department report to Congress on Chinese military power. The Pentagon took the unusual step of releasing the report late Saturday night. The report said China is rethinking the concept that U.S. airpower alone is sufficient to prevail in a conflict - a concept it inferred from the 1999 air war over Kosovo, which involved no U.S. ground forces. "The speed of coalition ground force advances and the role of special forces in (Iraq) have caused the People's Liberation Army theorists to rethink their assumptions about the value of long-range precision strikes, independent of ground forces, in any Taiwan conflict scenario," the report said. Other aspects of the Iraq war have reinforced the Chinese belief that the United States' long-range strategy is to dominate Asia by containing the growth of Chinese power, the report said. These include recent Pentagon decisions to base long-range bombers, cruise missiles and nuclear attack submarines to the Pacific island of Guam - moves related in part to the Iraq conflict. "China's leaders appear to have concluded that the net effect of the U.S.-led campaign (against terrorism) has been further encirclement of China," specifically by placing U.S. military forces in Uzbekistan and other Central Asian nations, and strengthening relations with Pakistan and India, concluded the Pentagon analysis. Because China's leaders believe their military forces are not yet strong enough to compete directly with the American military, they are putting more emphasis on preventing U.S. intervention first. This includes development of what the Chinese call "assassin's mace" weapons, the Pentagon said. The report said U.S. officials are not sure what "assassin's mace" is. "However, the concept appears to include a range of weapon systems and technologies related to information warfare, ballistic and anti-ship cruise missiles, advanced fighters and submarines, counterspace system and air defense," according to the Pentagon. The report said that while the concept of "assassin's mace" is not new in China, it has appeared more frequently in Chinese professional journals since 1999, particularly in the context of Taiwan, the U.S.-supported island which split from China after its communist takeover in 1949. Beijing considers Taiwan to be Chinese territory and has threatened to take it by force. In Beijing on Sunday, officials said President Bush had reassured Chinese officials that Washington will stick to its "one-China policy" toward Taiwan. That long-standing policy says the American government recognizes Beijing as the only legitimate Chinese government, although the United States also has pledged to provide enough defensive equipment to Taiwan to assure its security. Bush's comments to Chinese President Hu Jintao, released by China's Foreign Ministry, appeared to be an attempt to soothe Beijing's anger over Washington's decision to permit Taiwanese Vice President Annette Lu to stop in two U.S. cities before and after a Latin America tour. The Pentagon for several years has expressed concern at China's military modernization, especially its emphasis on deploying more shorter-range ballistic missiles that can strike Taiwan. The latest Pentagon report also said that since it last reported to Congress a year ago, China's imports of armaments have increase by 7 percent in value. These include a $1 billion deal for 24 Russian Su-30 fighter aircraft and $500 million for Russian SA-20 surface-to-air missile systems. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2004-06-24 10:10:00 69.161.216.141 Re: The China Threat China Commission Report Raise Grave National Security Concerns quote: On June 15, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission released its 2004 Annual Report to Congress. Based on an extensive series of hearings and research, the report concludes “a number of the current trends in U.S.-China relations have negative implication for our long-term economic and national security interests, and therefore that U.S. policies in these areas are in need of urgent attention and course corrections.â€� The Commission was established by Congress in 2000 to investigate, analyze, and provide recommendations to the Congress on the economic and national security implications of the U.S.- China relationship. On the day after making report public, members of the commission testified before the House Armed Services Committee. The commission’s bipartisan membership includes those with government, academic, business and labor experience. The Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate each appoint an equal number of commissioners (3 each). The commission thus represents one of the most successful efforts to deal with a major foreign policy danger with a minimal amount of partisan wrangling. China looms over Asia, and the world, in ways that cannot be ignored. The U.S. goods trade deficit with China expanded to $124 billion in 2003, a 20% increase over 2002. It is the United States´ most lopsided trade relationship, with U.S. imports from China ($152 billion) outpacing exports to China ($28 billion) by more than 5 to 1. The goods involved range from consumer items to advanced technology products. At the same time, U.S. firms continue to invest heavily in China, moving manufacturing and, in some cases, research and development, from the United States to Chinese sites. In addition, an increasing number of state-owned Chinese firms are listing on American capital markets, attracting billions of dollars from U.S. investors with little disclosure or transparency as to the finances or operations of these firms. The value of the work of the commission comes from the fact that it is one of the few places where the strategic consequences of economic shifts are studied. Far too often, economic change is simply placed off in a corner in a box labeled “businessâ€� as if commerce had no larger consequences beyond market transactions. But few things have such a direct impact on the balance of power in the world as shifts in wealth, industrial capacity, and technological achievement. As the Commission’s able chairman Roger Robinson stated in his opening remarks at the June 15 press conference, “China is in the midst of a diplomatic offensive in Asia to reassure its neighbors of its long-term peaceful intentions. These efforts are buying time and space for China to pursue its economic development and offensive military buildup.â€� Robinson played a major role during the Reagan administration in devising the economic strategy that undermined the Soviet Union and won the Cold War. Beijing is well aware of this history. Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue denounced the report and told United Press International that it reflected the “Cold War mentalityâ€� of its authors. But to an American audience, such a remark should be considered high praise and a boost to the report’s credibility. Two of the commissions critical findings concern the connection between economic growth and power. First, “China’s development as a locus of high-technology manufacturing and R&D has been a key component of its economic reform strategy, and the pace of this development has exceeded many outside observers´ expectations. What China does with its growing technology capabilities – whether it converts them to military uses and/or to control the free flow of information to its population – is of direct national security concern to the United States. Moreover, the extent to which these advances allow China to challenge U.S. competitiveness in technology development is a vital matter for U.S. economic security.â€� Second, “China’s quantitative and qualitative military advancements have resulted in a dramatic shift in the cross-Strait military balance toward China, with serious implications for Taiwan, for the United States, and for cross-Strait relations.â€� To deal with these dangers, the commission recommended that, “Congress should direct the administration to develop and publish a coordinated, comprehensive national policy and strategy designed to meet China’s challenge to the maintenance of our scientific and technological leadership and competitiveness in the same way it is presently required to develop and publish a national security strategy.â€� Unfortunately, the lack of effort the Bush administration has put behind its plan to revive American manufacturing, which it announced in January, indicates a White House unable to come to grips with international economic challenges. The Pentagon may be discussing how to deploy more aircraft carriers and submarines to East Asia, but pulling the economic rug from under Beijing´s military buildup seems beyond their comprehension. It is apparently more acceptable to contemplate a major war with China than to confront the Chamber of Commerce over corporate trade, investment, and technology transfers to the Beijing dictatorship. Yet, as the commission found, “U.S. trade and investment with China has played, and continues to play, a key role in China´s technological advancement. U.S. advanced technology and technological expertise is transferred to China, through both legal and illegal means, via U.S. invested firms and research centers in China, Chinese investments in the United States, bilateral science and technology (S&T) cooperative programs, and the tens of thousands of Chinese students and researchers at U.S. universities and research institutes who return to China after completing these programs.â€� The commission was also concerned about the role of European firms in aiding China’s development, especially as France is pushing for a lifting of the European Union ban on the sale of weapons to Beijing. The commission recommended that, “Congress should urge the President and the secretaries of State and Defense to press strongly their European Union counterparts to maintain the EU arms embargo on China.â€� If the EU were to openly sell armaments to China, which would contribute to the expansion of Beijing´s defense industrial capabilities as well as its standing military power, it would lead to increased lobbying by American firms to end what remains of U.S. limitations on the sale of weapons and military technology to China as well. The Aerospace Industries Association has already stated that, “If the EU refused to maintain an absolute ban on sales to China, AIA will urge the U.S. government to lift its ban.â€� The irresponsible inclinations of private firms to seek short term profits regardless of the larger consequences to U.S. national security and world peace must be countered by resolute government action. The commission report provides a host of thoughtful suggestions as to the form those actions could take. It deserves widespread consideration leading to effective implementation of its recommendations. (The full report can be found at the commission’s website http://www.uscc.gov.) William R. Hawkins is Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the U.S. Business and Industry Council. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2004-06-24 10:16:00 69.161.216.141 Re: The China Threat Some photographic evidence of the quietly growing threat… New Chinese Stealthy Fast Attack Craft quote: The Chinese navy has developed a new stealthy trimaran fast attack craft (FAC) design. It will probably grow into a larger more versatile platform, similar to the U.S. Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program. The use of advanced trimaran hull shows that the Chinese are able to incorporate advanced European and Australian fast ferry technology a bit faster than the U.S., as American programs to use these ships and this hull technology are only in the design and experiment stage. While the U.S. did use some Australian designed fast ferries in the 2003 Iraq invasion, the U.S. does not have ships coming off the lines, like the Chinese do. On one level, this new FAC is a Chinese program to replace old conventional hull designs, and to exceed the capabilities of Taiwan's new stealthy FAC design. The trimaran hull configuration confers greater high speed capability in heavy weather, while providing a large deck space for multiple uses. This first ship appears to be focused on the FAC mission, and appears to be designed for the installation of anti-ship missile launchers amidship (in the middle of the ship). But we can safely expect that the Chinese will soon design and build larger models that can carry UAVs and small boats for landing commandoes, as the U.S. may soon be doing. The Chinese will probably already have its version of the digital connectivity which lies at the heart of the LCS program. So here we have an area of military technical competition in which the Chinese are demonstrating creativity and a potential ability to match the U.S. just as it is embarking on a new direction in naval warship and combat tactics modernization. The new Chinese FAC design also demonstrates that the real naval threat from China is not aircraft carriers and large destroyers bought from Russia. No, the real threat is quiet diesel submarines and small ships like this new FAC. The real potential of this new design would be its use in co-ordination with their diesel subs and, possibly, theater ballistic missiles with precision guidance. A combination like that could enable the Chinese to deny the U.S. Navy the ability to safely move in some vital areas, such as the waters surrounding Taiwan Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2004-07-05 14:18:00 69.161.216.141 Re: The China Threat Beijing\'s Militarists Push For More Spending quote: Peter Zhang BrookesNews.Com Monday 21 June 2004 It is gratifying to have one's views occasionally confirmed, particularly by something as prestigious as the Pentagon. Perhaps readers will recall an article in which I said that Beijing was "very impressed indeed" with the speed of America's victory over Saddam. Anti-American readers took umbrage at my comment, saying that they thought it was politically motivated. I readily concede to being a Bush supporter. But unlike so many leftists I do not allow my biases — or in their case, prejudices — to affect my judgement. The Pentagon's 2004 report on Chinese military power confirmed that China's military was impressed with the American military's performance, from logistics, assault and special operations. The downside is that the American success may also have strengthened the hand of China's militarists. I have stressed before that there are basically two views, or perhaps one might say camps, in the Chinese hierarchy regarding US military power. On the one hand there are the militarists who believe that America is engaged in isolating China and keeping her military weak. These men have no understanding of American history or politics. What they are really doing is projecting their own attitudes on to the US. Because this is what they would do if they were Americans they assume it is what Americans are actually doing, or planning to do. The second camp is more realistic with considerable understanding of American politics. It understands that the idea of a country like the US having a long term plan to isolate China and keep her weak is ridiculous. As I have stated so many times before, the long term goal of the regime is to drive the US out of the Asia-Pacific region and peel off Australia and New Zealand from the US. The fundamental difference between the two camps is one of strategy. The more realistic camp knows that sabre rattling is only going to agitate China's regional neighbours and further antagonise the US. Therefore, diplomacy and duplicity are this camp's main weapons. One could have seen these weapons at work during a recent visit to New Zealand by the PLA. Beijing knows that how easy it is to deal with political idiots like Helen Clark who are so imbued with anti-Americanism that they think the liberators of Iraq are the real danger to world peace and that the butchers of Tiananmen Square can be trusted as peaceful allies. The Iraq war cost little more than 1 per cent of US GDP. A similar campaign by China, if it could have launched one, would have been vastly greater proportion of GDP. So much so as to possibly put an unsupportable burden on the economy. The point is that it will be many years before China's economy could allow it to challenge American power. This has given the Realpolitik camp an edge over the militarists. The resources are simply not there to allow them to directly challenge the US (yet…). Meantime, there are those in Beijing who believe that a military confrontation will never be necessary because the US will fall from within, particularly if the Democrats regain both houses. This is why the regime has rooted for every Democratic candidate since Carter. But democratic forces are also at work in China. As the country becomes more prosperous it could prove increasingly difficult for the regime to maintain its despotic grip on power. A prosperous and educated people are more likely to demand their rights, including the right to self-government, than a brow-beaten and poverty-stricken population. This is the regime's nightmare and one with a strong probability of occurring. I believe that time is on the side of democracy. I also believe that the US should not take chances with its national security — so vote for Bush. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2004-07-05 14:23:00 69.161.216.141 Re: The China Threat Top Chinese Official To Moscow For Military Cooperation Talks quote: Guo Boxiong, deputy chairman of China's central military commission, will visit Moscow on July 5 to discuss military cooperation between Moscow and Beijing, Russia's defense ministry said Saturday. He will meet with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov during his stay, the Interfax news agency quoted a ministry statement as saying. "The parties will exchange opinions on the most pressing problems of international relations, particularly those affecting security in the Asia-Pacific region," the statement said. China with India is a principal customer for Russian arms, but most of the contracts until now have concerned aircraft, boats, submarines and munitions. China in 2002 accounted for more than 2.5 billion dollars (about two billion euros) worth of orders, more than half of Russia's export contracts signed that year, totalling 4.8 billion dollars. Russian-Chinese defense cooperation gained momentum in the 1990s after Western nations imposed an embargo in response to the Tiananmen Square events of 1989. The cooperation was cemented in 2000 at a summit meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Jiang Zemin. In December, Chinese Defense Minister Cao Gangchuan visited Russia as part of Beijing's efforts to increase transfers of Russian military technology and reduce arms deliveries from Russia. CaryP (Member) 2004-07-11 01:28:00 209.124.239.169 Re: The China Threat Here's an article from one of Sean's favorites, J. R. Nyquist. I read his articles posted on one of the financial websites I get analysis from. Seems Iran's been acting up because they've got backing from China and more discreetly from Russia. These three countries and their allies want to bring the US "to its knees" according to the article. Seems Sean's concerns of an end to life as we know it here are well justified. Kudos to Sean, not that I reassured by the current scenario, but credit is due. He's taken some heat for some of his claims here. Here's the link Courting War with America I can't copy the article because it can't be "reproduced without the expressed, written permission of the author." Cary master p (Member) 2004-07-11 07:04:00 194.219.60.131 Re: The China Threat As a non-US citizen, I find it highly amusing that both the US and Chine wanna so the neighbourhood who's the big bully. US is upfront, while China is sneaky. But you all Americans don't realize that a nuclear confrontation with China will lead to global Thermonuclear war, i.e. Armageddon. Not only the biblical prophecies will be fullfilled (I don't give a rat's ass about them), but millions of people, even billions, would die in such a war...a totally meaningless war. What do you care if China invades Taiwan ? why should American get involved ? it will not affect you in any way, since Taiwan does not have oil. It's truly sadness that I have read so much military material, and you Ryan, Rick, Sean Osborne and the others, behave as you are soldiers preparing for war. Have you ever thought about the consequences ? Do you want the only known planet that bears intelligent life to be a vast nuclear desert ? Do you think that your lifes will not be changed by such an important development ? Would you like it when your children die out of cancer caused by the radiation cloud formed all over Earth ? ... CaryP (Member) 2004-07-11 08:59:00 209.124.239.169 Re: The China Threat quote:Originally posted by master p: As a non-US citizen, I find it highly amusing that both the US and Chine wanna so the neighbourhood who's the big bully. US is upfront, while China is sneaky. But you all Americans don't realize that a nuclear confrontation with China will lead to global Thermonuclear war, i.e. Armageddon. Not only the biblical prophecies will be fullfilled (I don't give a rat's ass about them), but millions of people, even billions, would die in such a war...a totally meaningless war. What do you care if China invades Taiwan ? why should American get involved ? it will not affect you in any way, since Taiwan does not have oil. It's truly sadness that I have read so much military material, and you Ryan, Rick, Sean Osborne and the others, behave as you are soldiers preparing for war. Have you ever thought about the consequences ? Do you want the only known planet that bears intelligent life to be a vast nuclear desert ? Do you think that your lifes will not be changed by such an important development ? Would you like it when your children die out of cancer caused by the radiation cloud formed all over Earth ? ... master p, My concerns exactly. Why are we slamming our peckers on the table with China? Look at all the military entanglements we're in now. Sean's been pounding the table about how other countries and terrorist organizations are a threat to our way of life. Evidence is mounting to support his claims. I'd rather retrench, pull our troops home, and stop pissing every lunatic on the planet off. Use our troops to protect our borders, which are leaking like a sieve right now. Who knows who and what have gotten into this country with our loose border policies? China wants Taiwan? Let 'em have it. It's not worth my children's future to exhibit some American "pride" before the fall. China could shut us down economically tomorow if they wanted to. With all the dollar reserves they've accumulated by selling us all their do-dads and taking our manufacturing base (initiated and promoted by global U.S. corporations). If China decided to dump their dollars and Treauries tomorow, it's pretty much game over, lights out for our (and the global economy). Sean and Ryan have a different attitude about all this (at least they appear to from their posts), and I respect their right to their own opinions. But they don't represent all Americans, and neither do I. Most Americans are asleep at the wheel IMO. Most of them have no idea we've got 7 (yes, count 'em, 7) aircraft carrier strike groups steaming into the China Sea right now as a show of force to back China down from its saber rattling over Taiwan and Hong Kong. A waste of manpower and taxpayer money IMO. The articles I've read say that about 75% of the Taiwanese military and political leadership actually prefer re-unification with mainland China, so let 'em have it. None of our business. I'd post those articles here, but they're paid subscriptions and copyrighted. I can understand that the U.S. is seen as the biggest threat to world peace by people living outside the U.S., as evidenced by polls outside the U.S. lately. Most people I speak with are shocked with this information. "Don't they know we're the good guys?" is a very common respones. Well, we used to be, anyway. Let's hope nobody's willing to really show their ass on this one. Cary master p (Member) 2004-07-11 19:17:00 80.76.63.18 Re: The China Threat No, I don't think the US is the greatest threat to peace right now. But the obsession of being recognized as the world's ultimate power state should stop, because it will only bring more harm than good. From what I read in the media, the US has a many great of internal problems. A great deal of true poverty, uncontrolled immigration...the west south part of your country speaks a weird mixture of spanish and english, isn't it so ? Economy is declinining, US citizens loose jobs to outsourcing, and the American economy is not strong enough to fight true globalization. And on top of all of that, you have armies in 180 countries! Why ? has anybody attacked you (besides 9/11, that is). Nope. Has any body threatened your way of life ? Absolutely not. Hey, the world is more American than you think. The hamburger culture has been embraced by most of Earth. I wouldn't have to worry, if I were you. America is such a great country. Or was such a great country...with the endless stream of wars, its going downhill faster than one can blink. GallowHill (Junior Member) 2004-07-11 21:58:00 52.128.30.10 Re: The China Threat quote:Originally posted by master p: What do you care if China invades Taiwan ? why should American get involved ? it will not affect you in any way, since Taiwan does not have oil. Well...we have a defense agreement with Taiwan. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on which side you are on, we gave our word to them. You'll be happy to know we also have defense agreements with the Phillipines and Japan, who are now currently at odds with China over ownership of some islands I've never heard of. I do lean a bit to the isolationist side, and would prefer to let these nations defend themselves. Especially those whose governments publicly denounce our foreign policies. CaryP (Member) 2004-07-16 02:43:00 209.124.239.169 Re: The China Threat Seems our "intelligence" community has been caught off guard by a new class of Chinese attack sub being built with the help of the Russians. The new subs, according to the article posted here, are designed to take on, guess what? That's right aircraft carriers. Yeeha. What's the reason we have 7 aircraft carrier strike groups in the China Sea again? Here's the Washington Times article Chinese produce new type of sub Here's the article in case it gets taken down. "July 16, 2004 Chinese produce new type of sub By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES China's naval buildup has produced a new type of attack submarine that U.S. intelligence did not know was under construction, according to U.S. defense and intelligence officials. The submarine was spotted several weeks ago for the first time and has been designated by the Pentagon as the first Yuan-class of submarine. A photograph of the completed submarine in the water at China's Wuhan shipyard was posted on a Chinese Internet site this week and confirmed by a defense official as the new submarine. Wuhan is located inland, some 420 miles west of Shanghai. One official said the new submarine was a "technical surprise" to U.S. intelligence, which was unaware that Beijing was building a new non-nuclear powered attack submarine. U.S. intelligence agencies have few details about the new submarine but believe it is diesel-powered rather than nuclear-powered, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The new boat, which appears to be a combination of indigenous Chinese hardware and Russian weapons, suggests that China is building up its submarine forces in preparation for a conflict over Taiwan, defense analysts say. "China has decided submarines are its first-line warships now, their best shot at beating carriers," said Sid Trevethan, an Alaska-based specialist on the Chinese military. "And China is right." "One has to marvel at the enormity of the investment by the People's Liberation Army in submarines," said Richard Fisher, a specialist on the Chinese military. China also is building two nuclear-powered submarines — one Type 093, believed to be based on the Russian Victor-III class and armed with intercontinental ballistic missiles, and a Type 094 attack submarine, which the Pentagon believes has a finished hull and will be ready for deployment next year. According to Mr. Trevethan, China currently has a force of 57 deployed submarines, including one Xia-class nuclear ballistic missile submarine, five Han submarines, four Kilos, seven Songs, 18 Mings and 22 Soviet-designed Romeos. Beijing also has eight more Kilos on order with Russia. Disclosure of the new submarine comes as the United States is trying to sell eight diesel submarines to Taiwan, which Beijing views as a breakaway province. Taiwan currently has just two World War II-era Guppy-class submarines and two 1980s Dutch submarines. Mr. Fisher, an analyst with the International Assessment and Strategy Center, said that despite the imbalance of power on the Taiwan Strait in favor of Beijing, the Bush administration has been slow to sell the submarines it offered Taiwan in April 2001. "It is simply appalling that the United States cannot get its act together to organize the production of eight new submarines for Taiwan," Mr. Fisher said. U.S. defense officials have said delays with the Taiwan submarine deal are the result of the Taipei government's budget problems. Chinese leaders told National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice last week that China would "not sit idly by" as Taiwan moved toward formal independence, and President Hu Jintao denounced U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan. But Miss Rice said the United States will go ahead with its Taiwan arms sales plan because of China's missile buildup opposite the island. A Pentagon report made public in May stated that China is changing its warship forces from a coastal defense force to one employing "active offshore defense." "This change in operations requires newer, more modern warships and submarines capable of operating at greater distances from China's coast for longer periods," the report said, noting that submarine construction is a top priority. Mr. Fisher said the Chinese submarine buildup should prompt the Pentagon to step up U.S. anti-submarine warfare capabilities, which he said are "at an historic low" because of cutbacks in specialized ships and aircraft. The Navy should consider building its own diesel attack submarine to be able to "effectively duke it out with the new tidal wave of Chinese subs, that if left unchecked, may soon dominate the Asian littoral regions," Mr. Fisher said. The Pentagon is also building up U.S. naval forces in the Pacific, with the addition of up to six attack submarines in Guam and the possible deployment of an aircraft carrier battle group to Hawaii in the coming months. All site contents copyright © 2004 News World Communications, Inc. Privacy Policy" Remember to sleep well tonight. Cary Malsua (Moderator) 2004-07-16 03:23:00 208.249.136.2 Re: The China Threat More Chinese Sabre Rattling ----------- China delivers blunt warning to U.S. WASHINGTON, (UPI) July 13 , 2004 - The United States must cease its interference with Chinese internal affairs over the question of Taiwanese independence or face a serious deterioration of U.S.