China flexes military muscle

[zzzz]

Good story about China and its military buildup.

As the Pentagon plans for U.S. forces to exit Iraq and Afghanistan, it is keeping one eye trained on the rising threat in the East. For two decades China has been adding large numbers of warships, submarines, fighter jets and — more significantly — developing offensive missiles capable of knocking out U.S. stealth aircraft and the biggest U.S. naval ships including aircraft carriers.

At the same time, China has announced that its territorial waters extend hundreds of miles beyond its shores, well into what its neighbors and the United States consider international waters. It has installed more than 1,000 ballistic missiles aimed at Taiwan, a democratic island nation and U.S. ally. Vietnam, the Philippines and Japan all have complained to the United States about confrontations on the high seas with China.

This is forcing the US to spend billions of dollars to develop another bomber, the long range strike bomber!

Since 1989, China's defense spending has increased by nearly 13% annually, according to the Department of Defense 2010 Annual Report to Congress. In March it announced its annual budget would be $78.6 million.

U.S. defense spending dwarfs that figure. The fiscal 2012 Pentagon budget request is $676 billion. However, the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank focusing on the military, has said the U.S. military is underfunded and cannot counter China's threat to U.S. allies in East Asia with declining defense spending, as some in Congress are seeking as part of a deal to raise the ceiling on the national debt.

Although the USA spends more, it suggests China's real defense spending approaches $300 billion. And all of that spending is concentrated in one region, East Asia, while the U.S. spending is spread out over many regions of the world.

The US military is stretched thin because we are a global military force and are involved militarily through treaties and commitments all over the world. The Chinese military is concentrated in one area. The threat is what is important here. If the Chinese are perceived as more powerful in the region then it will be they not us who influence events in the region. Even Japan, a long time foe of the Chinese, might have to start allying with the Chinese instead of the USA.

Jconline - China's military flexes its muscle

 

[St.Blues]

Two words for China........... FUCK YOU!

Blues

 

[Ringel05]

And the very real global game of chess continues.

 

[The_GiantNoodle]

Make no mistake. There WILL be a war with China in the next 50 years.

 

[Ringel05]

When I was a teen I remember reading a book, can't for the life of me remember now which book it was but some unknown reason one phrase stuck out and it's the only thing I remember from the book.

The Eagle will defeat the Bear but the Dragon will overcome them all. Weird, eh?

 

[BoycottTheday]

China is hiding a huge internal problem, the next war they fight might just be with themselves.

 

[Baruch Menachem]

China's military is almost entirely used for internal control. The leadership there really is riding a tiger of ever increased consumer expectation. The fact they have a huge imbalance of young men to young women is just one worry.

They are frightened of the citizenry for very good reason. All they can think to do short term is keep the army large, under ferocious discipline, and moving all the time from province to province to make sure the army doesn't side with the people in case of disturbance.

They have the experience of what happened in Romania, Albania, Russia, Hungary and Germany when they lost control. Life for those in power in China must be a constant nightmare.

 

[burntup2]

china is a very scary country. i seen on tv that we are selling water to china. they are dumping it on the ground to recharge their aquifers. a lot of rich people or people with resources like the bush's have bought land with water under it, mostly in 3rd world countries, yes our precious great bush family are not letting those people have water. they are saving it due to they believe water will be the next oil. china is not just building an army they are preserving their country. plus they are taking care of the business of their country. if we not careful we may be living under their control

 

[Trajan]

When I was a teen I remember reading a book, can't for the life of me remember now which book it was but some unknown reason one phrase stuck out and it's the only thing I remember from the book.

The Eagle will defeat the Bear but the Dragon will overcome them all. Weird, eh?

Nostradamus.

 

[zzzz]

Historically when a country has internal problems they will engineer a crisis with another country leading to a conflict that will instill national pride. What is the one thing that the Chinese want? Taiwan. They have been building up for a take over of that island for decades. If it wasn't for the shadow of the USA they would have already taken it. Now that they have unleashed their enormous industrial capacity they are getting the capacity to force the US to stay out of the southeast Asia. Its going to be an interesting 20 years in that region.

 

[Baruch Menachem]

In terms of usable force, Taiwan outnumbers them.

They have no real navy, they have no means to get troops over there. Taiwan has a better equipped air force that is also better trained.

They try it on, that will only hasten the revolution they fear.

The last thing they want is the kind of ass kicking the Finns gave Stalin back in 1940.

 

[rightwinger]

Chinas military has one primary mission. keeping 1.5 billion Chinese under control

They are not in our league

 

[zzzz]

In terms of usable force, Taiwan outnumbers them.

They have no real navy, they have no means to get troops over there. Taiwan has a better equipped air force that is also better trained.

They try it on, that will only hasten the revolution they fear.

The last thing they want is the kind of ass kicking the Finns gave Stalin back in 1940.

They are training in these new amphibious assault ships, landings against a contested shoreline and believe they now have the capability to make a breakout of the beach head.

http://defensetech.org/2011/04/01/china-boosts-it-amphibious-options/

They just launched this new ship this month. The Chinese are designing and building other amphibious capable vessels. although at present they are believed only capable of landing a little over a division of troops in 10 years that figure may be 10 times that, and with modern stuff too.

 

[Ringel05]

When I was a teen I remember reading a book, can't for the life of me remember now which book it was but some unknown reason one phrase stuck out and it's the only thing I remember from the book.

