Washington believes President Obama was made to appear weak
MORE than half of Chinese people questioned in a poll believe China and America are heading for a new “cold war”.
The finding came after battles over Taiwan, Tibet, trade, climate change, internet freedom and human rights which have poisoned relations in the three months since President Barack Obama made a fruitless visit to Beijing.
According to diplomatic sources, a rancorous postmortem examination is under way inside the US government, led by officials who think the president was badly advised and was made to appear weak.
In China’s eyes, the American response — which includes a pledge by Obama to get tougher on trade — is a reaction against its rising power.
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Now almost 55% of those questioned for Global Times, a state-run newspaper, agree that “a cold war will break out between the US and China”.
An independent survey of Chinese-language media for The Sunday Times has found army and navy officers predicting a military showdown and political leaders calling for China to sell more arms to America’s foes.
The trigger for their fury was Obama’s decision to sell $6.4 billion (£4 billion) worth of weapons to Taiwan, the thriving democratic island that has ruled itself since 1949.
“We should retaliate with an eye for an eye and sell arms to Iran, North Korea, Syria, Cuba and Venezuela,” declared Liu Menxiong, a member of the Chinese people’s political consultative conference.
He added: “We have nothing to be afraid of.
The North Koreans have stood up to America and has anything happened to them?No.
Iran stands up to America and does disaster befall it? No.”
Officially, China has reacted by threatening sanctions against American companies selling arms to Taiwan and cancelling military visits.
But Chinese analysts think the leadership, riding a wave of patriotism as the year of the tiger dawns, may go further.
“This time China must punish the US,” said Major-General Yang Yi, a naval officer. “We must make them hurt.”
A major-general in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), Luo Yuan, told a television audience that more missiles would be deployed against Taiwan.
And a PLA strategist, Colonel Meng Xianging, said China would “qualitatively upgrade” its military over the next 10 years to force a showdown “when we’re strong enough for a hand-to-hand fight with the US”.
Chinese indignation was compounded when the White House said Obama would meet the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet, in the next few weeks.
“When someone spits on you, you have to get back,” said Huang Xiangyang, a commentator in the China Daily newspaper, usually seen as a showcase for moderate opinion.
An internal publication at the elite Qinghua University last week predicted the strains would get worse because “core interests” were at risk. It said battles over exports, technology transfer, copyright piracy and the value of China’s currency, the yuan, would be fierce.
As a crescendo of strident nationalistic rhetoric swirls through the Chinese media and blogosphere, American officials seem baffled by what has gone wrong and how fast it has happened.
During Obama’s visit, the US ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman, claimed relations were “really at an all-time high in terms of the bilateral atmosphere ... a cruising altitude that is higher than any other time in recent memory”, according to an official transcript.
The ambassador must have been the only person at his embassy to think so, said a diplomat close to the talks.
“The truth was that the atmosphere was cold and intransigent when the president went to Beijing yet his China team went on pretending that everything was fine,” the diplomat said.
In reality, Chinese officials argued over every item of protocol, rigged a town hall meeting with a pre-selected audience, censored the only interview Obama gave to a Chinese newspaper and forbade the Americans to use their own helicopters to fly him to the Great Wall.
President Hu Jintao refused to give an inch on Obama’s plea to raise the value of the Chinese currency, while his vague promises of co-operation on climate change led the Americans to blunder into a fiasco at the Copenhagen summit three weeks later.
Diplomats say they have been told that there was “frigid” personal chemistry between Obama and the Chinese president, with none of the superficial friendship struck up by previous leaders of the two nations.
Yet after their meeting Obama’s China adviser, Jeff Bader, said: “It’s been highly successful in setting out and accomplishing the objectives we set ourselves.”
Then came Copenhagen, where Obama virtually had to force his way with his bodyguards into a conference room where the urbane Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, was trying to strike a deal behind his back.
The Americans were also livid at what they saw as deliberate Chinese attempts to humiliate the president by sending lower-level officials to deal with him.
“They thought Obama was weak and they were testing him,” said a European diplomat based in China.
In Beijing, some diplomats even claim to detect a condescending attitude towards Obama, noting that Yang Jiechi, the foreign minister, prides himself on knowing the Bush dynasty and others among America’s traditional white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant elite.
But there are a few voices urging caution on Chinese public opinion. “China will look unreal if it behaves aggressively and competes for global leadership,” wrote Wang Yusheng, a retired diplomat, in the China Daily.
He warned that China was not as rich or as powerful as America or Japan and therefore such a move could be “hazardous”.
It is not clear whether anyone in Beijing is listening.
February 8th, 2010, 21:56
vector7
Re: China's relationship with the US begining to turn Cold
US and China havent been on great terms as of late because the Americans are sending $6.3 billion worth of arms to Taiwan - the Americans are trying to provoke China into helping them impose sanctioning Iran to try to halt Tehran's nuclear ambitions. China got really upset at the arms sale and threatened sanctions against US companies supplying the arms, suspended key military-to-military contacts, and warned Obama that his planned meeting with the Dalai Lama will further damage U.S.-China relations.
February 8th, 2010, 23:43
vector7
Re: China's relationship with the US begining to turn Cold
Feb. 1 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. military is drawing up a new air-sea battle plan in response to threats such as China’s persistent military buildup and Iran’s possession of advanced weapons, according to the Pentagon’s latest strategy review.
The Air Force and Navy are seeking more effective ways to ensure continued access to the western Pacific and counter potential threats to American bases and personnel, according to the Quadrennial Defense Review that was released today along with the Pentagon’s proposed budget for fiscal 2011.
The joint Air Force-Navy plan would combine the strengths of each service to conduct long-range strikes that could utilize a new generation of bombers, a new cruise missile and drones launched from aircraft carriers. The Navy also is increasing funding to develop an unmanned underwater vehicle, according to the report.
The battle plan is among a range of new initiatives outlined in the review, which is conducted every four years to revise U.S. military strategy for the coming decade or more. The new report places top priority on the fights in Afghanistan and Iraq and against terrorist threats elsewhere, while also preparing for future threats.
“This is truly a wartime QDR,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote in a cover letter for the report. “For the first time, it places the current conflicts at the top of our budgeting, policy and program priorities.”