-China relations, China warned Tuesday. In an official statement delivered to the press at the Embassy of the Republic of China, embassy spokesman Sun Weide spoke of China's grave concern regarding recent U.S. actions on the Taiwan question. He urged the United States to halt all arms sales to the country, terminate military links, end official exchanges with Taiwanese authorities, and stop supporting Taiwan's efforts to join international organizations that require statehood. Such actions, Sun said, violated the one-China policy to which U.S. leaders pledged adherence in three joint communiqués signed by the two countries in 1979 and 1982. In the final communiqué, the United States reiterated its official recognition that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China. The United States also stated the intention to gradually reduce arms sales to Taiwan over a period of time, leading to a final resolution. Twenty-four years have passed, said Sun. It is time for the U.S. to honor its commitments. If those commitments are not honored, he said, ... the reactions will not be in favor of the bilateral relations. ... It will affect our cooperation and China-U.S. relations as well. Recent visits to China by U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney were successful, he said, and on the whole, China-U.S relations have been steadily progressing. However, it was made clear to Rice during her visit, Sun reported, that the importance of the Taiwan issue in China's relationship with the U.S. cannot be overemphasized. The Taiwan question bears directly on China's sovereignty and territorial integrity, he said. We don't need any foreign countries to play any roles in their regards. Sun rejected Cheney's suggestion during his April visit that there was a link between Chinese conduct over Hong Kong and the Taiwan question, saying China would not accept such interference from the U.S. government. A senior administration official told the Washington Post in April that Cheney's message to China's leaders had been that Beijing's efforts to stifle democracy in Hong Kong might further kindle Taiwan's moves towards formal independence. There is not, said Sun, any basis for American government officials to accuse China of eroding freedoms in Hong Kong. Expressing Beijing's dissatisfaction over recent comments and actions by U.S. government officials and congressmen, he said democracy is expanding in Hong Kong, and people are enjoying freedoms more than anytime in the past. China, he said, welcomes international dialogue on human rights on a basis of mutual respect. The recent breakdown in such dialogue, he said, is the sole responsibility of the United States. He pointed to the anti-China resolution tabled by the United States at the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva this April. The defeat of the resolution, the 11th such defeat since 1990, shows the international community recognizes Chinese progress in this area, he continued. The fact that Taiwan is part of China is also a fact recognized by the international community, said Sun. A State Department spokesman declined to comment on Tuesday's statement, pointing to the April testimony of James E. Kelly, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, in which he outlined to the House International Relations Committee U.S. official policy on Taiwan. The United States is committed, said Kelly, to the one-China policy based on the three joint communiqués. However, it will not support any unilateral move that alters Taiwan's status, and should China threaten force or coercion against Taiwan, the United States would use its capacity to resist that threat. In addition, the U.S. government will continue to sell Taiwan defensive military equipment in accordance with the Taiwan Relations Act, introduced in 1979. China strongly opposes this act as a violation of the one-China principle and the three joint communiqués, Sun noted at the press briefing. However, if Beijing fulfills its obligations in adopting a military position that supports peaceful approaches to Taiwan, the defensive requirements will also change accordingly, according to Kelly's testimony. China currently has short-range ballistic missiles aimed at Taiwan, which have been increasing by 50 to 75 missiles per year, Kelly stated. Taiwan views this threat as a major obstacle to reunification. Taiwanese President Chen Shui-Bian said in his May inaugural speech: If (China) continues to threaten Taiwan with military force, ... this will only serve to drive the hearts of the Taiwanese people further away and widen the divide in the Strait. The chairman of Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council, Joseph Wu, said in a June statement that under such military pressure, Taiwan must reinforce its own defenses. The Taiwanese position has been to call for peaceful and amicable negotiations on the issue of independence. Chen stated in his May speech that the Taiwanese government would not exclude any possibility as long as the people consented, and that the country understood China's insistence on reunification based on historical and ethnic concerns. However, he also called for a reciprocal understanding on the part of Beijing of the Taiwanese people's democratic concerns. Sun, however, cited the refusal of the Taiwanese authorities to recognize the one-China principle as the main obstacle to reunification, which, he said, is the common wish of all Chinese people, including our compatriots in Taiwan. China will never tolerate Taiwanese independence, he added. We know that there is only one China in the world. Such statements further confirm that Beijing's patience is beginning to wear thin, Ted Galen Carpenter, a leading foreign policy analyst, told United Press International Tuesday. Beijing is becoming increasingly frustrated that the United States does not regard this matter as urgent, said Carpenter, vice president of defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute in Washington. In fact, he said, We've reached the point where the status quo is unsustainable for more than a few years. The United States is caught in the middle of an increasingly tense situation, said Carpenter, and is currently heading for a nasty confrontation. We're likely to have a major crisis within the next few years, he said. If United States wants to avoid the line of fire, according to Carpenter, we should make clear to Taiwan that although we support negotiations, we will not defend Taiwan in the event of a military conflict. We don't want to fight a war with China over Taiwan, he concluded, and that may be the bottom line. Malsua (Moderator) 2004-07-16 03:25:00 208.249.136.2 Re: The China Threat China sets deadline for reclaiming Taiwan Big News Network.com Friday 16th July, 2004 China's military leader says Taiwan must reunite with Beijing by 2020; experts say China's military could be ready to fight for the island as early as 2012. Former President Jiang Zemin, still chairman of the Central Military Commission, set 2020 as the deadline for Taiwan's reunification in a recent speech to People's Liberation Army leaders, according to the pro-Beijing Wen Wei Po newspaper. Jiang reportedly also said that U.S. support of Taiwan had prolonged its separation from China, and accused the United States of using cross-straits tensions to constrain China. Lin Chong-pin, a former Taiwan deputy defense minister currently teaching at Tamkang University, said that the PLA needs just eight years to strengthen its forces and its arsenal of global positioning satellites, cruise missiles and unmanned aircraft, the South China Morning Post reported Friday. Lin also said by 2012 China would have planted enough infiltrators in Taiwan to assist its operations. He said Beijing's strategy was to paralyze and seize Taiwan with minimal bloodshed and damage. INVICTUS (Member) 2004-07-16 22:46:00 68.38.40.90 Re: The China Threat quote:Originally posted by CaryP: Seems our "intelligence" community has been caught off guard by a new class of Chinese attack sub being built with the help of the Russians. Mr Gertz may very well be in error here. As a matter offact I am almost certain he is in error here... This submarine is obviously the one of the new construction "Song" class submarines which US intelligence has known about since at least 1998 - six years now. Anyone want to hazard a guess that the Wuhan submarine factory has not been imaged by spy satellites in the past six years to keep up on the development of these boats? (I think the odds are "slim and none" of that being the case.) quote: 'Song' class submarines (1+2 ships) (Project 039) Displacement: 2,250 tons submerged Dimensions: 246 x 27.5 x 17.5 meters/807 x 90.2 x 57.4 feet Propulsion: Diesel-electric, 3 or 4 MTU diesels, 1 shaft, approx. 22 knots Crew: approx. 60 Sonar: unknown Armament: 6 21 inch torpedo tubes Concept/Program: A new Chinese-designed and -built diesel submarine. Production was reportedly planned at two per year starting in 1998, but it is expected that this will be slowed or cancelled in favor of Russian-built subs. The second unit has been badly delayed, and the first is reported to be unsatisfactory. Builders: Wuhan SY. Number Year FLT Homeport Notes 320 1998 321 Building 322 Building http://www.hazegray.org/worldnav/ Obviously "Project 039" had continued. The intel might be flawed, but it most certainly did not take US intelligence by surprise. No intel is totally devoid of errors or inaccurate information. Just another fact of life. Lepidoptera (Member) 2004-07-18 06:37:00 69.142.135.233 Re: The China Threat I heard about some cars that have been designed in China that debuted at the latest car show (held in China) that ranged in price between $2000 and $12,000. They're designed for the American market, and the $2,000 car is apparently comparable to our $20,000 cars, while the $12,000 car is comparable to our $60,000 luxury cars. Here's a very short article about the guy who's been contracted to sell them in Arizona - couldn't find anything else - it was a late-night TV show called something like "MotorTrend." http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0712chinesecar12.html Lazarus Starr (Moderator) 2004-07-19 22:27:00 24.217.64.20 Re: The China Threat quote:Originally posted by Lepidoptera: I heard about some cars that have been designed in China that debuted at the latest car show (held in China) that ranged in price between $2000 and $12,000. They're designed for the American market, and the $2,000 car is apparently comparable to our $20,000 cars, while the $12,000 car is comparable to our $60,000 luxury cars. Here's a very short article about the guy who's been contracted to sell them in Arizona - couldn't find anything else - it was a late-night TV show called something like "MotorTrend." http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0712chinesecar12.html That's pretty interesting actually. My guess is that tariffs would be imposed in order to bring our purchase price in line with other similar cars. -Laz aaahz (Member) 2004-07-20 04:40:00 207.69.140.22 Re: The China Threat I caught a glimpse of some of the chinese auto world offerings, and gotta admit to being a bit impressed, appearance wise at least. Whether or not they can be tweaked to meet US restrictions while maintaining their bargain price remains to be seen, other possible actions notwithstanding. As a UAW retiree, I admit to being a bit narrow minded when it comes to imports in general, but recent events forced my hand, needing a car NOW, immediately, I hit the bargain mart, found a 1990 240 SX for a mere $995 and couldn't pass it up(had a triumph GT6 back in the day, love sport cars). Fantastic driver, absolutely super on gas, and I can guarantee you none of my former co workers will ever talk me into ditching it. So, Chinese or not, trade wins out, I reckon, better than trading missiles at any rate. I can certainly understand Cary in his frustration, but considering our interests in the region and our need for steadfastness in our allies if we are to have any chance of success rooting out terror, to which it seems we are irrevocably committed right or wrong, I don't see how a pullback could be a good thing right now or any time in the foreseeable future. Please understand, Cary, I'm not making excuses for, nor do I necessarily agree with, the methods used so far in Iraq and the war on terror, rather trying to play the hand as dealt with the best chance of success. Lazarus Starr (Moderator) 2004-07-20 05:56:00 24.217.64.20 Re: The China Threat aaahz, As a UAW retiree I'm sure you'll recall the japanese imports in the 70s. No one took them seriously until the "Energy Crisis". A lot changed since then and because of those times. China could very well find this to be an apt time to send cheap vehicles to America considering the gas prices of late and the high cost of hybrids. Question is I guess would be how much did we learn from the 70's? Will China actually be able to grab a large chunck of our automotive markets and thus weaken our economy further? Or will they in the end see their cars taxed and tariffed to the point that they're just merely competive? -Laz Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2004-07-20 12:48:00 69.161.217.227 Re: The China Threat Guys, I posted an article on this on page 8 . Laz makes a good point that I hadn’t considered. With the gas prices being higher than usual, that is going to make these cars more attractive than they would normally be. And, as I posted after that article on page 8, these cars reportedly have Toyota-based 3, 4, and 6 cylinder engines so the reliability factor may not be as poor as some anticipate. The real problem with these cars coming in is that if they grow in popularity, it will possibly undercut US industry further causing more job loss and increased manufacturing-base erosion. Not to mention that it would be putting more money into Red China’s war chest. Lazarus Starr (Moderator) 2004-07-20 13:26:00 24.217.64.20 Re: The China Threat quote:Originally posted by Ryan Ruck: Guys, I posted an article on this on page 8 . Laz makes a good point that I hadn’t considered. With the gas prices being higher than usual, that is going to make these cars more attractive than they would normally be. And, as I posted after that article on page 8, these cars reportedly have Toyota-based 3, 4, and 6 cylinder engines so the reliability factor may not be as poor as some anticipate. The real problem with these cars coming in is that if they grow in popularity, it will possibly undercut US industry further causing more job loss and increased manufacturing-base erosion. Not to mention that it would be putting more money into Red China’s war chest. This is exactly my point. There is no better way to fund your world conquest than to have your rival pay the tab. And if you can destablize their economy and make their industry more foreign dependant then so much the better. One only has to look at Germany during WWII to see what industry dependancy and an unstable economy can accomplish in regards to a techpower. Germany would have been much harder to stop if it hadn't been for our 7:1 production ratio compared to Germany's. We built 7 tanks for every one they destroyed and they were unable to compete. -Laz Malsua (Moderator) 2004-08-03 11:56:00 216.6.171.95 Re: The China Threat I'm off to Mao-ville again tomorrow for 2 weeks. Each trip I'm staggered by the growth. Literally one year ago our factory was essentially at the end of the district. Only farmlands were beyond. Today it's at least a mile from the "frontier" or farms and such. I'll have some more pictures. When I get back, I'll dig through all the pics and see if I can't Make a Collage. For what it's worth, my company having a Chinese factory is good for several reasons. My company sends out millions of free samples. Every year until this one one, we kept scaling back sample rates and sales were flat. Our samples drive sales. In 2000, we sent out 14 Million, in 2003 we sent out 7 million. This year, one year after having the factory in China, we're sending out about 12 million(5 Mill done in China). Next year it will be 17 million, 11 or 12 million of it done in China. See the trend? Outsourcing the expensive labor intensive stuff to China. I figure in 5 years, the number of samples done locally will be 1 million or less. So now you're thinking, Ah-Hah! You've just outsourced American Jobs? Not true. We produce ORDERS here in the states. Who wants to wait 6 weeks for something. Orders are UP. REALLY up.(samples drive orders, remember?). We've hired about 100 Telemarketers in the past 6 months and in fact, we may move the laser production floor down to the main floor so we can hire 250 MORE!. These aren't cold callers. They are PMFU, Product Marketing, Follow up. In other words, we send you something, call you up, ask how you like it and the rate is phenominal. About 4%. This means for all the floor laborers we've laid off(Those 8-10 dollar an hour types) that were doing samples, We've margionally grown the floor types doing orders(they make a little more money because we don't want mistakes and are cherry picked out of the samplers), and we've also hired a whole bunch of telemarketers. In the process, we've cut costs, earned more profit(which comes home in my Bonus in February) and grown the business. The Telemarketers START at about 22 Grand base salary and get a bonus for sales. Our top sellers can rake in salaries over 6 figures. The only thing China gets from us is that we house and feed several hundred people while paying them 50 cents an hour. The office staff makes 5-10k a year except the top guy who lives in Hong Kong. He gets about 100 grand...but he lives in Hong Kong and in HK, 100 grand is about the minimum you can get away with paying someone who's got a western earned PHD. With a WFOE(wholly foreign owned enterprise), our taxes and Vats are very low or non-existant in most cases. It's a win win. Imagine if Germany said to us "we want to put a factory in rural west virginia(where unemployment is high), we'll house and feed your people, all you have to do is be easy on the taxes. You'd take it to. Not everything you read or see about China is a bad thing. Furthermore, the people in China don't hate Americans. Sure the PLA may, shrug. I suspect if China tries to rattle our cage, you'll see a revolt. They can't even control traffic. You think they can control a billion people? Bah, BS. I wish everyone who's posted to these threads could see what I see when I go. You'd have a different take on things. The communists are hanging on by the skin of their teeth. Sure, Beijing talks a big story, it's all talk. Building a few boats or subs is bluster to scare Taiwan. They simply don't have any backing of the people. -Mal CaryP (Member) 2004-08-11 04:16:00 209.124.239.169 Re: The China Threat I hope your trip went well Mal. Spotted this article from Newsmax, authored by one Alexandr Nemets. I'm not familiar with the author or much with Newsmax for that matter. So, I'm not claiming that the article or the author have any omniscience on the subject matter. But the article makes some interesting points on China's efforts to gear up for war with the U.S. The article is somewhat long, so I'm just posting the link. I suspect it will stay around for a while. Here's the link China Rapidly Modernizes for War With U.S. Cary Cspace (Member) 2004-09-13 05:46:00 66.115.23.131 Re: The China Threat More by Nemets/Newsmax on China's ICBM capabilities. China's Missile Threat Greater Than Believed quote: According to multiple sources, China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) began intensifying construction of its strategic missile and nuclear potential soon after the failure of its “missile maneuvers” around Taiwan in March 1996. Today, China openly acknowledges its strategic focus on a “missile sword” – a process that was accelerated after NATO's successful aerial war against Yugoslavia and one aimed to counter U.S. capabilities to defend Taiwan. China denies that its missile strategy is in response to America's vow to militarily defend Taiwan in a showdown that likely will take place this decade. The most comprehensive survey of the PLA's strategic missile potential was presented in the article “China's ICBM Forces: Construction and Real Power,” published last year by two Taiwanese experts in the authoritative Taipei-based journal Zhonggong Yanjiu (China Communism Research). But numerous other sources from both Taiwan and mainland China also paint a worrisome picture of China's military buildup. The journal article did not detail China's short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) aimed at Taiwan; China's DF-21 intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) with a range between 2,000 km and 3,000 km aimed at American bases in Japan and South Korea; nor China's cruise missiles and “094 project” – new-generation strategic submarines. Instead, the journal focused on China's growing long-range missile capability, notably its DF-5, DF-31 and DF-4 ICBM brigades under the PLA's 2nd Artillery (Missile Corps). These longer-range missiles by themselves are formidable – and foreboding, as the Taiwanese authors claimed that these missiles are targeting American territory. DF-5 ICBM The Dongfeng 5 (DF-5) ICBM is a silo-based long-range missile. It uses liquid fuel, has a maximum range of 13,000 km and is capable of hitting any target within the United States. The first generation of these missiles became operational in 1981, with the Soviet Union as their primary target. By 2000, DF-5 forces of the PLA 2nd Artillery consisted of three brigades. The first, the 803rd brigade, was established on Oct. 1, 1984, the 35th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Presently, this brigade is located near Huaihua, within the deep mountains of Hunan province, around 750 km northwest of Guangzho. The 803rd is considered the model, never missing its targets. This brigade was equipped entirely with improved DF-5A ICBMs and related equipment by the mid-1990s. The second brigade is officially known as the 804th and was organized at the end of the 1980s. It is located inside a mountain range in the western part of Henan province, not far from Luoyang (around 700 km southwest of Beijing). The third, officially known as the 818th brigade, was established in 1996 and is subordinated to Hunan province, like the 803rd. Formation of the 818th was complete in 1999. By the year 2000, all three brigades had been equipped with improved DF-5A ICBMs. These DF-5A ICBMs are mounted in stationary silos, which are protected from a pre-emptive strike. Sophisticated engineering and the introduction of sophisticated computer systems have greatly decreased the launch preparation time of these missiles. DF-31 Mobile ICBM The Dongfeng-31 (DF-31) ICBM is a comparatively new weapon of PLA's 2nd Artillery. This ICBM uses solid fuel and launches from a mobile launching platform. Its dynamic characteristics are much better than those of the DF-5, but it has a range of “only” 8,000 km. These missiles were demonstrated to the world for the first time on Oct. 1, 1999 (the 50th anniversary of the PRC). The first unit equipped with DF-31 ICBMs, formed in 1998-99, is officially known as the 813th brigade. It is subordinated to the 2nd Artillery's 54th base near Luoyang and is located near Nanyang, about 200 km south of Luoyang. The ICBMs of this brigade are capable of reaching Hawaii and Alaska. In 2001, however, it became known that the range of the DF-31 is actually 10,000 km or even 10,200 km, putting it within striking distance of the continental U.S. The development of the DF-31 began as early as 1978. At that time the Soviet Union was believed to be the major adversary of China, and the 8,000-km range was considered adequate to reach most of the Soviet Union. After the USSR disintegrated in 1991, the “northern threat” to China ceased to exist. In September 1994, China and Russia signed a joint statement that they would not use nuclear weapons against each other and in April 1996, China and Russia became “strategic partners.” After that, America became the major target, even the sole target, of Chinese ICBMs, and the 8,000-km range was insufficient for the DF-31. Even if this ICBM were located in northeastern Heilongjiang province, near the Russian border, it would be capable of reaching only the northwestern corner of the United States. This is why, in the 1990s, China developed its DF-31A modification, enabling the missile to have a range of approximately 10,000 km – and capable of striking the entire western portion of the U.S. The second brigade of the 2nd Artillery, equipped with DF-31 ICBMs, was established in 2000. Officially known as the 820th brigade, it is located at the 51st base of the 2nd Artillery, near Laiwu in Shandong province, about 400 km southeast of Beijing. It is not known for certain if the range of the DF-31 missiles in the 813th brigade is 8,000 km or 10,000 km, but there is little doubt that the 820th brigade is equipped with DF-31A ICBMs with the range of up to 10,200 km. Multiple sources in Hong Kong and even in China confirm this. China's Hidden ICBM Forces It is possible to conclude, based on the statements of Chinese strategists, particularly those from China Defense University, that the PLA has considerable “hidden” ICBM forces. These forces are hidden by the fact that China uses Changzheng (Long March, or LM) series missile boosters to launch satellites. Since the Chinese aerospace industry is capable of producing many dozens of LM-series boosters annually, these same missile boosters could be used, with insignificant changes, as nuclear-tipped ICBMs. Simply substitute a satellite with a nuclear warhead at the top of a modified missile booster and you have an ICBM. Then there is the DF-4 intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM). These IRBMs are virtually identical to the LM-1 missile boosters used at the dawn of Chinese cosmonautics in the first half of the 1970s to launch Dongfanghong satellites. It is relatively easy to upgrade the LM-1 booster, thus transforming the DF-4 IRBM into an ICBM. In the 1990s the PLA undertook additional upgrading of the DF-4 IRBM. Officially, this was done to upgrade the LM-1 missile booster and resulted in the emergence of the LM-1D missile booster with improved characteristics. According to reliable data, the new LM-1D missile boosters are used primarily for upgrading existing DF-4 IRBMs to DF-4A ICBMs with a range of 10,000 km or more. The DF-4A is still a silo-based liquid fuel missile. However, the DF-4A's major characteristics are close to those of the DF-5/DF-5A ICBM. As a result, the PLA has three additional ICBM brigades: the 805th, 812th and 814th. All three were re-equipped inexpensively with DF-4A missiles in the second half of the 1990s. The Real ICBM Potential of China According to reliable data and cautious estimates, by 2000 PLA's 2nd Artillery included eight ICBM brigades Ê namely, three DF-5 brigades, three DF-4A brigades and two DF-31 brigades. Each brigade has 12 ICBMs, so the 2nd Artillery missile corps, by 2000, had at least 96 ICBMs. This estimate contradicts U.K. and U.S. military analytical organizations that reported in 2002 that China's strategic nuclear potential comprised 24 DF-5 ICBMs and several DF-31 ICBMs. These Western surveys have underestimated seriously China's strategic missile and nuclear potential. Chinese strategists believe that in the case of a U.S. first strike, (a) about 50 percent of Chinese ground-based ICBMs would survive and could deliver a retaliatory strike, and (b) about 80 percent of the surviving ICBMs would reach their targets in the United States. Even assuming a low estimate of 38 Chinese ICBMs, some of them will be MIRVed – with multiple warheads targeting different targets on U.S. soil. CSpace Cspace (Member) 2004-09-17 05:27:00 66.115.23.131 Re: The China Threat Wasn't too sure where to put this... Some recent scuttle about Donald Keyser... remember this guy? He lost a top-secret laptop computer from the State Department awhile back. Ex-top US official accused of passing documents, concealing trip to Taiwan quote:A former aide to US Secretary of State Colin Powell has been arrested after he allegedly concealed a trip to Taiwan and passed documents to the island's intelligence agents, court records showed. Donald Keyser, who retired in July as principal deputy assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, was followed September 4 by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents to a Washington restaurant where he was seen handing over some documents to two Taiwanese agents, according to the records. The documents were described by an FBI affidavit filed in US District Court in Alexandria, Virginia Wednesday as something "derived from material to which Keyser had access as a result of his employment with the Department of State." He told FBI agents the documents contained "talking points" that he often would prepare for his meetings with the Taiwanese. Keyser was not charged with spying in the court papers but with violating State Department rules by failing to disclose a side trip he took to Taiwan last year during a visit to China and Japan. Keyser, who advised Powell on China issues, met one of the Taiwanese agents in Taipei in September 2003, the court papers said. Keyser sent his retirement papers in July but is technically still a State Department employee and currently assigned to the Foreign Service Institute, which runs a career transition process for retirees. In 2000, he made the news over a missing top-secret laptop computer in the State Department. As one of six State Department employees blamed for lax security at the department, he was suspended for 30 days and reassigned by then secretary of state Madeleine Albright. "I would say that we are cooperating and have been cooperating with the investigation," department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters. He said Powell had been "fully aware of this matter" for months. Keyser was released after posting a bail of 500,000 dollars pending a court hearing of his case on October 13, a spokeswoman for the Attorney General's office told AFP. The United States does not have official diplomatic links with Taiwan and it is rare for diplomats to travel to Taipei, especially in any official capacity, without specific permission. The United States shifted its diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979 and acknowledges Beijing's position that Taiwan is part of China. When questioned about his travel to Taiwan, Keyser said he had taken annual leave while on official travel to Japan and had flown to Taipei for sight-seeing purposes, FBI special agent David Farrell said in his affidavit. The arrest of Keyser, one of the nation's leading experts on China, has surprised those in diplomatic circles. It is the second case in recent months of a federal official being implicated in passing documents to US-friendly states. A Pentagon policy analyst was last month alleged to have provided a draft presidential directive on Iran to an American-Israel group amid fears that the information could have landed in Israel. "There is no question that Don is one of the brightest, one of the most capable foreign service officers in the state department," an ex-senior US diplomat said, referring to Keyser. "But reports that he would go and brief Taiwanese intelligence officials dumbfounds me because if he wanted to make sure Taiwan got this information, he would talk to Taiwanese diplomats. "There is no sense in talking to the spooks. It just defies understanding." FYI, CSpace Joey Bagadonuts (Member) 2004-10-17 00:17:00 68.56.101.135 Re: The China Threat I hope for the Hatians sakes that the Chinese don't use their Tiananmen Square crowd control techniques. Can it really be 15 years already? ================================================= http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-10/17/content_383085.htm China sends riot police to Haiti (Agencies) Updated: 2004-10-17 15:53 Ninety-five Chinese riot police, including 13 women, left Beijing for Haiti on Sunday, the first Chinese troops to be deployed to the Western Hemisphere. Chinese peacekeepers wave goodbye as they leave Beijing for Haiti on Sunday, October 17, 2004 on a six-month UN mission. They will join another 30-member team which left one month ago. [Xinhua] A small advance team left China last month. "This is a very hard task but we are full of confidence to succeed in this mission," one woman officer told state television. The force has spent three months training and passed exams administered by the United Nations. Specially trained for riots and crowd control, the force will join up with a multinational force on the troubled island. "This is our country's obligation in safeguarding world peace. China, being a responsible major country in the world, should play such role," Vice Minister of Ministry of Public Security Meng Hongwei told state television. China has participated in peacekeeping missions since 2000 in East Timor, Liberia and Kosovo, among other places, but it has never sent combat troops. The 125-member team will have its work cut out in Haiti where about 50 people have been killed since September. Its capital Port-au-Prince has been beset by violence between ex-soldiers who helped topple President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and supporters of the exiled leader who fled on Feb. 29 after US and French pressure to quit. Brazil is leading a UN force that numbers about 2,600 soldiers. It is a fraction of the 6,700 troops and 1,600 police authorised for the mission to stabilise Haiti after the February revolt in which more than 200 people were killed. Malsua (Moderator) 2004-10-17 05:01:00 216.6.171.95 Re: The China Threat quote:Originally posted by Joey Bagadonuts: I hope for the Hatians sakes that the Chinese don't use their Tiananmen Square crowd control techniques. Can it really be 15 years already? Yeah, seems like it was 2-3 years ago, not 15. I have a question though, how intimidating is 95 5'5" guys to an angry mob of guys 6'2"+? It's not a stereotype. The Chinese people are short. I've seen a couple of guys about my height, the vast majority are 6 inches or more shorter. The only shorter people are the Japanese. Compare that to the Average Haitian. Most of those guys are 2-3 inches taller than me. I tell you, it may take tanks to get their attention, as a band of folks 9 inches shorter than you isn't very intimidating. -Mal Joey Bagadonuts (Member) 2004-10-22 07:44:00 68.56.101.135 Re: The China Threat Could Hooters Girls be the secret weapon that will bring democracy to China? ================================================= http://www.thebostonchannel.com/food/3841747/detail.html First Hooters Restaurant Opens In Conservative China POSTED: 7:46 am EDT October 22, 2004 UPDATED: 3:54 pm EDT October 22, 2004 SHANGHAI, China -- It could be an eye-opening experience as the Hooters restaurant chain opens its first outlet amid the conservative, almost prudish society of China. Hooters, which has a racy reputation for its combination of cold beer, chicken wings and scantily-clad waitresses, has opened a branch in Shanghai. The company calls its image "delightfully tacky, yet unrefined." The opening underscores how much both Shanghai and China have changed. The city is the commercial hub of China's economy, the fastest-growing in the world. And decades of official prudishness are giving way, especially in Shanghai. It has hundreds of hostess bars and massage parlors. Hooters' presence underscores how China's economic vitality is challenging conservative, male-dominated views about sexuality and prudish communist morality. A Hooters waitress said the uniform -- short-shorts and low-cut T-shirts -- aren't any different from what young women might wear on the street on a hot day. Hooters boasts more than 375 restaurants worldwide. It plans to open seven more in China. Hooters' investors are betting that changing attitudes will take the "Hooters Girls" in stride. The restaurant is located in a foreigner-friendly area of Shanghai. The chain is not alone in China. Kentucky Fried Chicken, McDonald's and TGI Friday's are all there. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2004-11-02 23:24:00 140.32.120.188 Re: The China Threat China backs off criticism of US president Beijing, China, Nov. 3 (UPI) -- Chinese officials have denied that criticism of U.S. President George W. Bush published in state media Monday reflected the official government position. China Daily had quoted Qian Qichen, former vice premier and foreign minister, describing Bush as arrogant and criticizing him for trying to rule the world by force. Published one day before the U.S. election, the article was widely seen as the government's official view, and an effort to win favor with Democratic presidential challenger John Kerry. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said Tuesday that Qian had not been interviewed by the English-language paper, or approved publication of his remarks. She said the ministry had clarified the situation for the U.S. State Department. Mainland diplomats and analysts said the article did not signal a policy change toward the United States and was not intended to be provocative, the South China Morning Post reported Wednesday. "The article was aimed at a domestic audience," a retired diplomat told the paper. It had originally been printed on Oct. 18 in a weekly under the Central Communist Party School. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2004-11-02 23:36:00 140.32.120.188 Re: The China Threat Reprinted from NewsMax.com Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2004 9:11 a.m. EST Barnicle: Kerry Expected to Concede at 1 p.m. Longtime Kerry friend and Boston columnist Mike Barnicle said that after talking to Kerry campaign insiders he expects the top Democrat to concede the election to George Bush this afternoon. "I got a sense among the command staff that early afternoon he'll step up and do the right thing here and concede the election," Barnicle told radio host Don Imus. Barnicle seemed to have more than just a hunch, pointing to 1 p.m. rather than the 10 a.m. time frame that the Kerry campaign offered last night as the time when they'd first comment on the election results. Barnicle said the unnamed staffers he spoke to sounded resigned to the Bush win, but that the candidate didn't want to appear to be throwing in the towel until they had an opportunity to throughly review the Ohio tally in "the harsh light of day." Early morning numbers showed Bush with a popular vote margin of more than 3 million, with a margin of 134,000 votes over Kerry in the Buckeye state. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2004-11-09 00:05:00 140.32.120.188 Re: The China Threat Analyst predicts U.S.-China trade war UPI ^ | 11.09.04 China and the United States are likely to face a trade war sparked by the U.S. budget deficit and pressure on China to devalue the yuan, a top analyst says. Stephen Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley, said the threat was mainly caused by U.S. failure to rein in the deficit and American consumers who spent more than they earned, the South China Morning Post reported Tuesday. "Through reckless fiscal policies, there are early signs Asia and China are prepared for the likelihood that trade tension could accelerate due to actions largely taken in Washington," Roach said, speaking in Beijing. The U.S. current account deficit rose to 5.7 percent of gross domestic product midyear, from 4.5 percent last year. Americans have relied on foreign purchases of U.S. assets to fund their high consumption of imported goods, Roach said. But he warned that those purchases are drying up, and predicted that the dollar would lose 10 to 15 percent in value over time. As a result, the value of China's currency would increasingly be an issue in Beijing's dealings with Washington, Roach said. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2004-11-09 23:02:00 140.32.120.188 Re: The China Threat There is no mystery to me whose sub this was.... Mystery Sub Spotted in Japanese Waters ABC News ^ TOKYO Nov 9, 2004 — Japan put its navy on alert Wednesday after an unidentified submarine made a brief incursion into territorial waters near southern Okinawa, a top government official said. The submarine left shortly after it was spotted. A P3C reconnaissance aircraft and destroyer were dispatched to monitor the vessel's movements, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said. Defense chief Yoshinori Ono "issued a maritime alert order" after the submarine was spotted near the Sakishima islands in southern Okinawa prefecture (state), Hosoda said. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi called the incursion "regrettable. It's certainly not a good thing that a submarine of unknown national origin enters our territorial waters." Japan's public broadcaster NHK said defense officials were investigating a possible link between the submarine and Chinese military vessels detected recently in Japan's southern waters. Defense officials confirmed that two Chinese military vessels a submarine rescue craft and a towing vessel were spotted over the weekend 195 miles southeast of Tanegashima island, which is 620 miles from where the submarine was discovered. Japan has been studying methods for increasing its maritime defenses after a shoot out with a suspected North Korean spy ship in December 2001. In that incident, Japanese Coast Guard patrol boats fired on and sank the suspected spy ship off southwestern Japan. The Japanese patrol vessels returned fire only after the ship was ordered to stop but opened fire with a rocket and guns. The Sakishima islands lie in waters between the northeastern tip of Taiwan and Okinawa's main island, 1,000 miles south of Tokyo. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2004-12-04 13:21:00 69.161.219.87 Re: The China Threat China Tests Ballistic Missile Submarine quote: China's military has launched the first of a new class of ballistic missile submarines in what defense officials view as a major step forward in Beijing's strategic weapons program. The new 094-class submarine was launched in late July and when fully operational in the next year or two will be the first submarine to carry the underwater-launched version of China's new DF-31 missile, according to defense officials. "When fully operational, it will represent a more modern, more capable missile platform," said one official familiar with reports of the new submarine. A second intelligence official said building submarines is a top priority of the Chinese, and the Type 094 will be "China's first truly intercontinental strategic nuclear delivery system." The new Type 094 was spotted by U.S. intelligence agencies at the Huludao shipyard, located on the coast of Bohai Bay, some 250 miles northwest of Beijing. The submarine is in the early stages of being outfitted and is not yet equipped with new JL-2 submarine-launched nuclear missiles. The submarine is believed to be based largely on Russian nuclear submarine technology, the officials said. A CIA report made public last week stated that Russia was a major supplier of technology to China's naval nuclear propulsion programs. The launching of the new missile submarine appears ahead of schedule. A Pentagon report on Chinese military power made public in May stated that the new Chinese missile submarine would not be deployed until around 2010. A Defense Intelligence Agency report produced in 1999 and labeled "secret" stated that the new submarine is part of a program by China of "modernizing and expanding its missile force." "Mobile, solid-fuel missiles and a new ballistic missile submarine will improve the force's ability to survive a first strike," the report said, "while more launchers, on-board penetration aids, and possibly multiple warheads will improve its ability to penetrate missile defenses." The DIA report stated that China is expected to field one new ballistic missile submarine by 2020. A Chinese Embassy spokesman had no immediate comment. In a related development, U.S. intelligence officials said the Chinese suffered a setback in their JL-2 missile program when a test flight of the JL-2 missile failed over the summer. The JL-2 missile program was delayed by the test failure but is continuing to be developed, the officials said. China conducted tests of the JL-2 in 2002 and last year. Richard Fisher, vice president of the Washington-based International Assessment and Strategy Center, said the launch of the new missile submarine is "an astounding development." "The 094 has followed 093 development far more rapidly than the assessments in the annual Pentagon reports on the PLA," Mr. Fisher said, referring to the China's People's Liberation Army. China also recently launched a new attack submarine known as the Type 093. Additionally, U.S. intelligence agencies were surprised by China's disclosure in July of a third new type of submarine known as the Yuan-class, a diesel-electric attack submarine. "In the very near future, China will have a secure, second-strike nuclear attack capability that it will use to bolster its nuclear strategy of seeking to deter the United States from aiding Taiwan after a PLA attack," Mr. Fisher said. Mr. Fisher said the JL-2 likely will have multiple warheads. The new submarine will make it more difficult for the U.S. military to take part in a defense of Taiwan because of the threat of nuclear retaliation, he said. The Pentagon has deployed a new missile defense system, but a spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency has said the current interceptor system is designed to stop a long-range North Korean missile, but not an attack from Chinese or Russian missiles. A 1999 report by the House Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China stated that the new missile submarine will likely benefit from stolen U.S. nuclear warhead designs. The report stated that the JL-2 is expected to have a longer range than the DF-31 and that 16 JL-2s will be deployed on the new submarine. The range of the JL-2 is estimated to be about 7,500 miles, enough "to strike targets throughout the United States," the report said. "Instead of venturing into the open ocean to attack the United States, the Type 094-class submarines could remain near [Chinese] waters, protected by the [People's Liberation Army,] Navy and Air Force," the report said. The new submarine will be a major improvement over China's current ballistic missile submarine known as the Xia, which is equipped with medium-range missiles. The current Xia submarine is considered so noisy to underwater detection gear that its chances of surviving attack submarine strikes in ocean waters are limited. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2004-12-04 13:27:00 69.161.219.87 Re: The China Threat The China Price quote: They are the three scariest words in U.S. industry. Cut your price at least 30% or lose your customers. Nearly every manufacturer is vulnerable -- from furniture to networking gear. The result: A massive shift in economic power is under way From the rich walnut paneling and carved arches to the molded Italian Renaissance patterns on the ceiling, the circa 1925 council chamber room of Akron's municipal hall evokes a time when the America's manufacturing heartland was at the peak of its power. But when the U.S.-China Economic & Security Review Commission, a congressionally appointed panel, convened there on Sept. 23, it was not to discuss power but decline. One after another, economists, union officials, and small manufacturers took the microphone to describe the devastation Chinese competitors are inflicting on U.S. industries, from kitchenware and car tires to electronic circuit boards. These aren't stories of mundane sunset industries equipped with antiquated technology. David W. Johnson, CEO of 92-year-old Summitville Tiles Inc. in Summitville, Ohio, described how imports forced him to shut a state-of-the-art, $120 million tilemaking plant four football fields long, sending Summitville into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Now, a tenfold surge in high-quality Chinese imports at "below our manufacturing costs" threatens to polish Summitville off. Makers of precision machine tools and plastic molds -- essential supports of America's industrial architecture -- told how their business has shrunk as home-appliance makers have shifted manufacturing from Ohio to China. Despite buying the best computer-controlled gear, Douglas S. Bartlett reported that at his Cary (Ill.)-based Bartlett Manufacturing Co., a maker of high-end circuit boards for aerospace and automotive customers, sales are half the late-1990s level and the workforce is one-third smaller. He waved a board Bartlett makes for a U.S. Navy submarine-detection device. His buyer says he can get the same board overseas for 40% less. "From experience I can only assume this is the Chinese price," Bartlett said. "We have faced competition in the past. What is dramatically different about China is that they are about half the price." Where the Jobs Went "The China price." They are the three scariest words in U.S. industry. In general, it means 30% to 50% less than what you can possibly make something for in the U.S. In the worst cases, it means below your cost of materials. Makers of apparel, footwear, electric appliances, and plastics products, which have been shutting U.S. factories for decades, know well the futility of trying to match the China price. It has been a big factor in the loss of 2.7 million manufacturing jobs since 2000. Meanwhile, America's deficit with China keeps soaring to new records. It is likely to pass $150 billion this year. Now, manufacturers and workers who never thought they had to worry about the China price are confronting the new math of the mainland. These companies had once held their own against imports mostly because their businesses required advanced skills, heavy investment, and proximity to customers. Many of these companies are in the small-to-midsize sector, which makes up 37% of U.S. manufacturing. The China price is even being felt in high tech. Chinese exports of advanced networking gear, still at a low level, are already affecting prices. And there's talk by some that China could eventually become a major car exporter. Multinationals have accelerated the mainland's industrialization by shifting production there, and midsize companies that can are following suit. The alternative is to stay at home and fight -- and probably lose. Ohio State University business professor Oded Shenkar, author of the new book The Chinese Century, hears many war stories from local companies. He gives it to them straight: "If you still make anything labor intensive, get out now rather than bleed to death. Shaving 5% here and there won't work." Chinese producers can make the same adjustments. "You need an entirely new business model to compete." America has survived import waves before, from Japan, South Korea, and Mexico. And it has lived with China for two decades. But something very different is happening. The assumption has long been that the U.S. and other industrialized nations will keep leading in knowledge-intensive industries while developing nations focus on lower-skill sectors. That's now open to debate. "What is stunning about China is that for the first time we have a huge, poor country that can compete both with very low wages and in high tech," says Harvard University economist Richard B. Freeman. "Combine the two, and America has a problem." How much of a problem? That's in fierce dispute. On one side, the benefits of the relationship with China are enormous. After years of struggling to crack the mainland market, U.S. multinationals from General Motors (GM ) to Procter & Gamble (PG ) and Motorola (MOT ) are finally reaping rich profits. They're making cell phones, shampoo, autos, and PCs in China and selling them to its middle class of some 100 million people, a group that should more than double in size by 2010. "Our commercial success in China is important to our competitiveness worldwide," says Motorola China Chairman Gene Delaney. By outsourcing components and hardware from China, U.S. companies have sharply boosted their return on capital. China's trade barriers continue to come down, part of its agreement to enter the World Trade Organization in 2001. Big new opportunities will emerge for U.S. insurers, banks, and retailers. China's surging demand for raw materials and commodities has driven prices up worldwide, creating a windfall for U.S. steelmakers, miners, and lumber companies. The cheap cost of Chinese goods has kept inflation low in the U.S. and fueled a consumer boom that helped America weather a recession and kept global growth on track. But there's a huge cost to the China relationship, too. Foremost is the question of America's huge trade deficit, of which China is the largest and fastest-growing part. While U.S. consumers binge on Chinese-made goods, the U.S. balance-of-payments deficit is nearing a record 6% of gross domestic product. The trade shortfall -- coupled with the U.S. budget deficit -- is driving the dollar ever downward, raising fears that cracks will appear in the global financial system. And by keeping its currency pegged to the greenback at a level analysts see as undervalued, China amplifies the problem. America's Eroding Base The deficit with China will keep widening under most projections. That raises the issue: Will America's industrial base erode to a dangerous level? So far the hardest-hit industries have been those that were destined to migrate to low-cost nations anyway. But China is ramping up rapidly in more advanced industries where America remains competitive, adding state-of-the-art capacity in cars, specialty steel, petrochemicals, and microchips. These plants are aimed at meeting insatiable demand in China. But the danger is that if China's growth stalls, the resulting glut will turn into another export wave and disrupt whole new strata of American industry. "As producers in China end up with significant unused capacity, they will try to be much more creative in how they deploy it," says Jim Hemerling, a senior vice-president at Boston Consulting Group's Shanghai office. That's why China is an even thornier trade issue for the U.S. than Japan was in the 1980s. It's clear some Chinese exporters cheat, from intellectual-property theft and dumping to securing unfair subsidies. Washington can get much more aggressive in fighting violations of trade law. But broader protectionism is a nonstarter. On a practical level the U.S. is now so dependent on Chinese suppliers that resurrecting trade barriers would just raise costs and diminish the real benefits that China trade confers. Also, unlike Japan 20 years ago, China is a much more open economy. It continues to lower tariffs and even runs a slight trade deficit with the whole world -- which makes the U.S.'s deficit with China all the more glaring. Hiking the value of the yuan 30% might help. But that's unlikely. For one thing, Beijing fears what such a shift would do to jobs -- and the value of its $515 billion in foreign reserves. The real solution is for the U.S. to reduce its twin deficits on its own -- but that's more America's issue than China's. Meanwhile, U.S. companies are no longer investing in much new capacity at home, and the ranks of U.S. engineers are thinning. In contrast, China is emerging as the most competitive manufacturing platform ever. Chief among its formidable assets is its cheap labor, from $120-a-month production workers to $2,000-a-month chip designers. Even in sophisticated electronics industries, where direct labor is less than 10% of costs, China's low wages are reflected in the entire supply chain -- components, office workers, cargo handling -- you name it. China is also propelled by an enormous domestic market that brings economies of scale, feverish local rivalry that keeps prices low, an army of engineers that is growing by 350,000 annually, young workers and managers willing to put in 12-hour days and work weekends, an unparalleled component and material base in electronics and light industry, and an entrepreneurial zeal to do whatever it takes to please big retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores (WMT ), Target (TGT ), Best Buy (BBY ), and J.C. Penney (JCP ). "The reason practically all home furnishings are now made in China factories is that they simply are better suppliers," says Janet E. Fox, vice-president for international procurement at J.C. Penny Co. "American manufacturers aren't even in the same game." Fox's point is important. China's competitive advantages are built on much more than unfair trade practices. Some 70% of exports now come from private companies and foreign ventures mainly owned by Taiwanese, Hong Kong, Japanese, and U.S. companies that have brought access to foreign markets, advanced technology, and managerial knowhow. Aside from cheap land and tax breaks in some areas, private Chinese manufacturers get minimal government help. "The Chinese government cannot afford to offer financial support to the export economy," says business professor Gu Kejian of People's University in Beijing. And as capital floods in and modern plants are built in China, efficiencies improve dramatically. The productivity of private industry in China has grown an astounding 17% annually for five years, according to the U.S. Conference Board. China needs U.S. imports, though not as much as imagined when Beijing agreed to join the WTO. U.S. exports to China have risen 25% to 35% annually in the past two years. But China's exports still outstrip its imports from the U.S. by 5 to 1. The U.S. sells about $2.4 billion worth of aircraft a year, and its semiconductor exports tripled in three years. Otherwise the U.S. looks like a developing nation. It runs surpluses in commodities such as oil seeds, grains, iron, wood pulp, and raw animal hides. Meanwhile, the Chinese keep expanding their export base. Chinese competition arrives so fast that it's nearly impossible to adjust through the usual strategies, such as automating or squeezing suppliers. The Japanese, South Koreans, and Europeans often took "four or five years to develop their place in the market," says Robert B. Cassidy, a former U.S. Trade Representative official who helped negotiate China's entry into the WTO and now works for Washington law firm Collier Shannon Scott, which wages dumping cases on behalf of U.S. clients. "China overwhelms a market so quickly you don't see it coming." "Shock and Awe" Georgetown Steel Co. is a case in point. The Georgetown (S.C.) maker of wire rods used in everything from bridge cables to ball bearings had battled Asian and Mexican imports for years. But last year it shut its 600-worker plant, citing a tenfold leap in Chinese imports, to 252,000 tons, from 2001 to 2003. International Steel Group Inc. (ISG ) has since bought the facility after U.S. anti-dumping duties on imports and a rise in global demand helped hike domestic prices. The Gardiner (Mass.) plant of Seaman Paper Co., a maker of crepe and decorative paper, is highly automated. Yet Chinese imports have grabbed a third of the market. It sells 81-foot streamers to big retailers for as little as 9 cents each. That's below Seaman's cost of materials. "We thought we could offset Chinese labor cost by automating, but we just couldn't," says Seaman President George Jones III. In bedroom furniture, 59 U.S. plants employing 15,500 workers have closed since January, 2001, as Chinese imports have rocketed 221%, to $1.4 billion -- half of the U.S. market. Prices have plunged 30%. Dumping certainly seems to be one factor: At its Galax (Va.) factory, Vaughan-Bassett Furniture Co. displays a Chinese knockoff of one of its dressers that wholesales for $105 -- below the world market cost for the wood. But the main competition comes from Chinese megaplants that sell directly to U.S. retailers and can get a new design into mass production in two months. The new Chinese factories of suppliers such as Lacquer Craft Furniture, Markor, and Shing Mark, some of them Taiwanese-owned, employ thousands and are so big they seem meant to build Boeing 747s, making most U.S. factories look like cottage industries. "The first wave is shock and awe," says John D. Bassett III, CEO of Vaughan-Bassett, whose sales and workforce have shrunk even though it has boosted productivity fivefold at its 600-worker Galax plant since 1995 by investing in computer-controlled wood drying, cutting, and carving gear. "American industry has never encountered [such] competition." As component industries and design work follow assembly lines to China, key elements of the U.S. industrial base are beginning to erode. American plastic-molding and machine-tool industries have shrunk dramatically in the past five years. Take Incoe Corp. in Troy, Mich., a maker of steel components for plastic-injection machines. "When the economy turned soft, we anticipated the business would come back," says Incoe CFO Robert Hoff. "But it didn't. We saw our customer base either close or migrate to China." The U.S. printed-circuit-board industry has seen sales go from $11 billion to under $5 billion since 2001. In that time, PCB exports from China have more than doubled, to a projected $3.4 billion this year, says market researcher Global Sources Ltd. (GSOL ) Most U.S. production of key electronics materials, such as copper-clad laminates, has fled, too. "The whole industry is hollowing out," says Joseph C. Fehsenfeld, CEO of Midwest Printed Circuit Services Inc. in Round Lake Beach, Ill. The migration of electronics to China began when the Taiwanese shifted plants and suppliers across the Taiwan Strait in the late 1990s. As recently as four years ago, though, the U.S. exported $45 billion in computer hardware. Since the tech crash, that number has slid to $28 billion as the industry headed en masse for China, which is even more competitive than Taiwan. "All electronics hardware manufacturing is going to China," says Michael E. Marks, CEO of Flextronics Corp (FLEX )., a contract manufacturer that employs 41,000 in China. Flextronics and other companies are hiring Chinese engineers to design the products assembled there. "There is a myth that the U.S. would remain the knowledge economy and China the sweatshop," says BCG's Hemerling. "Increasingly, this is no longer the case." A visit to Flextronics' campus in the Pearl River Delta town of Doumen vividly illustrates Marks's point. The site employs 18,000 workers making cell phones, X-box game consoles, PCs, and other hardware in 13 factories sprawled over 149 acres. The bamboo scaffolding is about to come down on an additional 720,000-square-foot factory nearing completion. Almost every chemical, component, plastic, machine tool, and packing material Flextronics needs is available from thousands of suppliers within a two-hour drive of the site. That alone makes most components 20% cheaper in China than in the U.S., says campus General Manager Tim Dinwiddie. Plus, China will soon eliminate remaining tariffs on imported chips. In the past five years, electronic manufacturing-services companies such as Flextronics have cut their U.S. production from $37 billion to $27 billion while doubling their China output, to $31 billion. That's likely to double again by 2007. "Gravitational Pull" China is even making its presence felt in the U.S. market for networking gear, a bastion of American comparative advantage. On Nov. 15, struggling 3Com Corp. (COMS ) in Marlborough, Mass., launched a data-communications switching system for corporate networks of 10,000 users or more. It claims twice the performance of Cisco Systems Inc.'s (CSCO ) comparable switch. At $183,000, 3Com's list price is 25% less. Its secret? 3Com is settling for lower margins and taking advantage of a 1,200-engineer joint venture with China telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co. This is the first high-end piece of networking gear sold by a U.S. company that is designed and manufactured in China. For the price of one U.S. engineer, the joint venture can throw four engineers into the task of making customized products for a client. Even if 3Com does not succeed, similar tie-ups are expected, which could drive down prices of high-end gear sold in the U.S. Says 3Com President Bruce Claflin: "We want to change the pricing structure of this industry." 