China is Stirring: Why Now?

[Ryan Ruck]

China Sends Warplanes To Newly Declared Air Zone

November 28, 2013

China has sent warplanes to its newly declared air defence zone in the East China Sea, state media reports.

The vast zone, announced last week, covers territory claimed by China, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea.

China has said all planes transiting the zone must file flight plans and identify themselves, or face "defensive emergency measures".

But Japan, South Korea and the US have all since flown military aircraft through the area.

The new dispute in an already tense region has raised concerns it could escalate into an unplanned military incident.

China's state news agency Xinhua quoted air force spokesman Col Shen Jinke as saying several fighter jets and an early warning aircraft had been deployed to carry out routine patrols as "a defensive measure and in line with international common practices".

He said the country's air force would remain on high alert and would take measures to deal with all air threats to protect national security.

In Xinhua's Chinese language version of the article, the colonel said the aircraft would "strengthen the monitoring of targets in the air defence zone and do their duty".

'Destabilising'

The controversial air defence identification zone (ADIZ) includes islands known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, which are claimed by Japan, China and Taiwan.

Japan controls the islands, which have been the focus of a bitter and long-running dispute between Japan and China.

The zone also covers a submerged rock that South Korea says forms part of its territory.

China says the establishment of the zone was "completely justified and legitimate", but it has been widely condemned.

America, which called the move a "destabilising attempt to alter the status quo in the region", flew two unarmed B-52 bombers through the zone unannounced on Tuesday.

South Korea's Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se said on Wednesday that it had made "already tricky regional situations even more difficult to deal with".

Seoul said one of its military planes also entered the zone on Tuesday.

On Thursday, Japan said its aircraft had conducted routine "surveillance activity" over the East China Sea zone, but did not specify when.

"Even since China has created this airspace defence zone, we have continued our surveillance activities as before in the East China Sea, including in the zone," said Japan's top government spokesman, Yoshihide Suga.

"We are not going to change this [activity] out of consideration to China," he added.

South Korea and China held talks on the zone on Thursday, but failed to reach any agreement.

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US vows to help Japan defend status quo as China air defense row escalates


Joe Biden at a press conference with the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, in Tokyo. Photograph: Toru Yamanaka/AFP/Getty Images


The US and Japan will work together to prevent any attempt by China to change the status quo in the Asia-Pacific region, the US vice-president, Joe Biden, has said, on a visit to north-east Asia.


His comments came at the start of a week-long trip that will be dominated by rising tensions between China and Japan over a territorial dispute.
Biden, who will visit Japan, China and South Korea, is seeking to avoid escalation in the dispute, which intensified late last month when Beijing imposed an air defence identification zone (Adiz)] in an area of the East China Sea that includes the Senkaku islands – known as the Diaoyu islands in China – which Japan and China both lay claim to.
Washington has been downplaying reports of disagreements between the US and Japan over the issue; a senior administration official travelling with Biden insisted there was "no daylight" between the two countries.
Earlier in the day, Biden told reporters in Tokyo that the US-Japanese security arrangement was "the cornerstone of security not merely in the Pacific basic but the cornerstone upon which our security is built for the next 20 years or more".
Biden is accompanied on the Japanese-leg of the trip by Caroline Kennedy, the newly appointed US ambassador. A second senior official said the US intended to call on China to "exercise restraint" and "avoid any other destabilising actions", including a new declarations of air defence zones.
However, Biden and officials travelling with him have stopped short of calling on Beijing to "rescind" its declaration – a demand made by the state department on Monday.
Speaking in Tokyo at the start of a visit that was supposed to have focused on strengthening economic ties between the US and the region, Biden said he was "deeply concerned" about China's abrupt imposition of the zone, saying it would raise regional tensions and increase the risk of accidents and miscalculation.
Biden said he would raise US concerns with "great specificity" when he met the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, in Beijing later this week.
He stopped short of calling on Beijing to scrap the zone, calling for better communication between Japan and China, whose leaders have not held official talks since taking office. But he said China's move had "raised regional tensions and increased the risk of accidents and miscalculation".
China insisted it would not rescind the procedures governing the air defence zone, despite US calls for it to do so.
"The fact that China's announcement has caused confusion and increased the risk of accidents only further underscores the validity of concerns and the need for China to rescind the procedures," Jen Psaki, the chief spokeswoman for the state department, said on Monday.
The White House spokesman, Jay Carney, described the Chinese announcement of the zone nine days ago as "a provocative attempt to unilaterally change the status quo" that increased the risk of inadvertent confrontation.
While many countries – including the US and Japan – have similar zones, China's is controversial because it includes airspace over the disputed islands.
But on Tuesday the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Hong Lei, told reporters: "It is not China that has escalated the regional tensions. It is that some countries keep playing on the issue for their selfish gains, and China is firmly opposed to them doing that."
Hong urged other countries to respect China's actions, which he described as "justifiable and lawful". He added: "China established it [the zone] to safeguard sovereignty and the freedom and order of flight in the related airspace."
Concerns have grown of an accidental confrontation that could escalate. China said last week it had scrambled jets to monitor flights in the airspace by the US and Japan.
But Shen Dingli, an expert at Fudan University in Shanghai on US-China relations, said: "The US has not sent armed aircraft … China in turn does not send its fighters to fly towards B-52s."
He added: "There is no need to resolve the dispute: the dispute does not exist. The US is messing around by not observing China's unilateral action. But in a similar way, China will soon be in a position to reciprocate by not observing [the US] Adiz."
China's defence ministry said in a statement posted on its website on Tuesday that countries whose aircraft were not reporting their flight plans to China were "irresponsible". But it added that China considered the zone to be one of co-operation rather than confrontation.
The zone covers more than 600 miles from north to south, above international waters separating China, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan. China says all aircraft entering the zone must notify the Chinese authorities beforehand or face unspecified "emergency defensive measures". The rules apply to all aircraft passing through the zone, not just those heading towards Chinese airspace.
Japan and the US believe the zone is an attempt by China to assert control over the islands.
Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, said he and Biden had "confirmed we should not tolerate any attempt by China to change the status quo unilaterally by force".
Biden flew into Tokyo late on Monday faced with the delicate task of avoiding provoking China while demonstrating support for Japan, its main ally in a region already nervous about Chinese naval aggression and North Korea's nuclear weapons programme.
Behind US pleas for Japan and China to reduce tensions lie fears that an accident or miscalculation could quickly escalate into armed conflict.
The US raised hackles in Tokyo when it emerged that three US civilian airlines, acting on government advice, were complying with Chinese regulations and identifying their aircraft before flying through the zone.
US officials insisted, however, that the move did "not indicate US government acceptance of China's requirements". To underline Washington's opposition, two B-52 bombers flew into the area last week without notifying Chinese authorities. Japanese and South Korean military jets also flew through the zone in defiance of Chinese regulations.
But the decision to advise US civilian airlines to comply was less than the unequivocal show of support that Japan had hoped for. Japan, by contrast, has urged Japanese airlines to ignore China's demands to submit flight plans in advance.
"China's declaration of an air defence identification zone is an attempt to unilaterally change the status quo, which can invite unexpected situations and is an extremely dangerous act," Japan's chief cabinet secretary, Yoshihide Suga, told reporters before Biden's meeting with Abe.
"Japan and the United States share the position that China's Adiz is unacceptable … I think [Biden] will head to China to discuss various issues, including this, with his understanding of Japan's position."
On Monday, Chinese officials attempted to exploit divergences in the approaches of Washington and Tokyo. Hong Lei, a foreign ministry spokesman, told reporters in Beijing the US had showed a "constructive attitude" but dismissed Japan's "erroneous actions".
In an editorial, the Global Times, a tabloid published by the Chinese Communist party's official People's Daily, cautioned Biden against offering unrestrained support for Japan's position on the air defence zone.
"The only choice he has if he wants a successful trip [to China] is not to go too far in his words over there," it said. "If he openly supports Tokyo and wants to 'send an expedition to punish' Beijing, the Chinese people won't accept it."
Washington has refused to take sides in the simmering dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, a strategically important archipelago surrounded by rich fishing grounds and potentially large gas and mineral deposits.
But the US recognises Japan's administrative control over the territories – reinforced just over a year ago, when Japan's government effectively nationalised the islands – and is obliged by its bilateral security treaty with Japan to defend its ally, should the diplomatic row escalate.

[American Patriot]

Wonder who is gonna shoot first?

This is provocation, and deliberate.

This is like the school bully staking out the playground and denying access to the other kids.

[American Patriot]

Kim Jong Un’s Purge of His Uncle May Test Ties With China

The dramatic purge of Jang Song Thaek, uncle to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, highlights the ongoing power struggle in the Hermit Kingdom and Pyongyang's awkward relationship with China, its longtime ally
By Emily Rauhala / Beijing Dec. 09, 2013

Jung Yeon-Je / AFP / Getty ImagesA South Korean man watches TV news about the alleged dismissal of Jang Song Thaek, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un's uncle, at a railway station in Seoul on Dec. 3, 2013

North Korea today confirmed that Kim Jong Un‘s once-powerful uncle Jang Song Thaek, has been purged—and purged in a spectacular fashion.


In a television segment broadcast Monday, Jang, the erstwhile #2, is shown being arrested in front of an audience of top party members. State media kept up the drumbeat with charges Jang was “affected by the capitalist lifestyle,” and allegations ranging from economic mismanagement, to womanizing and drug use. “Jang pretended to uphold the party and leader,” reported KCNA, the party mouthpiece. “But was engrossed in such factional acts such as dreaming different dreams and involving himself in double-dealing behind the scene.”


‘Dreaming different dreams’ may be one of the stranger ways to accuse an official of what amounts to treason. But the charges against Jang seem to reflect the fact that there is to be one only vision for North Korea and one leader — Kim Jong Un. Kim’s tenure has seen a flurry of promotions, demotions and purges that suggest the young dictator is shoring up his base. “This is probably a step toward the consolidation of power under Kim,” says Scott Snyder, of the Council on Foreign Relations. “Jang Song Thaek was both his supporter and his biggest threat.”


(MORE: American Detained in North Korea Arrives Home in California)


Jang’s ouster is the biggest shakeup in North Korean politics since young Kim came to power. A long-time associate of Kim Jong Il, Jang was once seen as a regent to the young dictator. He also had strong patronage networks of his own, and within the ultra-conservative halls of North Korean power was seen as something of a liberal. He visited Seoul in 2002 and has made several official trips to China, most recently in August 2012.