Two-War Capability
The review deemphasizes but does not abandon the Pentagon’s doctrine that calls for the military to be able to fight two major wars nearly simultaneously. It acknowledges this mission but says planning should focus more closely on other scenarios, such as irregular warfare including conflicts involving insurgents or drug traffickers and even humanitarian disasters.
“In the mid- to long-term, U.S. military forces must plan and prepare to prevail in a broad range of operations that may occur in multiple theaters in overlapping time frames,” the Defense Department says in the review.
“This includes maintaining the ability to prevail against two capable nation-state aggressors,” it states.
Gates said the wider array of threats includes “sophisticated new technologies to deny our forces access” to areas of the sea, air, space and cyberspace. Briefing reporters at the Pentagon today, Gates also cited the threat of al-Qaeda and other groups “developing more cunning and destructive means to attack and terrorize.”
“We have learned through painful experience that the wars we fight are seldom the wars we planned,” Gates said. “As a result, the United States needs a broad portfolio of military capabilities, with maximum versatility across the widest possible spectrum of conflicts.”
Tensions With China
Alluding to China in his cover letter, Gates cited longer- term threats such as “the military modernization programs of other countries.”
U.S. officials have often called on their Chinese counterparts to provide explanations and assurances that their moves are purely defensive. The two countries resumed military talks last June, then China halted visits again over the Defense Department’s Jan. 29 announcement of a new arms sale to Taiwan. Gates said today he still plans to visit China this year.
“I hope that, if there is a downturn” in relations, “that it will be a temporary one and that we can get back to strengthening this relationship,” Gates said today.
Assurances Lacking
China is developing and deploying “large numbers” of advanced missiles, new attack submarines, long-range air defense systems and capabilities to wage electronic warfare and target computer systems, according to the report, which echoes an assessment of China’s military power issued almost a year ago.
China’s refusal to provide adequate assurances of its intentions raises “a number of legitimate questions regarding its long-term intentions,” the Pentagon says in the review.
Citing “more complex” security conditions in the region, including North Korea and terrorist threats in Southeast Asia, the review calls for “a more widely distributed” and flexible U.S. presence in Asia that relies more on allies. Partners would include Australia, Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam.
Threat From Iran
In the Middle East, Iran is fielding small attack boats in the Persian Gulf, a development that U.S. officials have cited in the past. That compounds the threat to naval operations from the acquisition by Iran and other nations of weapons such as quiet submarines and advanced cruise missiles that can target ships, according to the report.
Iran also has provided drones and shoulder-fired missiles to the Islamic militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Russia and other nations have contributed to the spread of surface-to- air missiles, the department said.
Among the solutions proposed are more ways to deploy U.S. forces abroad, such as naval assets, “in regions facing new challenges.”
Existing bases also need to be either hardened to protect against potential attacks or reinforced with backup locations or by dispersing them in multiple places, the department concluded.
The Pentagon has about 400,000 U.S. military personnel stationed overseas, either in war zones or elsewhere. The review emphasizes “taking care of our people” serving in multiple long deployments that take a “significant toll” on them and their families.
“We now recognize that America’s ability to deal with threats for years to come will depend importantly on our success in the current conflicts,” Gates said in his remarks at the Pentagon.
Other Concerns
In addition to supporting existing wars, the quadrennial review emphasizes the need for more unmanned aircraft, intelligence, special forces, helicopters and long-range strike capabilities as well as skills such as foreign languages and training of foreign military forces.
The U.S. military also must find better and faster ways to strengthen foreign allies and partners to share the burden, the Pentagon said.
The Pentagon should continue to maintain a nuclear arsenal as a “core mission” until “such time as the administration’s goal of a world free of nuclear weapons is achieved,” according to the report.
The potential threat of cyber attacks and the need to conduct “high-tempo operations” will require more expertise in that field and centralized command of cyber operations, the department said.
Climate Change
This year’s review also is the first to address the effects of climate change and energy dependence, Michele Flournoy, the undersecretary of defense for policy, said in a Pentagon briefing.
Climate change might create “a new operating environment in the Arctic” and increase the demand for U.S. forces in humanitarian disasters, she said.
The military’s dependence on energy for its operations also creates a vulnerability that the Pentagon aims to reduce, Flournoy said.
“We see an extremely complex environment with a multiplicity of challenges,” she said. “And we can’t afford to ignore any of them.”
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?...NA-ANNIVERSARY
Members of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force Aviation stand at attention during a training session at the 60th National Day Parade Village in the outskirts of Beijing, September 15, 2009.
Credit: Reuters/Joe Chan
BEIJING (Reuters) - Senior Chinese military officers have proposed that their country boost defense spending, adjust PLA deployments, and possibly sell some U.S. bonds to punish Washington for its latest round of arms sales to Taiwan.
The calls for broad retaliation over the planned U.S. weapons sales to the disputed island came from officers at China's National Defence University and Academy of Military Sciences, interviewed by Outlook Weekly, a Chinese-language magazine published by the official Xinhua news agency.
The interviews with Major Generals Zhu Chenghu and Luo Yuan and Senior Colonel Ke Chunqiao appeared in the issue published on Monday.
The People's Liberation Army (PLA) plays no role in setting policy for China's foreign exchange holdings. Officials in charge of that area have given no sign of any moves to sell U.S. Treasury bonds over the weapons sales, a move that could alarm markets and damage the value of China's own holdings.
While far from representing fixed government policy, the open demands for retaliation by the PLA officers underscored the domestic pressures on Beijing to deliver on its threats to punish the Obama administration over the arms sales.
"Our retaliation should not be restricted to merely military matters, and we should adopt a strategic package of counter-punches covering politics, military affairs, diplomacy and economics to treat both the symptoms and root cause of this disease," said Luo Yuan, a researcher at the Academy of Military Sciences.
"Just like two people rowing a boat, if the United States first throws the strokes into chaos, then so must we."
Luo said Beijing could "attack by oblique means and stealthy feints" to make its point in Washington.
"For example, we could sanction them using economic means, such as dumping some U.S. government bonds," Luo said.