3Com hopes this is the start of a whole line of networking gear designed and made in China for the global market. Without referring to China, Cisco CEO John T. Chambers says "we are starting to see a stream of good, very price-competitive competitors, particular from Asia." The next step for China is critical mass in core industries. Outside Beijing, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMI ) has just opened a chip plant fabricating 12-inch silicon wafers that experts say is just two generations behind Intel Corp. (INTC ) A foundry that makes chips on a contract basis, this plant won't compete directly with U.S. chipmakers. But with four more 12-inch wafer plants due by 2006 and many more fabs in the pipeline, the U.S. Semiconductor Industry Assn. warns that a "gravitational pull" could suck capital, people, and leading-edge research-and-development and design functions from the U.S. Digital technologies aren't the only areas where the Chinese have huge ambitions. In the past decade, U.S. petrochemical makers have invested in little new capacity. But at a three-mile-long site in Nanjing, 12,000 workers are erecting a $2.7 billion network of pipes and towers for China's Sinopec (SNP ) and Germany's BASF (BF ) that by next year will be among the world's biggest, most modern complexes for ethylene, the basic ingredient in plastics. An even bigger complex is going up in Shanghai. "The Chinese understand everything that scale means," says Fluor Corp. (FLR ) Group President Robert McNamara, who lives part-time in Shanghai and whose company has design contracts at both complexes. "When they target an industry to dominate, they don't mitigate." Can China dominate everything? Of course not. America remains the world's biggest manufacturer, producing 75% of what it consumes, though that's down from 90% in the mid-'90s. Industries requiring huge R&D budgets and capital investment, such as aerospace, pharmaceuticals, and cars, still have strong bases in the U.S. "I don't see China becoming a major car exporter in the foreseeable future," says GM China (GM ) Chairman Philip F. Murtaugh. "There is no economic rationale." Murtaugh cites high production costs and quality issues at Chinese car plants, as well as just-in-time delivery needs in the West, as impediments. Burning Rubber Don't tell that to Miao Wei, president of Dongfeng Motor Corp. On Nov. 7, Dongfeng and Honda Motor Co. (HMC ) announced that their joint venture will invest $340 million to boost output of Honda CR-Vs and Civics fivefold, to 120,000, by early 2006. The plant aims to achieve world standards by employing Honda's flexible manufacturing system. "Honda will sell some of the Chinese-built cars in Europe," says Miao. Nissan Motor Co. (NSANY ) is also talking about exporting with Dongfeng. China's carmakers are developing the suppliers that one day could sustain exports. Auto-parts maker Wanxiang Group in Hangzhou started as a tiny township-owned farm-machinery shop in 1969. Now it's a $2.4 billion conglomerate that supplies the Chinese assembly plants of GM, Ford Motor (F ), Volkswagen, and others and also exports 30% of its output. In two years, China will drop the rule that its auto plants buy at least 40% of parts locally. Wanxiang is getting ready: It is opening a $42 million plant loaded with U.S. and European testing gear. And since 1995, Wanxiang has bought 10 U.S. auto-parts makers. "Our goal is to acquire technology, management, and most important, to get access to overseas markets," says Chairman Lu Guanqiu. Some U.S manufacturers hope China will run out of steam. This year, factories in Guangdong and Fujian faced serious labor shortages for the first time. Red-hot demand has meant skyrocketing costs for China's producers, most of which rely on imported goods such as steel, plastics, and components. Energy shortages have forced manufacturers to shut factories several times a week. In almost any industry one can think of, vicious price wars are biting into already razor-sharp margins. "There are so many small companies competing that they crowd out all profit," says Beijing University economist Zhang Weiying. Indeed, given the low emphasis on profits and the unsophisticated accounting of many Chinese companies, often their pricing isn't based on a full understanding of costs. Having gotten as far as they can on cheap production costs, Chinese manufacturers must develop their own technologies and innovative products to move ahead -- areas in which they've made slow progress so far. The juggernaut will slow, but only slightly. While salaries for top Chinese designers are rising fast, they are still a fifth to a tenth of those in Silicon Valley. If China's wages rise 8% annually for the next five years, says a Boston Consulting Group study, the average factory hand will still earn just $1.30 an hour by then. If China allowed the yuan to appreciate by around 10% in the next year, productivity gains would more than offset the higher costs, figures China expert Nicholas R. Lardy of the Institute for International Economics. "I don't think revaluation will have a significant impact," he says. And Chinese producers are hardly standing still. In a recent survey of Chinese and U.S. manufacturers by IndustryWeek and Cleveland-based Manufacturing Performance Institute, 54% of Chinese companies cited innovation as one of their top objectives, while only 26% of U.S. respondents did. Chinese companies spend more on worker training and enterprise-management software. And 91% of U.S. plants are more than a decade old, vs. 54% in China. Shanghai-based TV maker SVA Group, for example, has opened China's first plant to make flat panels, a venture with Japan's NEC (NIPNY ) Corp. That is enabling SVA to secure a U.S. beachhead by selling liquid-crystal display and plasma TV sets through channels such as the online sites of Costco Wholesale (COST ) and Target. Starting price: $1,600 -- 30% below similar models by Royal Philips Electronics (PHG ) and Panasonic (MC ). More innovation. Better goods. Lower prices. Newer plants. America will surely continue to benefit from China's expansion. But unless it can deal with the industrial challenge, it will suffer a loss of economic power and influence. Can America afford the China price? It's the question U.S. workers, execs, and policymakers urgently need to ask. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2004-12-13 01:32:00 140.32.120.188 Re: The China Threat China and Russia Will Hold First War Games Together AP ^ | Dec 13, 2004 China and Russia will hold their first joint military exercise next year, the Chinese government said Monday, as President Hu Jintao called for an expansion of the rapidly growing alliance between the former Cold War rivals. The announcement came during a visit to Beijing by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, who was expected to discuss expanding the Kremlin's multibillion-dollar annual arms sales to China. The exercises are to take place on Chinese territory, the official China News Service said. But that report and other government statements didn't say when they would take place or what forces would be involved. "We want ... to promote the development of the two countries' strategic collaborative relationship in order to safeguard and promote regional and world peace," CNS quoted Hu as telling Ivanov. Beijing and Moscow have built up military and political ties since the Soviet collapse in 1991, driven in part by joint desire to counterbalance U.S. global dominance. They are partners of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization, formed to combat what they consider the common threat of Islamic extremism and separatism. The other members are the former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The announcement of military exercises comes two months after Beijing and Moscow settled the last of their decades-old border disputes that led to violent clashes in the 1960s and '70s. The agreement was signed during an October trip to Beijing by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who said relations had reached "unparalleled heights." That visit also produced a pact to jointly develop Russian energy resources, an urgent issue for Beijing, which is trying to avert fuel shortages in its booming economy. The frontier where at one point 700,000 Soviet troops faced 1 million Chinese soldiers is now a bustling cross-border market. China has become the Russian arms industry's No. 1 customer, and is expected to buy $2 billion in weapons this year. Russia is a key supplier for the Chinese military's effort to modernize its arsenal and back up frequent threats to invade Taiwan, the self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its territory. The United States and the European Union have banned weapons sales to China since its bloody 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. But Moscow has supplied Beijing with high-performance Su-27 fighters and other top-of-the-line arms. Ivanov also met with Defense Minister Cao Gangchuan and Guo Boxiong, deputy chairman of the Communist Party commission that runs China's military, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Hu is chairman of the commission. Hu is to visit Moscow in May during festivities commemorating the end of World War II. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2004-12-13 01:33:00 140.32.120.188 Re: The China Threat Jane’s: China Developing Two Versions of FT-2000 Missile Defense System missilethreat.com ^ | Dec. 10, 2004 | Unknown The December issue of Jane’s Missiles and Rockets notes that China is developing two versions of the FT-2000 air and missile defense system, namely the FT-2000A and FT-2000B. The report of the two versions is not by itself new. The article rather seems to have been prompted by a leaflet distributed at the recent Zhuhai air show. New information added by the leaflet also includes that the full system, which China reportedly hopes to market around the world, would include a “passive radar,â€� 12 launchers with one missile each, a single support station, and three slave or relay stations. The -A and B versions vary in range and capability, and are based on the Chinese HQ-2 and Chinese HQ-9 respectively. Additional Info From Janes: FT-2000 Country: China Basing: Land Status: Operational, Exported Details In a report to Congress on May 28, 2004, the U.S. Department of Defense highlighted the major improvements that China has made to its air and missile defense systems over the past few years, including “[the] development of an antiradiation SAM [surface-to-air missile], most likely intended to target AWACS [Airborne Warning and Control System] aircraft and standoff jamming platforms.â€�(1) The report was referring specifically to the FT-2000, a Chinese anti-radiation surface-to-air missile system designed to counter electronic jamming aircraft, AWACS aircraft, and other air radiation wave targets. Developed and manufactured by the China National Precision Machinery Import and Export Corporation (CPMIEC) during the late 1990s, the FT-2000 is also believed to be capable of destroying tactical ballistic missiles, similar to the U.S. Patriot and the Russian S-300P systems on which it is based.(2) At present, two versions exist, the mobile FT-2000 and the fixed-based FT-2000A.(3) The FT-2000 is the direct result of a concerted effort by China to eliminate an inherent vulnerability in medium- and long-range surface-to-air missiles: jamming. For decades, air and missile defense systems like the Patriot and the S-300P have been susceptible to advanced techniques designed to confuse or immobile their interceptor missiles and keep them from reaching their targets. One of the most common jamming devices is S- and C-band airborne noise. If used properly, this and other deception mechanisms lead to what is known as the “suppression of enemy air defensesâ€� and allows attacking aircraft and missiles to proceed to their targets without challenge.(4) The FT-2000 was designed to neutralize and counter these airborne jamming devices. It contains a passive radar target seeker programmed to detect the specific electromagnetic signals emanating from its target. Essentially, the FT-2000 uses its target’s own jamming frequencies against it. In addition, the FT-2000 has a passive homing system that does not transmit electromagnetic waves, thus minimizing the chances that its enemies will detect it in time.(5) The system is equipped with modified HQ-9 interceptor missiles, each of which is 6.8 meters long, 0.47 meters in diameter, and has a launch weight of 1,300 kilograms. The HQ-9 missiles give the FT-2000 a range of 12 to 100 kilometers and an operating altitude of 3 to 20 kilometers. The mobile system is transported and launched on an 8 X 8 cross-country launcher with four canisters that resemble those used by the S-300P.(6) In addition to the mobile FT-2000, China has developed a fixed-based variant, the FT-2000A. According to a recent Chinese sales brochure, the FT-2000A uses a highly-modified HQ-2 missile that has been equipped with passive radio frequency homing seekers. Each HQ-2 is armed with a 60-kilogram fragmentation warhead and has a range of 60 kilometers and a maximum altitude of 18 kilometers. Reports indicate that each FT-2000A battery consists of 12 missile launchers, each containing one missile, and a central control station. The central control station has one master passive sensor and three auxiliary passive sensors. The four sensors are capable of triangulating on electromagnetic signals in the 2- and 6-GHz frequency range, which covers most AWACS aircraft and other air radiation wave targets, thus earning it the nickname “AWACS killer.â€�(7) In addition to its role as an anti-radiation missile system, the FT-2000 also has advanced capability against tactical ballistic missiles, although this point is seldom mentioned. As Richard D. Fisher, Jr. has pointed out, Chinese officials at the 1998 Zhuhai Air Show—shortly after plans for the FT-2000 had been unveiled—stated that the FT-2000 was being developed into an active-guided missile that eventually would have the ability to shoot down short- and medium-range ballistic missiles.(8) Since the FT-2000 is based on comprehensive systems such as the U.S. Patriot and the S-300P, it is no surprise that it too has anti-missile capabilities. In October 2003, it was reported that China had closed a deal with its neighbor, Pakistan, to supply the latter with an unspecified number of FT-2000 missiles to counter India’s early warning capabilities. The China-Pakistan deal followed India’s own arrangement with Israel and Russia to install three Israeli Phalcon AWACS on Ilyushin Il-76 freighter aircraft, thus giving it an airborne early warning system.(9) According to various news sources, shortly after India announced its acquisition of the Phalcon radars, Air Chief Marshal Kaleem Saadat, the head of Pakistan’s air force, visited China and conveyed Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s wish to purchase an unspecified number of FT-2000s.(10) The recent China-Pakistan arrangement may just be an attempt to maintain the delicate balance of power between India and Pakistan, both of which possess nuclear weapons. Yet according to an article published in Malaysia in January 2003, the People’s Liberation Army is eager to export the FT-2000 around the globe.(11) It is entirely possible that “AWACS killerâ€� air and missile defense systems like the FT-2000 will soon proliferate throughout Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, a development that would introduce a multitude of strategic problems for the U.S. and its allies. Jane’s: China Developing Two Versions of FT-2000 Missile Defense System December 10, 2004 :: Jane’s Information Group :: News The December issue of Jane’s Missiles and Rockets notes that China is developing two versions of the FT-2000 air and missile defense system, namely the FT-2000A and FT-2000B. The report of the two versions is not by itself new. The article rather seems to have been prompted by a leaflet distributed at the recent Zhuhai air show. New information added by the leaflet also includes that the full system, which China reportedly hopes to market around the world, would include a “passive radar,â€� 12 launchers with one missile each, a single support station, and three slave or relay stations. The -A and B versions vary in range and capability, and are based on the Chinese HQ-2 and Chinese HQ-9 respectively. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2005-01-15 18:23:00 69.161.222.74 Re: The China Threat Amphibious Operations: Old Chinese Warships Converted To Fast Transports quote: January 2, 2005: China is converting older frigates and destroyers to APDs (fast transports). At the rate the conversions are going, China will soon have at least eight APDs. The first to be converted are the Jianghu class frigates, which were built in the 1970s and are now being retired. To create an APD, most weapons are removed from these frigates, with the now empty spaces modified to transport cargo or troops. The 1,800 ton Jianghu’s have a top speed of about 46 kilometers an hour. This enables APDs to move quickly, especially during darkness, to reach their destination. Shorter travel time makes the APDs less vulnerable to attack (and easier to defend, especially if you have to keep fighters overhead.) Taiwan is 300 kilometers from the Chinese coast. Each APD could carry several hundred troops, or a few hundred tons of cargo. China took the “armored regimentâ€� of the 164th infantry division and converted it to the Second Marine Brigade. This brigade is organized using the new format, with one company of each infantry battalion having armored vehicles, in this case amphibious light tanks (Type 63A). The infantry companies have amphibious armored personnel carriers. The brigade artillery battalion has self-propelled 122mm howitzers. The First Brigade is larger, and has five combat battalions (two armored, with amphibious tanks, and three infantry.) The armor battalions have two tank and one infantry companies. In addition to the two brigades, there are two marine recon battalions and two frogman platoons (think “SEALs Liteâ€�). These are usually attached to the First Marine Brigade. There may be a skeleton Marine Brigade in Shanghai, to be used to rebuild a Marine Brigade if one of the other two is destroyed in combat. The total size of the Chinese Marine Corps is over 10,000 troops. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2005-01-15 18:26:00 69.161.222.74 Re: The China Threat China\'s Growing Navy Worries U.S. quote: One day in November, a nuclear-powered Chinese Navy submarine quietly slipped past this western Pacific island, home port for five supply and ammunition ships positioned here by the U.S. military for rapid deployment around the world. "We are watching them," a crew member of a U.S. Navy nuclear attack submarine said at an American fast food restaurant while on shore leave here. "The Chinese are a real concern." Ever since the U.S. Marine Corps defeated Japanese forces here 60 years ago, the Marianas have been widely considered an American lake. Now, the United States may have to get used to sharing the western Pacific with China, the world's rising naval power. According to military analysts, China is rapidly expanding its submarine force to about 85 by 2010, about one-third more than today. "They want to become the dominant power in the western Pacific, to displace the United States, to kick us back to Hawaii or beyond," said Richard Fisher Jr., who studies Chinese naval strengths and strategies for the International Assessment and Strategy Center, a Washington research institute. China is embarking on a $10 billion submarine acquisition and upgrade program and is buying destroyers and frigates and equipping them with modern antiship cruise missiles, according to Eric McVadon, a retired U.S. Navy admiral who served as defense attache in Beijing in the early 1990s. "The Chinese are converting their surface navy into a truly modern antiship cruise-missile surface navy," McVadon, now an East Asia security consultant, said after attending a naval review conference in Hawaii. "The modernization of their navy has taken a great leap forward. Their nuclear sub program has taken off like wildfire." In contrast, Russia, which once had 90 submarines in the Pacific, has mothballed all but 20. Japan has 16 submarines and no plans to buy more. The U.S. Pacific Fleet has 35 submarines, with many considered to be the most modern in the world. "We don't have to worry about losing control of the seas anytime soon," Richard Halloran, a military affairs analyst based in Honolulu, said by telephone. "But the Chinese are moving a whole lot faster on military modernization than anyone expected a short time ago." For its open-water navy, China is concentrating on submarines. The immediate goal, analysts say, is to blockade Taiwan, an island nation seen by Beijing as a breakaway province. In response, the U.S. Navy is reversing an old Soviet-era formula, where the United States had 60 percent of its submarines in the Atlantic and 40 percent in the Pacific. In addition to shifting toward keeping 60 percent in the Pacific, the United States recently set up an antisubmarine warfare center in San Diego. In January, Guam is to receive a third U.S. nuclear attack submarine, the Houston. In three years, the United States will have brought from zero to three its forward deployed submarines in Guam, the U.S. territory 240 kilometers, or 150 miles, south of here. Since March, the United States, using satellites and maritime surveillance planes, has detected Chinese submarines in waters west of Guam. The Chinese Han Class submarine that passed near here cruised first near Guam. From the Marianas, the Chinese submarine went north to Okinawa, where Japanese forces detected it Nov. 9 as it shadowed a joint naval exercise between the United States and Japan. Violating international law, the submarine passed between two Japanese islands without surfacing and identifying itself. Japan protested strongly, and Japanese officials said they had won a private apology from Chinese officials. The rise of China's navy is watched with apprehension in the Pacific, where, down through the centuries, the islands have long been playthings for the world's maritime powers: Spanish, American, British, French, German and Japanese. "I have talked to several Chinese residents here who are quite proud that China will have a big navy again," Samuel McPhetres, regional history professor at Northern Marianas College, said in an interview. "But are two big maritime powers willing to share the Pacific?" In October 2003, a destroyer and a supply ship from the Chinese Navy made a goodwill visit to Guam, reciprocating a visit made one month earlier by two U.S. Navy ships to Zhanjiang, in southern Guangdong Province. It was the first call by U.S. warships to the headquarters of China's South Sea Fleet there. But a few years ago, alarm bells rang in Washington when Chinese companies were the only bidders for a U.S. Navy ship repair facility that was to be ceded by the Pentagon to Guam's territorial government. Washington stopped the sale. Later, Guam signed a 20- year lease with a Japanese company. Today, Washington is cautious about extending to Chinese tourists the same Guam-only visa privileges extended to South Korean tourists. Robert Underwood, who served until 2003 as the territory's nonvoting delegate to the U.S. Congress, warned that huge Chinese tourism might scare away military strategists who are investing hundreds of millions of dollars. Today's era of carefully negotiated port calls and surreptitious surveying reminds some historians of an earlier era. "In the 1920s American military and Japanese military had to size up each other to see what the challenges were," Daniel Martinez, National Park Service historian at the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, said in an interview in Saipan. "You could see today the potential of what was happening in 1930s, when the U.S. and Japan sought to spread influence throughout the Pacific." Japan's influence is eroding with new air links from here to Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. "The Chinese influence in the Pacific islands will be very, very big, bigger than Japan's today," Hiroshi Nakajima, executive director of the Pacific Society, an academic group, predicted in a recent interview here. Eventually, Nakajima said, "Chinese interests and the American interest will clash." Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2005-01-18 18:29:00 69.161.222.74 Re: The China Threat China Builds Up Strategic Sea Lanes quote: By Bill Gertz The Washington Times China is building up military forces and setting up bases along sea lanes from the Middle East to project its power overseas and protect its oil shipments (Or cut ours off…), according to a previously undisclosed internal report prepared for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. "China is building strategic relationships along the sea lanes from the Middle East to the South China Sea in ways that suggest defensive and offensive positioning to protect China's energy interests, but also to serve broad security objectives," said the report sponsored by the director, Net Assessment, who heads Mr. Rumsfeld's office on future-oriented strategies. The Washington Times obtained a copy of the report, titled "Energy Futures in Asia," which was produced by defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. The internal report stated that China is adopting a "string of pearls" strategy of bases and diplomatic ties stretching from the Middle East to southern China that includes a new naval base under construction at the Pakistani port of Gwadar. Beijing already has set up electronic eavesdropping posts at Gwadar in the country's southwest corner, the part nearest the Persian Gulf. The post is monitoring ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and the Arabian Sea, the report said. Other "pearls" in the sea-lane strategy include: • Bangladesh: China is strengthening its ties to the government and building a container port facility (Kind of like the “container facilitiesâ€� in our hemisphere…) at Chittagong. The Chinese are "seeking much more extensive naval and commercial access" in Bangladesh. • Burma: China has developed close ties to the military regime in Rangoon and turned a nation wary of China into a "satellite" of Beijing close to the Strait of Malacca, through which 80 percent of China's imported oil passes. China is building naval bases in Burma and has electronic intelligence gathering facilities on islands in the Bay of Bengal and near the Strait of Malacca. Beijing also supplied Burma with "billions of dollars in military assistance to support a de facto military alliance," the report said. •Cambodia: China signed a military agreement in November 2003 to provide training and equipment. Cambodia is helping Beijing build a railway line from southern China to the sea. •South China Sea: Chinese activities in the region are less about territorial claims than "protecting or denying the transit of tankers through the South China Sea," the report said. China also is building up its military forces in the region to be able to "project air and sea power" from the mainland and Hainan Island. China recently upgraded a military airstrip on Woody Island and increased its presence through oil drilling platforms and ocean survey ships. •Thailand: China is considering funding construction of a $20 billion canal across the Kra Isthmus that would allow ships to bypass the Strait of Malacca. The canal project would give China port facilities, warehouses and other infrastructure (More “container facilitiesâ€�!) in Thailand aimed at enhancing Chinese influence in the region, the report said. The report reflects growing fears in the Pentagon about China's long-term development. Many Pentagon analysts believe China's military buildup is taking place faster than earlier estimates, and that China will use its power to project force and undermine U.S. and regional security. The U.S. military's Southern Command produced a similar classified report in the late 1990s that warned that China was seeking to use commercial port facilities around the world to control strategic "chokepoints." A Chinese company with close ties to Beijing's communist rulers holds long-term leases on port facilities at either end of the Panama Canal. The Pentagon report said China, by militarily controlling oil shipping sea lanes, could threaten ships, "thereby creating a climate of uncertainty about the safety of all ships on the high seas." The report noted that the vast amount of oil shipments through the sea lanes, along with growing piracy and maritime terrorism, prompted China, as well as India, to build up naval power at "chokepoints" along the sea routes from the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea. "China ... is looking not only to build a blue-water navy to control the sea lanes, but also to develop undersea mines and missile capabilities to deter the potential disruption of its energy supplies from potential threats, including the U.S. Navy, especially in the case of a conflict with Taiwan," the report said. Chinese weapons for sea-lane control include new warships equipped with long-range cruise missiles, submarines and undersea mines, the report said. China also is buying aircraft and long-range target acquisition systems, including optical satellites and maritime unmanned aerial vehicles. The focus on the naval buildup is a departure from China's past focus on ground forces, the report said. "The Iraq war, in particular, revived concerns over the impact of a disturbance in Middle Eastern supplies or a U.S. naval blockade," the report said, noting that Chinese military leaders want an ocean-going navy and "undersea retaliatory capability to protect the sea lanes." China believes the U.S. military will disrupt China's energy imports in any conflict over Taiwan, and sees the United States as an unpredictable country that violates others' sovereignty and wants to "encircle" China, the report said. Beijing's leaders see access to oil and gas resources as vital to economic growth and fear that stalled economic growth could cause instability and ultimately the collapse of their nation of 1.3 billion people. Energy demand, particularly for oil, will increase sharply in the next 20 years — from 75 million barrels per day last year to 120 million barrels in 2025 — with Asia consuming 80 percent of the added 45 million barrels, the report said. Eighty percent of China's oil currently passes through the Strait of Malacca, and the report states that China believes the sea area is "controlled by the U.S. Navy." Chinese President Hu Jintao recently stated that China faces a "Malacca Dilemma" — the vulnerability of its oil supply lines from the Middle East and Africa to disruption. Oil-tanker traffic through the Strait, which is closest to Indonesia, is projected to grow from 10 million barrels a day in 2002 to 20 million barrels a day in 2020, the report said. Chinese specialists interviewed for the report said the United States has the military capability to cut off Chinese oil imports and could "severely cripple" China by blocking its energy supplies. doctorchaos (Member) 2005-01-24 14:59:00 66.58.58.82 Re: The China Threat China's smart. At one point the US was also equally smart. Are we, today? Eventually, the Chinese will be very economically and militarily powerful. There will be a "balance of oil" at that point. Either the US or China could cut off access to the other's oil. The big question is whether Japan will successfully re-militarize without re-nationalizing, and if it will choose the US over China. China may make a "deal" that Japan can't refuse as obviously Japan is even more dependent on sea-borne oil than China. Taiwan is a loss. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2005-01-30 16:36:00 69.161.222.74 Re: The China Threat In Canada Spies Are Us quote: by Judi McLeod Canadafreepress.com January 26, 2005 Operation Sidewinder. It sounds like a Hollywood spy movie starring Harrison Ford. For a long time, Sidewinder moldered on the shelf as just another conspiracy theory. In reality, Sidewinder was a controversial report put together by a small but hard-working team of RCMP and CSIS (Canadian Security & Intelligence Service) officials. It was Sidewinder that sounded the first alarm bells that China is one of the greatest ongoing threats to Canada’s national security and Canadian industry. But even after Sidewinder was side swiped by former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, intelligence proves that there is no doubt that an active Chinese Intelligence Service has been able to gain influence on vital sectors of the Canadian economy, including real estate, high technology and security. The bottom line is that this unprecedented influence gave China ongoing access to economic, political and some military intelligence in Canada. Operation Sidewinder met with a fate that silenced ringing alarm bells. Officially entitled Chinese Intelligence Services and Triads Financial Links in Canada, it was buried. Following orders from persons unknown, CSIS watered down Sidewinder’s worrisome conclusions and replaced it with a revised document called, Echo. CSIS officials maintain that they buried Sidewinder because it relied on nothing more than conspiracy theories--even though http://www.asianpacificpost.com heralded the news in August 2003 that some 3,500 Chinese spy companies had been identified operating in Canada and the United States. While CSIS claimed that conspiracy caused them to go mum, other intelligence sources are saying that political pressure forced CSIS to abandon the Sidewinder report. Prominent among Sidewinder’s case studies was The Chinese, state-owned China International Trust Investment Company (CITIC), which already has a subsidiary up and running in Canada. CITIC has spent about $500 million to buy a Canadian pulp mill, a petrochemical company, vast real estate and hotels. At the time of the Sidewinder report. CITIC already had connections with one large Canadian corporation. Add to that portfolio, the Alberta oil sands, ownership of which is currently being contemplated by a state-owned Chinese company and a Toronto-based mine company, Noranda Mines–a deal worth more than $7 billion. Sidewinder found that significant amounts of arms, manufactured by a CITIC-controlled company, have been confiscated on Mohawk reserves. Chinese tycoons have gained solid influence in municipal politics and development through their ownership of large chunks of real estate and hotel chains in key urban centres like Toronto. Vancouver is now considered the North American gateway for China’s state-owned COSCO shipping company. Both U.S. Senate and Canadian intelligence sources have described COSCO as "the merchant marine for China’s military". According to U.S. Intelligence reports, COSCO vessels do not just transport Oriental bric-a-brac. COSCO vessels have been caught carrying assault rifles into California and biological-chemical weapons components into North Korea, Pakistan, Iraq and Iran. Add to these disturbing events that Canadian law enforcement agencies have kicked in with hard-line information that Chinese Triad criminal elements are active in and around Canada’s ports. Sidewinder star Li Ka-Shing is also Asia’s most powerful man. He owns large tracts of prime real estate in Canada and octopus-like interests in the nation’s telecommunications, petroleum and banking sectors. Even as he was acquiring Vancouver’s Expo 86 lands, Hong Kong Police were asking CSIS to investigate Li Ka-Shing in Canada, back in 1988. Anne Marie Doyle, then Canadian High Commissioner officially denied that request to Hong Kong. Conspiracy theories were tossed out the window when U.S. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher revealed that the U.S. Bureau of Export Affairs, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and the Rand Corporation had identified Li Ka-Shing and Hutchison Whampoa (Li’s primary business) as financing or serving as a conduit for Communist China’s military in order for them to acquire sensitive technologies and other equipment. Former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien’s connections to the burgeoning CTIC conglomerate served as his entrée into the private sector. While John Turner was leader of the federal Liberals, Chrétien was working for Gordon Securities, one of the many Li-controlled companies on Canadian soil. Chrétien also served as an international-relations adviser to PetroKazakhstan, a Calgary-based oil company trying to expand its oil exports to China. But anyone trying to join the dots on Chinese influence in Canada shouldn’t stop with Chrétien. Prime Minister Paul Martin, portrayed by the Canadian media as a sworn Chrétien enemy during the Liberal leadership race, carries on the Chinese dynasty. This is a saga that begins and ends with the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), which provides more development assistance to China than to any other country in the world. Both Chrétien and Martin are under the personal influence of Kofi Annan pointman Maurice Strong, who founded CIDA, which launched him as an international powerhouse in 1967. At the same time 3,500 Chinese spy companies have been identified conducting intelligence operations in Canada and the U.S., the Canadian Liberal Government is selling off its nation’s natural resources--with taxpayers’ money. See also Welcome to the Peoples\' Republic of China on Canadian soil . Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2005-01-30 17:05:00 69.161.222.74 Re: The China Threat I’m pretty sure this hasn’t been posted to this thread before. It is a very informative read! Here’s the link to the entire report – July 2002 - Report To Congress Of The U.S. - China Security Review Commission Chapter 1 - China’s Perceptions of the United States and Strategic Thinking quote: Key Findings * The U.S. Government has dedicated insufficient resources to collect, translate, and analyze Chinese writings and statements. Consequently, it has a limited understanding of the perceptions of the United States held by Chinese leaders and the Chinese people. This undermines our government’s ability to respond appropriately to the challenges and opportunities of the relationship, as well as to prepare for potential crises. * China’s leaders consistently characterize the United States as a "hegemon", connoting a powerful protagonist and overbearing bully that is China’s major competitor, but they also believe that the United States is a declining power with important military vulnerabilities that can be exploited. China views itself as an emerging power. * Chinese leaders say that they pursued Word Trade Organization (WTO) membership as a means to continue China’s rapid economic growth, which they consider essential to become a major power. Such rapid economic growth would also help the Chinese Communist Party maintain its monopoly on power. This objective is quite different from one of the main U.S. goals for China’s accession, which is to promote the development of economic, legal and democratic reforms in China, as well as regional stability in Asia. * China’s leaders seek to deter the United States from effectively intervening in any Chinese use of force against Taiwan, by denying the United States the unfettered freedom under international law to operate in the seas and airspace near China. * The U.S.-China bilateral relationship is uncoordinated within the U.S. Government and does not include the necessary permanent institutions for managing and resolving conflicts. At worst, current U.S. practices have the effect of supporting Chinese efforts to enhance science, economic, financial and technology bases without adequate oversight within our government. * Chinese strategic thinking and military planning differ markedly from our own, underscoring the need to study such differences more carefully. Such Chinese thinking draws heavily on ancient Chinese military lore and history, as well as Chinese Communist revolutionary history, and emphasizes nontraditional and asymmetrical techniques designed to enable an inferior power to defeat a superior one. Such techniques include deception, preemption, use of ‘"assassin’s mace" or trump card weaponry, as well as information and cyber warfare. The possibilities of miscalculation, miscommunications, and misunderstandings are high, given the substantial differences in each country’s thinking and planning, and require far more attention from U.S. policymakers and the Congress. * Attempts to build crises-management and confidence-building measures (CBMs) between the United States and China have failed. This is due in part to Chinese strategic thinking which does not value openness, which the Chinese fear could result in revealing weaknesses, and also be construed as negotiation with a "superior" power. This has resulted in a dangerous lack of "circuit breakers" in the U.S.-China military relationship. This contrasts starkly with CBMs China has executed with India, Russia and the ASEAN and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Introduction The U.S.-China relationship is one of the most important and most difficult bilateral relationships for this nation. Yet U.S. Government officials know woefully little about prevailing Chinese perceptions and strategic thinking. American policymakers know less than they should about how Chinese leaders assess U.S. foreign policy and the exercise of U.S. power, how China views its role in Asia and beyond, how Chinese leaders have incorporated their thinking and perceptions into economic, political and military planning, and how the Chinese Government has portrayed the United States to its own populace. Over the past year, the Commission has held a series of hearings and briefings with leading U.S. scholars, policymakers, and analysts and translated and analyzed official, semi-official and other Chinese publications, both unclassified and classified, to identify Chinese leadership perceptions and attitudes of the United States and how they might affect U.S. national security interests. In addition, the Commission contracted independent research, including a major study conducted by the University of Maryland to provide empirical evidence on the messages and tone of Chinese reporting on the U.S. over time, and how it is affected by various events. Given the control of the Chinese leadership over the media, such messages give us insight into how the leadership attempts to portray the United States and thus develop attitudes toward the U.S. among the Chinese people. The U.S. Government must dedicate far greater resources to collecting and analyzing both open and classified Chinese sources in order to better understand the views of Chinese leaders. U.S. Government efforts in this area are far less extensive than similar efforts our country made to understand the Soviet Union during the Cold War. As the Defense Department noted in its December 2000 Net Assessment Report to Congress, in order to judge whether China is deterred by U.S. military capabilities, we need to understand how the Chinese authorities assess the situation. The Commission has found that while there are ongoing debates among China’s leaders on various aspects and timelines of their security environment, China’s strategic assessments and public portrayals of U.S. power are shaped by the view that U.S.-style democratic liberalism and the U.S. presence and position of power in the Asian periphery threaten the Communist Party’s monopoly on political power. Specifically, 1. China sees the United States as a hegemonic power that is a major obstacle and competitor for influence in Asia; 2. China believes the United States is a superpower in decline, losing economic, political, and military influence around the world; 3. China aspires to be a major international power and the dominant power in Asia. To that end, China is actively pursuing a multipolar world where it could align with other rising powers such as Russia, Japan, and Europe in order to check or challenge U.S. power; 4. China’s leaders want to maintain stable and good relations with the United States because the United States is an important market for Chinese goods and an important source of science and technology, financial capital, and foreign direct investment--all central components of China’s rising status and strength. 5. China’s leaders believe that the United States, although technologically superior in almost every area of military power, can be defeated, most particularly, in a fight over Taiwan in which China controls the timing. Along with logistical and operational weaknesses, Chinese analysts also believe that the United States will not and cannot sustain casualties in pursuit of its vital interests. China is dedicating considerable resources toward preparing for potential conflict with the United States, especially over Taiwan;1 and 6. September 11 changed the context of China’s approach to the United States but did not change the fundamentals.2 The beliefs of the Chinese leaders shape and direct China’s relations with the United States and China’s economic and military programs. They also influence China’s relations with our major allies, its neighbors, terrorist sponsoring states, and its military doctrine and weapons acquisition programs. The United States as a "Hegemon" The term "hegemon," according to Chinese thinking, has a negative connotation, and depicts a power that desires imperialistic control over other powers, and is overbearing and controlling. China has traditionally characterized as hegemons only foreign powers with which it has highly antagonistic relationships. When China split with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, it began characterizing the Soviet Union as a Socialist hegemon. When Vietnam invaded Cambodia, and just prior to the Chinese invasion of Vietnam, Beijing characterized Hanoi as a "regional hegemon." The word "hegemon," usually used alongside other terms such as "imperialist," "unilateralist," and "self-appointed world policeman," is precisely how official Chinese media characterize the United States. Such characterization communicates to the Chinese people that the United States, from the point of view of its foreign policies toward China, is a power with which China has a competitive, if not antagonistic, relationship. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, China has viewed the U.S. global position with deep suspicion, if not hostility. Chinese leaders believe that the fundamental drive of the United States is to maintain global hegemony by engaging in the shameless pursuit of "power politics," often disguised as a quest for democratization.3 China’s Defense White Paper of 2000 reflects deep concern about an international order predominantly shaped by the United States. It states that "certain big powers" (i.e., the United States) are contributing to instability and "threatening world peace" by pursuing neo-interventionism, new gunboat policy, and neo-economic colonialism.4 The document links such new problems to "hegemonism" and the hegemon’s proclivities for playing "power politics."5 China has viewed high-profile U.S. military actions of 1999-2001–including the NATO campaign against Yugoslavia, the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, the EP-3 incident over the South China coast–as glaring examples of "hegemonism" at work, and believes that they have produced an "extremely negative impact" on the international situation.6 Beijing has compared the United States to Nazi Germany for the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade; it has labeled U.S. involvement in Bosnia and Kosovo as an attempt to maintain U.S. dominance in Europe; it has characterized the enlargement of NATO as an effort to contain and encircle China; and it has criticized U.S. development of ballistic missile defenses as contributing to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.7 Furthermore, Beijing has perceived Washington’s "anti-China" streak — from what some American China policy analysts call the "China Threat" theory to others’ regular condemnation of China’s human rights record — as a U.S. attempt to preempt China’s impending challenge to American influence in Asia. Persistent efforts by some members of the U.S. Congress to deny China most-favored nation (MFN) status for much of the 1990s, and to block Chinese accession to the WTO based on labor, human rights and economic grounds, were viewed by the Chinese as a blatant intervention in China’s internal affairs and a convenient excuse to prolong and protect U.S. hegemony. To Beijing, the U.S. Government practices deception and repeatedly lies about its intentions to maintain hegemony. Therefore, U.S. actions, including those taken in the name of some global public good (such as humanitarian intervention in the Balkans), are seen as part of a conspiracy to impose the U.S. vision of the world on others.8 By this logic, even the U.S. policy of engagement with China itself is a new form of "containment" and U.S. support for peaceful evolution toward democracy is no more than a sinister ploy to destroy the Chinese Communist Party. For instance, even though the top Chinese leadership aggressively pursued China’s entry into the WTO, many Chinese officials still view American support for China’s WTO entry as part of a larger effort to promote democracy in China through economic integration and "peaceful evolution," or to maintain power by disseminating "Americanization."9 Paradoxically, Chinese suspicions of U.S. intentions and hostility toward American unipolarity exist alongside the recognition that U.S. trade and investment, technology, and know-how are crucial to China’s search for modernization. The investigative research done by the University of Maryland indicates a contradiction in the leadership’s characterization of the United States to the Chinese people. The contradiction is between their portrayal of U.S. foreign policy and that of the economic relationship, as well as general U.S. relations with China. The former is uniformly negative across the entire survey period by the researchers, and the latter is very positive across the same period. The characterization of the Sino-American relationship is generally positive. As pointed out by the research report to the Commission: A major theme emerging from the extensive reporting done on U.S. foreign policy is of the United States as a hegemonic power that acts unilaterally and in opposition to general international principles. Aside from the embassy bombing and reconnaissance plane issues, other major themes that emerged included the U.S. war on terrorism, in which the U.S. is taking increasingly strident steps away from international norms.10 Similarly, Chinese leaders can aggressively seek U.S. trade, investment and financial assistance while simultaneously denouncing U.S. intentions and power. Post-September 11 Chinese suspicions of the United States did not subside even after a notable upswing in official Sino-American relations after September 11. Rather, official Chinese media has continued to portray the United States as a hegemon, albeit a wounded one. The state media blamed the September 11 terrorist attacks on a misguided and aggressive U.S. foreign policy. The University of Maryland study looked at Chinese media coverage in the time period after September 11 and found that the media, "although supportive at first of the U.S. anti-terrorist position, soon after introduced a more wary tone" and characterized the U.S. war on terrorism as "taking increasingly strident steps away from international norms."11 In the month immediately following September 11, Chinese open sources reiterated three constant decades-old themes: a relative decline in U.S. power is underway, the U.S. Government practices deception and continually lies about its intentions, and China must be vigilant about U.S. actions against China, because the U.S. is making China its enemy. Two days following the attack, the Chinese owned Hong Kong newspaper Ta Kung Pao featured an interview in Beijing with two active duty colonels, who said, "The United States has been too self-willed and conceited, likes to dominate others, and has made so many enemies that it has been unable to determine who the enemies were since the attacks occurred."12 In a more lengthy analysis of the impact of September 11 on U.S.-Sino relations, the Deputy Director of the influential Chinese Institute of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), Yuan Peng, challenged the analysis of some American scholars that counter terrorism cooperation between the United States and China would be the new strategic foundation of U.S.-China relations. Peng argued that cooperation over counter-terrorism "would hardly change [the United States’] deep prejudice towards certain countries. Fundamental contradictions will re-emerge at the end of the counter-terrorist war…And, second, differences between China and the US over a number of related important issues like the definition of terrorism, the goal of the current war, etc. have come to the surface despite good bilateral cooperation over counter-terrorism so far. Such divergences over concrete issues, plus existing problems between the two, might cast shadows over their future ties."13 Within days of September 11, videos and DVDs produced by the government appeared in China explaining the attacks.14 Most notably, a video entitled The Pentagon in Action painstakingly portrays the U.S. Government as a wounded bully whose hegemonic power and ego have been challenged and which is obsessed with irresponsible military retaliations. Despite its occasional sympathetic tone, the video repeatedly cites "the world’s opinions" to criticize America’s "immature and revengeful" counter-terrorist measures. The French prime minister and foreign minister, the German defense minister, the Russian President and China’s President, all "earnestly" urge the U.S. to be cautious, and "don’t behave just like the terrorists." Saddam Hussein appears in this program as a rational statesman urging the U.S. to utilize wisdom rather than force. And Jiang Zemin advises the Americans to use "wisdom, rationality and courage," not just blunt force, in dealing with the world’s real problems. America’s geopolitical position after September 11 continues to feed Chinese anxiety.15 Russia, which China has actively courted to balance U.S. hegemony, has drawn even closer to the United States since September 11. This has been underscored by the U.S.-Russia agreement in St. Petersburg and the formation of the NATO-Russian Council. In Central Asia, the United States gained access to bases and facilities in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan and was granted permission to overfly the territories of Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Georgia.16 In South Asia, the United States cemented a crucial alliance with Pakistan through President Pervez Musharraf. In sum, America’s heightened military presence in China’s "backyard" and improved relations with its neighbors have created anxiety in Beijing about U.S. designs to encircle or contain it.17Furthermore, not only has the United States not condoned China’s crackdown on Muslims in Xinjiang Province, it has stepped up pressure on issues ranging from religious freedom to controlling the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).18 America’s Relative Decline and Perceived Weaknesses Relative Decline China’s leaders have been predicting the relative decline of American economic, political and military influence relative to other powers, for decades. Without the decline of the "capitalist" United States, Chinese Marxism would be proven wrong. The debate in China is how long it will take. In the 1990’s, Chinese analysts were predicting that the decline would take five years. Today, revisionists admit that the rate of decline is going to be slower.19 U.S. unipolarity, they argue, will in time be balanced by rising poles such as the European Union (EU), Russia, Japan, and China. In a multipolar world, U.S. influence would be weakened to accommodate the interests and desires of other powers, especially China.20 Chinese strategists measure national standing by evaluating both quantitatively and qualitatively the politics, economics, military, science and technology, and foreign affairs of a country to determine relative "comprehensive national power (CNP)."21 The analysts predictably see U.S. decline in virtually all arenas, and symbols of that decline can be seen everywhere in macro and micro trends, including, for example, the building of newer and higher skyscrapers in Asia. Among Chinese strategic thinkers, the economic growth of the rising powers, particularly China, is a central component of (relative) U.S. economic decline and the inevitable trend toward multipolarity. An article from CICIR states: "As a result of their economic growth, more and more countries now dare to say ‘no’ to the United States."22 U.S. hegemonic impulses and, consequently its "mistaken foreign policy", will, over time, alienate key European and Asian allies, who after the collapse of the Soviet Union, will be unwilling to remain subordinate to a grand U.S. strategy but instead will assert their own "polarity."23 China believes that the enhancement of its economic and political power and international influence will lead the new poles, such as the EU and Japan, to seek better relations with Beijing as American hegemony declines.24 The results of the struggles among the Untied States, Europe and Japan will lead all three to "attach more importance to the China factor in their foreign strategies" because of the "enhancement of China’s Comprehensive National Power and the extension of China’s international influence."25 Perceived Military Weaknesses Chinese strategists also view the United States as relatively weak militarily. Foremost in their strategic considerations are: * The United States will not and cannot sustain casualties in pursuit of vital interests.26 If China could kill or wound enough American service personnel, as occurred in Somalia, it could effectively deter U.S. forces or force their defeat in the event of a military conflict in East Asia, including in the defense of Taiwan.27 * Despite overwhelming U.S. military and technological superiority, China can still defeat the United States by transforming its weakness into strength and exploiting U.S. vulnerabilities through asymmetric warfare, assassin’s mace weapons, deception, surprise, and preemptive strikes. In general, Chinese authors assert: the United States barely won the Gulf War (Saddam Hussein could have won with a better strategy); the United States today cannot contain Chinese power; the United States cannot execute its past military strategy of two major regional contingencies; and that U.S. munitions cannot damage deep underground bunkers like those in China.28 Lieutenant General Li Jijun, Vice President of the Academy of Military Science, wrote about the weaknesses of the U.S. military during the Gulf War: U.S. Armed Forces revealed many weak points. For example, the combat consumption was too great, and it could not last long. There was great reliance on the allied countries. The high-tech equipment was intensive and its key links were rather weak; once they were damaged, combat effectiveness was greatly reduced. Also, if the adversary of the United States was not Iraq, if the battle was not fought on the flat desert, if the Iraqi Armed Forces struck first during the phase when U.S. Armed Forces were still assembling, or if Iraqi Armed forces withdrew suddenly before the U.S. Armed Forces struck, then the outcome of the war might have been quite different.29 Chinese assessments of American military weaknesses have led to a broad conclusion by many Chinese strategists and military authors that the U.S. forces will one day be vulnerable to a Chinese strategy of deception, special silver-bullet "trump card" weapons, and classic defeat of the "superior" by the "inferior." Finally, a recurring Chinese theme is that the "decay" of American global predominance stems from rampant social problems in the United States, including drugs, crime, social inequality, homelessness, racial tensions, and spiritual and moral crises.30 Chinese Strategic Priorities It is clear that China anticipates America’s decline and is working to shape a world with a weaker United States and stronger competing poles of power where it can play a central role. China’s strategy to help achieve this objective appears to include biding its time by avoiding confrontation with the United States, and meanwhile gaining access to American investment, technology and know-how. At the same time, Beijing is working to counter U.S. influence and competition by preparing if needed to subdue American forces via military modernization, including asymmetrical means of warfare.31 Economic Growth Economic growth is a central pillar of Chinese power. The Chinese Government and its industries share an overwhelming common and driving goal to increase the power and international standing of China as a nation state. While China’s leaders remain wary of U.S. support for WTO entry, they view accession as essential to continue rapid growth by accelerating economic reform, attracting higher levels of foreign investment, maintaining and expanding export markets and playing a more influential role in shaping the rules of the world trading system. Over the past two decades, China has undertaken a prodigious economic reform and has seen a dramatic growth in its economy. This growth has been largely propelled by exports from China and foreign direct investment in China, in both of which the United States plays a lead role. China’s growth strategy has also included a stringent commitment to improving its science and technology base by importing both civilian and military technologies from advanced industrial nations, again most importantly, from the United States. Chinese policy has been guided since the 1970’s by the maxim enunciated by Deng Xiaoping that science and technology from abroad is the prime force of production and central to China’s rise from poverty and weakness. The United States is seen as a major source for this technology. The Chinese have used a variety of overt and covert methods to acquire this technology, including sending large numbers of students abroad to study relevant disciplines, forming joint ventures, partnerships, and using the attraction of its potential consumer market to induce firms to sign investment agreements that require some form of technology transfer.32 Chinese leaders have repeatedly insisted that peace is fundamental for economic growth. As China’s White paper on National Defense states, "A peaceful international environment and a favorable surrounding environment serves China’s fundamental interests."33 In the short-to-mid term, China needs the United States to achieve its objective of developing its economy, its science and technology base and its military force.34 While debate periodically erupts among its strategists on how to deal with the United States, patience has been the guiding dictum since Deng Xiaoping launched the modernization drive. Deng’s often quoted advice was, keep cool-headed to observe, be composed to make reactions, stand firmly, hide our capabilities and bide our time, never try to take the lead and be able to accomplish something. Deng’s advice is followed today. The only real debate in China on U.S. decline is when. The leaders counsel patience, and tolerating whatever the United States does to China, in order to allow China to grow for the next 20 years. The leaders believe that at that time, China will, at best, be equal to the United States or, at least, be able to combine with other powers to check American power. There is a basic sense of confidence at the highest levels that the U.S.-PRC relationship is achieving China’s immediate objectives of growth in exports and foreign direct investment, which will lead to economic growth.35 Strengthening the Party Chinese leaders believe that American-style democratic capitalism threatens the Chinese Communist Party’s political monopoly, but they believe they can grow economically and still maintain their power. This matter was recently addressed in Jiang Zemin’s announcement of the "Three Represents" in which he called on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to represent the forces of production, the progressive course of China’s culture, and the broad interests of the majority of the Chinese people. According to Jiang, the Three Represents would make the CCP more relevant to the Chinese people amidst the rapid social and economic developments now taking place within China. Viewed as the centerpiece of Jiang’s effort to modernize the CCP, the strategy was announced together with Jiang’s invitation to intellectuals and entrepreneurs–traditionally viewed as "red capitalists" or the "exploiting class"--to join the CCP. These new members, Jiang argued, would strengthen the CCP with their technological know-how, education, and skills and therefore help strengthen "socialism with Chinese characteristics." This theory was developed at the Party School, headed by Hu Jintao, Jiang’s anticipated successor.36 At the time that the theory was announced, approximately 100,000 CCP members were business owners.37 If fully implemented, the strategy would fundamentally change the CCP and dilute its traditional membership of workers and peasants. For that reason, Jiang has been accused by ideological hard-liners of betraying the core principles. Some even argue that Jiang is using the Three Represents to build a cult of personality around himself before retiring as President at the upcoming Party Congress in October 2002. Despite some internal dissent, the CCP has pressed on with a nation-wide propaganda campaign to spread Jiang’s theory. Cadres, academic institutions and ordinary citizens have all been instructed to study and practice it much like they studied Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory. Expanding China’s International Role In response to a world in which the United States has not declined as quickly as the Chinese hoped, Beijing put forth a "New Security Concept" in 1996-97, which calls for the abandonment of "Cold War mentality" and a new security order based on "mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, and cooperation." Having failed to achieve parity or dominance through their own efforts and our failures, the Chinese are now attempting to gain equal footing through diplomacy. The emphasis on equality and cooperation reflects China’s preference for a multi-polar world that conforms less to U.S. influence and more to their own desires.38 Beijing has described traditional U.S. alliances as vestiges of "Cold War Thinking" while at the same time it has sought to establish its own "partnerships" in Asia and around the world. In the past decade, Beijing has established multiple "cooperative" or "constructive partnerships" with countries from Japan to India, from the European Union to the United Kingdom, from Mexico to South Africa.39 Asserting greater influence in the Asia Pacific region is central to China’s strategic policy. And Chinese analysts also see the region as an important source of technology, investment and modern management techniques.40 Since 1989, China has sought to create an environment conducive to domestic economic development and regional stability by engaging in confidence building measures (CBMs) with other Asian countries. Such measures have contributed to a reduction of tensions between China and border states such as India, Russia, and three Central Asia republics (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan).41 In addition, Beijing has agreed to CBMs with other key players in the Asia region, such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). As a result, China has successfully eliminated any dramatic or compelling military threat to its borders, at least for the short term. Most notably, Beijing aggressively sought and reached a friendship and cooperation treaty with Russia, which was intended, in part, to counter-balance U.S. and European global influence. The record stands in stark contrast to the resistance by China to U.S. Government attempts to develop CBM’s between itself and China. Authoritative U.S. Government sources involved in years of such futile efforts concluded the Chinese simply did not want such CBMs to have a central place in U.S.