These experiences seem to have made him a target, at least according to the official narrative, with state media lambasting his “depraved,” “capitalist” ways. And, it seems, he wasn’t just a capitalist, but a lousy capitalist. The excoriating KCNA report faults Jang for “throwing the state financial management system into confusion and committing such acts of treachery as selling off precious resources of the country at cheap prices”—a reference, in all likelihood, to China.


Although it is still too soon to know what Jang’s ouster will mean for North Korea, many wonder if his sacking could hurt Sino-DPRK ties. Jang was the principal North Korean backer for a joint economic zone near the Chinese city of Dandong. The site, officially called the Hwanggumpyeong Island Special Economic Zone, is supposed to bring North Koreans to work in Chinese factories and even play host to some banks.


But progress has been slow, says Adam Cathcart, who studies North Korea and China at Leeds University, mostly due to North Korea’s failure to get its economic house in order. A bridge to the area stands unfinished after 2.5 years—a rarity in China, where major infrastructure projects seem to spring up overnight. Just before Jang first went missing, North Korea announced a new, separate economic zone at Sinuijiu without consulting the Chinese. The whole Dandong project, Cathcart, says, “is just limping along.”


(MORE: Why China’s New Air-Defense Zone Matters)
Of course, the same might be said for Sino-North Korean relations. Mao Zedong famously said that North Korea and China were as “close as lips and teeth,” but the alliance has seen better days. China is frustrated by the north’s ongoing economic woes and believes that the Pyongyang’s nuclear theatrics led to the United States reinforcing its strategic position in East Asia.


But China is stuck with them for now.”The cost of sustaining the Kim regime may have increased and the benefits may have declined,” says Daniel Pinkston, the International Crisis Group’s deputy project Director for North East Asia, in a new report. “But the calculation remains that the potential consequences of cutting Pyongyang loose are unacceptable.”


Indeed, in an editorial published late Monday, China’s Global Times noted the ‘political’ nature of Jang’s fall, saying his removal reflected a split between those who emphasized economic development and those who are holding strong to the country’s ‘military first’ stance. In the end, though, Jang’s fall “won’t exert influence on East Asian dynamics,” they say. North Korea may wobble, but China will stand firm.


MORE: China and South Korea Plan to Build a Statue and Now Japan Is Upset

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This has nothing to do with the instability in the region with regard to Pyongyang.

Winter Games
China holds war games near Korean border


China holds war games near Korean border


Type 07 122mm cannon in PLA exercises near N. Korea in April / Source: Chinese Internet

BY: Bill Gertz
December 9, 2013 6:15 pm

China’s military is holding large-scale military maneuvers near the North Korean border amid new signs of political instability in Pyongyang.

U.S. military intelligence assets in Asia—including satellites, aircraft and ships—are monitoring the war games by the 39th Army Group that are part of the Shenyang military region.

A defense official said the war games are routine winter training and do not appear related to the ouster of No. 2 North Korean leader Jang Song Thaek, confirmed by the Pyongyang regime Sunday night.

The official pointed to a Chinese military newspaper report on the exercises.

The PLA Daily, the official military newspaper, reported Friday that the exercises began Dec. 4 and involved cold-weather operations of about 3,000 troops.

The maneuvers are taking place in the Changbai Mountains near China’s northeastern border with North Korea.

As part of the Chinese military’s efforts to increase realistic training, the exercises were carried out without site surveys or adaptation training before the winter season.

The exercises are said by the newspaper to simulate “real-war” training, a key theme of Chinese military training over the past several years.

“This training exercise will focus on researching movement, camouflage, billeting, command, and combat operations in the severely cold conditions of winter, and explore ways to build up the overall combat capabilities of units,” 39th Group Army Commander Gen. Pan Liangshi was quoted as saying.

Additionally, the war games will involve training with electromagnetic warfare operations, including jamming and other types of electronic warfare.

Cold weather preparations included the installation of heated fuel lines in wheeled vehicles and jump starter batteries for armored vehicles. Wheeled vehicles were fitted with chains.

Disclosure of the war games comes as North Korea’s communist government confirmed the ouster of Jang Song Thaek, the uncle of Kim Jong Un who is considered the No. 2 leader in North Korea.
North Korean state radio announced that Jang, a Politburo member and vice chairman of the powerful National Defense Commission, had been removed from his positions and stripped of all power.

Jang was shown on state television being arrested at a Party meeting.

The report said Jang was part of an “anti-party and counter-revolutionary” faction that was labeled “extremely dangerous.”

The faction was plotting within the ruling Workers Party of Korea to “challenge the party through factional maneuvers, while attempting to undermine the party’s monolithic leadership.”

According to the report, Jang and others committed “anti-state” and “anti-people” criminal acts and “double-dealing behind the scene [sic].”

Jang had been viewed as seeking closer ties to China and was involved in North Korea’s foreign economic relations.

He was accused of following the “capitalist way of life,” seeking to take personal control of North Korean economic development and of selling off North Korean resources as “giveaway prices.”

“The criminal acts committed by Jang Song Thaek and his followers are mind boggling, and they brought immensely harmful consequences to our party and revolution,” the report said.

China’s military in the past has conducted military war games near North Korea.

Chinese leaders fear a breakdown in order in North Korea will send thousands of refugees into China.

China conducted similar war games in the spring when tensions were high over North Korean threats to attack the south.

The military activities between March and April coincided with reports that North Korea was preparing to conduct new and destabilizing tests of mobile KN-08 missiles.

The spring exercises took place in Jilin province and reports from the region indicated Chinese forces had been ordered to be on a heightened state of alert.

Those movements included PLA heavy armored vehicles, including tanks and armored personnel carriers, which were reported moving near the Yalu River that separates China from North Korea.

There is no indication the latest military maneuvers involve a heightened alert status.


Biden Trying to Show US Still Focused on Asia

WASHINGTON November 30, 2013 (AP)
By JOSH LEDERMAN Associated Press




It's up to Vice President Joe Biden to show that the U.S. effort to realign its gaze toward Asia hasn't fizzled out.

Biden is set to arrive Monday in Tokyo on a weeklong trip to Asia, which is watching carefully to see how committed the Obama administration is to increasing America's influence in the region as a hedge against an increasingly assertive China.

In meetings with leaders in Japan, China and South Korea, the vice president will seek to show that while the administration has been preoccupied with Mideast flare-ups and a series of domestic distractions, the U.S. remained determined to be a Pacific power.

At the same time, disputes among Asian nations seem to be boiling over, threatening instability in a region that's vital to the U.S. economy.

American allies Japan and South Korea are barely speaking. China is butting heads with its neighbors and with the U.S. about Beijing's new air defense zone over a group of tiny islands that have exacerbated long-simmering territorial conflicts. The U.S. on Friday advised American civil aviation carriers to comply with China's demand that it be told of any flights passing through that defense zone.

Early in his presidency, Barack Obama declared the U.S. was "all in" when it came to the Asia-Pacific. His administration pledged to increase its influence, resources and diplomatic outreach in the region, and to bolster the U.S. military footprint so that by 2020, 60 percent of the Navy's warships would be based there, compared with 50 percent now.

The concern was that as China came into its own as a superpower, its sway over other Asian nations would grow, too.

But in Obama's second term, Iran, Syria and Egypt have absorbed the president's attention on foreign policy matters. At home, the administration has been consumed with a health care rollout that's become a major political problem, while intense gridlock in Congress has bogged Obama down in domestic disputes.

To cap it off, Obama had to scrap a much-anticipated trip to Asia in October because the federal government was shut down. His absence led many in the region to wonder if it remained an Obama priority.

Obama's national security adviser, Susan Rice, said recently it does. She announced that Obama will visit Asia in April and promised that the U.S. will keep deepening its commitment to Asia "no matter how many hot spots emerge elsewhere."

But Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, said he's heard loud concerns as he's traveled the region as the chairman of the House subcommittee dealing with Asia.

"In each country I've gotten this feedback: 'When do you think the president is going to put some meat on the bones?'" Chabot said. "It's been mostly just talk, and mostly diplomatic engagement. They want to get beyond just talk."

On his first stop, Biden will meet with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe before focusing on women's issues with the new U.S. ambassador, Caroline Kennedy. In Beijing, Biden will hold talks with China's president, Xi Jinping, vice president, Li Yuanchao, and premier, Li Keqiang.

After meeting with South Korean leaders in Seoul, Biden will give a major speech on the U.S.-Korea relationship at Yonsei University and lay a wreath at a cemetery honoring fallen U.S. troops.
The trip comes at a critical time.

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Chinese Naval Vessel Tries to Force U.S. Warship to Stop in International Waters

Landing ship sailed dangerously close to U.S. guided missile cruiser

The USS Cowpens / AP

BY: Bill Gertz
December 13, 2013 5:00 am

A Chinese naval vessel tried to force a U.S. guided missile warship to stop in international waters recently, causing a tense military standoff in the latest case of Chinese maritime harassment, according to defense officials.

The guided missile cruiser USSCowpens, which recently took part in disaster relief operations in the Philippines, was confronted by Chinese warships in the South China Sea near Beijing’s new aircraft carrier Liaoning, according to officials familiar with the incident.

“On December 5th, while lawfully operating in international waters in the South China Sea, USS Cowpens and a PLA Navy vessel had an encounter that required maneuvering to avoid a collision,” a Navy official said.

“This incident underscores the need to ensure the highest standards of professional seamanship, including communications between vessels, to mitigate the risk of an unintended incident or mishap.”

A State Department official said the U.S. government issued protests to China in both Washington and Beijing in both diplomatic and military channels.

The Cowpens was conducting surveillance of the Liaoning at the time. The carrier had recently sailed from the port of Qingdao on the northern Chinese coast into the South China Sea.

According to the officials, the run-in began after a Chinese navy vessel sent a hailing warning and ordered the Cowpens to stop. The cruiser continued on its course and refused the order because it was operating in international waters.

Then a Chinese tank landing ship sailed in front of the Cowpens and stopped, forcing the Cowpens to abruptly change course in what the officials said was a dangerous maneuver.

According to the officials, the Cowpens was conducting a routine operation done to exercise its freedom of navigation near the Chinese carrier when the incident occurred about a week ago.
The encounter was the type of incident that senior Pentagon officials recently warned could take place as a result of heightened tensions in the region over China’s declaration of an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea.