The warnings from the PLA come after weeks of strains between Washington and Beijing, who have also been at odds over Internet controls and hacking, trade and currency quarrels, and President Barack Obama's planned meeting with the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader reviled by China as a "separatist."
MILITARY SPENDING BOOST
Chinese has blasted the United States over the planned $6.4 billion arms package for Taiwan unveiled in late January, saying it will sanction U.S. firms that sell weapons to the self-ruled island that Beijing considers a breakaway province of China.
China is likely to unveil its official military budget for 2010 next month, when the Communist Party-controlled national parliament meets for its annual session.
The PLA officers suggested that budget should mirror China's ire toward Washington.
"Clearly propose that due to the threat in the Taiwan Sea, we are increasing military spending," said Luo.
Last year, the government set the official military budget at 480.7 billion yuan ($70.4 billion), a 14.9 percent rise on the one in 2008, continuing a nearly unbroken succession of double-digit increases over more than two decades.
The fresh U.S. arms sales threatened Chinese military installations on the mainland coast facing Taiwan, and "this gives us no choice but to increase defense spending and adjust (military) deployments," said Zhu Chenghu, a major general at China's National Defence University in Beijing.
In 2005, Zhu stirred controversy by suggesting China could use nuclear weapons if the United States intervened militarily in a conflict over Taiwan.
The United States switched official recognition from Taiwan to China in 1979. But the Taiwan Relations Act, passed the same year, guarantees Taiwan a continued supply of defensive weapons.
China has the world's biggest pile of foreign currency reserves, much of it held in U.S. treasury debt. China held $798.9 billion in U.S. Treasuries at end-October.
But any attempt to use that stake against Washington would probably maul the value of China's own dollar-denominated assets.
China has condemned previous arms sales, but has taken little action in response to them. But Luo said the country's growing strength meant that time has passed.
"China's attitude and actions over U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan will be increasingly tough," the magazine cited him as saying. "That is inevitable with rising national strength."
The simmering difficulties in the US strategic relationship with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) were, by the beginning of 2010, ready to emerge despite the attempts of the US Administration of Pres. Barack Obama to show a pattern of deference to Beijing.
But the internal US economic policies, leading to the de facto devaluation of the US dollar, seemed, if anything, a deliberate move to devalue the worth of the PRC’s massive investments in US dollar instruments. All that was needed to cause Beijing to vent its frustrations with the US — quite apart from major differences over the demand for Beijing to make economic and social investments in redressing alleged “climate change” — were additional seeming insults to the PRC’s sovereignty and pride.
US allegations that the PRC Government was censoring the Google online search engine in China — which evidence indicates was the case — highlighted the sensitivity of Beijing which collectively recognizes (a) the potential of the electronic media to cause social unrest, and (b) the delicacy of the PRC to any social and economic unrest occurring in the near future.
The most significant pretext, however, was the US decision to move ahead with its $6.4-billion defence equipment sales package to the Republic of China (ROC: Taiwan), which was announced by the US Defence Department on January 29, 2010. Given historical precedent, Beijing had no option but to react negatively to the sale, and hoped its early threats of damage to US-PRC relations would sway the now left-leaning US Congress to refuse sanction for the sale, an unlikely occurrence, but one which had a 30-day window of opportunity, the time during which Congress can veto an Administration foreign military sale after it has been proposed.
Perhaps most importantly, however, the incident gave Beijing the long-awaited opportunity to break completely with the US-led packages of measures on trade, economic approaches, and “climate change” accords, which were perceived as being highly detrimental to the PRC’s need to control its domestic agenda and the foreign resources acquisitions needed to support it. Thus, competition between the PRC and the West in Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia (not to mention East Asia) will intensify with less regard for niceties.
This will, Defense & Foreign Affairs analysts believe, lead to the more rapid coalescing of new strategic blocs, some of which will be expedient and temporary, including the Russo-Chinese alliance using the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as a basis. Within this framework, the PRC will pursue its fundamental and long-term alliance relationships with Pakistan and Myanmar, and in both these countries the development of communications infrastructure linking the PRC with the Indian Ocean can be expected to take precedence. Indeed, the PRC will need to move quickly to ensure that it continues to exert strong influence over the Myanmar Government after the late-2010 elections which could see the military leadership out of the national leadership.
The PRC will attempt to further demonstrate that its strategic relationship with the Iranian Government is separate and equal to the Russo-Iranian relationship, but more friendly to Tehran than Moscow. But there is no escaping Beijing’s need to remain close with Moscow in order to access all of the pipelines linking it through Central Asia to Iran, and then on through Turkey to Europe.
US media speculation that the PRC would support, or not interfere with, a new US-led sanctions regime against Iran — over Iran’s continued pursuit of an indigenous nuclear weapons program — are, according to Defense & Foreign Affairs analysts, naïve. Firstly, the PRC is, with Russia, the major facilitator of trade access to and from Iran and neither will jeopardize its influence with Tehran and the benefits derived there from. That would be akin to suggesting that the Great Game for control of Central Asia and Persia had not just been won by Russia and its allies (in this case, the PRC).
This leads inevitably to the reality that Iran will — with US sensibilities now less of an issue in Beijing or Moscow — be invited to become a full member of the SCO, with the implied military protection of Iran from external attack (“an attack on one is an attack on all”), either formally or de facto.
Most significantly, the changing trends mean that the PRC will no longer have to mask its growing interest in the Indian Ocean and its intention to compete there with the US as well as India. The PRC in January 2010 made it clear that it needed what could be called “temporary home porting” in Gwadar, the Pakistani port being developed by the PRC, of its PLA Navy vessels in the Indian Ocean so that crews could get their necessary shore-time and ships could be revictualed.
The ROC, meanwhile, has a brief respite to build relations with Washington, now that the strenuously leftist Administration of Barack Obama has been rebuffed by the state it felt was a natural ally, the PRC. But within this taut web of competition and dependencies, the US and the PRC will remain careful not to push each other too far.