-China relations. The results were a nearly complete failure in the face of no interest by Chinese. Perhaps even more worrisome is the same lack of interest and success in reducing misunderstandings or miscalculations between Beijing and Taiwan, resulting in no CBMs between them. Similarly, China’s economic relations with Europe and Japan reflect both an interest in building relations with America’s traditional allies and also decreasing China’s own dependency on the United States. To this end, China has courted Europe and Japan for technology, investments, and markets. China has also thrown a broad net in its efforts to acquire advanced science and technology from abroad. China has cooperative arrangements in both civilian industrial and military areas with countries such as Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Russia, Israel, Brazil, Japan, Korea, and Australia. Its membership in WTO helps broaden China’s outreach to all the players in the world trading system, lessens its dependency on the United States for investment and trade, and makes it even more attractive to foreign investors. In addition, Beijing is attempting to broadly counter American influence by increasing its involvement in multilateral organizations. On the international level, Beijing has increasingly supported the United Nations, where it has a permanent seat or the Security Council, as a legitimate arbiter of conflicts around the world. Regionally, Beijing has actively sought to strengthen ties with neighbors by signing a statement of friendship and cooperation with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, increasing involvement with the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), participating in ASEAN +3 discussions and hosting the all-Asia Boao Economic Forum.42 Military Modernization On the military front, China is dedicating considerable resources to a military modernization effort, the focus of which is preparing for conflict involving the United States over Taiwan.43 China is upgrading its missile force structure, shortening its response time, and enhancing its reliability and survivability. Over the past year, China has emphasized a "real world focus" in its military training exercises, emphasizing "rigorous practice in operational capabilities and improving the military’s actual ability to use force."44 Among other measures, China is preparing to respond to U.S. forces, if necessary, by developing the capacity to control sea lines of communication and project force there. These objectives entail a substantial build-up of air, marine, airborne, and naval forces. China is not only adding longer range cruise missiles to its inventory, it is also developing through military purchases from traditional U.S. allies an over-the-horizon capability for its cruise missiles to extend the range at which they can strike U.S. naval forces.45 China has also publicly stated its intention to be able to neutralize an American aircraft carrier. This objective may, in part, be based on its belief that the United States does not have the will to sustain casualties. While reaffirming their commitment to economic growth and development, senior Chinese leaders have agreed to a significant increase in funding for military modernization, announcing in March 2002, a 17.6 percent increase in military spending. The bulk of Chinese defense investment is still commanded by the PLA ground forces and the Chinese military school of thought that endorses the concept of People’s War or Active Defense. This concept supports a large standing army, a suitable defense mobilization base, and opposes dependence on foreign weapons. Nevertheless, beginning in 1985, competition for resources has come from the Local War advocates who were embraced by Deng Xiaoping and have characterized China’s most likely future conflicts as intense but limited local wars."46 Since the Gulf War, competition for resources has also come from reformists who are "Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA)" advocates, who call for investment in the most exotic and advanced form of weaponry, including what they term "assassin’s mace weapons," which can deliver decisive blows in carefully calculated surprise moves and change the balance of power. There is evidence that the Chinese leadership is allocating resources among these three distinct paths.47 Since the Gulf War, PLA analysts seem convinced that their traditional approach to warfare, which focuses on mass and the annihilation of their enemies, would not be successful against an enemy with advanced technologies. In facing a high-tech enemy that relies on the RMA concepts, the PLA’s revised doctrine seeks to exploit perceived weaknesses in such concepts.48 Chinese thinking on military planning and action differs markedly from our own, underscoring the need to understand their thinking better than we do now. Drawing on analyses of ancient and modern warfare in China as well as their own extensive revolutionary experience, the Chinese conclude it is not necessary to match U.S. capabilities to achieve victory and believe that the "inferior can defeat the superior." According to such thinking, China can transform weakness into strength by employing deception, surprise and preemptive strikes, creating or leveraging discord amongst the enemy’s internal units, capitalizing on the opponent’s complacency, and using "trump cards" or "assassin’s mace weapons." In fact, assassin’s mace weapons have been given the highest level of attention since August 1999 when Jiang Zemin called for their priority development in a speech.49 Such weapons fall in line with a host of other asymmetrical strategies–such as cyber warfare–that the Chinese believe would help to counter U.S. military superiority.50 Information warfare--focusing on gaining and exploiting information, attacking the enemy’s information systems and defending one’s own information--is an important component of this asymmetric warfare strategy. Asserted Major General Wang Pufeng, former director of the strategy department of China’s Academy of Military Science: "In the future, information warfare will control the form and future of war. We recognize this developmental trend…and see it has a driving force in the modernization of China’s military and combat readiness. This trend will be highly critical to achieving victory in future wars."51 One of the consequences of this analysis is that China is increasing its investment in space warfare.52 China’s efforts include the pursuit of a viable indigenous space force. Particular attention is being paid to the development of small boosters able to launch satellites at a moment’s notice in a contingency.53 The PLA’s strategy of defeating a "high-tech" opponent through surprise and preemptive attacks "calls for operations aimed at destroying the enemy command system, crippling the enemy information system, destroying the enemy’s most advanced weapons systems, crippling the enemy support (logistics) systems, and disrupting the critical links in the enemy’s campaign systems."54 To deal with the gap between mission requirements and capabilities, China’s weapons acquisition policy continues to require weapons purchases and technology acquisition from a host of advanced industrial nations including, along with the United States, Russia, Israel, Great Britain, Italy, France, and Germany. It has also been relying very heavily on its ability to develop and produce missiles to bridge the gap,55 while it seeks to build and improve its defense, science and technology and industry and develop its indigenous capacity to build weapons.56 Given the PLA assessment methods from the model of "weak defeating the strong," normal western strategies and communications may not operate effectively. The use of "direct" communications cannot be trusted to establish the credibility of Chinese intentions, and may not be interpreted correctly. Thus, so-called confidence building measures might be used to deceive or may be interpreted as a means of Western deception. Once in a crisis, the Chinese may not escalate at the same pace or by the same means as the West, which may lead to misperceptions of the Chinese level of commitment. Indeed, thinking on asymmetric warfare appears to be so pervasive in China today that the Commission believes the troubling possibility of Chinese self-deception could be worrisome in that it could lead to major miscalculations on their part. It is worthy of more attention by American policymakers. Promoting Nationalism On the domestic front, China has carefully fanned the flames of nationalism and anti-Americanism through state-controlled media. To counter persistent U.S. objections to China’s behavior in areas from trade to human rights, from weapons proliferation to Taiwan, the Chinese state media has portrayed Washington as the self-appointed policeman of the world, whose foreign policy is inherently aggressive and bent on undermining others countries’ national sovereignty.57 The Chinese leadership has projected these negative images while also deliberately embracing those American achievements they would like China to emulate for its own development, such as American advances in high technology. Years of anti-American propaganda greatly contributed to the popular reaction to September 11, as Chinese Internet users gloated online over America’s national tragedy. The degree of anti-Americanism so embarrassed Beijing that Internet censors were instructed to delete such online content.58 China’s promotion of nationalism and anti-Americanism reflects a larger strategy on the part of the CCP to maintain stability and control as the economy rapidly opens up to the outside world and American values and culture. Official Sino-American Relations The U.S.-PRC bilateral relationship is at best, deficient for conflict resolution, uncoordinated within the U.S. bureaucracy and, at worst, has the effect of supporting Chinese efforts to enhance their science and technology base without adequate oversight within the U.S. Government. Science & Technology Exchanges The main elements of the existing bilateral relationship were established by President Carter in 1979, shortly after the normalization of relations with the PRC. At that time, President Carter and Premier Deng Xiaoping signed the U.S.-China Agreement on Cooperation in Science and Technology, which set up a series of joint commissions and committees to facilitate and promote bilateral dialogue and cooperation. Eleven U.S. Federal Agencies and numerous branches currently participate in cooperative exchanges under the Science and Technology agreement and its nearly 60 protocols, memoranda of understanding, and annexes. These agreements cover cooperative research in diverse fields, including energy, mathematics and chemistry, fisheries, the earth and atmospheric sciences, high-energy physics and other energy related areas, agriculture, cooperation in civil industrial technology, mine safety and miners’ health and disaster research. According to the Congressional Research Service, which was asked to examine the structure of these agreements, there is no centralized mechanism for coordinating, funding or reporting to Congress on the various cooperative programs occurring within these agencies or commissions.59 However, the Department of State in its first comprehensive assessment to Congress of the history and implications of these arrangements reported that the bilateral S&T relationship is coordinated through two mechanisms: the Joint Commission on S&T Cooperation and the S&T Executive Secretaries.60 But the Department of State acknowledged that these coordination meetings are infrequent and clearly insufficient to monitor, much less direct, set guidelines, or evaluate the detailed technology transfers being made. The Joint Commission Meeting originally scheduled to meet once a year to coordinate the overall effort meets customarily every two years with the personnel on both sides varying greatly from meeting to meeting. Similarly, according to State, the Executive Secretariat Meeting should annually occur, but in reality the meetings are less frequent. During President George W. Bush’s visit to China, he and President Jiang Zemin agreed to set up further exchanges and cooperation in the fields of trade, energy, science and technology, environmental protection, AIDS prevention and cure, and law enforcement. Given the history of these activities, the Commission finds that the Executive Branch needs to undertake a major effort to coordinate these exchanges and to inform Congress of the activities and progress on a regular basis. The Chinese value the economic relationship with the United States very highly and have made strenuous efforts to insulate it from the vagaries of episodic military incidents, tensions, and even confrontations. For example, during the U.S. reconnaissance plane crisis, they "quietly" renewed, according to the Department of State, the agreement on scientific and technology exchanges with the United States. Furthermore, in the early morning after the plane incident, the mayor and other Shanghai officials fanned out across the U.S. firms located in the area to assure these executives that they and their firms would be protected, to encourage them to remain in a business-as-usual mode, despite the rhetoric and tensions associated with the military incident.61 Confidence Building Measures The U.S. China relationship is event driven with very few structured mechanisms for conflict resolution or threat reduction. The Four Party Talks addressing the Korean Peninsula and the US-China coalition addressing the South Asian Nuclear Tests in 1998 are two examples of temporary mechanisms that terminated once the issue was resolved or was no longer of central importance. This lack of durable architecture is particularly important, and even dangerous, given the Chinese perceptions of the United States. The United States worked diligently for years with the Soviet Union to establish threat reduction mechanisms to avoid unnecessary or potentially cataclysmic conflict. Despite extensive efforts by the United States to do the same thing, the result has been near total failure. Over the past decade, the United States has sought to establish a more stable architecture of military CBMs with China, in part, because of growing concern over China’s negative perceptions of U.S. activities in the Asia-Pacific region, specific worrisome military incidents, and the general need to manage crisis. PLA reluctance to acknowledge any legitimacy to U.S. national security concerns has been mainly responsible for the general failure of these initiatives. An underlying factor complicating these efforts has been the Chinese Government’s apprehension about revealing any weakness to the United States. On this latter point the Commission has noted that, whether in the area of threat reduction, budget discussions, or military to military exchanges, the Chinese pattern has been to absorb as much information as possible and share as little as possible. The implementation of CBMs between China and the United States since 1989 has largely reflected these attitudes and the vicissitudes of a very contentious Sino-American relationship. Following the Tiananmen Massacre of 1989, the United States suspended all military cooperation with China. Regular contact did not resume until September 1993, when the Clinton administration began its policy of "Comprehensive Engagement." Between 1993 to 1995, the following measures were established:62 * Restoration of high-level military exchanges, such as visits to China by Defense Secretary William Perry and two former commanders-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Command; * Enhanced military transparency, including consultations and briefings regarding defense budgets and military strategies; * Restoration of exchanges of military academic units, such as visits between the American National Defense University (NDU) with the Chinese NDU; * Establishing joint agreements on preventing nuclear proliferation and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction * Cooperation on defense conversion; and * Reciprocal visits of naval warships. The sum total of these efforts is meager, given the increasing level of military operations and interfaces between the Chinese and U.S. military and subsequent events. The CBMs were put aside after China became incensed by Washington’s willingness to permit Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui to attend his alumni reunion at Cornell University, on a private visit to the United States in 1995. Momentum was regained after the 1995-1996 Taiwan Strait crisis when the U.S. began a discussion with the Chinese about creating a crisis-management mechanism similar to the U.S.-Russian Incidents at Sea Agreement. Helped by the momentum of the 1998 Sino-American presidential summit, a direct presidential communications link (hotline) was established between Presidents Clinton and Jiang, several decades after one was established with the Soviet Union. Subsequently, the two militaries exchanged port visits and reciprocal senior defense and military visits were conducted through the respective National Defense Universities.63 After much effort, the Military Maritime Consultation Agreement was also established to foster a process for dialogue. Unfortunately, it is essentially a hollow shell and only calls for periodic discussions between U.S. and PRC military officials on navigation in international waters to enhance understanding when maritime and air forces operate in close proximity.64 This arrangement fell far short of the more robust structure the United States wanted. The shortcomings of our CBM efforts were dramatically evident in April 2001 during the EP3 incident. At that time the Chinese refused to use the Military Maritime Consultation Agreement to help resolve the crisis. The Chinese refusal was due, in part, to their reluctance to give legitimacy to U.S. activities in the region and also Chinese perceptions of the U.S. as a hegemon with aggressive intent. These elements help to block the development of crisis reduction mechanisms and, consequently, raise the possibility of conflict between the two countries. Similarly, the Chinese are very reluctant to engage in confidence building measures with the Taiwanese. The overriding reason appears to be China’s fears that they will convey legitimacy on the Taiwan regime and reveal their own weaknesses. By stark contrast, the Chinese are far more forthcoming on establishing CBMs when they clearly perceive them as enhancing China’s rising power. Beijing has successfully used a variety of CBMs to establish better relations with neighboring countries (See appendix for further discussion). The CBMs also have opened up doors to acquiring much-needed weapons systems and technology from Russia and have facilitated force reductions along shared borders with India and Central Asian states.65 At the same time, the CBMs have allowed China to reassure its neighbors of the benign nature of its rapid military growth. In sum, China is keen to encourage any organization or structure that could speed the formation of a multi-polar world. Beijing’s participation in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which consists of China, Russia and four Central Asian Republics, could potentially serve as a counter to U.S. foreign policy, while its participation in the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), because of ARF’s emphasis on consensus, prevents any major power (like the United States) from dominating the agenda.66 Beijing uses CBMs to achieve regional stability and create options that would undermine U.S. influence and power in Asia. Library of Congress Understanding Chinese perceptions and strategic thinking is crucial to the formulation of a sound U.S.-China policy. The Library of Congress China collection is the national repository of published and other material on contemporary China, and plays a critical role in informing the Congress, the Executive Branch, and the public for the national policy debate on China. Unfortunately, in recent years, the Library’s China collection has been poorly maintained and sorely neglected. Insufficient attention has been paid to collecting and organizing open source Chinese materials in key areas relevant to the policy debate, such as military affairs and national security, Chinese foreign policy, and Sino-American relations. Materials that do exist in the Library are not available for easy and free access to the public. Recent studies conducted by reputable China scholars have also called attention to this problem.67 The Library’s China collection needs to be greatly improved to serve the nation’s policy debate on China. National Security Implications Chinese perceptions of the United States as a hegemonic power and China’s principal rival and competitor have serious implications for U.S. national security. China is seeking to enhance its national power relative to U.S. power. Potential conflict with the United States over Taiwan is the primary focus for that effort and the reason underlying China’s growing interest in asymmetric warfare. We must not ignore China’s dedicated effort to develop its science and technology base, to acquire advanced technology, and to intimidate and threaten Taiwan. In addition, U.S. security interests are put at risk by China’s proliferation of WMD to terrorist sponsoring states. Chinese perceptions of the United States as an aggressive power become highly destabilizing when combined with a deliberately weak architecture of crisis management. The efforts to resolve the EP-3 incident last year is an example of this deficiency. Understanding Chinese perceptions of the United States is central to a successful deterrence and crisis management policy, military and diplomatic strategies and our economic relationship. We do not know as much as we should about Chinese perceptions; we do know that the Chinese have a world view very different from ours and that they devise their policies and strategies from such a view. Given, for example, the PLA’s use of ancient models of the weak defeating the strong, western notions of deterrence may not operate effectively. In a crisis the Chinese may not escalate at the same pace or by the same means as the West, causing the West to miss the level of commitment the Chinese are applying. Unless we understand Chinese perceptions, we run the risk of implementing policies that are ineffective. All of this increases the potential for misunderstanding and miscalculations. China’s perceptions of the United States and its related strategic objective of multi-polarity impose limits on the extent of genuine cooperation with shared goals and a common agenda. China’s reliance on deception casts further doubt on the credibility of its cooperation. Nonetheless, China’s recognition that the United States is vital in its modernization, and its recognition that a peaceful international environment is essential for its growth, provides the Untied States important opportunities and leverage. The combination of Chinese leaders’ perceptions of America as an adversarial hegemon, and the lack of solid bilateral institutions for crisis-management response, is potentially explosive. Chinese leaders may well believe the worst of American intentions, and there is no regular mechanism for resolving misunderstandings. In the worst case, this could lead to military conflict. It is urgent for American leaders to work to correct mistaken Chinese perceptions of us, so that that future Chinese leaders will come to share more of our values–particularly in the areas of democracy and human and labor rights–and view us as reliable partners in the search for peace. There is no short-term solution, and we will most likely have to navigate some highly choppy waters before reaching mutual understanding. But there is no more important mission for our policymakers than this one. Recommendations * The Library of Congress China collection today is nearly unusable and is a disgrace, despite two major studies advocating a more robust and sophisticated collection. The Commission recommends, therefore, on an urgent basis that the Congress fund the appropriate implementation of the detailed recommendations already submitted by these two previous investigations. * The Commission recommends that Congress expand the U.S. Government’s capacities for collection, translation and analysis of open source Chinese language materials, including expanding the scope of Chinese materials translated by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) and enhancing the Library of Congress’s collection. The Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and other appropriate Executive Branch agencies should report annually to the Congress on their resources and progress in this area. * The Commission recommends that Congress request that the Foreign Broadcast Information Service restore and maintain a national research data bank which identifies Chinese authors and publications and determines their relative authority. Such a data bank would help policy makers and scholars determine the significance of the publications and their relative influence on Chinese policymaking. * The Commission recommends that Congress provide federal funding and other incentives to strengthen Chinese language and area studies programs in U.S. universities, similar to the program that was developed with regard to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the National Defense Education Act of 1958. In conjunction, there should also be incentives given to post-secondary graduates in this field to provide government service. * The Commission recommends that Congress request that the President designate an Executive Branch agency to develop a database of all government-to-government and government-funded cooperative programs between the U.S. and China. The database should include a full description of each program, including its history, origin, activities, and statutory basis (if any), and a status report on its achievements to date, and should be in both unclassified and classified form, as appropriate. Congress should receive an annual report on official U.S.-China bilateral programs, based on the database, and the agreements should be submitted to Congress pursuant to the Case Act (PL 92-403). * The Commission recommends that Congress encourage the Department of Defense to make renewed attempts to develop military-to-military confidence building measures, within the context of a strategic dialogue with China and strictly based on the principles of reciprocity, transparency, consistency and mutual benefit. Chapter 1, Appendix China’s Confidence Building Measures with Neighboring Countries India The Sino-Indian relationship has experienced extreme animosity and repeated attempts to reduce bilateral tensions. China’s invasion of India in 1962 has resulted in unsettled border areas and mutual distrust. In addition, India deeply resents China’s effort to balance Indian power in South Asia through the persistent proliferation of nuclear technology and components to Pakistan. Hostilities between the China and India reached a new height in 1998 when India cited the rise of China and its close ties with Pakistan as key threats that led India to detonate a nuclear bomb. Despite these and other chronic disagreements, China and India have attempted to forge a more stable relationship. Most notably, they agreed to CBMs in 1993 and in 1996 to reduce tension in disputed areas along their common border. In September 1993, India and China entered into an agreement to maintain peace and tranquility along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), declaring that the boundary question should be resolved through peaceful and friendly consultations.68 Pending a settlement, the two countries will respect the LAC and rely on experts to check and determine the line where there are differences of alignment. Beijing and Delhi also agreed to a reduction of military forces along the border, to be maintained at levels in conformity with the principle of "mutual and equal security."69 As part of this agreement, the two sides agreed to a series of CBMs, including the prohibition of specified levels of military exercises in mutually identified zones and prior notification of exercises at specified levels near the LAC.70 In November 1996, during the visit of Chinese President Jiang Zemin to India, the two countries signed the Agreement on Confidence Building Measures in the Military Field along the Line of Actual Control in the India-China Border Areas. The agreement reaffirmed the 1993 commitment to seek a peaceful solution to the boundary dispute and to observe the LAC.71 The two sides agreed to refrain from deploying armed forces along the LAC to attack the other side; to reduce the strength of armed forces to a minimum along the common border; and provide for bringing down the number of field army, border defense and the paramilitary forces to mutually agreed ceilings and the geographical zones.72 In addition, both promised to avoid holding large-scale military exercises and to give prior information of any such exercise involving more than one hazardous chemicals within the 10 km area.73 CBM agreements between China and India have contributed to the reduction of military tensions on the two countries’ shared borders. While mutual distrust and deep-seeded animosity linger, China and India today are no longer facing imminent war. Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Since the collapse of the former Soviet Union, China has pursued improved military relations and strategic partnerships with Russia and the central Asian republics, bilaterally and multilaterally, despite its continuing struggle in broader relationships with these counties.74 Most significant is the creation of the "Shanghai Five" (later renamed as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization), which consists of Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and China and first convened in Shanghai in April 1996. The group signed the "Agreement on Confidence-Building in the Military Field in the Border Area," which called for mutual non-use of force and renunciation of military superiority through confidence building measures along their common border. Under the agreement, the armed forces deployed in the 100-km zone on either side of the border shall not be used in attacks against the other side and shall not be engaged in any activities that would endanger the other side or threaten peace and stability in the region.75 According to the CBMs, the parties shall: * Exchange information on the number of personnel and amounts of essential armaments and equipment of land forces, paratroopers, border guards and air defense forces deployed in the 100-km zone; * Refrain from carrying out military games aimed against the other parties; inform each otherof the military activities in the 100-km zone; invite observers to watch large-scale exercises along the border; * Allow warships to enter the 100-km zone only on strictly specified occasions, with notable exceptions for Russian warships; * Prevent dangerous military activities in the zone: redeployment should not acquire a dangerous form and the parties should take measures to prevent stray bullets, shells and rockets from hitting the territory of the other side during military games; * Promote military cooperation in adjacent districts, such as official visits by military commanders, trips by teams of experts at various levels and observers to watch military exercises; * Stipulate that border guard units establish contact and exchange information to promote cooperation. Since 1996, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization has held annual summits and has deepened their cooperation in military, cultural and trade and security areas. Recently, statements by the group indicate an inclination to seek an expanded role in international affairs. For example, in July 2000, the group even voiced a thinly veiled criticism of U.S. policy when it declared oppositio Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2005-02-02 03:13:00 69.161.222.74 Re: The China Threat Conversions Of Jetliners in China Draw Attention quote: By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES The Bush administration is investigating whether China illegally converted Boeing commercial jetliners into a military surveillance aircraft in violation of U.S. export laws. A Boeing 737 jetliner was photographed during a recent military exposition in Zhuhai, China, with what appeared to be a protruding radar dome, or "radome," on the forward part of its fuselage. Authorities also are investigating a second photograph suggesting the modification of another jetliner. "We have already begun looking into this matter," said Eugene Cottilli, a spokesman for the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security. If the Chinese modifications violate U.S. export rules, penalties could range from fines to the imposition of economic sanctions on China that would bar purchases of U.S. aircraft worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The radome is thought to house a special radar pod that monitors missile tests or might be used in military command and control operations, Bush administration officials said. A State Department official involved in defense trade controls confirmed that the matter is under investigation. The official said commercial jets are permitted for export to China without a license, but that converting a civilian aircraft into a military jet is not allowed under U.S. export rules. "It is unquestionably true that these jets could not have been sold to the Chinese military without a presidential waiver, which is very unlikely," the official said. In the case of China, all military sales have been blocked and any transfers require a presidential waiver of sanctions imposed after the 1989 military crackdown on unarmed protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, the official said. Investigators have contacted Boeing and are trying to further identify the modified jets shown in photographs through tail numbers. A Boeing spokesman had no immediate comment. A Chinese Embassy spokesman could not be reached for comment. Officials announced last week that at least six Chinese airlines will order 60 Boeing 7E7 Dreamliners — twin-aisle aircraft that can carry up to 296 passengers nearly 9,800 miles — a deal worth about $7.2 billion. Boeing estimates that China will buy 2,400 new jet aircraft worth an estimated $197 billion over the next 20 years. Sanctions blocking China from purchasing U.S. jets would have a major economic impact, analysts said. Boeing said 15 state-owned Chinese airlines have purchased a total of 170 Boeing 737s between 1983 and 2004. An additional 46 are on order. Richard Fisher, a specialist on the Chinese military, identified the suspected jet conversion in Zhuhai during a video presentation by the Xian Aircraft Group, which makes Chinese H-6 bombers. "There is a distinct possibility that China has illegally modified a U.S.