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently called China’s new air defense zone destabilizing and said it increased the risk of a military “miscalculation.”

China’s military forces in recent days have dispatched Su-30 and J-11 fighter jets, as well as KJ-2000 airborne warning and control aircraft, to the zone to monitor the airspace that is used frequently by U.S. and Japanese military surveillance aircraft.

The United States has said it does not recognize China’s ADIZ, as has Japan’s government.
Two U.S. B-52 bombers flew through the air zone last month but were not shadowed by Chinese interceptor jets.

Chinese naval and air forces also have been pressing Japan in the East China Sea over Tokyo’s purchase a year ago of several uninhabited Senkaku Islands located north of Taiwan and south of Okinawa.

China is claiming the islands, which it calls the Diaoyu. They are believed to contain large undersea reserves of natural gas and oil.

The Liaoning, China’s first carrier that was refitted from an old Soviet carrier, and four warships recently conducted their first training maneuvers in the South China Sea. The carrier recently docked at the Chinese naval port of Hainan on the South China Sea.

Defense officials have said China’s imposition of the ADIZ is aimed primarily at curbing surveillance flights in the zone, which China’s military regards as a threat to its military secrets.

The U.S. military conducts surveillance flights with EP-3 aircraft and long-range RQ-4 Global Hawk drones.

In addition to the Liaoning, Chinese warships in the flotilla include two missile destroyers, the Shenyang and the Shijiazhuang, and two missile frigates, the Yantai and the Weifang.

Rick Fisher, a China military affairs expert, said it is likely that the Chinese deliberately staged the incident as part of a strategy of pressuring the United States.

“They can afford to lose an LST [landing ship] as they have about 27 of them, but they are also usually armed with one or more twin 37 millimeter cannons, which at close range could heavily damage a lightly armored U.S. Navy destroyer,” said Fisher, a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center.

Most Chinese Navy large combat ships would be out-ranged by the 127-millimeter guns deployed on U.S. cruisers, except China’s Russian-made Sovremenny-class ships and Beijing’s new Type 052D destroyers that are armed with 130-millimeter guns.

The encounter appears to be part of a pattern of Chinese political signaling that it will not accept the presence of American military power in its East Asian theater of influence, Fisher said.

“China has spent the last 20 years building up its Navy and now feels that it can use it to obtain its political objectives,” he said.

Fisher said that since early 2012 China has gone on the offensive in both the South China and East China Seas.

“In this early stage of using its newly acquired naval power, China is posturing and bullying, but China is also looking for a fight, a battle that will cow the Americans, the Japanese, and the Filipinos,” he said.

To maintain stability in the face of Chinese military assertiveness, Fisher said the United States and Japan should seek an armed peace in the region by heavily fortifying the Senkaku Islands and the rest of the island chain they are part of.

“The U.S. and Japan should also step up their rearmament of the Philippines,” Fisher said.
The Cowpens incident is the most recent example of Chinese naval aggressiveness toward U.S. ships.

The U.S. intelligence-gathering ship, USNS Impeccable, came under Chinese naval harassment from a China Maritime Surveillance ship, part of Beijing’s quasi-military maritime patrol craft, in June.

During that incident, the Chinese ship warned the Navy ship it was operating illegally despite sailing in international waters. The Chinese demanded that the ship first obtain permission before sailing in the area that was more than 100 miles from China’s coast.

The U.S. military has been stepping up surveillance of China’s naval forces, including the growing submarine fleet, as part of the U.S. policy of rebalancing forces to the Pacific.

The Impeccable was harassed in March 2009 by five Chinese ships that followed it and sprayed it with water hoses in an effort to thwart its operations.

A second spy ship, the USNS Victorious, also came under Chinese maritime harassment several years ago.

Adm. Samuel Locklear, when asked last summer about increased Chinese naval activities near Guam and Hawaii in retaliation for U.S. ship-based spying on China, said the dispute involves different interpretations of controlled waters.

Locklear said in a meeting with reporters in July, “We believe the U.S. position is that those activities are less constrained than what the Chinese believe.”

China is seeking to control large areas of international waters—claiming they are part of its United Nations-defined economic exclusion zone—that Locklear said cover “most of the major sea lines of communication” near China and are needed to remain free for trade and shipping.

Locklear, who is known for his conciliatory views toward the Chinese military, sought to play down recent disputes. When asked if the Chinese activities were troubling, he said: “I would say it’s not provocative certainly. I’d say that in the Asia-Pacific, in the areas that are closer to the Chinese homeland, that we have been able to conduct operations around each other in a very professional and increasingly professional manner.”

The Pentagon and U.S. Pacific Command have sought to develop closer ties to the Chinese military as part of the Obama administration’s Asia pivot policies.

However, China’s military has shown limited interest in closer ties.

China’s state-controlled news media regularly report that the United States is seeking to defeat China by encircling the country with enemies while promoting dissidents within who seek the ouster of the communist regime.

The Obama administration has denied it is seeking to “contain” China and has insisted it wants continued close economic and diplomatic relations.

President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to seek a new type of major power relationship during a summit in California earlier this year. However, the exact nature of the new relationship remains unclear.

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Call Made to Congress for China War Plan




By Kris Osborn Thursday, December 12th, 2013 3:26 pm

Posted in Policy

The U.S. military needs a more focused war plan specific to China, especially after China’s recent declaration of an air defense zone over the East China Sea, a group of defense analysts told a prominent House subcommittee Wednesday.

As part of the Pentagon’s overall defense strategy to pivot to the Pacific, the U.S. should buy more Virginia-class attack submarines, prioritizing long-range anti-ship missiles, carrier-based drones, and missile defense technology, the analysts told the House Armed Services’ Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee.

Seth Cropsey, a senior fellow at The Hudson Institute, told the subcommittee that the U.S needs a detailed war plan for China in the event that conflict arises.

“Chinese leaders are ambitious and they are moving toward great power status. The U.S. is not taking this possibility as seriously as it should,” said

Much of the hearing was focused on how the U.S. can counter-balance Chinese strategic moves to deny access to certain areas in the region through the use of long-range missiles, guided missile destroyers and submarines. In particular, the analysts said China have sought to control waterways, choke points and restrict access to key islands and territories in the region.

China has already provoked tensions in the region by declaring an air-defense zone in the East China Sea. U.S. leaders flew two unarmed B-52s through the area shortly after the announcement. However, the White House has also asked civilian U.S. airliners to alert China when their aircraft fly through the zone.

“While Naval modernization is a natural development for any sea-faring nation such as China, it is clear the modernization is emboldening the Chinese government to exert their interests by bullying their neighbors and pushing back the United States in the Asia Pacific region,” said Rep. Randy Forbes, R-Va., chairman of the Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee.

If China succeeds in restricting access to or controlling its near seas, that would present “major implications for U.S. strategy and constitute a major challenge to the post World War II international order,” said Ronald O’Rourke, specialist in Naval Affairs, Congressional Research Service.

Chinese defense spending has increased from an estimated $45 to $60-billion annually in 2003 to $115 to $200 billion today, said Jim Thomas, vice president and director of studies, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

This includes investments in ships, long-range missiles, fighter jets and submarines, he explained. Unlike the U.S. which maintains a global posture, the Chinese military can spend all of its funds on regional counter-intervention, Thomas said.

The Chinese military has as many as 100 land-based strike fighters equipped with sophisticated avionics, sensors and advanced air-to-air missiles, he testified. Thomas also mentioned China’s DF-21D long-range ballistic missile, a weapon with a maneuverable warhead able to attack large surface combatants at ranges up to 930 miles.

“A decade ago China was reliant upon Russian assistance in its armaments, but is now increasingly shifted toward indigenous design and production. It is rapidly building up a modernized submarine force and its advanced guided missile destroyers represent a major improvement in fleet air defenses,” he told the Subcommittee.

These defenses are designed to protect aircraft carriers and help China push its Naval perimeter further off the coast, Thomas added. China also has an armada of small, armed fast-attack craft which could make it difficult for foreign forces to approach to within 200 nautical miles of the Chinese coast, Thomas testified.

Being able to thwart or spoof command and control and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance networks needs to be a key part of a counter-China defense strategy, Thomas emphasized as well.

Andrew Erickson, associate professor at the U.S. Naval War College, testified that the U.S. should do more to deny China the ability to seize and hold off-shore territory. This includes developing anti-ship cruise missiles such as the recently tested Long Range Anti-Ship Missile as well as long-range surface to air missiles, he said.

Erickson said offensive mine warfare could also provide key elements of the strategy. Most of all, however, Erickson emphasized that the U.S. should use its undersea technological advantage to deny China the ability to seize territory.

He stressed that the Navy should maintain its current pace of building two Virginia-class attack submarines, called SSNs, per year.

“It is therefore essential to ensure the present two-a-year construction rate of Virginia-class, nuclear-powered attack submarines. These SSNs are ideal for denying China the ability to hold and re-supply any forcefully seized islands. Given China’s ongoing limitations in anti-submarine warfare and the inherent difficulty of progressing in this field, China could spend many times the cost of these SSNs and still not be able to counter them effectively,” Erickson.

Rourke also told the Subcommittee that the U.S. might want to consider acquiring three Virginia-class submarines per year, citing the importance of the platform.

Tags: China, war plan

[American Patriot]

Enough to make the Navy clench...... no?

An almost shooting incident?

[MinutemanCO]

Seems to be right sround the bend, no?

[vector7]

Is the US Navy Big Enough to Take on China and Iran?

October 23, 2012 by Daniel Greenfield 50 Comments

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Obama claimed during the debate that the US Navy, now at its smallest size since 1917, is more than big enough for what we need to do. At the same time, Obama has pushed into the Pacific to counter China, while trying to maintain a presence in the Mediterranean to fight piracy and still holding on to enough naval power to lift an Iranian blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

China has gotten fairly aggressive in the South China Sea, confronting Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines. These confrontations may eventually lead to war.

We won’t get too detailed here in terms of vessel equivalency, or what kind of vessels will be most useful in what type of conflict, so let’s just look at numbers alone.

The US Navy has 53 submarines. The Chinese Navy has 63.

The US Navy has 62 destroyers. The Chinese Navy has 25.

The US Navy has 24 frigates. The Chinese Navy has 47.