February 12th, 2010, 17:11
American Patriot
Re: China's relationship with the US begining to turn Cold
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?...A-CHINA-TAIWAN A recruit of China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) attend a training shoot at a military base in Changzhi, Shanxi province, February 1, 2010. Credit: Reuters/Stringer
BEIJING (Reuters) - China should build the world's strongest military and move swiftly to topple the United States as the global "champion," a senior Chinese PLA officer says in a new book reflecting swelling nationalist ambitions.
The call for China to abandon modesty about its global goals and "sprint to become world number one" comes from a People's Liberation Army (PLA) Senior Colonel, Liu Mingfu, who warns that his nation's ascent will alarm Washington, risking war despite Beijing's hopes for a "peaceful rise."
"China's big goal in the 21st century is to become world number one, the top power," Liu writes in his newly published Chinese-language book, "The China Dream."
"If China in the 21st century cannot become world number one, cannot become the top power, then inevitably it will become a straggler that is cast aside," writes Liu, a professor at the elite National Defense University, which trains rising officers.
His 303-page book stands out for its boldness even in a recent chorus of strident Chinese voices demanding a hard shove back against Washington over trade, Tibet, human rights, and arms sales to Taiwan, the self-ruled island Beijing claims as its own.
"As long as China seeks to rise to become world number one ... then even if China is even more capitalist than the U.S., the U.S. will still be determined to contain it," writes Liu.
Rivalry between the two powers is a "competition to be the leading country, a conflict over who rises and falls to dominate the world," says Liu. "To save itself, to save the world, China must prepare to become the (world's) helmsman."
"The China Dream" does not represent government policy, which has been far less strident about the nation's goals.
Liu's book testifies to the homegrown pressures on China's Communist Party leadership to show the country's fast economic growth is translating into greater sway against the West, still mired in an economic slowdown.
The next marker of how China's leaders are handling these swelling expectations may come later this week, when the government is likely to announce its defense budget for 2010, after a 14.9 percent rise last year on the one in 2008.
"This book represents my personal views, but I think it also reflects a tide of thought," Liu told Reuters in an interview. "We need a military rise as well as an economic rise."
Another PLA officer has said this year's defense budget should send a defiant signal to Washington after the Obama administration went ahead in January with long-known plans to sell $6.4 billion worth of arms to Taiwan.
"I think one part of 'public opinion' that the leadership pays attention to is elite opinion, and that includes the PLA," said Alan Romberg, an expert on China and Taiwan at the Henry L. Stimson Center, an institute in Washington D.C.
"I think the authorities are seeking to keep control of the reaction, even as they need to take (it) into account," Romberg said in an emailed response to questions.
Liu argues that China should use its growing revenues to become the world's biggest military power, so strong the United States "would not dare and would not be able to intervene in military conflict in the Taiwan Strait."
"If China's goal for military strength is not to pass the United States and Russia, then China is locking itself into being a third-rate military power," he writes. "Turn some money bags into bullet holders."
China's leaders do not want to jeopardize ties with the United States, a key trade partner and still by far the world's biggest economy and military power.
Yet Chinese public ire, echoed on the Internet, means policy-makers have to tread more carefully when handling rival domestic and foreign demands, said Jin Canrong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing.
"Chinese society is changing, and you see that in all the domestic views now on what China should do about the United States," said Jin. "If society demands a stronger stance, ignoring that can bring a certain cost."
Liu's book was officially published in January, but is only now being sold in Beijing bookstores.
LIGHTING A FIRE IN AMERICA'S BACKYARD
In recent months, strains have widened between Beijing and Washington over trade, Internet controls, climate change, U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and President Barack Obama's meeting with Tibet's exiled leader, the Dalai Lama, who China reviles.
China has so far responded with angry words and a threat to sanction U.S. companies involved in the Taiwan arms sales. But it has not acted on that threat and has allowed a U.S. aircraft carrier to visit Hong Kong.
Over the weekend, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said he wanted trade friction with the United States to ease. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg is due to visit Beijing this week.
Liu and other PLA officers, however, say they see little chance of avoiding deepening rivalry with the United States, whether peaceful or warlike.
"I'm very pessimistic about the future," writes another PLA officer, Colonel Dai Xu, in another recently published book that claims China is largely surrounded by hostile or wary countries beholden to the United States.
"I believe that China cannot escape the calamity of war, and this calamity may come in the not-too-distant future, at most in 10 to 20 years," writes Dai.
"If the United States can light a fire in China's backyard, we can also light a fire in their backyard," warns Dai.
Liu said he hoped China and the United States could manage their rivalry through peaceful competition.
"In his State of the Union speech, Obama said the United States would never accept coming second-place, but if he reads my book he'll know China does not want to always be a runner-up," said Liu in the interview.
(Editing by Benjamin Kang Lim and Jeremy Laurence)
March 1st, 2010, 17:04
vector7
Re: China's relationship with the US begining to turn Cold
On May 24 in a vast meeting room inside the grounds of the state guesthouse at Diaoyutai in Beijing, Rear Adm. Guan Youfei of the People's Liberation Army rose to speak.
Known among U.S. officials as a senior "barbarian handler," which means that his job is to deal with foreigners, not lead troops, Guan faced about 65 American officials, part of the biggest delegation the U.S. government has ever sent to China.
Everything, Guan said, that is going right in U.S. relations with China is because of China. Everything, he continued, that is going wrong is the fault of the United States. Guan accused the United States of being a "hegemon" and of plotting to encircle China with strategic alliances. The official saved the bulk of his bile for U.S. arms sales to China's nemesis, Taiwan -- Guan said these prove that the United States views China as an enemy.
U.S. officials have since depicted Guan's three-minute jeremiad as an anomaly. A senior U.S. official traveling on Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's plane back to the United States dismissed it, saying it was "out of step" with the rest of the two-day Strategic and Economic Dialogue. And last week in Singapore, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates sought to portray not just Guan, but the whole of the People's Liberation Army, as an outlier intent on blocking better ties with Washington while the rest of China's government moves ahead.
But interviews in China with a wide range of experts, Chinese officials and military officers indicate that Guan's rant -- for all its discomfiting bluster -- actually represents the mainstream views of the Chinese Communist Party, and that perhaps the real outliers might be those in China's government who want to side with the United States.
