Chinese People's Liberation Army missile carrier trucks drive past the Tiananmen Square during a military parade marking China's 60th anniversary in Beijing, China, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2009. To mark 60 years of communist rule China put together its biggest-ever military parade: hundreds of thousands of marchers, batteries of goose-stepping soldiers and weaponry from drone missiles to amphibious assault vehicles. (AP Photo/Vincent Thian)
(AP Photo/Vincent Thian)
(AP Photo/Vincent Thian)
(AP Photo/Vincent Thian)
(AP Photo)
(AP Photo/Vincent Thian)
EUTERS/Jason Lee
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"In the interest of National Defense...
"Ask not what your country can do for you but ask what you can do for your country!"
Group: Special Forces
Posts: 744
Member No.: 745
Joined: 10-June 06
according to Times Now India Chinese force force local India tribes people out of their lands and pastures saying it is their territory Times Now has proof from the locals, proof of intrusion by soldiers of China's PLA. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTihru9Enmo&feature=related
Question: Since they are doing this to India a nation far better off then the Philippines in terms of military capabilities without being afraid of military responds from India can the Philippines find itself in the same situation and if we did can we count on India Military support? out that we are in the same boat with when it comes to relations to china?
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"No sacrifice is too great in the service of freedom."
Beijing To Build Large Destroyers Beijing plans to build a new generation of large destroyers as part of its effort to develop a blue-water navy, a report from an official ship-building institute shows
Greg Torode Chief Asia correspondent Oct 19, 2009 The emergence of a giant concrete ship in the unlikely setting of Wuhan is the latest sign that Beijing's desire for aircraft carriers is fast moving towards a full-blown production programme....
Group: Analysts
Posts: 1,369
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Joined: 6-December 04
With the kind of officials we currently have, we might be sold to the ChiComs instead of fighting them for our freedom. We could tap on the Indians to help us defend ourselves but I doubt that they'd come to our assistance if a battle starts as they may have their hands full guarding their borders both from the ChiComs and Pakistanis.
As for this carrier threat, its something indeed not to be dismissed lightly but it should also noted that this may be a smokescreen. Something to make us fear them when there's really nothing there. The same way the Soviets did with that large complex that they said is for anti-ballistic missile defenses.
They may be hiding something even more potent than a carrier dream.
This post has been edited by City Hunter on Oct 20 2009, 07:09 AM
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Command is about authority, about appointment to a position. Effective leadership is different. It must be learned and practiced in order for it to rise to the level of art. You must love those you lead before you can be an effective leader. You can certainly command without that sense of commitment but you cannot lead without it; and without leadership, command is a hollow experience. .. a vacuum often filled with mistrust and ignorance.
As for this carrier threat, its something indeed not to be dismissed lightly but it should also noted that this may be a smokescreen.
From all I've read, I doubt it's just a smokescreen.
The aircraft shown below (which are more probably replicas rather the real things) may have more probably been lifted by crane to the top instead of landing there:
This project is run by the well-known Chinese Warship Research & Design Center (No.701 Institute under CSIC).
From the picture, you can see a mock flight deck, one Su-27 fighter and one Z-8 helicopter (both are probably full scale models). The most obvious is the gIslandh commanding structure which is very similar to the one of gvaryagh in Dalian. It is very interesting that Chinese people cut a big square opening on the commanding structure. For the picturing angle, there are possibly 3 square openings on other 3 sides of the structure. Since gChina-Defense-Mashuph has reported that gvaryagh Aircraft Carrierfs commanding structure has been being improved since the end of August. The gbig square openingsh indicate that Chinese Navy will certainly equip gvaryagh carrier with domestic ship-borne AESA radars, perhaps a improved version on Type 052C Destroyer.
This post has been edited by MSantor on Oct 20 2009, 09:42 AM
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People who are truly strong help the weak, not step on them. ----------------------------------------------------------------------
China's military sought to assure the United States on Monday that its arms buildup was not a threat and said Beijing wanted to expand cooperation with the Pentagon to reduce the risk of future conflicts.