The US Navy has 13 aircraft carriers. The Chinese Navy has 1.

The US Navy has has a total of 285 active vessels. The Chinese Navy has a total of 515 combat vessels and 138 major combat vessels, though this includes some ships and forces that would be classified as part of the Coast Guard in the US.

And the Chinese Navy is being expanded with all that money that Obama is borrowing to pay off his campaign donors.

Now add to that another 30 Iranian submarines, 2 destroyers and 6 frigates, and the US Navy’s resources becomes strained if it has to deal with two conflicts at the same time, while maintaining anti-piracy operations as well.

As former Naval captain John McCain has pointed out, “I don’t know why the President of the United States feels it necessary to denigrate and insult his opponent,” he said. “This is a man who has never known anything about national defense or national security or served in the military, and to make a smart remark about horses and bayonets and planes that fly off aircraft carriers to me is not only unpresidential but shows a lack of maturity and a lack of judgment.”

“We have pivoted to the Asia Pacific and we know that requires more ships and more naval presence,” McCain said. “To justify a steady reduction in shipbuilding shows a misunderstanding of the size of the challenge we face in the Asia-Pacific region. And sequestration, which he cavalierly said ‘won’t happen,’ will have a draconian effect on shipbuilding in Portsmouth and the other industries such as BAE in New Hampshire as well.”

[vector7]

Australia’s integration into US war plans against China



12 December 2013

The deep integration of Australia into the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” demonstrates the very advanced character of the US preparations throughout the Indo-Pacific for war with China. Australia, along with Japan, is rapidly being transformed into a giant base for future US operations in the region.

At last month’s AUSMIN (Australia-US Ministerial) talks, Australia’s foreign and defence ministers committed to “increased rotations of US Air Force aircraft in northern Australia,” as well as further “naval cooperation in Australia” and more “combined exercises in Australia and multilateral engagement in the broader region.” Negotiations will begin on a “binding agreement” to support US rotational deployments.

The AUSMIN communiqué represents a dramatic acceleration of Australia’s involvement in the Pentagon’s war plans. So-called rotational deployments, in effect basing arrangements for US forces, are well underway. By 2017, the US Marine presence in the northern city of Darwin will reach 2,500—a complete Marine Air Ground Task Force with associated aircraft and military equipment. Nuclear-capable B-52 bombers are already conducting fully-fledged operations, not training runs, into Australian airbases near Darwin.

While the language of the AUSMIN communiqué is deliberately muted, a series of US think tank reports have highlighted the central importance of Australia in US war preparations against China. The Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment (CBSA) released a report last month entitled, “Gateway to the Indo-Pacific: Australian Defense Strategy and the Future of the Australian-US Alliance,” which explained that “Australia had moved from ‘down under’ to ‘top centre’ in terms of geopolitical import” for American strategy.

The CBSA, which has close ties with the Pentagon, outlined in considerable detail the role that the Australian military and its bases would play in a US war with China. The island continent would be transformed into a vast base to sustain a US blockade of China by controlling key shipping lanes through South East Asia and conducting attacks on Chinese vessels in the Indian Ocean. It would also function as a protected rear area for the US military as it launched its AirSea Battle plan to devastate the Chinese mainland. The report detailed what was needed to upgrade northern Australian air bases and the Stirling naval base in Western Australia, as well as the purchases required for the Australian military.

The AUSMIN communiqué laid out other areas of military cooperation, including the construction of two “space security” facilities in Western Australia and the expansion of cyber warfare capacities. As revealed by US National Security Agency (NSA) documents leaked by Edward Snowden, Australia is already centrally involved in the NSA’s massive spying operations in Asia—an essential component of war. As well as intelligence gathered by key surveillance bases such as Pine Gap, Australian agencies feed the NSA with vast amounts of data by tapping into undersea cables and operating listening posts in Australian diplomatic missions across the region.

Such is the close integration of the Australian military with US forces that if Washington were to declare war on China, Australia would automatically be involved. Washington cannot afford to have a government in Canberra that would hesitate in also declaring war.

Another US think tank, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), devoted an entire report, published in October, to the issue of “building a politically sustainable US military presence in South East Asia and Australia.” It criticised the lack of attention to “the fundamentally important task of ensuring enduring political support, without which US force posture objectives in the region cannot be achieved.”

Acutely aware of widespread public hostility in the region to US bases, the CNAS report outlined a strategy that “aims to develop an affirmative rationale for enhanced US military presence while proposing policies to insulate this presence from potential political challenges.”

The Obama administration has already gone well beyond the CNAS’s rather modest proposals, designed to disguise the US military build-up in Asia and neutralise political opposition. Over the past four years, it has mounted what former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton termed in November 2010 “forward-deployed diplomacy” that involved sending “our assets... into every corner and every capital of the Asia Pacific region.”

The two linchpins of the Obama administration’s “pivot”—Australia and Japan—were the focus of special attention. In June 2010, both Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and, just weeks later, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, were levered out of office with Washington’s backing. Hatoyama and Rudd committed the same “crime” in Obama’s eyes. While committed to the respective US alliances, they proposed initiatives to ease tensions between the US and China, right at the point when Obama was ratchetting up the pressure on Beijing.

In Australia’s case, key Labor and trade union powerbrokers, later revealed in WikiLeaks cables as “protected sources” of the US embassy, orchestrated an inner-party political coup that overnight replaced Rudd with Julia Gillard, who immediately pledged fealty to Washington. The central importance of Australia was underscored by Obama’s decision to formally announce the “pivot” in November 2011, not in Washington, but in the Australian parliament—courtesy of Gillard.

Now, barely three months in office, the Liberal-National Coalition government, like its Labor predecessor, has quickly demonstrated its unalloyed support for Washington’s aggressive strategy toward China. When China announced an air defence identification zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea last month, Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop immediately joined Washington and Tokyo in condemning the move. Australia could have avoided taking sides, like New Zealand, but instead Bishop called in the Chinese ambassador for a dressing down.

The sudden flare-up of tensions in the East China Sea highlights the very real danger facing the working class throughout Asia and internationally of a slide to war. Yet workers and youth are being deliberately kept in the dark over the Australian government’s commitment to the advanced US preparations for war against China. Throughout this year’s lengthy Australian election campaign, the media and political establishment blacked out any mention, let alone debate, of the discussion occurring in strategic circles in Washington and Canberra.

The deepening global economic crisis is fuelling geo-political tensions that bear a chilling resemblance to those a century ago. The drive by US imperialism to use its military might to maintain its economic and strategic dominance in Asia and the world is threatening to precipitate a conflict that would completely eclipse the catastrophe of World War I. The only means of halting this war drive is through a united struggle of workers—in Australia, China, the US and throughout Asia and the world—to put an end to global capitalism and its outmoded nation-state system on the basis of a socialist and internationalist perspective.

Peter Symonds

[vector7]

Japan and South Korea hold joint exercise in China’s air defence zone



Rescue exercise near Suyan Rock is seen as sending out a strong signal to Beijing, but two nations are at odds over commercial flights

PUBLISHED : Thursday, 12 December, 2013, 4:59pm
UPDATED : Friday, 13 December, 2013, 6:20pm
Kristine Kwok and Agencies

Japan and South Korea have conducted a joint naval exercise in an area covered by China's air defence identification zone - a move that is seen as sending a firm message to Beijing.

Both countries said that while they didn't inform the Chinese authorities, the joint maritime rescue drill was planned long before Beijing announced the controversial zone over the East China Sea. Under Chinese rules, all aircraft are required to report flight plans in advance.

The drill had been planned for a long time, since before China’s announcement
JAPANESE NAVAL SPOKESMAN

But yesterday's exercise added another complication to the issue, with the two countries divided over compliance by commercial flights.

Korean Air and Asiana Airlines said they would start to notify the Chinese authorities from yesterday, while Japan has told its commercial operators not to comply.

However, analysts said the Asian neighbours were sending a strong signal to China by choosing to carry out the exercise near Suyan Rock. The tiny, submerged rock has become the focus of renewed disputes between Beijing and Seoul since the air zone was declared on November 23.

A South Korean military official was quoted by the Yonhap news agency as saying that two destroyers and two helicopters from each side took part.

But neither side submitted flight plans to the Chinese authorities, the report said.

A Japanese naval spokesman confirmed the drill was conducted within China's air zone.

But he added: "The drill had been planned for a long time, since before China's announcement [of the air defence identification zone]. It was not organised in reaction [to the zone]."

South Korea extended its own air defence identification zone at the weekend to cover Suyan Rock - which it calls Ieodo - in an apparent protest against China's inclusion of the rock in its zone.

While UN maritime law says a state cannot claim territorial sovereignty over a submerged rock - Suyan lies 4.5 metres below the surface - both sides have sought administrative control over it.

Seoul currently has administrative control over the rock. It also falls under Japan's air defence identification zone, though Tokyo doesn't make claims to it.

Scott Harold, a political scientist with the Rand Corporation think tank, said Seoul intended to send a message to Beijing, through the joint exercise, that it would continue to be active around the disputed area.

He said that while relations between Japan and South Korea had been strained over the past 15 months and disputes between the two persisted, China's air defence zone had inadvertently brought the two countries closer.

"This drill is a very low-cost and politically safe way for Japan to signal to South Korea that, while they have disputes on other issues, on this one they could work together," Harold said.

Beijing has so far not responded to the joint exercise.


Bloomberg, Agence France-Presse

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as Japan and South Korea in joint exercise in China's air defence zone

[vector7]

China’s air zone announcement was just the beginning

WHEN CHINA announced its decision to claim a wider air zone that encompassed the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Island territories, the East China Sea erupted into conflict reminiscent of the Cold War era. In response, the United States and Japan declared the zone illegitimate and flew military aircraft through it, while China deployed fighter jets to identify them.

But this was not a simple instance of China overstepping and getting burned -- nor was it as sudden and unexpected as headlines suggest. Rather, it was the manifestation of a longstanding Chinese regional strategy that is only just beginning. And China is likely quite pleased with how it is playing out thus far.

For years, China has been looking for opportune moments to test the existing status quo of regional security, and then advance its self-interests. Ever since the summer of 2012, when Japan’s Noda-led government announced its intention to purchase more of the Senkaku Islands from a private owner, China has felt that the precarious equilibrium between the two countries had shifted. It was only a matter of time before China would try and change the status quo.