Guan's speech underscored that 31 years after the United States and China normalized relations, there remains a deep distrust in Beijing.
That the United States is trying to keep China down is a central part of the party's catechism and a foundation of its claims to legitimacy.
More broadly, many Chinese security experts and officials view the Obama administration's policy of encouraging Chinese participation in solving the world's problems -- including climate change, the global financial crisis and the security challenges in Iran and North Korea -- not as attempts to elevate China into the ranks of global leadership but rather as a scheme to enmesh it in a paralyzing web of commitments.
"Admiral Guan was representing what all of us think about the United States in our hearts," a senior Chinese official, who deals with the United States regularly, said on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with a reporter. "It may not have been politically correct, but it wasn't an accident."
"It's silly to talk about factions when it comes to relations with the United States," said a general in the PLA who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. "The army follows the party. Do you really think that Guan did this unilaterally?"
China's fear of the United States was very much on display this past weekend during the Shangri-La Dialogue, where Gates and his Chinese counterparts clashed repeatedly throughout the program.
Gates said it was unnecessary for the PLA to hold the military relationship hostage because U.S. arms sales to Taiwan are, "quite frankly, old news." The United States has provided military assistance to Taiwan since 1949, when the Nationalist government of China fled to the island after the Communist victory on the mainland; this assistance did not stop when Washington normalized relations with Beijing in 1979.
"You, the Americans, are taking China as the enemy," countered Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu. Zhu rose to prominence in China in 2005 after he warned that if the United States came to Taiwan's defense in a war with China, Beijing would abandon its "no first use" doctrine on nuclear weapons and attack the United States.
In January, Washington announced a $6.4 billion arms package for Taiwan, prompting China to downgrade its military ties with the United States. China's stance on the issue is part of a concerted campaign to change a foundation of U.S. policy in the region -- its security relationship with Taiwan. At the very least, Chinese officials said, they want the Obama administration to reiterate a commitment it made in a joint communique with China in 1982 to decrease arms sales to Taiwan.
The U.S. framing of Guan's speech and the entire PLA as being out of step with the times is significant, analysts said, because the Obama administration could fall into a trap of expecting more from China than it can deliver. On the plane back to the United States, for example, U.S. officials predicted that despite Guan's outburst, China would welcome Gates and that it would also begin to side with South Korea against North Korea following the release of a report in Seoul implicating the regime of Kim Jong Il in the deadly sinking of a South Korean warship on March 26. China did neither, and interviews with PLA officers indicate that the military is highly suspicious of the South Korean report.
U.S. officials have also expressed the hope that China would work harder to press Iran, for example, to engage in talks on its nuclear weapons program. The United States also wants China's cooperation on slapping new sanctions on Tehran. China has shown more flexibility on this issue, but it is still unclear whether it will ultimately support sanctions.
Chinese analysts say the Obama administration ignores what China calls its "core national interests" -- especially U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan -- at its peril.
"For years, China has opposed arms sales to Taiwan among other things, but we were never strong enough to do anything about it," said Cui Liru, the president of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, a think tank run by the Ministry of State Security. "But our national strength has grown. And it is time that the United States pay attention."
"This is not just a talking point that can be dismissed by your government," he continued. "It is something that must be dealt with or it will seriously damage ties."
June 10th, 2010, 21:51
vector7
Re: China's relationship with the US begining to turn Cold
Recap: The decline of the US space programs so far under Obama
NASA researchers have tested a spacesuit intended for missions to Mars. The tests were conducted at a base in the Antarctic. It is believed that the low temperatures of the continent closely resemble conditions on the red planet.
The creator of the suit, Argentine engineer Pablo de Leon, personally tried out the suit and was pleased with its performance.
The suit consists of 350 different materials and costs about 100 thousand dollars. Earlier, U.S. President Barack Obama said that NASA may be sending astronauts to Martian orbit in 20-25 years.
Obama Ruins Kid’s Day
In 2011, China launched more rockets into orbit than the U.S.—the first time ever, according to Gizmodo. Though the U.S. retains advantages in funding, the Chinese launched 19 rockets last year, while the U.S. launched 18; both were eclipsed by Russia, which sent 31 rockets into space.
When asked for advice Tuesday by a WUSA9 reporter, former Discovery astronaut Dr. Anna Fisher told a boy watching the shuttle, “Study Russian.”
In June 2010 NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden, Jr., a retired Marine Corps major general, told Al Jazeera that one of his goals was “to reach out to and engage the Muslim world, making better known its historic contribution to science.”
Bolden now says it will take some motivation, perhaps from a not-so-friendly rival, for NASA to again be in a position to reach its goals.
Speaking to a group of midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Institute’s annual history conference in Annapolis, Md. on Saturday, Bolden speculated that if China were to make advances in space exploration, the United States might seek to follow suit. And based on that assumption, he said he was rooting for the rival nation on the other side of the Pacific.
“We haven’t talked about the Chinese,” Bolden said. “We can’t work with the Chinese right now. But I’m rooting for them. They’re probably going to put a spacecraft called Shenzhou into orbit here, hopefully by the end of the year. It’s going to be the first capsule of their space station. And the reason they are doing that is that we are not allowing them to be partners right now. So they’re going alone. They need to be successful to drive us.”
Bolden, the pilot of two space shuttle missions and the commander of two other space shuttle missions, predicted if the Chinese mission is successful, we should expect further moves by the Chinese next year. He also said that the United States doesn’t dominate space exploration like it once did and that the fact should be acknowledged.
Russia is schedualed to have 30 working satellites by 2020.
Quote:
China launches Beidou satellites
From: bbc Last Updated: May 19, 2012, 12:18 pm Russia's Glonass satellite network has 31 satellites in orbit, but only 24 are reported operational. Four more are in reserve, one undergoing trials, and two under maintenance.Moscow, Russia's deputy prime minister Vladislav Surkov said that more than 300 billion roubles (£6bn, $10.2bn) have been budgeted to further develop Glonass and bring 30 satellites into operation by 2020.
Going by the numbers Russia has already exceeded their 2020 goals to date.
Between both Russia and China that's 43 birds now in orbit with another 17 scheduled to go up soon.
Between them they have enough satellites to meet their 2020 goals TODAY.