At the start of a visit to Washington, Xu Caihou, vice chairman of the People's Liberation Army Central Military Commission, said military ties were generally moving in a "positive direction" and defended China's fast-paced military development as purely "defensive" and "limited" in scope.
"We are now predominantly committed to peaceful development and we will not and could not challenge or threaten any other country" and "certainly not the United States," Xu told a Washington think tank ahead of talks with Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
Xu described China's development of advanced weapons systems, including cruise and ballistic missiles, as "entirely for self-defense" and justified "given the vast area of China, the severity of the challenges facing us."
"As you know, China has yet to realize complete unification," Xu said, in an apparent reference to Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province. "So I believe it is simply necessary for the PLA to have an appropriate level of modernity in terms of our weapons and equipment."
Xu's visit, which will include a tour of major U.S. military bases, including U.S. Strategic Command, was meant to give a boost to military-to-military dialogue, which Beijing resumed this year after halting it in 2008 to protest a $6.5 billion U.S. arms sale to Taiwan.
NAVAL INCIDENTS
U.S. officials have expressed alarm about what they see as China's unprecedented military expansion over the past year. Last week, Gates said better dialogue was needed to avoid "mistakes and miscalculations."
"I want to make clear that the limited weapons and equipment of China is entirely to meet the minimum requirements for meeting national security," Xu said through a translator.
He said military mechanization was still at an early stage. "China's defense policy remains defensive" and was designed to repel attacks, not initiate attacks, he said. "We will never seek hegemony ... military expansion."
Chinese vessels have confronted U.S. surveillance ships in Asian waters repeatedly this year and Beijing has called on the United States to reduce and eventually halt air and sea military surveillance close to its shores.
Xu said those U.S. missions "infringed upon Chinese interests," adding: "It is encouraging to see that both sides have recognized that we should not allow such incidents to damage our ... mil-to-mil relations."
Xu said U.S.-Chinese military relations have improved since President Barack Obama took office in January and can be expanded further.
"The military-to-military relationship constitutes an important part of overall bilateral relations. It is important not only to strategic trust ... but also to regional stability," he said. "The Chinese military is positive toward developing mil-to-mil relations with the U.S. military."
Last month, U.S. intelligence agencies singled out China as a challenge to the United States because of its "increasing natural resource-focused diplomacy and military modernization."
(Reporting by Adam Entous; editing by Stacey Joyce)
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People who are truly strong help the weak, not step on them. ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Them..... advocating further militarization "for peace"? Riiight.
QUOTE
November 03, 2009 Xinhua News Agency
BEIJING, Nov 01, -- China will develop an air force with integrated capabilities for both offensive and defensive operations in space as well as in air, the commander of China's air force says.
Calling militarization in the space and in air "a threat to the mankind," Gen. Xu Qiliang said on Sunday that China must develop a strong force in the two arenas in order to face challenges of that threat.
"Only power could protect peace," the 59-year-old air force commander said in an interview with Xinhua, 10 days ahead of 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army air force.
Superiority in space and in air would mean, to a certain extent, superiority over the land and the oceans, Xu said.
"As the air force of a peace-loving country, we must forge our swords and shields in order to protect peace," he said.
According to Xu, not only major air force powers in the world are currently eyeing space and air superiority, some developing countries are also changing their military strategies to gain upper ground in the two arenas.
A country without adequate power would have no say when faced with challenges posed by the militarization in the space and air, he said.
The PLA air force would improve its detection and early warning, air striking, anti-missile air defense, strategic delivery capabilities in order to effectively protect China's interests and help maintain regional and world peace, Xu said.
Xu meanwhile stressed that the PLA air force was peace-oriented. "The Chinese people is a peace-loving people, and China is a responsible developing country which upholds a national defense policy that is defensive in nature," he said.
A powerful PLA air force would protect China's sovereignty, safety and territorial integrity, and would play a major part in maintaining regional stability and world peace, he said.
"The PLA air force will pose no threat to any other country," Xu said.