From that perspective, China’s timing was sensible, at least with regard to how the United States might respond. Relative China hardliners like Hillary Clinton and Kurt Campbell departed at the beginning of President Obama’s second administration. Obama’s political ratings are at record lows following a series of domestic challenges, including a government shutdown that forced him to miss the APEC summit. At the moment that China pulled the trigger, the administration had just announced a makeup Asia trip for April, and Gary Locke, the American ambassador to China, had just announced his imminent resignation, with no successor yet planned. Meanwhile, China’s foreign minister was in Geneva with Secretary of State John Kerry, who had his hands full with the interim Iran nuclear deal announcement -- and China had been constructive in getting the deal done. If ever there was a good time to see if the United States would deliver a softball response to a direct Chinese challenge, this was it.

So the time was ripe for China to advance some of its key long-term regional goals: show that its claims in the territorial dispute are a core interest; build a growing international coalition of support for its position; and isolate Japan, particularly by driving a wedge between it and the United States.

On the last goal -- creating daylight between the United States and Japan -- how did China fare? Initially, not well. The US-Japan response seemed airtight at first, with Washington dismissing China’s claim and sending two B-52s through the air zone.

But in the days since, China has reason to see the air zone dispute as a fruitful avenue for gains. Following concerns from American commercial airline carriers that their travel into the zone was in breach of China’s new rules, the State Department and the FAA advised the airlines to comply with Chinese notification requirements; this announcement came immediately after the Japanese foreign ministry had explicitly told Japanese carriers to defy the ruling. While the FAA’s decision was pushed by bureaucratic procedure, it was accepted by the White House, which has no stomach for ratcheting up tensions and believes that the flyover and official rejection of China’s claim already defended the US-Japan alliance.

Vice-President Joe Biden’s trip to Japan, China, and South Korea -- which had been previously scheduled -- offers further evidence of China’s upper hand, more because of what didn’t happen and what went unsaid. In Japan, Biden commiserated with President Abe about the air zone, before departing for China. During a five-hour meeting between the Vice-President and Xi Jinping, neither leader publicly mentioned the air zone, with Biden instead focusing on the importance of the US-China relationship and the need for "candor" and "trust." While he later addressed US businessmen in Beijing and said he was "very direct" with Xi in explaining the US stance on the air zone, his public hedging with Xi shows just how much the US wants to play the role of intermediary and stabilizer, rather than digging in against China and escalating conflict.

After all, while the US has repeatedly rejected China’s air zone claim, it has stopped short of pushing for China to rescind it. Beijing can’t roll back the air zone and accede to Japanese demands, or risk reducing its power domestically. In turn, the US realizes that pushing for China to do so would only ratchet up tensions. From China’s perspective, this constitutes a victory: Biden’s trip has served to solidify the new status quo, as, to some extent, it casts the US as the arbiter between China and Japan. Japan’s stance has always been to deny China’s claim altogether, and state that any negotiations are a nonstarter. By playing an intermediary role, the US is permitting China’s new narrative of an acknowledged territorial dispute to bake in to the international community’s thinking.

Where have we seen such tactics from China before? The whole strategic approach is similar to Beijing’s longstanding policy on Taiwan, where the blueprint went as follows: work bilaterally with countries around the world that it can influence, using political threats and economic inducements to erode support for the offending position. That took decades with Taiwan, but ultimately worked in China’s favor. For years, China claimed that tension over Taiwan could lead to war with the United States. Yet it ultimately became a win for Beijing, with Taiwan’s international support eroded and the gradual integration of Taiwan into the mainland, first economically and ultimately politically.

The air zone declaration and its aftermath make it clear that China intends for its security position to win out in the East China Sea, and expects it to be a faster process, given the shift of the regional security and economic power balance in its favor. That position is evident in China’s harsh rebukes toward Australia after Canberra summoned the Chinese ambassador home to answer for the air zone announcement. Given China’s economic influence in Australia, Beijing was able to take a harsher position there than it did with the United States.

In short, Beijing lost some face when it didn’t respond to the American flyover, but if you’re grading Beijing’s strategy on the issue, it earns high marks. Yes, there is a risk of pushback in response to Chinese aggression, as neighbors could further align with the US. China’s actions could make it easier, domestically, for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to succeed in revising the constitution to strengthen Japan’s security capabilities (a policy that, according to opinion polls, a majority of Japanese still don’t agree with). But as long as China engages on a bilateral level with carrots and sticks, dialing pressure up and down in proportion to its influence over individual countries, it will likely chip away at resistance to its goals. And this episode has made those goals even clearer: make no doubt, the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands are a core interest and China intends to own them.

Longer term, conflict in the East China Sea remains the greatest potential danger to the international order and the global economy. For now, China will wait for the next attractive moment to shift the status quo in its favor.

[vector7]

China Conducts Second Flight Test of New Long-Range Missile

DF-41 is second test of road-mobile, likely MIRV-capable ICBM


Purported photos of Chinas DF-41

BY: Bill Gertz

December 17, 2013 5:00 am

China’s military conducted the second flight test of its newest long-range missile that is capable of hitting targets in the United States with a nuclear warhead, according to defense officials.

The flight test of the new Dong Feng-41, or DF-41, took place Friday from the Wuzhai missile launch center in Shanxi province to an impact range in western China, said officials familiar with details of the tests.

It was the second test of the new, road-mobile, long-range ICBM that U.S. intelligence agencies assess will be outfitted with up to 10 multiple, independently-targetable reentry vehicles, or MIRVs.

Prior to Friday’s flight test, the last DF-41 flight test took place July 24, 2012.

Pentagon spokesmen did not return emails seeking comment on the missile test.

The most recent test indicates that China’s long-range missile development is continuing, and the missile is raising new concerns about China’s professed nuclear doctrine of not being the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict.

Disclosure of the nuclear missile flight test comes as tensions remain heightened between the United States and China over the near collision between the USS Cowpens, a guided missile cruiser, and a Chinese navy tank landing ship in the South China Sea on Dec. 5.

The State Department and Pentagon protested the incident, which involved the Chinese ship stopping in the path of the Cowpens, forcing the cruiser to make an abrupt maneuver to avoid a collision. The incident took place near China’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning.

The DF-41, with its range of between 6,835 miles and 7,456 miles and expected multiple-warhead capability, is viewed as a potential “first strike” weapon, or a weapon capable of carrying out a surprise nuclear attack that would knock out an enemy’s arsenal and limit its counterstrike capability.

A report by the Air Force National Air and Space Intelligence Center made public in May referred to China’s development of a new long-range missile with multiple warheads, in addition to current long-range DF-31 and DF-31A mobile ICBMs.

“China has the most active and diverse ballistic missile development program in the world,” the NASCI report said. “It is developing and testing offensive missiles, forming additional missile units, qualitatively upgrading missile systems, and developing methods to counter ballistic missile defenses.”

“The Chinese ballistic missile force is expanding in both size and types of missiles.”

Without mentioning the DF-41, the report said, “China may also be developing a new road-mobile ICBM capable of carrying a MIRV payload, and the number of warheads on Chinese ICBMs capable of threatening the United States is expected to grow to well over 100 in the next 15 years.”
Defense officials said the report was referring to the DF-41.

Rick Fisher, a China military affairs expert and senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center, said reports of the latest DF-41 test coincide with disclosures on Chinese military enthusiast websites showing a new 18-wheel transporter erector launcher for the new DF-41.

“It appears that this new large MIRV-capable ICBM is making progress toward achieving an operational status,” Fisher said.

Fisher said there are reports that the Second Artillery Corps, as China’s missile service is called, includes at least one reload missile for each mobile missile-launcher system.

If the new DF-41 is deployed in the future with a reload missile per launcher, it would vastly increase the numbers of nuclear warheads in the Chinese arsenal, as many as 120 to 240 warheads for each DF-41 unit.

“What this means is that Obama administration suggestions that the United States can continue to reduce its number of deployed warheads, perhaps to 1,000 or less, is simply irrational,” Fisher said.

“What we know and don’t know about China’s ability to rapidly increase its warhead numbers points to an unacceptable level of risk for the United States.”

In addition to the DF-41, China also has begun to deploy its submarine-launched ballistic missile called the JL-2 and may develop a follow-on JL-2A with up to three warheads.

“Inasmuch as the U.S. Navy estimates there will be up to five of the 12-missile carrying Type 094 nuclear powered ballistic missile submarines, this at least indicates that [missile submarines] could become another source for fast Chinese warhead growth,” he said.

The publication Jane’s Strategic Weapon Systems reported in 2012 that the Chinese were developing the DF-41, also designated the CSS-X-10, and that it is intended to replace easy-to-target silo-based DF-5 and DF-5A missiles.

Larry Wortzel, a former military intelligence officer and member of the congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, told the House Armed Services Committee in testimony last month that the new DF-41 is part of China’s growing nuclear missile arsenal.

“China is enhancing its nuclear deterrent capability by modernizing its nuclear force,” Wortzel said Nov. 20. “It is taking measures such as developing a new road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the DF-41. This missile could be equipped with a multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV), allowing it to carry as many as 10 nuclear warheads.”

Wortzel said the Chinese, in addition to MIRVs, could outfit their missiles with “penetration aids” designed to defeat U.S. missile defenses. China also may be developing rail-mobile ICBMs, he said.

The Chinese nuclear buildup could have a profound impact on regional security. China recently has been bullying its neighbors, specifically Japan and Philippines, over islands and maritime claims.

“When China achieves a position of nuclear parity or even superiority, we can expect that it will make far more vigorous demands on the United States that could diminish the security of America and its friends and allies,” Fisher said.

Mark Stokes, a former Pentagon official and specialist on China’s strategic nuclear systems has said the DF-41 has been mentioned in Chinese military writings and appears to involve a larger, solid fuel rocket motor derived from the DF-31 series ICBMS.

Ground tests of the DF-41 motor have been detected over the past several years.

There are suspicions among U.S. intelligence analysts that the DF-41 is based on Russia’s mobile ICBM known as the SS-27 and that the DF-41 will incorporate Russian missile guidance technology.
China in August conducted two flight tests of the DF-31A ICBM and in November 2012, another DF-31A was flight-tested.

Tsai The-sheng, Taiwan’s director of the National Security Bureau, as the intelligence service for the island nation is called, told Taiwan’s legislature that China is still developing the DF-41 and the sub-launched JL-2.