There is already work integrating and grooming their precision for commercial uses:
Quote:
Launch will boost Beidou 2012-5-17 "It is better to encourage cooperation for compatibility," he said. "For example, if a navigator is compatible with Beidou and GPS and Russia's GLONASS, it will be much more precise."
Russia has been quietly working on their second generation tactical sat PMGs while unifying their Air and Space defenses under one command:
Last week, President Barack Obama was in Asia to declare a cold war with China. Hopefully the U.S.-China cold war won’t be like the one fought with the Soviet Union that brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation and cost trillions of dollars over 60 years.
The crux of the conflict is China’s attempt to assert its sovereignty over the South China Sea, a resource-rich conduit for roughly $5 trillion in annual global trade, of which $1.2 trillion is American, which U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared last year a matter of “national interest.”
Beijing’s assertive behavior in the South China Sea precipitated calls from Asian allies for the U.S. to deepen its involvement to be a strong counterweight. Those calls led to the formulation of Obama’s new Asia strategy, which administration officials admit changes America’s “military posture toward China” into something like the former East-West cold war. The first shots of the new war were heard last week.
President Obama, while traveling in Asia, fired the first rounds of the cold war when he declared the U.S. is a “Pacific nation,” and we intend to play "a larger and long-term role in shaping this region and its future.”
“I have directed my national security team to make our presence and missions in the Asia Pacific a top priority,” Obama said. The region “is absolutely vital not only for our economy but also for our national security,” and then the President and his representatives unveiled an avalanche of cold war-like initiatives intended to counter China’s influence.
The U.S. will increase its military presence in Asia. Obama announced an agreement to permanently station 2,500 Marines in Australia, and to increase combat aircraft such as B-52 bombers and aircraft carriers traveling to Australia. This compliments 28,000 troops already stationed in South Korea, and 50,000 in Japan.
Ally Singapore promised to provide basing for U.S. littoral combat ships, and Vietnam invited the U.S. Navy to use the Cam Ranh Bay port for provisioning and repairs.
Last Friday, Obama announced plans to supply 24 refurbished F-16C/D fighter aircraft to Indonesia, the administration restated its arms commitment to China-rival Taiwan, and the administration is considering offering the Philippines a second destroyer. Also last week, Clinton was in Manila to mark the 60th anniversary of the U.S.-Philippine Mutual Defense Treaty, to discuss regional issues, and then she traveled to Thailand to bolster that relationship.
After Clinton’s meeting with Philippine officials, Albert del Rosario, the Philippines’ foreign minister, issued a statement urging the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to play a more decisive role in the South China Sea crisis. Many ASEAN partners have already promised to increase their naval spending, adding patrol craft and submarines, according to the Wall Street Journal.
On the economic front, Obama announced an Asia Pacific free trade deal, called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, that excludes Beijing. He also used the trip as an opportunity to admonish the Chinese to “play by the rules” and repeatedly criticized Beijing for undervaluing their currency, which makes American goods more expensive.
On the diplomatic front, Obama attended the East Asia Summit (EAS) in Bali, Indonesia—the first time an American president has attended the annual event. Obama wants the EAS to serve as a decision-making body for policy in the region.
Consider Beijing’s behavior that precipitated these cold war initiatives and how Obama’s Asia strategy might play out.
First, China’s actions and rhetoric regarding the South China Sea are warlike. It claims “indisputable” sovereignty over 90% of the sea in order to gain maximum access to about a tenth of the world’s commercial seafood and oil and gas reserves that could rival those of Kuwait. It threatens international oil firms that sign deals with South China Sea countries and Chinese warships routinely harass ships in contested waters.
China’s semi-official Global Times wrote, “If these countries don’t want to change their ways with China, they will need to prepare for the sound of cannons.” The Times was referring to the 750 Spratley Islands in the South China Sea, which are contested by Asian states such as Vietnam.
China’s aggressive behavior and threatening rhetoric are complemented by massive militarization. Beijing is projecting military power far from its shores with a rapidly growing, modern blue-water navy, long-range aircraft with refueling capabilities, a global satellite network, anti-access ballistic missiles (read aircraft carrier killers) and its first aircraft carrier. These instruments of war provide Beijing an expeditionary capability that could lead to a shooting war.
The U.S. established a cold war-like hotline between China’s People's Liberation Army and the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff in anticipation of military tensions. Vice Admiral Scott Swift, the new commander of the U.S. Seventh Fleet that patrols the South China Sea, hopes the hotline will prevent inevitable “brushups” from triggering “tactical miscalculations.”
Second, China’s trade practices are undercutting American and regional allies’ economic influence. Obama said, “When it comes to their economic practices, there are a range of things [the Chinese] have done that disadvantage not just the U.S. but a whole host of their trading partners.” Obama expressed widespread frustration at an Asian news conference when he said, “The United States and other countries … feel that enough is enough.”
Last week, Obama met with Chinese President Hu Jintao to express U.S. concerns on economic issues including currency. China’s currency, the yuan, which is pegged to the U.S. dollar, makes its exports cheaper than those made in America. But China argues it has allowed the yuan to appreciate 6.7% since 2010, and the U.S. trade deficit and unemployment problems are not caused by the Chinese currency’s exchange rate.
Deng Yuwen, who writes for the China Daily, argues, “The major causes of Sino-U.S. trade imbalance are the differences in the two countries' investment and trade structure, savings ratio, consumption rate and division of industrial labor, and the unreasonable international currency system.”
Unfortunately, a U.S.-China trade war might become a component of the cold war if our differences are not quickly resolved. That would hurt China by transferring the import market to other economies. China might then respond by selling U.S. Treasuries, which could be a fatal blow to the dollar’s credit and do nothing for America’s unemployment problem.
Finally, China’s aggressive behavior is forcing Asian countries into a new political paradigm. They are coalescing around regional organizations such as ASEAN and inviting the U.S. to be a counterbalance to China. This is reminiscent of the formation of NATO in 1949 just as the Cold War with Russia started.