This year marks the 60th founding anniversary of the People's Republic of China. Its naval force was founded on April 23, 1949, and its air force on Nov. 11 that year.
Previous report said the PLA air force would put its most advanced warplanes on display in the suburbs of Beijing in November, to mark its 60th founding anniversary.
This post has been edited by MSantor on Nov 3 2009, 11:42 PM
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People who are truly strong help the weak, not step on them. ----------------------------------------------------------------------
BEIJING - China's rapidly modernizing air force is planning a display of its new military might for its 60th anniversary, showcasing a wide-ranging technical upgrade that has boosted its capabilities, though it still lags far behind its main rival, the United States.
The People's Liberation Army Air Force is marking the occasion this Sunday with an aerial show and skydiving exhibition, using some of the state-of-the-art combat aircraft that have replaced hundreds of antiquated MIG fighters.
While only about 20 percent of those planes are on a level with those deployed by the West, that ratio is already double what it was five years ago, said Cheung Tai Ming, an expert on the Chinese military at the University of California, San Diego.
In another two decades, it could become the region's dominant air force, Cheung said.
"In terms of hardware," he said, China's air force "is making strides but still has long way to go."
China's air force and navy have been prime beneficiaries of huge defense spending increases as the primarily land-based, defensively oriented military boosts its ability to project force far from the nation's borders.
Tanker planes, AWACS and other support aircraft have been added to extend the reach and effectiveness of the air force's advanced Russian Sukhoi and domestically developed J-10 fighters.
The force has more than 600,000 members and about 2,000 aircraft - making it the largest in Asia - but still far smaller than the United States Air Force fleet which has more than 5,000 aircrft and nearly 327,500 active service personnel.
SHARM EL-SHEIK, Egypt China's premier on Sunday pledged $10 billion in new low interest loans to African nations over three years, offering the beleaguered continent sorely needed cash while dismissing criticism that Beijing's motives in Africa are far from altruistic.
Wen Jiabao's promise at the start of a two-day China-Africa summit was warmly received by African leaders and officials, most of whose nations confront a miasma of despair further accentuated by a global financial crisis that is only now showing signs of abating.
"The Chinese people cherish sincere friendship toward the African people, and China's support to Africa's development is concrete and real," Wen said at a forum that attracted leaders such as Sudan's Omar al-Bashir who faces an international arrest warrant and Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe. Both are heads of state out-of-favor with the West.
Wen said China wants to help Africa build its financing capacity and would provide $10 billion in concessional loans ones with generous terms.
As part of an eight-point plan, he said China would also forgive government debts of the poorest African nations that have relations with Beijing and would build 100 new clean energy projects for the continent. It would also gradually institute a zero-tariff policy on 95 percent of goods from some of the poorest countries. All this would take place over three years.
The latest offer marks a doubling of the $5 billion loan pledge China made in 2006 to African nations a promise that Beijing and most at the summit said China has upheld. Over the past eight years, trade between China and Africa has surged tenfold to almost $107 billion by the end of 2008, and Wen said despite the financial crisis, Chinese investments in Africa were up 77 percent in the first three quarters of 2009.
But China's inroads into Africa have drawn accusations by some in the West that the Asian powerhouse has ignored Africa's needs and the dismal rights records of some nations while looking only to sap the continent of the resources it needs to fuel its bustling economy. Critics contend that its aid is predicated on these countries renouncing ties with Taiwan a belief Wen appeared to validate by stipulating that assistance was pegged to having diplomatic relations with China.
But more troubling for some has been Beijing's willingness to pour money into some countries irrespective of their internal politics.
China has, for example, been a key force in developing Sudan's vital oil sector even as the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum is accused of atrocities in the Darfur region. More recently, a $7 billion mining deal was signed between a little-known Chinese company and Guinea's government an agreement that came weeks after soldiers there opened fire on demonstrators and raped women in the streets.
The Chinese premier said he took issue with claims that "China has come to Africa to plunder its resources and practice neocolonialism."