“Neither of them has been deployed at any Chinese military base yet,” Tsai said, the official Central News Agency reported April 15.

Tsai said that China’s fast pace of military technology development makes it very likely the People’s Liberation Army will deploy a multi-warhead DF-41 in the future.

[Avvakum]

The U.S. government lab behind Beijing’s nuclear power push

• By David Lague and Charlie Zhu
• Filed December 20, 2013

HELPING HAND: Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee pioneered research on thorium power decades ago. China has a research collaboration deal with the lab. Here, in an undated photo, a technician works on an experimental reactor vessel. REUTERS/Oak Ridge National Laboratory/Handout

The Chinese military-industrial complex wanted to master the science for an alternative nuclear reactor. So, it turned to a storied American institute.

HONG KONG - Scientists in Shanghai are attempting a breakthrough in nuclear energy: reactors powered by thorium, an alternative to uranium.
The project is run by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a government body with close military ties that coordinates the country’s science-and-technology strategy. The academy has designated thorium as a priority for China’s top laboratories. The program has a budget of $350 million. And it’s being spearheaded by the influential son of a former Chinese president.
But even as China bulks up its military muscle through means ranging from espionage to heavy spending, it is pursuing this aspect of its technology game plan with the blessing – and the help – of the United States.
China has enlisted a storied partner for its thorium push: Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The U.S. government institute produced the plutonium used for the Manhattan Project and laid important groundwork for the commercial and military use of nuclear power.
The Tennessee lab, as it happens, helped pioneer thorium reactors. The Pentagon and the energy industry later sidelined this technology in favor of uranium. The Chinese are now enthusiastically tapping that know-how, in an example of how the rising Asian superpower is scouring the world for all sorts of technology needed to catch up to America in a broad array of scientific fields.
Related Item

1. 
   Thorium and the dream of clean nuclear power

Thorium’s chief allure is that it is a potentially far safer fuel for civilian power plants than is uranium. But the element also has possible military applications as an energy source in naval vessels. A U.S. congressman unsuccessfully sought to push the Pentagon to embrace the technology in 2009, and British naval engineers have proposed a design for a thorium-fueled ship.
In a further twist, despite the mounting strategic rivalry with China, there has been little or no protest in the United States over Oak Ridge’s nuclear-energy cooperation with China.
“The U.S. government seems to welcome Chinese scientists into Department of Energy labs with open arms,” says physicist and thorium advocate Robert Hargraves. He and other experts note that most of the U.S. intellectual property related to thorium is already in the public domain. At a time when the U.S. government is spending very little on advanced reactor research, they believe China’s experiments may yield a breakthrough that provides an alternative to the massive consumption of fossil fuels.

The technology’s immediate appeal for China, both Chinese and American scientists say, is that thorium reactors have the potential to be much more efficient, safer and cleaner than most in service today.
The Chinese plan to cool their experimental reactors with molten salts. This is sharply different from the pressurized water-cooling systems used in most uranium-fueled nuclear plants. The risks of explosions and meltdowns are lower, proponents say.
“If a thorium, molten-salt reactor can be successfully developed, it will remove all fears about nuclear energy,” says Fang Jinqing, a retired nuclear researcher at the China Institute of Atomic Energy. “The technology works in theory, and it may have the potential to reshape the nuclear power landscape, but there are a lot of technical challenges.”
Other advocates agree on thorium’s peaceful promise. Republican Senator Orrin Hatch and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, introduced legislation in 2010 calling on the U.S. government to share its thorium expertise.
The unsuccessful bill said it was in U.S. “national security and foreign policy interest” to provide other countries with thorium fuel-cycle technology, because doing so would produce less long-lasting waste and reduce the risk of nuclear proliferation.
CLEAN POWER: A reactor core, part of a molten-salt reactor experiment, at the Oak Ridge lab. Boosters say thorium-fueled molten-salt reactors would be safer than today’s uranium plants. REUTERS/Oak Ridge National Laboratory/Handout

Oak Ridge has been free to proceed in spite of that bill’s failure.
TURNING BACK NUCLEAR CLOCK
What China is attempting is to turn the nuclear clock back to the mid-1960s, when Oak Ridge successfully operated a reactor with fuel derived from thorium and cooled with molten salts. The lab also produced detailed plans for a commercial-scale power plant.
Despite considerable promise, the thorium test reactor was shut down in 1969 after about five years of operation. Research was effectively shelved when the Nixon Administration decided in the 1970s that the U.S nuclear industry would concentrate on a new generation of uranium-fueled, fast-breeder reactors. For a range of technical and political reasons, not least the public’s fear of nuclear plants, these new uranium reactors have yet to come into widespread commercial use.
The die was cast against thorium much earlier. In the early 1950s, an influential U.S. Navy officer, Hyman Rickover, decided a water-cooled, uranium-fueled reactor would power the world’s first nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus. Rickover was instrumental in the 1957 commissioning of a similar reactor at Shippingport, Pennsylvania - the world’s first nuclear-power station.
Admiral Rickover was a towering figure in atomic energy and became known as the father of the U.S nuclear navy. He had clear reasons for his choice, engineers say. The pressurized water reactor was the most advanced, compact and technically sound at the time. More importantly, these reactors also supplied plutonium as a byproduct - then in strong demand as fuel for America’s rapidly growing arsenal of nuclear warheads.
“The short answer is that uranium was good for bombs and thorium wasn’t,” says Kirk Sorensen, president of Flibe Energy, a privately held thorium-technology start-up based in Huntsville, Alabama.

“The U.S. government seems to welcome Chinese scientists into Department of Energy labs with open arms.” Physicist and thorium advocate Robert Hargraves.

With the launch of the Nautilus in 1955, a course was set that is still followed today, with most of the world’s nuclear power generated from this type of reactor.
Although it does not yield byproducts that can be readily used to make weapons, thorium does have military applications.
The fuel could be used to power Chinese navy surface warships, including a planned fleet of aircraft carriers. China’s nuclear submarine fleet has struggled with reactor reliability and safety, according to naval commentators, and thorium could eventually become an alternative.
Top British naval engineers last year proposed a design for a thorium reactor to power warships. Compact thorium power plants could also be used to supply reliable power to military bases and expeditionary forces.
Thorium also has military potential for the United States, experts say. But the world’s most powerful military is reluctant to pursue alternatives to its uranium-fueled reactors, because it has operated them successfully for almost six decades.
Joe Sestak, a former U.S. congressman and retired two-star admiral, failed in an effort to get the Pentagon to reconsider thorium in 2009. “It is very hard to effect a change in something that has been established for a long time,” he says. Sestak says he was unaware of the extent of cooperation between the U.S. and China on thorium technology.

INTELLECTUAL HOME
INFLUENTIAL PARTNER: Jiang Mianheng, son of former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, in 2001. The younger Jiang brokered the Chinese partnership with Oak Ridge. REUTERS/Stringer

Flibe Energy’s Sorensen, a former NASA engineer, has plans to build thorium-fueled reactors for commercial use in the United States. Sorensen has been instrumental in reviving global interest in the groundbreaking work of the late American nuclear physicist Alvin Weinberg.
It was Weinberg who led research into molten-salt cooled reactors and thorium when he ran Oak Ridge from 1955 to 1973. Weinberg was eventually fired for his persistent thorium advocacy. But he had some powerful supporters. In his last scientific paper, published shortly after his death in 2003, nuclear-weapons pioneer Edward Teller called for the construction and testing of a small, thorium-fueled reactor.
Oak Ridge remains the intellectual home of this technology. The U.S. Department of Energy lab still has a small research project under way on the use of molten-salt coolants for uranium-fueled reactors. The Energy Department is also funding related research at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Wisconsin and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
But the ambitious project under way in China could be the best bet to unlock thorium’s promise of safe, cheap and abundant nuclear fuel.
Jiang Mianheng, son of former Chinese president Jiang Zemin, visited Oak Ridge in 2010 and brokered a cooperation agreement with the lab. The deal gave the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which has a staff of 50,000, the plans for a thorium reactor. In January 2011, Jiang signed a protocol with the Department of Energy outlining the terms of joint energy research with the academy.

“The Chinese are very aggressive, very determined and programmed to move forward with this technology.” Jess Gehin, a nuclear-reactor physicist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory

An electrical engineer trained at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Jiang told a conference on thorium in Shanghai last year China’s thorium project “is 100 percent financed by the central government.”
The protocol stipulates that intellectual property arising from the joint research will be shared with the global scientific community. It excludes sharing commercially confidential information and any other material that the parties agree to withhold. The pact also specifically rules out any military or weapons-related research. “All activities conducted under this protocol shall be exclusively for peaceful purposes,” it says.
Jess Gehin, a nuclear-reactor physicist at Oak Ridge, says the pact allows the two sides to share information about their research.
“The Chinese are very aggressive, very determined and programmed to move forward with this technology,” Gehin said. “Right now we agree that we should meet routinely, maybe a couple of times a year.”
Jiang did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement posted on the Chinese Academy of Sciences website, he said China and the United States “should boost mutual trust and carry out complementary and mutually beneficial cooperation in the study of thorium-based salt reactors, hybrid energy systems and other cutting edge science and technology.”
THORIUM AS A HEDGE
Beijing’s long-term goal: commercialize the technology by 2040, after building a series of increasingly bigger reactors. The Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics is recruiting nuclear physicists, engineers, project managers and support staff, according to a regular stream of job advertisements it publishes online. Its team is expected to expand to 750 by 2015 and eventually include 1,000 researchers.
A director at the Shanghai Institute, Li Qingnuan, and other senior researchers are wooing top young talent across China to join the project. After lecturing on molten-salt reactor technology at Sichuan University in April, Li invited students from the audience to apply for positions at the institute, according to a report on the university’s website.
THORIUM MAN: Nuclear physicist Alvin Weinberg led research into thorium-fueled reactors when he ran Oak Ridge from 1955 to 1973. REUTERS/Oak Ridge National Laboratory/Handout