NATO started as a political association that galvanized into a military structure with the advent of the Korean War. Lord Ismay, the first NATO secretary general, famously stated the organization’s goal as “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” Perhaps Asia’s “NATO” will embrace a similar goal that keeps the Chinese down and the Americans in the region as a security blanket for decades to come.
Thomas Donilon, Obama’s national security adviser, argued the U.S. needs to “rebalance” its strategic emphasis, from Mideast combat theaters toward Asia, where he contends Washington has put too few resources in recent years. That may be true, but the administration had better be careful in its enthusiasm to counter China’s emergent power and not abandon shooting wars in the Mideast just to join other more complex, expansive and incredibly expensive wars in Asia.
China's vast military machine grows by the day. America's sending troops to Australia in response. As tension between the two superpowers escalates, Max Hastings warns of a terrifying threat to world peace.
On the evening of November 1, 1950, 22-year-old Private Carl Simon of the U.S. 8th Cavalry lay shivering with his comrades in the icy mountains of North Korea.
A patrol had just reported itself ‘under attack from unidentified troops’, which bemused and dismayed the Americans, because their campaign to occupy North Korea seemed all but complete.
Suddenly, through the darkness came sounds of bugle calls, gunfire, shouts in a language that the 8th Cavalry’s Korean interpreters could not understand. A few minutes later, waves of attackers charged into the American positions, screaming, firing and throwing grenades.
‘There was just mass hysteria,’ Simon told me long afterwards. ‘It was every man for himself. I didn’t know which way to go. In the end, I just ran with the crowd. We ran and ran until the bugles grew fainter.’
This was the moment, of course, when the armies of Mao Tse-tung stunned the world by intervening in the Korean War. It had begun in June, when Communist North Korean forces invaded the South.
U.S. and British forces repelled the communists, fighting in the name of the United Nations, then pushed deep into North Korea. Seeing their ally on the brink of defeat, the Chinese determined to take a hand.
In barren mountains just a few miles south of their own border, in the winter of 1950 their troops achieved a stunning surprise. The Chinese drove the American interlopers hundreds of miles south before they themselves were pushed back. Eventually a front was stabilised and the situation sank into stalemate.
Three years later, the United States was thankful to get out of its unwanted war with China by accepting a compromise peace, along the armistice line which still divides the two Koreas today.
For most of the succeeding 58 years the U.S., even while suffering defeat in Vietnam, has sustained strategic dominance of the Indo-Pacific region, home to half the world’s population.
Yet suddenly, everything is changing. China’s new economic power is being matched by a military build-up which deeply alarms its Asian neighbours, and Washington. The spectre of armed conflict between the superpowers, unknown since the Korean War ended in 1953, looms once more.
American strategy guru Paul Stares says: ‘If past experience is any guide, the United States and China will find themselves embroiled in a serious crisis at some point in the future.’
The Chinese navy is growing fast, acquiring aircraft-carriers and sophisticated missile systems. Beijing makes no secret of its determination to rule the oil-rich South China Sea, heedless of the claims of others such as Vietnam and the Philippines.
The Chinese foreign minister recently gave a speech in which he reminded the nations of South-East Asia that they are small, while China is very big.
Michael Auslin of the American Enterprise Institute described these remarks as the diplomatic equivalent of the town bully saying to the neighbours: ‘We really hope nothing happens to your nice new car.’
This year, China has refused stormbound U.S. Navy vessels admission to its ports, and in January chose the occasion of a visit from the U.S. defence secretary to show off its new, sophisticated J-20 stealth combat aircraft.
Michael Auslin, like many other Americans, is infuriated by the brutishness with which the dragon is now flexing its military muscles: ‘We have a China that is undermining the global system that allowed it to get rich and powerful, a China that now feels a sense of grievance every time it is called to account for its disruptive behaviour.’
Washington was angered by Beijing’s careless response to North Korea’s unprovoked sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan a year ago, followed by its shelling of Yeonpyeong island, a South Korean archipelago.
When the U.S. Navy deployed warships in the Yellow Sea in a show of support for the South Korean government, Beijing denounced America, blandly denying North Korea’s guilt. The Chinese claimed that they were merely displaying even-handedness and restraint, but an exasperated President Obama said: ‘There’s a difference between restraint and wilful blindness to consistent problems.’
Washington is increasingly sensitive to the fact that its bases in the western Pacific have become vulnerable to Chinese missiles. This is one reason why last week the U.S. made a historic agreement with Australia to station up to 2,500 U.S. Marines in the north of the country.
Beijing denounced the deal, saying it was not ‘appropriate to intensify and expand military alliances and may not be in the interests of countries within this region’.
Even within Australia, the agreement for the U.S. base has provoked controversy.
Hugh White of the Australian National University calls it ‘a potentially risky move’. He argues that, in the new world, America should gracefully back down from its claims to exercise Indo-Pacific hegemony, ‘relinquish primacy in the region and share power with China and others’.
But Richard Haas, chairman of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, says: ‘U.S. policy must create a climate in which a rising China is never tempted to use its growing power coercively within or outside the region.’
To put the matter more bluntly, leading Americans fear that once the current big expansion of Chinese armed forces reaches maturity, within a decade or so, Beijing will have no bourgeois scruples about using force to get its way in the world — unless America and its allies are militarily strong enough to deter them.
Meanwhile, in Beijing’s corridors of power there is a fissure between the political and financial leadership, and the generals and admirals.
On the one hand, Chinese economic bosses are appalled by the current turmoil in the West’s financial system, which threatens the buying power of their biggest customers.
On the other, Chinese military chiefs gloat without embarrassment at the spectacle of weakened Western nations.
As America announces its intention to cut back defence spending, the Chinese armed forces see historic opportunities beckon. Ever since Mao Tse-tung gained control of his country in 1949, China has been striving to escape from what it sees as American containment.
The issue of Taiwan is a permanent open sore: the U.S. is absolutely committed to protecting its independence and freedom. Taiwan broke away from mainland China in 1949, when the rump of the defeated Nationalists under their leader Chiang Kai-shek fled to the island, and established their own government under an American security blanket.
China has never wavered in its view that the island was ‘stolen’ by the capitalists, and is determined to get it back.