"This allegation, in my view, is totally untenable," Wen told reporters. "Any person who is familiar with China-Africa interaction knows that relations between the two sides did not begin yesterday."
China has been active in Africa for decades, working on infrastructure projects and supporting African nations in their fight against colonial powers in the early 1950s and 60s. He said that at that time, China did not take a "single drop of oil or a single ton of minerals."
Wen said China's imports of African mineral resources and energy account for only 13 percent of the continent's total exports and its investments in Africa's oil and gas sector were only one-sixteenth of the total investments in the continent.
"So, why do some people only criticize China?" Wen asked.
Earlier, the Chinese premier invited others in the international community to step up and do their part to support Africa. The comments appeared to be a subtle nudge at Western nations with a checkered colonial past on the continent.
Zimbabwe's Mugabe blamed by many in the West for driving his country's economy into the ground praised China's growth as a model.
"Over the past 60 years, China has achieved phenomenal economic growth and development, purely from its own efforts without having to resort to the colonization and economic plunder of other nations," Mugabe said. "Its economic miracle is indeed a source of pride and inspiration to all of us."
Other leaders, like Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, expressed frustration with fallout from the global economic crisis that she said has "eroded benefits accumulated over years of reform."
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the summit's host, said participants should seize the opportunity to press developed nations, "given their responsibility in the financial and economic crisis," to live up to their obligations in helping developing nations cope with the fallout.
(This version CORRECTS the style on the transliteration of the Sudanese president's last name.)
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People who are truly strong help the weak, not step on them. ----------------------------------------------------------------------
The headline of this TIMES article states: "Why China won't be tough on Iran and North Korea."
Debateable, considering the article I posted earlier which highlights one prominent China analyst's views of why Beijing can't afford to support North Korea anymore.
China's government, as President Barack Obama by now no doubt knows, loves to talk about climate change. But it's an issue that exists for Beijing at 30,000 ft., far from earthly, everyday concerns. So President Hu Jintao can play the responsible global citizen by making vague commitments, as he did at the U.N. this fall, to reduce his country's carbon gas emissions by a "notable amount" at some point in the future without actually doing anything that might disrupt China's economy. But he doesn't have the same luxury of deferring action on the increasingly urgent global concerns over nuclear developments in Iran and North Korea.
Obama's sense of urgency over Iran is pretty apparent. Before arriving in Beijing, he conferred on the issue with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev at the APEC summit in Singapore and warned that "time is running out" for Iran to accept a deal to send its uranium to Russia for reprocessing into reactor fuel. The implicit message was clear: unless Iran accepts the plan, the U.S. will press for further sanctions against Tehran, this time possibly seeking restrictions on investment in Iran's vital energy sector. (See pictures of the world's worst nuclear disasters.)
A U.S. push for harsher sanctions against Iran won't be welcomed in Beijing, for two reasons. First, for all the talk of China as the other half of a G-2 that will - together with the U.S. - set the world's agenda, Beijing has not yet embraced the idea that it has the power and responsibility to shape events far beyond its borders. "Beijing is interested in domestic stability first, and stability on their frontier after that," says a senior East Asian diplomat based in Beijing. "The notion that they are ready and willing to stand up and run the world with the U.S. now is very premature." Adds Willem van Kemenade, an expert on the China-U.S. relationship at the Netherlands Institute for Security Studies, on the question of Iran sanctions: "[China's] first instinct will be to look to see what the Russians do."
That's odd on the face of it because China's interests in Iran are very different from Russia's. Moscow is a huge energy exporter whose responses to Iran's nuclear program are primarily based on geopolitical calculations. Under Prime Minister Vladimir Putin - who tells Medvedev what to do - Moscow is in the process of deciding whether accepting a nuclear-armed Iran fits with its strategy of pushing back against U.S. global dominance.