-made transport aircraft to perform military missions," said Mr. Fisher, vice president of the International Assessment and Strategy Center. Mr. Fisher said specialists think China is using the radome and other special antennas on two Boeing 737s to monitor tests of its long-range land attack cruise missile that is in development. A third photograph on a Chinese Web site also showed a 737 that appeared modified for military surveillance. The modified jets also could be used for "military electronic surveillance missions" or airborne command posts, Mr. Fisher said. "I can't imagine the U.S. government approving the conversion of a U.S. jet for monitoring a new strategic long-range land attack missile," he said. The Pentagon thinks China is building a long-range cruise missile that could be outfitted with both conventional and nuclear warheads that is modeled after the U.S. Navy's Tomahawk. Mr. Fisher said that if the Bush administration secretly approved the modifications to the 737, it would undermine efforts to prevent the European Union from lifting its arms embargo on China. The administration also is pressing Israel not to send Israeli-made anti-radar missile drones to China. "If it were known that the United States acquiesced to China's possible illegal military modification of a Boeing 737, it could be used to undermine Washington's appeals in Europe and Israel," Mr. Fisher said. I wonder what is going to happen with these aircraft? - China Sign First Order For Five A380 With Airbus - Six Chinese Airlines to Order As Many as 60 Boeing Jets (7E7 / 787) Can you say airlift? And even if the investigation results in a ban on sales of Boeing jetliners to China, they will simply purchase more from Airbus. Cspace (Member) 2005-02-02 14:01:00 65.3.130.218 Re: The China Threat Iran and China linked to Ukraine missiles quote: An investigation by the Ukrainian secret police has found that Iran and China bought long-range missiles designed to carry nuclear warheads from Ukraine, one of the country's politicians said on Wednesday. Grigory Omelchenko, an ally of the country's new leadership and a former head of the anti-mafia committee in the Ukrainian parliament, claimed on Wednesday that Ukraine's SBU secret police had found that 12 Kh-55s were illegally exported in 1999-2001. He said six of the air-to-ground cruise missiles were sold to Iran, and six to China. The Kh-55 - which the US calls the AS-15 - has a highly accurate guidance system and a range of up to 3,000km, which would put Israel in striking distance of Iran. The missile was part of the Soviet bomber fleet weaponry left behind in Ukraine. The allegations, made in Ukraine's parliament yesterday, bolster claims by the US and other governments that Iran is seeking to develop the ability to produce nuclear weapons. They also raise concerns about Iran and China's efforts to improve long-range missile technology. Mr Omelchenko, a one-time SBU officer, said that last year the SBU prevented an attempt to export 14 Kh-55s and arrested a former SBU officer, who is being tried in Kiev's Regional Appeals Court. He accused high-ranking officials linked to Leonid Kuchma, the former president, of covering up the SBU's findings about the sale to protect a "highly placed person from the circle of President Kuchma, who was involved in the illegal arms sales". Last November, Colin Powell, former US Secretary of State, said he ha d seen intelligence that Iran was working to adapt missiles to deliver a nuclear weapon. In September the US slapped sanctions on a private Ukrainian company for violating a US ban on proliferation to Iran, without specifying what it was suspected of selling. FYI, CSpace Lazarus Starr (Moderator) 2005-02-02 14:25:00 24.217.64.65 Re: The China Threat I suppose Iran needs those for energy needs too? -Laz Joey Bagadonuts (Member) 2005-02-03 06:00:00 68.56.101.135 Re: The China Threat Looks like its been a busy week for China. ==================================================== http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050125-101657-3311r.htm IBM sale to China raises concern By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES Three House committee chairmen asked the Bush administration yesterday to review the proposed sale of IBM's personal computer unit to a Chinese-owned company. Republican Reps. Donald Manzullo, Henry J. Hyde and Duncan Hunter stated in a letter to Treasury Secretary John W. Snow that they are worried the proposed sale could undermine U.S. national security by transferring sensitive technology to Beijing. "Given the relationship between so-called 'private companies' in communist states and their government, we believe that it is manifestly in the public interest to extend the time for review by those agencies in the federal government responsible for defense, foreign policy and intelligence in order to ensure that there are no adverse national security ramifications of the sale," the lawmakers said yesterday. IBM announced on Dec. 7 that it would sell its personal computing division to the Chinese computer maker Lenovo Group Ltd. for $1.75 billion. The division makes the company's well-known Thinkpad laptop computer line. Because the deal involves the transfer of technology to a foreign company, the federal government must approve it. Mr. Manzullo is chairman of the House Small Business Committee, and Mr. Hyde heads the International Relations Committee. They both represent Illinois. Mr. Hunter, of California, is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. In addition to perhaps transferring advanced U.S. technology to the Chinese, the chairmen said, the deal could lead to U.S. government contracts with IBM "being fulfilled or participated in by the Chinese government." The congressmen said the proposed sale was announced during the holiday season and during a congressional recess. "Given the importance of this matter, and the limited ability of Congress, affected agencies, and other interested parties to evaluate this process and provide input, we believe the [review] process should remain open," the congressmen said. They requested a Treasury Department briefing on the national security, licensing and contracts that would be affected before the sale is approved. Congressional aides said the proposed sale has raised concerns among national security officials because Lenovo's parent company, Legend Holdings, is controlled by a Chinese state-owned enterprise. IBM spokesman Edward Barbini declined to comment on the national security aspects. Mr. Barbini said IBM has filed all the required legal notices with the Committee on Foreign Investments, the U.S. government panel that reviews foreign sales involving foreign technology. "IBM is following all the normal, routine procedures in the review of this transaction," he said. The congressmen's call for a review comes as the Bush administration is trying to stave off efforts by the European Union to lift an arms embargo on China imposed after the 1989 killing of democratic protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. The European Union, under pressure from China, is considering lifting the embargo, perhaps as early as this year. ...thats my story and I'm sticking to it. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2005-02-26 10:03:00 69.161.222.74 Re: The China Threat Red Chinese Deploy Their First AWACS quote: The People's Republic of China, after more than a decade of efforts which saw the cancellation of an initial Israeli project to provide them with the capability (at the behest of the United States), have now produced their own first modern AWACS aircraft and placed them in service. The aircraft are based on the Russian Beriev A-50 Mainstay airframe but use wholly Chinese created phased array radar components housed in a non-rotating dome, providing 360 degree coverage. Two aircraft have been built and two more are rapidly being completed for placing in service. Capabilities of the Chinese phased array system are unknown, but believed to be on par with the Russian conventional AWACS capability of tracking 60-100 aircraft at once in a 250 mile radius air space and directing 12 or more fighters to all weather, day or night engagements simultaneously. In air refueling capability is included. In addition to this capability, the People's Republic is also developing an AWACS capability based on the shorter ranged Y-8 turboprop aircraft. It is thought that the system is either similar to, or a derivative of, the Swedish Ericsson PS-890 Erieye system and can therefore be used for either aircraft control, electronic intelligence, ground mapping and targeting missions. It is not thought that any of the Y-8 aircraft are operational as of yet. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2005-02-27 14:12:00 69.161.222.74 Re: The China Threat China Threat News The articles of higher importance are highlighted in orange. * Airbus Sees 2005 A350 Orders, Commitments Reaching 100,30-40 From China * An Unknown PC Giant, Lenovo Flexes Its Muscles * And China Came A-Courting (Jamaica) * Arms Sales To China Rattle US * Arms Trade With China Scary * As China Stands Up, So Will Japan * ASEAN And China Sign \'Dirty\' FTA * Asian Rivals Rethink Strategy As China Sees Business Soar * Beijing Bear Hug * Beijing Preparing Major Arms Deal * Beijing Warns EU On Weapons Ban * Beijing\'s Sigh of Relief * Betting on China * Beware China\'s Traps * Beyond the Rim * Bill Clinton Helps Launch Chinese Search Engine * Bush Warns Of China Arms Sales * Canada: China\'s Dubious Buy-In * China A Player In Yukos Sale * China Accuses U.S. and Japan of Interfering on Taiwan * China Aims To Quadruple Nuclear Power (Plants) * China And India Pledge More Defence Cooperation * China And India To Hold Joint Army Exercises In Tibet * China And Sudan: Partners In Oil -- And Warfare? * China and Technology Standards * China and the War for Resources * China Arms Embargo Not What It Seems * China Builds Invasion Fleet * China Chipping Away At US National Security * China Commits $50 Billion Of Investment To Caribbean, Latin Region * China Emerging as U.S. Rival for Canada\'s Oil * China Gains Strategic Foothold Near Persian Gulf * China Has Lost Faith in Stability of U.S. Dollar * China Holds 3 Critics Overnight As Raids Increase * China In America\'s Neighborhood * China In Bid To Buy Noranda * China Invests Heavily In Sudan\'s Oil Industry * China Lays Into \'Bush Doctrine\' Ahead of U.S. Poll * China Loans Russia $6 Billion for Yukos Nationalization * China Looks To Build Huge Oil Supply * China Looming Large * China Made First Export Of Major Oil-Drilling Equipment To US * China May Be Offered Stake in Yukos Subsidiary * China Military Buildup Threatens US Forces: CIA Chief * China Moves to Keep Hold of More Metals * China On Path To Surpass US Economically By 2025 * China Orders More Communist Control of Businesses * China Pipeline Set To Open * China Plans Sophisticated Line of Military Exports * China Plans To Have Over 100 Eyes In The Sky By 2020 * China Produces Missiles For Iran * China Pursues \'Manifest Destiny\' Through Mercantilism and Imperialism * China Ready To Back India For Security Council Seat * China Says Rumsfeld May Visit This Year * China Sees Great Potential In China-Caribbean Trade * China Sees Heavy Investment in Argentina in Decade * China Spying On Us: CSIS -- Visiting Students, Scientists Steal Canadian Technology * China Stocks Arsenal With Russia Weapons * China Sub Tracked By U.S. Off Guam Before Japan Intrusion * China Takes Lead In Nuclear (Power Plant) Race * China Targets Caribbean Trade * China Thankful For Hand On EU Arms * China \'Threat\' Strengthens US-Japan Military Ties * China Willing To Resolve Border Issue With India * China, Pakistan Call For Closer Army-To-Army Ties * China’s Shipbuilding Industry: An Emerging Threat to U.S. National Security * China\'s Angry Young Focus Their Hatred On Old Enemy (Japan For Now…) * China\'s Chance * China\'s Choice * China\'s Economic War - Stealing Jobs and Technology From America * China’s Emerging Ties With Iran Thwart U.S. Efforts To Keep Tehran In Line * China\'s Growing Appetites * China\'s Military Moves Worry Congress * China\'s Space Wars * Chinese Automaker To Begin Exporting Cars To The U.S. * Chinese Car Giant Could Save MG Rover * Chinese Car Group\'s Takeover Of Rover Hits Snags * Chinese High-Tech Espionage Cases Growing In US: Report * Chinese Industries Going Great Guns * Chinese Oil Company May Bid For Unocal * Chinese Quest for Crude Increases Focus on Africa * Chinese Reach Into Gulf * Chinese Space Official to Visit NASA Chief * CIA Issues Warning On China’s Military Efforts * Colder Cold War Brewing In Asia * Communist China Cold Calls Americans * Congressmen Warn China: Stop Abuses or Lose 2008 Olympics * Dollar Expected To Fall Amid China\'s Rumoured Selling * Don\'t Return Drones To China, U.S. Tells Israel * Drone Tug-o-War Brings Chinese Deputy Prime Minister to Jerusalem, Involves Rumsfeld * End Of Fiber Pact May Mean China-US Trade War * Energy-Hungry China Digs Deeper To Boost Oil Reserves By 25% * \'Evil Teachings\': China Orders Marxist Revival; Brands Christianity \'Evil\' * Ex-FBI China Unit Agent Indicted * FBI Spy Chief Asks Private Sector For Help * Ferguson Backs Uranium For China (Australia Set To Sell Uranium To China) * For Israel, China Is An Ally In The Making * Former FBI Agent Cites Penetration Of CIA By China * France Joins China Navy Drills * France Reveals Airbus A380 Sale To China * France Urges End To China Arms Embargo * Friction Between Japan And China Surges * From China With Love * Gwadar: China\'s Naval Outpost On The Indian Ocean * IBM Sells PC Group To Lenovo * IBM-Lenovo Probe Nears End * IBM-Lenovo Deal Faces US Security Challenge * India And China: Oil-Patch Partners? * Intruding Chinese Sub First Circled Guam In Suspected Military Drill [Nuke To Marianas, Then Japan] * Iran, China To Exchange Expertise On Aerospace Technology * Iran-China Trade To Reach US$7 Billion In 2004 * It Takes Two To Tango (India & China) * J-5 Ground Attack UAV * Japan Nervous Of Chinese Military Action, Relations Chill * Japan-China Tensions Rise Over Tiny Islands * Lugar Makes Threat On EU Arms Sales To China * Man Who Imported the Yugo to Begin Bringing Chinese Cars to the U.S. * Military Build Up Of China Gathers Pace * Missiles Developed By China \'Identical\' To Iran\'s * New Chinese Jets Superior, Eagle Loses to Flanker * "Peaceful Rising" In China Is A Costly Hoax * Pentagon Not Talking To Israelis After China Standoff * Australian Prime Minister Defies Bush Over China Arms * Red China Targeting America * Rep. Tom Tancredo Challenges “One-Chinaâ€� Policy * Rice Hints U.S. Resigned To EU Ending China Arms Embargo * Rising China To Haunt Bush In Second Term * Royal Takeover Seen As Pro-China, Anti-West (Nepal) * Rumsfeld Warns of Concern About Expansion of China\'s Navy * Rumsfeld Worried About China * Selling Out to China? * Shenzhou VI Manned Spaceship Due To Blast Off In Autumn 2005 * Straw In China To Discuss Anglo-Sino Ties * Talks Fail to Bridge U.S.-China Gaps: Official * Tensions Surface Over Arms For China * The China Threat * The Chinese Dragon Submerges * The Chinese Fears of US Military\'s Might * The Dragon\'s Dawn: China as a Rising Imperial Power * The Growing Beijing/Tehran Axis * The Rising Threat From China: Seeing Is Believing * The Sino-Saudi Connection * The Two Faces Of China * U.S. Is Punishing 8 Chinese Firms for Aiding Iran * U.S. Lost 1.5 Million Jobs to China in 1989-2003, Report Says * U.S. Watches As China Woos Caribbean * U.S., Israel In Dustup Over Weapons Upgrade For China * US China Agree to New Visa Deal * US Export-Import Bank Makes $5 Billion Commitment For China Nuclear Power Plants * US Judge Hits Leung Prosecution (Spy For China Set Free) * US Sees A Spy In China\'s Lenovo * US Signals Hard Line On China * US Slaps Sanctions On Five Chinese, North Korean \'Proliferators\' * US To Post Military Officers To Taiwan Mission: Jane\'s * US-China Begin Defense Ministry Security Talks * US-Europe Paper Regarding China * US-Japanese Security Stance Angers China * Weapons For China * Welcome To The Peoples’ Republic Of China On Canadian Soil * What If… "China Attacks Taiwan!" * Who Forgot China? Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2005-03-01 23:09:00 140.32.120.188 Re: The China Threat Cornering the dragon Asia Times ^ | 03.02.05 | Conn Hallinan Cornering the dragon By Conn Hallinan When newly appointed Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Porter Goss recently warned that China's modernization of its military posed a direct threat to the United States, was it standard budget time scare tactics, or did it signal the growing influence of hardliners in the administration of President Bush who want to "contain" China and reinstitute the Cold War in Asia? A day later, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld delivered a similar message to the Senate Armed Services Committee. Rumsfeld claimed that within a decade the Chinese navy could surpass the US navy, and that China was "increasingly moving their navy further from shore". The 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review will reportedly take a similarly alarmist view of China's military. The CIA and Pentagon assessments offer nothing particularly new in their military analysis of China. However, both specifically excluded any mention of US-China cooperation around North Korea or last year's CIA analysis that growing economic ties between China and the US made military conflict less likely. "It is a little surprising," James Steinberg, former national security advisor in the (former president) Bill Clinton administration told the Financial Times, "that it [the CIA assessment] didn't say anything about the enormous emphasis China places on a stable international environment and constructive relations with the US." But not so surprising if the long battle between those in the Republican Party who favor engagement with China has begun to tip in favor of those who advocate confrontation and encirclement. As Nation defense correspondent and Hampshire College professor Michael Klare pointed out in 2001, this division in the Republican Party goes back to the earliest days of the Cold War. For some two decades the hardliners, with their close ties to Chang Kai-shek on Taiwan, dominated US-China policy. But lured by the potential of China's markets, and anxious to widen the Sino-Soviet division, the engagement wing of the party seized the initiative with secretary of state Henry Kissinger's trip to China in 1971, establishing relations with Beijing. The old confrontationist "China lobby" was hardly dead, however. Using the immense wealth of the Scalife, Olin and Carthage foundations under the umbrella of the highly influential American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the "lobby" recruited a group of well-placed, powerful political figures. AEI members include neo-conservative icons like Lynne Cheney, Charles Murry, Michael Novak, Irving Kristol, Ben Wattenberg, Frank Gaffney and Michael Ledeen. The AEI is closely aligned with the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), the group that successfully lobbied for "regime change" in Iraq and argues that it is a strategic necessity for the US to control the world's oil supplies. PNAC, the brainchild of the AEI's Kristol, includes among its members Vice President Dick Cheney, Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, former State Department officials Richard Armitage and John Bolton, and other leading administration figures like Elliot Abrams, Richard Perle and Zalmay Khalilzad, presently US Ambassador to Afghanistan. The confrontationists' goals are much the same as they were in the opening years of the Cold War: ring China with military bases, support Taiwanese independence, and, in Kristol's words, "Work for the fall of the Communist Party oligarchy in China." In short, corner the dragon. Recent events suggest that the confrontationist wing is back in the driver's seat. Containment redux? Goss' and Rumsfeld's characterization of China contradicts last year's conclusions of the administration's Independent Task Force on Chinese Military Power headed by former defense secretary Harold Brown and retired admiral Joseph Prueher. The panel found that while China is modernizing its military, it is 20 years behind the US and that "the balance between the United States and China, both globally and in Asia, is likely to remain decisively in America's favor beyond the next 20 years". China's military budget is less than one tenth that of the US and it does not have a massive arms industry, preferring to purchase submarines, destroyers, aircraft and high performance anti-aircraft missiles from Russia and Israel. In spite of Rumsfeld's grim forecast, the Chinese navy is designed for defending its territorial waters, not projecting force elsewhere. While the US has a dozen aircraft carriers, China has one, and an old obsolete Soviet one at that. While China has deployed large numbers of intermediate-range ballistic missiles facing Taiwan, most observers see this more as an attempt to intimidate the Taiwanese than as a prelude to invasion or a threat to US forces in the region. The missiles are far too inaccurate to pose a military threat, on top of which Taiwan has become so central to China's economy that any actual attack on the island would be an act of economic suicide. Jonathan Pollack, director of the Strategic Research Department of the US Naval War College, told The New York Times that while China did have the largest standing army in the world and was in the process of modernizing, "I don't see these capabilities as the leading edge of a more comprehensive, long-term plan to either supplement US military power in the Western Pacific or challenge US power on a global scale," adding, "Let's not make them out to be 10 feet tall." The Bush administration has always had a somewhat schizophrenic approach to China, with one faction preaching engagement, the other confrontation. Early in his first term, Bush warned that the US would do "whatever it took" to defend Taiwan, changed the designation of China from "strategic partner" to "strategic competitor", and initiated a campaign of aggressive military surveillance which ultimately led to the downing of a US Navy EP-3E spy plane on Hainan Island. On the other hand, the administration has encouraged trade, welcomed China to the World Trade Organization, and up to recently, muted its rhetoric on Taiwan. Late last year, then secretary of state Colin Powell warned Taiwan not to seek independence and said that US policy favored its "peaceful reunification" with China. Trade and Powell notwithstanding, however, any close examination of the administration's actions vis-a-vis China suggests the engagement wing is in eclipse. A central goal of the confrontationists has been to deploy an anti-ballistic missile shield (ABM) in Asia, which the administration is now in the process of doing. So far it has enlisted Japan and Australia in this effort, and it is wooing India as well. While the rationale for the ABM is alleged to be North Korea, the real target is China's 20 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). The strategy of ringing China with US military bases is also well underway. Besides its traditional bases in Japan and South Korea, Guam has become, according to Pacific Commander Admiral William Fargo, a "power projection hub", that will play an increasing role in Asia, with "geo-strategic importance". The island already hosts B-52s, fighter planes, nuclear attack submarines, and the high-altitude spy drone, the Global Hawk. Since Guam is a US colony acquired during the Spanish American war, the military does not need permission for the buildup, as it would in Japan or Korea. The US is also attempting to build bases in Southeast and South Asia. While Indonesian authorities deny the story, the Singapore Times reports that the US is presently negotiating to open a naval base on Sulawesi Island. It is also strengthening military ties to Thailand, Singapore, India, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia. The encirclement has also spread to Central Asia, an important source of oil and gas for China. The US presently has bases in Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan, and military ties with Uzbekistan, which, according to Rumsfeld, are "growing stronger by the month". Several of these countries border China. The Chinese response has been to increase their military budget, particularly in response to the US ABM system. "Once the United States believes it has a strong spear and a strong shield," Sha Zukang, a leading Chinese arms expert told The New York Times, "it could lead them to conclude that no one can hurt the United States and they can harm anyone they like anywhere in the world." The Chinese currently have 20 CSS-4 ICBMs, but appear to be increasing that force to between 75 and 100 missiles, as well as upgrading the CSS-4's guidance systems. It is also only a matter of time before China puts multiple warheads (MIRVs) on their missiles, a deeply destabilizing move. MIRVing is a cost-effective way to overwhelm an ABM system, but one that can also tempt an adversary to launch a first-strike attack. China is also deploying missile-firing submarines to offset the US buildup in the Taiwan Strait. The "containment" policies of the hawks have not damaged the growing Chinese economy - now the world's third largest - or shaken the grip of the Chinese Communist Party. But they have accelerated an arms race in the region, fueled growing nationalist movements in both China and Japan, and raised the stakes of any potential clash over Taiwan. The last time the "China Lobby" tried to contain China, it was a country devastated by World War II and its own civil war. Today it is a nuclear-armed giant, whose economic growth has lifted economies from Tokyo to Rio de Janeiro. Americans need to ask themselves: is it really a good idea to push that dragon into a corner? Conn Hallinan is a foreign policy analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus and a lecturer in journalism at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2005-03-01 23:15:00 140.32.120.188 Re: The China Threat U.S. Lawmakers Warn Europe on Arms Sales to China NY Times ^ | March 2, 2005 | THOM SHANKER and DAVID E. SANGER WASHINGTON, March 1 - Senior members of Congress from both parties emerged from a meeting with President Bush on Tuesday warning Europe that if it lifts its ban on arms sales to China, the United States may retaliate with severe restrictions on technology sales to European companies. The warning came after Mr. Bush, on his trip to Europe last week, twice cautioned the Europeans not to lift the restrictions, in place for 15 years. His insistence was based, at least in part, on a new American intelligence assessment that Beijing is rapidly becoming better equipped to carry out a sophisticated invasion of Taiwan and to counter any effort by the United States to react to such an attack, administration officials and intelligence analysts say. After the White House meeting on Tuesday, Senator Richard G. Lugar, the Indiana Republican who is chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said that if the ban is lifted - as European leaders have said they plan to do in coming months - Congress could react with "a prohibition on a great number of technical skills and materials, or products, being available to Europeans." The ranking Democrat on the committee, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, called a lifting of the ban "a nonstarter with Congress." Their statements reinforce warnings that Mr. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made in meetings with Europeans over the past several weeks that the weapons sales would amount to a transfer of even more sophisticated military technology to China. But European officials say that the concerns are overstated, and that they are considering a compromise proposal that would keep advanced technologies from being exported. Although Mr. Bush and Ms. Rice have spoken publicly about the sale of heavy weapons, Pentagon officials say the biggest concern is the technology that goes with it, including radar and battlefield communication systems that could take China's rapid military buildup to a new level. And to make their case, the officials have begun to discuss how such technology would give China an increased ability to intimidate Taiwan with the threat of invasion if it moves too aggressively toward independence. The motivations for the officials to discuss this intelligence in interviews over the past two weeks are varied, and certainly include concerns about how the Chinese buildup could affect American security interests. But the discussion also comes as Congress takes up Mr. Bush's new spending proposals, which devote a majority of supplemental funding to land forces and the war in Iraq, while missions related to perceived threats from China fall mainly to the Navy and the Air Force. In addition, some administration hawks are concerned about China's rapid growth as a military power in the Pacific at a time that American attention is focused on the Middle East. The new intelligence reports indicate that since Mr. Bush came to office, China has raced ahead with one of the most ambitious military buildups in the world - including building 23 new amphibious assault ships that could ferry tanks, armored vehicles and troops across the 100 miles to Taiwan, and 13 new attack submarines. "Their amphibious assault shipbuilding alone equals the entire U.S. Navy shipbuilding since 2002," one intelligence official said. The official said Chinese military purchases abroad and domestic production of ships and warplanes "definitely represents a significant increase in overall capacity." At the same time, any advances in radar and communications ability would improve how rapidly and effectively those ships and planes could support an invasion or counter American moves in the region. Military experts in European capitals and in Washington say they do not dispute the American intelligence reports on the growth in quality and quantity of Chinese arms. But European political leaders argue that the sanctions were placed to punish China because of its killing of pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square 16 years ago, not because of its military power. Now that a new generation of leaders has taken over in Beijing, they say, the specific cause of the sanctions is removed. In contrast, Japan has sided with the United States in asserting a growing Chinese threat to Taiwan, publicly inserting those concerns for the first time into a joint security statement issued in recent days. The latest intelligence reports give the fullest sense to date of what China has actually fielded in the past several years, and how, as the new director of central intelligence, Porter J. Goss, recently told Congress, the weaponry could "tilt the balance of power in the Taiwan Strait." The United States has deliberately left vague whether or how it would defend Taiwan in the event of invasion. The last time a crisis erupted in the region, President Clinton put a carrier near the Taiwan Strait - but not inside it - as a caution to Beijing. That event prompted a rethinking of military strategy in Beijing, China experts say. One intelligence official noted that China's military expansion has tried to fill gaps that have been identified in a range of Pentagon reports and public American intelligence estimates. The intelligence official said: "What the Chinese have systematically done is look at what other people have said about them, and said, 'Fine. I don't have a credible amphibious capability. Well, I'm going to build one. I don't have a credible surface force that can provide adequate air cover and surface-to-surface strike capability against incoming fleets. Fine, I'll build that. Submarines worry you? Fine, I'll buy them or I'll build them.' " "It's a modernization across the force," the official added. China's growing submarine fleet, which includes new nuclear- and conventional-powered vessels, helps China patch a major vulnerability: an inability until now to control the Taiwan Strait. This larger submarine fleet, even if less effective than its American counterpart, would vastly complicate any effort by Washington to intervene. Past calculations of how quickly the American aircraft carrier fleet could safely move into the area are even now being rewritten to include new estimates of the patrolling range of the new Chinese submarine fleet. In a written statement on "Current and Projected National Security Threats to the United States" submitted to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence earlier this month, Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, discussed an even broader nature of the Pentagon's concern. "In addition to key Taiwanese military and civilian facilities," Admiral Jacoby said, "Chinese missiles will be capable of targeting U.S. and allied military installations in the region to either deter outside intervention in a Taiwan crisis or attack those installations if deterrent efforts fail." Admiral Jacoby, in unclassified testimony, predicted that by 2015, the number of Chinese nuclear warheads "capable of targeting the continental United States will increase severalfold." For now, though, China's capabilities are not considered a threat to the United States mainland; China still lacks an oceangoing navy that could rival America's presence in the Pacific, while America has no lack of nuclear missiles that can strike China from land or from submarines. Experts also say it is clear that China will be able to proceed with its modernization plans with or without European weapons, though its progress may be slower. China has purchased destroyers, as well as many other weapons, from Russia, its main supplier. At the same time, it is modernizing its fleet of warships, built at a rapidly growing chain of domestic shipyards that is financing its own expansion by taking an increasing share of commercial shipbuilding contracts in Asia, according to United States government assessments. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2005-03-02 02:37:00 69.161.222.74 Re: The China Threat Chinese J-8H Arrives Ahead of Schedule quote: March 1, 2005: The latest version of China’s J-8 fighter-bomber, the J-8H, has entered service earlier than expected. The J-8H has a new radar (allowing it to use longer range air-to-air missiles), more powerful engines and electronics enabling it to deliver smart bombs. The J-8 is a Chinese redesign of the old Russian MiG-21, and is equipped with two engines. The J-8H is another example of how China is taking older aircraft, and making them quite lethal by equipping them with more powerful electronics. The U.S. Air Force has long advocated the use of long range, radar guided, air-to-air missiles. The drawback with this is that it now becomes possible to turn a relatively slow and unmaneuverable aircraft like the J-8 into an F-22 killer by giving it good radar and long range missiles. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2005-03-02 02:40:00 69.161.222.74 Re: The China Threat CHINA: Rearmament More Rapid Than Reported quote: February 28, 2005: Reports, and digital photos, getting out of China via the Internet, indicate that the modernization of the Chinese armed forces is some two years ahead of the schedules cited by most Western experts. New aircraft, ships and tanks are showing up sooner than expected, and China is spending money on more training for pilots and ship crews. Not as much training as Western forces get, but more than in the past for China. It appears that the Chinese defense budget will go up another 10-15 percent next year. This is only about half of what Japan spends, but the Japanese pay much more for personnel and equipment. This gives Japan a qualitative edge that the Chinese are trying to close. China also expects Europe to drop its arms embargo this Summer. This would enable China to more quickly, and cheaply, upgrade warplanes, ships and tanks with more modern, and effective, French and German electronics and weapons. European nations have been selling China hundreds of millions of dollars worth of dual use military equipment each year, but as long as the embargo is in force, explicitly military gear can only be sold under the table and smuggled in. American protests, that selling China weapons might mean the use of those weapons against American forces, has no effect on the French and Germans. Indeed, France was rather pleased when in 1986, a French Exocet anti-ship missile, fired by an Iraqi warplane, heavily damaged an American warship (by mistake, of course.) Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2005-03-06 15:41:00 69.161.222.74 Re: The China Threat New Air Defence DDG quote: The first of class 115 is currently under construction at Dalian Shipyard Dalian Shipyard in Dalian, Liaoning Province is currently building a new air-defence missile destroyer (DDG) possibly designated Type 051C for the PLA Navy (PLAN). The first of the class, launched on 28 December 2004, carries a pennant number of 115. The destroyer is said to be fitted with the Russian-made RIF/S-300F (NATO codename: SA-N-6) medium-range air defence missile system and the 30N6E phased array radar. The ship is expected to be commissioned in 2006 in the PLAN North Sea Fleet. The artist impression of the Type 051C air defence DDG The Type 051C is the PLA Navy’s first dedicated fleet air defence missile destroyer, with its design concept similar to the U.S. DDG-51 Arleigh Burke class. The destroyer has a total of 48 RIF missiles housed in six large-size revolver vertical launching systems (VLS), with two launchers on the bow deck behind the main gun and four in the structure in front of the stern helicopter deck. Like the DDG-51, the Type 051C has no helicopter hanger to carry its own shipborne helicopter. Eight anti-ship missiles instead of 16 found on other Chinese-built destroyers are installed at midship due to the limited space. The general hull design of the Type 051 appears to be identical to the Type 051B (Luhai class) missile destroyer, possibly with a slightly larger displacement. The ship lacks the radar cross-section reduction features found on the Type 052B/C destroyers built by Jiangnan Shipyard in 2004. The exact powerplant arrangement of the ship is unknown, but Ukraine-made gas turbine is one of the possible options. DEPLOYMENT (See table at source link) RIF-M/S-300F MISSILES SYSTEM In 2002 China purchased two Altair RIF (SA-N-6) shipborne air defence missile systems for two yet-to-be-built air defence ships. The missile is guided by the 30N6E phased array radar, which can direct 12 missiles to engage 6 targets simultaneously. The RLF missile system has been in service with the Soviet/Russian navy for over two decades and is proven to be highly effective against airborne targets. It is installed on all Soviet/Russian cruisers built after 1980. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2005-03-09 16:33:00 69.161.222.74 Re: The China Threat I would hope that the higher ups start connecting the dots… We have China building these new Type 051C air defense cruisers outfitted with the S-300 system, China has purchased quite a few Su-30MKK carrier based fighters, and we have Chinese pilots intensively training on runways made to simulate the dimensions of a carrier deck. All this among other suspicious activities like all those aircraft carrier amusement parks… (all 3 or 4 of them!) I think that PLAN Project 9935 may be well under construction. After all, China is the third largest producer of oceangoing metric tonnage in the world and they are churning out about 272.5 million tonnes of steel a year. With those stats, building an indigenous carrier would not be that difficult a task. Especially since the super-size transport ships they currently have no problem building are not that dissimilar in size to an aircraft carrier. With the fact that China is currently building several ships of eight different classes, I have little doubt that there are indeed carriers under construction in those three covered graving docks in Shangahi as mentioned in that above linked white paper. With the most recent “lawâ€� passed against Taiwan secession, I think that we will soon (within 5 years) see those three new carriers “rolled outâ€� and all those “floating amusement parksâ€� brought into active service. Seemingly overnight (to those much less informed than us), China will have 6 or 7 modernized, active service aircraft carriers. Just my guess… Rick DonaldsonAdministrator (Member) 2005-03-09 22:22:00 140.32.120.188 Re: The China Threat I can assure you that the "higher ups" have looked over this thread since the beginning. I have two threads that were started with the intent to inform people of the threats... both of those threads have been examined in detail and the information provided therein have been carefully examined by those "higher ups" you mentioned. In fact, I've had several calls regarding some of my posts and the information we've all gathered. So... The US government is aware of the China Threat. Well aware. aaahz (Member) 2005-03-10 22:27:00 207.69.140.23 Re: The China Threat I'll address this to Rick as the last poster, but welcome any comment. As I've said before, I'm in no position to argue w any here on specifics, as, I know nothing!!! I have, however, kept my thinking cap on and watched, listened, whatever, tried to keep as well informed as possible. There are so many threads here spelling out our defensive shortcomings and outside threats, almost always well presented, logical and scary, that one begins to wonder which country will erase us first. As Rick pointed out, the PTBs know what we write(putting myself in their place, I would ignore nothing). So, what's the game? I have 3 general scenarios in mind that fit. 1. We have one heckuva ace up our sleeve, waiting to spring it at the right time. 2. Our economy tanks, dragging down the world and leaving the Chinese to fill the vacuum. 3. The invasion threat is real. Period, nuff said. Rick, I'm hopin' it's #1. It would make sense, let them commit resources before making them obsolete, win the war w/o a shot. aaahz (Member) 2005-03-10 22:36:00 207.69.140.23 Re: The China Threat Beg pardon, all, when you sleep on a couch you always get up on the wrong side. Immediately after posting I read the disclosure book post and realized there were far more than 3 scenarios that fit, albeit far-fetched to mainstream folk, and I was just trying to get someone to admit we got rayguns and rocketships in the closet. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2005-03-13 04:51:00 69.161.222.74 Re: The China Threat Beijing\'s ANZUS Warning quote: CHINA is demanding that the Howard Government review its 50-year-old military pact with the US, warning that the ANZUS alliance could threaten regional stability if Australia were drawn into Sino-US conflict over Taiwan. Under the ANZUS alliance, Australia is obliged to support the US should China resort to force to resolve its long-running dispute with Taiwan. But a top Chinese official - Beijing's director-general of North American and Oceanian Affairs, He Yafei - told The Australian that Australia and the US needed to be careful not to invoke the ANZUS alliance against China. "We all know Taiwan is part of China, and we do not want to see in any way the Taiwan issue become one of the elements that will be taken up by bilateral military alliances, be it Australia-US or Japan-US," he said. "If there were any move by Australia and the US in terms of that alliance (ANZUS) that is detrimental to peace and stability in Asia, then it (Australia) has to be very careful." Asked if he were referring to Taiwan, Mr He said "especially so". "It (Taiwan) is our internal affair." But a spokesman for Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said last night that Australia had no plans to alter any of its commitments. "Neither Australia nor the US have any plans to amend the ANZUS alliance," he said. But Mr Downer hinted at a policy shift on Taiwan in Beijing last year, when he suggested Australia might not have to go to Taiwan's aid under the terms of ANZUS because a flare-up might not constitute a direct attack on US interests. He was quickly corrected by Prime Minister John Howard, but the Downer comments raised expectations in Beijing that Australia now considers its more than $20billion-a-year trade relationship with China as too important to sacrifice over Taiwan. Australian National University Strategic and Defence Studies Centre board chairman Paul Dibb said the warning from Beijing was simply another sign of China's "growing economic strength and predominance in the Asia-Pacific". "China is gaining confidence and this suggests it wants to throw its weight around a bit," he said yesterday. But China's objection could not change Australia's policy, which was to make a decision at the time if it came to a conflict in the Taiwan Strait. "There's little doubt the US would expect Australian support in the event of naked aggression against Taiwan by China," Professor Dibb said. "If the Taiwanese provoke an attack, then that might be different." Lowy Institute security analyst Alan Dupont said he could not recall a Chinese official referring directly to the ANZUS alliance. "It's a reminder that our relationship with China is rather fragile, and that intervention in Taiwan could have negative consequences for our political and economic relationship," he said. Dr Dupont said there was also concern in Beijing about how trilateral security talks between Australia, the US and Japan might develop in relation to Taiwan. A Taiwan government spokesman told The Australian that China had no right to attempt to influence the policies of other nations towards Taipei. "Those countries have taken a position on Taiwan they believe is in the best interests of stability and security in the region," he said. The comments come after Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing told Tokyo and Washington on Sunday to drop Taiwan from their joint security pact. He was commenting after Tokyo and Washington named Taiwan as an issue of "strategic" concern during defence talks in Washington. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2005-03-13 05:03:00 69.161.222.74 Re: The China Threat US Reveals China Arms Build-Up quote: By Hamish McDonald Beijing March 7, 2005 American intelligence agencies have revealed a huge build-up in Chinese assault forces - apparently designed to invade Taiwan - as China's leaders made new overtures for a peaceful agreement with the island republic. US officials said China was racing to complete 23 amphibious ships able to ferry tanks and troops across the 160-kilometre-wide Taiwan Strait and 13 submarines to protect them, according to a New York Times report. "Their amphibious assault shipbuilding alone equals the entire US Navy shipbuilding since 2002," one official said. The US revelation came as more than 15,000 protesters marched in Taiwan yesterday, denouncing China's planned anti-secession law and vowing to fight what they claim is Beijing's attempt to force their self-ruled, democratic island to unify with the mainland. The Chinese Government is due to present the draft of the law forbidding the formal secession of Taiwan from China, setting definitions of separatist activity and penalties for traitors - a law Taiwan says lays a legal base for an invasion. The two sides split amid civil war in 1949, but Beijing insists Taiwan is part of its territory and has repeatedly threatened to attack if Taipei formalises its de facto independence or drags its feet on unification talks. China's legislature, the National People's Congress, is expected to pass the legislation during a 10-day session that began on Saturday. Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian did not join the protest, apparently to avoid provoking Beijing. Former Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui, a strong supporter of formal independence for the island, said the proposed law was unjustified since Taiwan was not a part of China. Congress spokesman Jiang Enzhu denied the law authorised an attack or war mobilisation. It was needed because "reckless moves by secessionists have become the top barrier to China's reunification and a real threat to regional peace and stability". The mainland would not go to war as long as there was "a glimmer of hope" of peaceful reunification. Meanwhile, Chinese officials announced at the congress a 12.6 per cent increase in defence spending to 245 billion yuan ($A38 billion) this year. , "This is still a fairly small amount compared with (the military spending) of other major countries in the world, in terms of its proportion to total financial expenditures and gross national product," Mr Jiang said. But military analysts said it did not include major outlays disguised under industrial investment and the space program. While third to the US and Japanese defence budgets, it allows a high level of hardware purchases, given the low salaries of Chinese troops. China is trying to transform the People's Liberation Army from a vast low-tech infantry force to a more mechanised and information-based fighting machine, able to project power offshore and take on the US Navy in a battle for Taiwan. As well as acquiring aircraft and ships from Russia, and the large shipbuilding program, the army expects this year to complete trimming 200,000 soldiers from its 2.5 million total. Teng Jianqun, a researcher with the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association, told the Xinhua news agency that "in the age of information, it is the quality of troops instead of quantity that counts, that is why major military powers of the world have downsized their troops over the past several years". Another Chinese military expert was more blunt. "I think the real aim of the current military streamlining is to improve China's combat readiness, to prepare for local war in the information age," Chen Zhou, a professor with the army's Military Academy of Sciences, said. China has streamlined the PLA nine times since the communist state was founded in 1949. Total ranks were reduced from a record of 6.27 million in 1951 to 2.5 million in 2003. The proposed lifting of the European Union's arms embargo on China, imposed after the army's 1989 massacre of Tiananmen demonstrators, is adding to concerns in American defence and intelligence circles. Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2005-03-13 13:43:00 69.161.222.74 Re: The China Threat China\'s Hu Tells Military To Step Up Preparations For Possible War quote: China's President Hu Jintao told the military Sunday it should step up preparations for a possible war, and to safeguard territorial integrity, in apparent reference to reunifying with Taiwan. "We shall step up preparations for possible military struggle and enhance our capabilities to cope with crises, safeguard peace, prevent wars and win the wars if any," Hu said shortly after he was appointed to the country's top military post. "We must continuously enhance our sense of political responsibility, and always place the task of defending national sovereignty, security and territorial integrity and safeguarding the interests of national development above anything else," he was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua news agency. The Chinese president was addressing a meeting of People's Liberation Army delegates at the 10th the National People's Congress, the country's top legislature. His comments came on the eve of a meeting Monday in which the parliament is expected to pass an "anti-secession" law aimed at preventing rival Taiwan from moving towards independence. The law gives the Chinese military the legal basis for attacking Taiwan if it moves towards independence. At the same time, Beijing insists that "non-peaceful means" will be used only as a "last resort." Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2005-03-13 14:21:00 69.161.222.74 Re: The China Threat The Rising Sea Dragon In Asia - 2005 Update quote: THE RISING SEA DRAGON IN ASIA 2005 Update By Jeff Head, February 2005 As an update to the original "Rising Sea Dragon in Asia", that I published in January of 2004 (and have been writing and warning about since 2000), I offer this update, dated in February of 2005. This report is fairly short and broad, and I believe does not contain the detail necessary to reflect the true scope of the emerging threat. But it does clearly indicate the nature and size of the current Red Chinese buildup, and their is only one principle power that such a buildup can be directed at, the United States military. Regarding the continuing naval buildup, the Chinese have already built and launched two of the brand new, very modern, Aegis-type Lanzhou-class destroyers, two of the new Guangzhou-class guided missile destroyers, two new Ma'anshan-class guided missile frigates, four of the new large Type 73 Amphibious Assault ships (that's right, four in a very short time frame and more building...can you guess what these are indeed for?), and a class of very modern diesel-electric attack subs. In addition, the west has now seen another new class, dubbed the Type 51C that was just launched in December of 2005 in the Dalian, Liaoning Province. Another area air defense destroyer similar to the Type 52C, Lanzhou-class, this new class is similar in appearance to the Arleigh Burke-class original batch destroyers, and is based on the late 1990's Luhai-class hull.. It has an Aegis type air defense capability, but no helo facilities, while the two new Type 52C's are similar to the Arleigh Burke Batch IIA ships, with onboard helicopter landing and housing facilities. All of this is in addition to acquiring four very modern and capable Hangzhou-class destroyers from Russia and a total of twelve very modern Russian diesel-electric subs, as well as currently building their own new and modern classes of nuclear attack subs and ballistic missile submarines, along with continuing heavy research into aircraft carrier design and/or refitting. The efforts continue unabated as the Red Chinese continue to build or acquire these EIGHT new classes of ships simultaneously at a rapid pace. Eight new classes of ships at once represents a HUGE outlay in technology and capital across the board. It is almost unheard of and is representative of the massive arms build-up the Red Chinese are embarked upon with their new found wealth. If continued, it can have but one goal in mind, a direct challenge for naval dominance in the Pacific Rim and beyond. As stated, that challenge is a direct one to the United States Navy. In the mean time, the Chinese are also modernizing their naval air forces at a rapid pace, acquiring or license building hundreds of modern SU-27, SU-27SK, and SU-30 aircraft from Russia, many with very credible strike-at-sea, air-to-surface missile capabilities. They are also building their own new J-10 aircraft. Within the past two to three years these efforts represent a quantum leap in terms of the quality of the Red Chinese equipment and the rate at which they are being built or otherwise put into service. Here are some recent pictures: The brand new construction and launch of the area air defense, Aegis-like, Type 51C-class destroyer. The new Lanzhou-class (Type 52C) Aegis-like destroyer. 1st commissioned in July 2004, second in service in early 2005. The new Guangzhou-class (Type 52B) Guided Missile Destroyer. 1st commissioned in July 2004, second in service in early 2005. (Continued in next post because of picture posting restrictions…) Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2005-03-13 14:22:00 69.161.222.74 Re: The China Threat quote: The new Hangzhou-class (Type 951/EM) (a.k.a. Sovremenny-class) guided missile destroyers. Four acquired from Russia in the last five years, two already in service, two more in 2005. They carry the Russian Sunburn or Moskit cruise missiles, designed to attack US Aircraft Carriers. The new Ma'anshan-class (Type 054) Guided Missile frigates. Two launched in late 2003, will be in service in early 2005. Two of the new Type 73 Amphibious Assault Ship class, of which three have already been built. (Continued in next post because of picture posting restrictions…) Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2005-03-13 14:23:00 69.161.222.74 Re: The China Threat quote: The new Yuan-class SSK diesel/electric attack submarine. The new Russian acquired Kilo-class SSK diesel/electric attack submarines, of which four have been acquired and EIGHT MORE are on order. Continued outfitting of the former Russian Varyag at the Dalian shipyards. (Continued in next post because of picture posting restrictions…) Ryan RuckAdministrator (Администратор) 2005-03-13 14:25:00 69.161.222.74 Re: The China Threat quote: Red Chinese SU-30 and SU-27SK (J11) and SU-27 aircraft. The Chinese Produced J-10 attack fighter. As these ships are produced in numbers and, as the Chinese continue with their across the board naval buildup and, their carrier development plans towards ultimately launching their own, the balance of power in the China Sea and western Pacific is going to hang in the balance. Do not forget, the Chinese have purchased and are studying and apparently refitting western style and Russian aircraft carriers. Their intentions in this regard, with the production of all the support and defense ships necessary to form carrier battle groups of their own is clear. Even without those groups, they are producing a formidable force to challenge our groups in the inner island chain in the western Pacific. While the Chinese experience level with this equipment is lacking and will be very much inferior to the decades of practical experience the United States Navy has, there is no doubt that the Chinese are embarked on a path to challenge that experience and heretofore dominance of the U.S. Navy in the region at some point. If within range of large numbers of land-based aircraft and missiles, and if coupled with modern, capable weapons systems like the Sunburn or Moskit missiles and perhaps supercavitiating torpedo technology, a credible threat to American naval supremacy in the western Pacific could be posed in the next few years...and this does not even address their continued rapid buildup of ballistic missiles and modernization program across the board of their land based armed forces, which are proceeding at a similar pace as that described here regarding their navy and naval air forces. Although the hefty12-14% increase in direct military expenditures of the Red Chinese (and this does not include dual use and so-called private sector input to the defense apparatus-just remember, in the Red Chinese system, there is no real private sector) represents a small proportion of US Military outlays, remember as well that a significant portion of western outlays goes towards relatively high salaries, benefits, and health care costs that the Chinese system is not burdened with. In terms of outlays towards pure military weapons systems directly, the Chinese are rapidly catching up with western numbers. All of this bears very serious consideration and planning. While we do so, consider this: As stated, the Chinese are currently building and launching eight modern, entire classes of major combatant vessels (not including the two new nuclear attack and strategic missile submarines)...simultaneously. This is a monumental achievement and compares to the United States Navy which is currently building and launching three new classes of major combatants (the Virginia-class subs, the San Antonio-class LPDs, and the continuing Burke-class destroyers) with plans for two to three more U.S. classes in the future. Clearly the Chinese and the PLAN are serious about their future naval capabilities in the China Sea and western Pacific and are rapidly building up across the board to implement them. This should be reminiscent to our senior citizens who experienced it, or anyone who has studied history, of the rapid buildup of adversary military in the 1930s. We all know where that led… Again, there can only be one power that the Red Chinese intend to, and must, confront if conflict over geo-political policy comes into play...and that is the U.S. Navy. Such tremendous development, building and launching of vessels indicate that they intend to do just that and their intentions, capabilities and funding in this regard cannot be underestimated. Copyright © 2005, by Jeff Head Jeff Head (jeffhead.com) is an engineering consultant who has many years of experience in the power, defense, and computer industries. He currently works for the federal government helping maintain and protect regional infrastructure. He is a member of the U.S. Naval Institute, and he is also the author of a self-published and best-selling fictional series of military techno-thrillers about future military confrontation with the Red Chinese called the Dragon's Fury Series of novels (dragonsfuryseries.com) that projects a fictional third world war arising out of current events. Cspace (Member) 2005-03-15 04:08:00 66.115.23.131 Re: The China Threat U.S. catches China transferring WMD tech to Iran quote: WASHINGTON – The United States has charged that China continues to supply unconventional weaponry and dual-use technology to Iran, despite numerous appeals. China has transferred components and expertise to Iran's weapons of mass destruction and missile programs, officials said. They said some of the Chinese components have arrived via Pakistan, another key ally of Beijing. "Unacceptable proliferant activity continues," Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control Stephen Rademaker told the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission on March 10. "We are particularly concerned about continued transfers of CBW- and missile-related technology by Chinese entities to Iran, despite the imposition of sanctions." The components were said to have included dual-use missile components, raw materials, and expertise to Iran's solid-fuel missile program. Officials said Beijing has also supplied dual-use chemical weapons-related production equipment and technology to Iran. A key Chinese supplier to Iran has been identified as Q.C. Chen, a Chinese national under U.S. sanctions since 1997. Officials said Beijing has failed to stop Chen, who has sold components to Iran's chemical weapons program. Another leading Chinese proliferator to Iran and Sudan has been identified as China North Industries Corp., or Norinco. Officials said Beijing has not taken any steps to stop missile and WMD exports by Norinco to the Middle East. Officials said China has sold major weapons and components to oil-producing countries in the Middle East banned from receiving Western defense systems. They said Beijing has rebuffed U.S. appeals to halt the weapons supplies. In 2000, Congress formed the commission to investigate and report on national security implications of trade and economic relations between the United States and China. Since 2001, the United States has imposed 60 sanctions on Chinese entities in connection with mis