China’s sprawling network of nuclear-research and industrial companies are gearing up to assist. In early June, the China National Nuclear Corporation, the body overseeing all Chinese civilian and military nuclear programs, announced that state-owned China North Nuclear Fuel Company had signed an agreement with the Shanghai Institute to research and supply thorium and molten salts for the experimental reactors.
The push into thorium is part of a broader national energy strategy. The government wants to reduce its dependence on coal-fired power plants, which account for about 80 percent of the nation’s electricity but have darkened its skies. Nuclear energy is a big part of the plan: China aims to have 58 gigawatts of nuclear power on the grid by 2020, an almost five-fold increase from 12.57 gigawatts today.
Thorium is a hedge on that nuclear bet. China has 15 conventional nuclear reactors online and 30 under construction. But energy authorities are also investing in a range of different technologies for the future, including advanced pressurized water reactors, fast-breeder reactors and pebble-bed reactors. China has little uranium but massive reserves of thorium. So, the prospect of cheaper nuclear power with secure supplies of fuel is a powerful attraction.
At last year’s Shanghai thorium conference, Jiang described how clean nuclear power would allow China to make a “revolutionary” move towards a greener economy.
The bet on unconventional nukes, he said, explains “why China is the first one to eat a crab“ - citing an old Chinese proverb about the individual who dares to make a discovery important to civilization.
Coming Next, Part 7: Galileo’s Friend


Thorium and the dream of clean nuclear power


By David Lague
HONG KONG - China isn’t alone in turning to thorium as a potential source of power. Enthusiasm for exploiting this alternative to uranium is on the rise across the world, even as the cleanup continues from the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan.
A new generation of scientists and nuclear engineers argue that thorium could be the key to realizing a dream of safe, cheap and plentiful nuclear power for an energy hungry world.
Thorium deposits, estimated to be about four times more abundant than uranium, are widely distributed: Substantial reserves have been found in China, Australia, the United States, Turkey, India, and Norway. About 6,600 tonnes of thorium used to power the most efficient proposed reactors would provide enough energy to replace all of the fossil fuels and nuclear energy consumed globally each year, proponents say.
THE FUTURE? A fuel rig is installed at the Halden Research Reactor in Norway. The new five-year project is testing thorium for use in future commercial reactors. REUTERS/Halden Research Reactor/Handout

Uranium-poor India has a long-term research effort under way and has decided thorium will become the mainstay of its nuclear energy industry later this century. The French government has a research program. Companies in the United States, Australia, Norway and the Czech Republic are working on reactor designs or thorium fuel technology.
Energy from thorium is not just scientific theory. On April 25, Thor Energy, a private Norwegian company, began producing power from thorium - named after the Norse god of thunder - at the Halden test reactor in Norway.
“It is the fundamental first step in the thorium evolution,” says company CEO Oystein Asphjell. The tests are aimed at showing the fuel could be a valuable alternative to uranium for existing reactor operators. Nuclear giant Westinghouse, a unit of Toshiba Corp, is part of an international consortium that Thor Energy established to fund and manage the experiments.
A Westinghouse spokesman said the company was “providing viewpoints” on the research.
Asphjell says burning thorium in current pressurized water reactors could boost safety and provide greater fuel security, especially for countries with limited access to uranium. Eventually, proponents want to pair thorium with a new kind of reactor, cooled not by water but by molten salt. That, booster say, would realize thorium’s full potential as a fuel.
Thorium is a shiny, slightly radioactive metal. In its natural form, thorium isn’t fissile - meaning that, in contrast to uranium, it can’t split to sustain a nuclear chain reaction.
But if thorium is bombarded with neutrons from a small amount of fissile nuclear fuel acting as a starter, either uranium-235 or plutonium-239, it is converted to uranium-233 - a form of uranium that is a first-rate nuclear fuel. Once started in a reactor, the process is self-sustaining, with subsequent fissions of uranium-233 in turn converting more thorium to nuclear fuel.
In the kind of molten-salt cooled reactor favoured by many thorium proponents, the uranium-233 fuel would be dissolved in a coolant of liquid fluoride salts contained in a graphite core. Surrounding the core would be a blanket of thorium, also dissolved in liquid fluoride salts.
When the fuel in the core fissions, it produces heat and a barrage of neutrons that pass through the graphite and convert some of the thorium in the blanket to uranium-233. This is then removed from the blanket and fed into the core, while fresh thorium is supplied to the blanket. The coolant and fuel mixture from the reactor core is circulated through a heat exchanger, so that the energy can be extracted to power a turbine and generate electricity.
One advantage of this system is that the fluoride salt coolant has an extremely high boiling point of 1,400 degrees Celsius, far higher than the reactor’s operating temperature of about 750 degrees Celsius. That means the whole system can operate at close to normal atmospheric pressure.
In a conventional water-cooled reactor, the cooling system must be designed to withstand high pressure. That means reactors also must have massive, heavily engineered and expensive containment structures to minimise the danger from leaks or pressure explosions.
HARDWARE: A fuel rig and rods at the Halden reactor. REUTERS/Torbjorn Tandberg/Thor Energy/Handout

Because the core in a thorium molten-salt reactor is already liquid, it can’t melt down. The design calls for a plug of frozen salt at the bottom of the system. If the reactor overheats, the plug would melt and the fuel and coolant would drain into a containment vessel below, where it would rapidly solidify and could be recovered for future use, proponents say.
These reactors could be much more efficient than most current nuclear plants, which extract between three and five percent of the energy in uranium fuel rods. In a molten salt reactor, almost all the fuel is consumed.
One tonne of thorium fuel would deliver the same amount of energy as 250 tonnes of uranium in a pressurized water reactor, according to a briefing paper published by the United Kingdom All Party Parliamentary Group on Thorium, a group of UK lawmakers who advocate adoption of the alternative fuel.
Also, because most of the fuel is consumed, thorium yields little waste and is much less radioactive, proponents say. Most of the residue will become inert within 30 years, with about 17 per cent needing secure storage for about 300 years.
The most dangerous waste from current generation reactors requires storage for 10,000 years.
The molten-salt reactor may have one further benefit. Some advocates believe they can be used to burn off existing nuclear waste.
A privately owned U.S start-up, Transatomic Power of Cambridge, Massachusetts, says it plans to build molten salt cooled reactors to burn some of the 270,000 tonnes of nuclear waste accumulated worldwide. “There is enough waste just in the U.S to power the country for a century,” says Russ Wilcox, company CEO and co-founder.

[Avvakum]

I know the Chinese Communist Party is completely committed to Marxism, and that they're equally committed to their media outlets commitment to Marxism, and that by enforcing ideological purity they are almost prepared for a major step in their revolution, when I saw this article;

• News
• World news
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Chinese journalists face Marxist ideology exam

Exam to be based on 700-page manual that prohibits published reports from featuring comments that go against party line

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• Jonathan Kaiman in Beijing and agencies
  
• theguardian.com, Thursday 19 December 2013 07.13 EST
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The Beijing News offices. Chinese journalists will sit an exam in the new year covering topics such as socialism with Chinese characteristics. Photograph: Jason Lee/Reuters

Chinese journalists will have to pass a new ideology exam early next year to keep their press cards, in what reporters say is another example of the ruling Communist party's increasing control over the media under President Xi Jinping.
It is the first time reporters have been required to take such a test en masse, state media have said. The exam will be based on a 700-page manual peppered with directives such as "it is absolutely not permitted for published reports to feature any comments that go against the party line", and "the relationship between the party and the news media is one of leader and the led".
Some reporters say the impact of the increased control in the past year has been chilling. "The tightening is very obvious in newspapers that have an impact on public opinion," a journalist at a current affairs magazine said. "These days there are lots of things they aren't allowed to report."
China has also intensified efforts to curb the work of foreign news organisations. The New York Times Company and Bloomberg News have not been given new journalist visas for more than a year after they published stories about the wealth of relatives of the former premier Wen Jiabao and Xi.
On Thursday, China's foreign ministry granted Bloomberg journalists and some New York Times reporters press accreditation, allowing them to proceed with visa applications.
"We hope this development means the New York Times reporters still awaiting their press cards will be given them soon, and all the reporters whose visa procedure is still under way will be issued with 2014 residence visas," said Peter Ford, president of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China, said in a statement.
The General Administration of Press and Publication, a key media regulator, has said via state media that the aim of the exam and accompanying training is to "increase the overall quality of China's journalists and encourage them to establish socialism as their core system of values". It did not respond to questions from Reuters about the exam or press freedom in China.
Traditionally, Chinese state media have been the key vehicle for party propaganda. But reforms over the past decade that have allowed greater media commercialisation and limited increases in editorial independence, combined with the rise of social media, have weakened government control, according to academics.
Even within the party, interpretations of the media's ideal role in Chinese society vary. "Supervision by the press is conducive not only to the struggle against corruption, but also to social progress," said Yu Keping, deputy president of the Central Compilation and Translation Bureau (CCTB), on Thursday at the Caixin Summit, a high-profile gathering of politics and economics experts organised by an influential Chinese magazine. The bureau is responsible for "translating and researching classical Marxist works", according to the official webpage china.org.cn.
"There are preconditions for the press to make contributions to social progress," he added. "One is independence – the press should not be attached to powerful organisations."
Yet China media watchers point to a flurry of editorials after Xi spoke to propaganda officials in August as evidence of concern within the party that control over public discourse was slipping. The official Beijing Daily described the party's struggle to win hearts and minds as a "fight to the death".
Some reporters and academics, however, trace the start of the tougher attitude to a strike lasting several days in January by journalists at an outspoken newspaper, the Southern Weekly, after censors scrapped a new year editorial calling for China to enshrine constitutional rights. Xi had taken over the Communist party only several weeks earlier.
"This was a shock to Xi Jinping's leadership [circle]," said Xiao Qiang, a China media expert at the University of California at Berkeley. "They own these newspapers. That makes it an internal, public rebellion, which made the censorship and media control mechanism look really bad."
The strike ended after local propaganda officials promised to take a lighter hand with censorship. Some senior reporters have since left the paper, according to two sources. The Southern Weekly declined to comment.
Journalists will have to undertake a minimum 18 hours of training on topics including Marxist news values and socialism with Chinese characteristics, as well as journalism ethics, before sitting the exam in January or February. Reporters who fail the test will have to resit the exam and undergo the training again. It is not clear what happens to reporters who refuse to take it.
In theory, all reporters in China need a press card to report, although Zhan Jiang, a journalism professor at the Beijing Foreign Studies University, said many did without one. Zhan said recent scandals in the Chinese media had raised some questions about the industry's professionalism.
A reporter for the New Express tabloid in Guangzhou was arrested in October after confessing on state television to accepting bribes for fabricating more than a dozen stories about Zoomlion Heavy Industry Science and Technology Co Ltd in Changsha. The reporter wrote that Zoomlion had engaged in sales fraud and exaggerated its profits, accusations strongly denied by the state-owned construction equipment maker.
"It's hard to say if this is really to improve the actions of journalists or to control them. You don't know what [the authorities] are thinking," Zhan said.
Reporters had little doubt about the aim of the exam. "The purpose of this kind of control is just to wear you down, to make you feel like political control is inescapable," said a reporter for a newspaper in the booming southern city of Guangzhou.
Jonathan Kaiman Beijing and agencies

[vector7]

Chinese Military's Secret to Success: European Engineering




In this photo taken on July 17, 2013 and released by the Chinese Navy Oct 27, 2013, sailors in protective gear clean and disinfect a nuclear submarine during a drill at the Qingdao submarine base in east China's Shandong province.