Beijing was infuriated by America’s recent £4 billion arms deal with Taiwan which includes the sale of 114 Patriot anti-ballistic missiles, 60 Blackhawk helicopters and two minesweepers.
When I last visited China, I was struck by how strongly ordinary Chinese feel about Taiwan. They argue that the West’s refusal to acknowledge their sovereignty reflects a wider lack of recognition of their country’s new status in the world.
A young Beijinger named David Zhang says: ‘The most important thing for Americans to do is to stop being arrogant and talk with their counterparts in China on a basis of mutual respect.’ That is how many of his contemporaries feel, as citizens of the proud, assertive new China.
But how is the West supposed to do business with an Asian giant that is not merely utterly heedless of its own citizens’ human rights, but also supports some of the vilest regimes in the world, for its own commercial purposes?
Burma’s tyrannical military rulers would have been toppled years ago, but for the backing of the Chinese, who have huge investments there.
A million Chinese in Africa promote their country’s massive commercial offensive, designed to secure an armlock on the continent’s natural resources. To that end, following its declared policy of ‘non-interference’, China backs bloody tyrannies, foremost among them that of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.
China, like Russia, refuses to endorse more stringent sanctions against Iran, in response to its nuclear weapons-building programme, because Beijing wants Iranian oil. Indeed, Chinese foreign policy is bleakly consistent: it dismisses pleas from the world’s democracies that, as a new global force, it should play a part in sustaining world order.
If Chinese leaders — or indeed citizens — were speaking frankly, they would reply to their country’s critics: ‘The West has exploited the world order for centuries to suit itself. Now it is our turn to exploit it to suit ourselves.’
A friend of ours has recently been working closely with Chinese leaders in Hong Kong. I said to his wife that I could not withhold a touch of sympathy for a rising nation which, in the past, was mercilessly bullied by the West.
She responded: ‘Maybe, but when they are on top I don’t think they will be very kind.’ I fear that she is right. It seems hard to overstate the ruthlessness with which China is pursuing its purposes at home and abroad.
The country imprisons Nobel prizewinners such as the political activist and writer Liu Xiaobo, steals intellectual property and technological know-how from every nation with which it does business and strives to deny its people access to information through internet censorship.
The people of Tibet suffer relentless persecution from their Chinese occupiers, while Western leaders who meet the Dalai Lama are snubbed in consequence.
Other Asian nations are appalled by China’s campaign to dominate the Western Pacific. Japan’s fears of Chinese-North Korean behaviour are becoming so acute that the country might even abandon decades of eschewing nuclear weapons, to create a deterrent.
A few months ago, the Chinese party-controlled newspaper Global Times carried a harshly bellicose editorial, warning other nations not to frustrate Beijing’s ambitions in the South China Sea — Vietnam, for example, is building schools and roads to assert its sovereignty on a series of disputed islands also claimed by China.
The Beijing newspaper wrote: ‘If Vietnam continues to provoke China, China will . . . if necessary strike back with naval forces. If Vietnam wants to start a war, China has the confidence to destroy invading Vietnam battleships.’
This sort of violent language was familiar in the era of Mao Tse-tung, but jars painfully on Western susceptibilities in the 21st century. China’s official press has urged the government to boycott American companies that sell arms to Taiwan.
The Global Times, again, demands retaliation against the United States: ‘Let the Chinese people have the last word.’
Beyond mere sabre-rattling, China is conducting increasingly sophisticated cyber-warfare penetration of American corporate, military and government computer systems. For now, their purpose seems exploratory rather than destructive.
But the next time China and the United States find themselves in confrontation, a cyber-conflict seems highly likely. The potential impact of such action is devastating, in an era when computers control almost everything.
It would be extravagant to suggest that the United States and China are about to pick up a shooting war where they left off in November 1950, when Private Carl Simon suffered the shock of his young life on a North Korean hillside.
But we should be in no doubt, that China and the United States are squaring off for a historic Indo-Pacific confrontation.
Even if, for obvious economic reasons, China does not want outright war, few military men of any nationality doubt that the Pacific region is now the most plausible place in the world for a great power clash.
Michael Auslin of the American Enterprise Institute declares resoundingly: ‘America’s economic health and global leadership in the next generation depend on maintaining our role in the world’s most dynamic region.’
But the Chinese fiercely dissent from this view. It is hard to exaggerate the threat which this clash of wills poses for peace in Asia, and for us all, in the coming decades.
December 1st, 2011, 18:40
Toad
Re: U.S. and China Declare Cold War
Toad~ I honestly don't quite know where to put this.
Crude oil: US sanctions against Iran and China’s call for WW III
Last Updated : 01 December 2011 at 19:05 IST
Commodity Online
Iran's Crude Oil is once again targeted by the US as it spruces up to tighten its financial sanctions in a move to deter buyers of Iranian oil. China, has meanwhile threatened a third world war if the US does not stay away from Iran.
The US has been stepping up pressure after a report from the IAEA suggested that Iran may be developing nuclear weapons. Iran has rubbished the allegations by stating that the nuclear technology is being developed only for peaceful purposes. Oil is Iran's main source of revenue and pumped in $56 billion in the first 7 months of 2011, as per data by the Energy Department. As such, sanction on buying of Oil will strain the Iranian economy, the US believes.
France has also stepped forward to suggest that the EU stop all crude oil imports from Iran. The EU is however split on a decision.
In spite of all the sanctions of the West, crude oil is an important commodity and it is impossible to think that Iran, the third largest Crude Oil exporter, will have a hard time in finding buyers for Oil. Asia, especially China and India have increased their imports from Iran. The Chinese customs expect Iran to be the second largest crude supplier to China in 2011. India, meanwhile, has routed payments through Turkey after finding it difficult to pay for Iran's crude oil through Europe.
The aggression of the West has been met with strong words from both Russia and China, who have been warning of any attacks on Iran. A Chinese television reported China's Major General Zhang Zhaozhong as saying that China will not hesitate to protect Iran even with a Third World War in order to safeguard its domestic political needs.
Russia has also voiced similar sentiments regarding Syria with President Dmitry Medvedev publicly stating that he has put the missile attack early warning system in combat mode and will not tolerate any US missile defence system in Europe.