Unlike Russia, China defines a harmonious relationship with the U.S. as being among its core interests. But China now imports a growing share of Iran's oil output - Tehran is China's third largest foreign supplier (behind Saudi Arabia and Angola), and Beijing has also significantly increased its investments in natural-gas projects in Iran. Being forced to choose between an expanding energy relationship with Iran and maintaining diplomatic accord with the U.S. is precisely the kind of dilemma that makes China's leadership assume the foreign policy equivalent of the fetal position. Thus, Hu's public remarks on Tuesday afternoon, after meeting with Obama: "We both stressed that to uphold the international nuclear nonproliferation regime and to appropriately resolve the Iranian nuclear issue through dialogue and negotiations is very important to stability in the Middle East and in the Gulf region."
Got that? No talk about "time running out." It's all about "dialogue and negotiations" (even if Iran has been talking to the West for years about its nuclear programs and just rejected the best offer it had ever gotten). The template China would like the U.S. to follow in responding to Iran is the same one that is used in dealing with North Korea - the topic that will dominate the conversation in Seoul, Obama's next stop.
Unlike Iran, North Korea is already a nuclear-armed nation, and it says it continues to reprocess plutonium to build more bombs. (The U.S. estimates that Pyongyang has eight to 10 nukes so far.) China has used its leverage to get North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il to rejoin negotiations over its nuclear program after a lengthy hiatus, and Obama is eager to engage - to Beijing's enormous relief. "Kick the can down the road" is its guiding principle in nuclear diplomacy, whether in its backyard (North Korea) or farther afield (Iran). China, first and foremost, wants stability on its border, and not even North Korea going nuclear did much to change that equation.China also needs Iran's energy exports, and anything that mucks that up - like tougher sanctions - is unlikely to interest Hu.
For now, Hu has what he wants in respect to North Korea - both Pyongyang and Washington are willing to resume talks. Keeping the Iran nuclear stalemate off the boil won't be as easy. Obama said on Tuesday that if Iran failed to assure the outside world that its nuclear intentions were "peaceful," there would be "consequences." For the record, that's not a phrase the Chinese came anywhere close to using.
Three times in the last four years, Beijing has voted for limited sanctions against Iran at the U.N. And right now, insists senior Administration adviser David Axelrod, "there is more unity than there has ever been in dealing with Iran." But such unity is based on the U.S.'s emphasizing diplomacy rather than ratcheting up pressure on Tehran. How long it will last is one of the questions Obama will have to worry about on his long flight home.
This post has been edited by MSantor on Nov 19 2009, 08:59 AM
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People who are truly strong help the weak, not step on them. ----------------------------------------------------------------------
(it's 21+ MB; lots of pretty pictures for various government officials )
The bulk of the PLA efforts has centered around three areas:
QUOTE
Anti-Surface Warfare: The PLA(N) has more than quadrupled the number of submarines capable offiring anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCM), installed missiles with longer ranges and more sophisticated guidance packages on its surface combatants, built over 50 highspeed ASCM-carrying patrol craft, and developed the world's only anti-ship ballistic missile.
Naval Air Defense: Historically a weak area for the PLA(N), its newest combatants now feature mid and long-range surface-to-air missiles, and the Luyang II DDG possesses a sophisticated phased-array radar system similar to the western AEGIS radar.
Force Projection: China has increased its underway replenishment capability by 67 percent, allowing greater sustainment of operations far from shore. China has also constructed a large amphibious ship (Yuzhao LPD) and a hospital ship (Anwei AH), which could be used either for humanitarian reliefmissions or support to amphibious combat. Finally, China is refurbishing an aircraft carrier bought from Ukraine and plans to build its own within the next five to ten years.
I suspect PRC's focus continues to remain focused on the East Asian region, with Taiwan being a constant thorn.
The summary states that China has developed the world's only anti-ship ballistic missile [possibly a DF21 MRBM variant], specifically designed to defeat U.S. carrier strike groups in the event of military conflict over Taiwan. Closer reading, however, indicates that it's still very much in the experimental stages.
This post has been edited by MSantor on Nov 23 2009, 10:43 AM
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People who are truly strong help the weak, not step on them. ----------------------------------------------------------------------
China Watch, PLA/PLAN/PLAAF updates
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