The Eagle will defeat the Bear but the Dragon will overcome them all. Weird, eh?

Nostradamus.

But I've never read Nostradamus so if it comes from him then it must have been quoted in the book I was reading.

 

[waltky]

Uncle Ferd purt sure dey gettin' ready to send one o' dem EMP bombs over here...

China held secret missile tests: report
Fri, Sep 07, 2012 - NUCLEAR BUILDUP:The tests represent a new level of capability for China’s nuclear forces and may have dire implications for Taiwan, a military specialist on China said

US intelligence agencies have leaked reports of secret new Chinese missile tests that could have important implications for Taiwan. The reports have been published by national security journalist Bill Gertz on the Washington Free Beacon Web site. Gertz said US intelligence agencies had monitored a fourth flight test last week of the Dong Feng-31A (DF-31A) intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). It was fired from China’s Wuzhai Space and Missile Test Center in Shanxi Province to an impact range in western China. “Thursday’s DF-31A test came ten days after the flight test at Wuzhai of a silo-based CSS-4 Mod 2 long-range missile, and several weeks after flight tests of a new road-mobile DF-41 ICBM, on July 24, and a submarine-launched JL-2 missile on August 16,” Gertz wrote. “China’s secretive military made no mention of any of the tests,” he said.

According to Gertz, US intelligence officials believe the DF-41 will eventually be outfitted with between three and 10 warheads. “China is currently in the middle of a major strategic nuclear forces buildup that includes four new ICBMs — the DF-41, JL-2 [Julang-2], DF-31A, and another road-mobile missile called the DF-31,” Gertz wrote. Richard Fisher, a specialist on China’s military with the International Assessment and Strategy Center, told the Taipei Times that the testing represents a new level of capability for China’s nuclear forces. “It may mark the beginning of a new era in which China fields multiple ICBM types armed with multiple warheads,” Fisher said. “Uncertainties concerning China’s nuclear missile developments are of direct importance to Taiwan,” he said. “Any potential for China to undermine regional or Taiwanese confidence in the extended American nuclear deterrent has profound and potentially dire implications,” he said. “For the PLA [People’s Liberation Army], nuclear checkmate of US forces would be a key part of any campaign against Taiwan,” he said.

Fisher said that were Japan to lose confidence in the extended US nuclear deterrent, it is quite well-positioned to develop both the nuclear warheads and long-range missiles to provide for its own deterrent. Japan’s M-V solid fuel space launch vehicle was developed in part to provide the option to field a long-range ballistic missile if needed. “Such a move by Japan could lead to similar reactions by South Korea, Vietnam, Australia and even Taiwan, which apparently ended its own nuclear weapon program in the 1980s following intervention by the [then US president Ronald] Reagan administration,” Fisher said. “However, I am told that many of the engineers involved in this effort still reside in Taiwan,” he said.

According to Fisher, China shows “little inclination” to stop its nuclear and advanced conventional missile buildup that is undermining the US deterrent and shows “little to no interest” in the kind of transparency that might lower anxieties. “China regularly signals that it wants American military power to depart from Asia and apparently is ready to plunge the region into a period of instability, even conflict, to emerge as its primary power,” Fisher said. Word of the missile testing came as US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was visiting Beijing for high-level talks with Chinese leaders.

China held secret missile tests: report - Taipei Times

 

[Billo_Really]

Make no mistake. There WILL be a war with China in the next 50 years.

No more wars! I'm sick of fuckin' wars.

Did anyone consider China's military build up a reaction to us going around the world making up reasons to attack sovereign nations?

 

[MHunterB]

NO. The expansion of Chinese hegemony has been ongoing since '49 or so.... Usually nations do what nations do based on their own reasons, not in response to something else. Maoism includes a commitment to expand based on exporting the revolution.

 

[Franticfrank]

I sincerely hope there will be no war. Besides, the two sides really have so much to lose considering they are reliant on each other as trading partners. Statistics do show that 51% of Americans view the growing Chinese military as a threat. It could really get more unstable but hopefully mutual respect and common sense will prevail.

 

[mamooth]

China, Japan, Taiwan and the East China Sea | Flashpoints

Right now, China and Japan are doing another round of saber-rattling over the Senkaku Islands, some uninhabited rocks in the East China Sea that give the owner geographical claim to some nice oil fields. Japan has formally held them for the last hundred years, but China's current policy is more or less that any territory which China has held in the past thousand years has to be returned to China.

It's worse than usual this time, because nationalists in both nations are using it as a political issue. In China, where the economy is not good, the government is aiding the rabble-rousers, as they look for issues to deflect from domestic bad news. And the Chinese military is only nominally under civilian government control, being more of an independent actor. The military just might overthrow the government if they consider it to be not acting in Chinese interest.

The US is obligated by treaty to defend Japan. And Japan is running out of room to back down, given that the Senkaku Islands are as much a part of Japan as Okinawa, which Chinese nationalists also claim. US policy under all administrations has been to delicately try to contain Chinese expansion, which is getting more difficult, as China seems so intent on pissing off pretty much every nation around it.

 

[Katzndogz]

The Chinese are preparing for combat with Japan.

http://freebeacon.com/chinese-general-prepare-for-combat/

We have a treaty with Japan. Will obama honor that treaty or throw Japan under the bus like he's throwing Israel under the bus?