December 19, 2013
HONG KONG — If the People's Liberation Army went to war tomorrow, it would field an arsenal bristling with hardware from some of America's closest allies: Germany, France and Britain.

Most of China's advanced surface warships are powered by German and French-designed diesel engines. Chinese destroyers have French sonar, anti-submarine-warfare helicopters and surface-to-air missiles.

Above the battlefield, British jet engines drive PLA fighter bombers and anti-ship strike aircraft. The latest Chinese surveillance aircraft are fitted with British airborne early warning radars. Some of China's best attack and transport helicopters rely on designs from Eurocopter, a subsidiary of pan-European aerospace and defense giant EADS.

But perhaps the most strategic item obtained by China on its European shopping spree is below the waterline: the German-engineered diesels inside its submarines.

Emulating the rising powers of last century - Germany, Japan and the Soviet Union - China is building a powerful submarine fleet, including domestically built Song and Yuan-class boats. The beating hearts of these subs are state-of-the-art diesel engines designed by MTU Friedrichshafen GmbH of Friedrichshafen, Germany. Alongside 12 advanced Kilo-class submarines imported from Russia, these 21 German-powered boats are the workhorses of China's modern conventional submarine force.

With Beijing flexing its muscles around disputed territory in the East China Sea and South China Sea, China's diesel-electric submarines are potentially the PLA's most serious threat to its American and Japanese rivals. This deadly capability has been built around robust and reliable engine technology from Germany, a core member of the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Arms trade data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) to the end of 2012 shows that 56 MTU-designed diesels for submarines have been supplied to the Chinese navy.

“They are the world's leading submarine diesel engines,” says veteran engineer Hans Ohff, former managing director of the Australian Submarine Corporation, the company that built Australia's Collins-class conventional submarines.

MTU declined to answer questions about transfers to the Chinese navy, future deliveries or whether it supplies technical support or servicing. “All MTU exports strictly follow German export laws,” a company spokesman said.

China's military market

The Chinese defense ministry says the PLA's dependence on foreign arms technology is overstated. “According to international practice, China is also engaged in communication and cooperation with some countries in the area of weaponry development,” the ministry said in a statement responding to this series. “Some people have politicized China's normal commercial cooperation with foreign countries, smearing our reputation.”

Transfers of European technology to the Chinese military are documented in SIPRI data, official EU arms trade figures and technical specifications reported in Chinese military publications.

These transfers are crucial for the PLA as it builds the firepower to enforce Beijing's claims over disputed maritime territory and challenge the naval dominance of the U.S. and its allies in Asia.

China now has the world's second-largest defense budget after the United States and the fastest growing military market. Many of Europe's biggest defense contractors have been unable to resist its allure. High-performance diesels from MTU and French engine maker Pielstick also drive many of China's most advanced surface warships and support vessels, SIPRI data shows. Pielstick was jointly owned by MTU and German multinational Man Diesel & Turbo until 2006, when Man took full control.

Some military analysts remain skeptical about the quality of China's military hardware. They say the engines and technology the PLA is incorporating from Europe and Russia fall short of the latest equipment in service with the United States and its allies in Asia, including Japan, South Korea and Australia. This leaves the PLA a generation behind and struggling to integrate gear from a range of different suppliers, they say.

Others counter that China doesn't need to match all of the most complex weapons fielded by the United States and its allies. Even if it deploys less than the best gear, Beijing can achieve its strategic goal of blunting U.S. power.

“At what point do they become good enough?” says Kevin Pollpeter, a specialist on Chinese military innovation at the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation at San Diego. “If they have sufficient quantities of good-enough weapons systems, maybe that will carry the day.”

Limits of embargo

Russia remains China's most important outside source of arms and technical assistance. The Chinese navy's best-known vessel - its sole aircraft carrier, the Liaoning - was purchased from Ukraine. A U.S. Navy vessel nearly collided with a Chinese warship last week while maneuvering near the Liaoning, during a time of heightened tensions over Beijing's recent declaration of a new air-defense zone in the East China Sea.

European hardware and know-how fills critical gaps, however. It wasn't supposed to play out this way.

The European Union has had an official embargo on arms shipments to China since the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. Washington imposes even tighter restrictions on transfers of U.S. military technology to China, inspiring energetic efforts by Beijing to smuggle American gear and know-how. Europe's embargo, however, has been far more loosely interpreted and enforced. Thus weapons and, perhaps more importantly for the PLA, dual-use technology have steadily flowed from America's European allies to China.

EU arms makers have been granted licenses to export weapons worth almost 3 billion euros ($4.1 billion) to China in the 10 years to 2011, according to official figures from Brussels collated by the London-based Campaign Against Arms Trade. EU governments approved the sale of aircraft, warships, imaging equipment, tanks, chemical agents and ammunition, according to official figures.

Michael Mann, an EU spokesman in Brussels, said the EU arms embargo issued in June 1989 “does not refer to dual use goods.” It is up to individual member states to exercise control over such goods, Mann said.

From China's perspective, France and the UK interpret the arms embargo most generously, mostly blocking only lethal items or complete weapons systems. France was by far the biggest EU supplier, accounting for almost 2 billion euros of these licenses. The United Kingdom ranked second with almost 600 million euros, followed by Italy with 161 million euros. The value of weapons actually shipped is difficult to extract from the data because some countries, including the UK and Germany, don't report these figures.

The value of German export licenses for weapons was a relatively modest 32 million euros in the decade to 2011. However, EU arms trade figures don't include dual-use technology that in many cases can be sold without licenses. Examples of such technology include many kinds of diesel engines. The same applies to transfers of commercial aerospace design software that can be used for fighters, bombers and unmanned aerial vehicles.

Arms industry experts say dual-use transfers are almost certainly more valuable to the PLA than the actual weapons Europe has delivered. But it's impossible to calculate a hard number for European-Chinese trade: The EU lacks a consistent system for tracking these transfers amid the vast flow of goods, services and intellectual property to China. Europe shipped goods worth 143.9 billion euros to China in 2012, according to EU trade statistics.

Critics of the EU's arms trade with China say member states have failed to devise a system to enforce the embargo. They say this reflects the loose structure of the EU, where each member state interprets the restrictions differently according to domestic law, regulations and trade policies.

Geography plays a role, too: The distance between Europe and Asia means there is ambivalence about the rapid growth of Chinese military power. From Europe, China looks like an opportunity, not a threat.

Selling components

The embargo is nevertheless an embarrassment for Beijing; senior Chinese officials routinely call for it to be lifted, and pressure from Washington keeps it in place. That means the sale of complete weapons like the pan-European Eurofighter, German submarines or Spanish aircraft carriers remain impossible for the foreseeable future.

In the meantime, Europe has discovered a lucrative trade selling components, particularly if they incorporate dual-use technologies that fall outside the embargo.

“Nobody sells entire weapons systems,” says Otfried Nassauer, director of the Berlin Information Center for Transatlantic Security and an expert on Germany's arms trade. “But components, especially pricey high tech components, that works OK.”

Under Beijing's long-term policies to promote innovation, domestic arms makers are encouraged to import the foreign technology that China lacks. The challenge is to adapt this range of components and know-how into locally built weapons.

One example is how German engine makers have contributed technology to support China's expanding fleet of support vessels that monitor satellites and missiles.

Man Diesel & Turbo last year announced it would supply engines built under license in China for two new transport vessels for the China Satellite Maritime Tracking and Controlling Department, part of the PLA's General Armament Department (GAD). The GAD oversees weapons research and development and manages all of China's military and civilian space operations, including the tracking of satellites and missiles. The European engine maker will also supply gear boxes, propellers and propulsion control systems for the ships from its Danish manufacturing unit, it said.

A spokesman for Man Diesel & Turbo said about 250 of its engines had been made under license in China and supplied to the Chinese navy. The company also provided some selected services and spare parts including fuel equipment.

“All our business does fully comply with the applicable export control or embargo regulations set by Germany and the European Union,” the spokesman said. He added that Pielstick brand engines supplied to the PLA navy by Chinese licensees were not subject to export approval. “None of these engines is specifically designed for military purposes,” he said. “There is a broad variety of civil applications for these engines, too.”

Underwater disaster

Reliable submarine engines top Beijing's shopping list, and China's navy has good reason to want the best.

In the late spring of 2003, a disabled Chinese submarine was found drifting, partly submerged, in the Bohai Sea off China's northern coast. When the boat was raised, rescuers found all 70 of its crew dead. Their deaths were blamed on “mechanical difficulties,” according to reports at the time in China's state-controlled media. The outcome of any inquiry was never made public.

Since then, submariners all over the world have speculated about what went wrong aboard Ming class submarine number 361, a Chinese copy of an obsolete Russian design. Most agree it was probably a fault with its diesels. The engines either didn't shut down immediately when the submarine submerged, sucking the oxygen out of the hull in minutes, or the suffocating exhaust vented internally rather than outside the hull. Either way, the outcome was catastrophic.

It was one of Communist China's worst peacetime military disasters, and the navy chief and three other senior officers were sacked. But the People's Liberation Army navy was already taking delivery of diesels from MTU. Engineers at the Wuchang Shipyard on the Yangtze River were fitting these power plants in China's first indigenously designed and built conventional submarines, the Song class.

MTU is a unit of Germany's Tognum Group, which is jointly owned by UK-based multinational Rolls Royce Group PLC and Germany's Daimler AG. Contracts with the PLA and powerful defense manufacturers give MTU and its parent influence in competing for contracts in China's massive civilian market. China's biggest arms maker, China North Industries Group Corporation, or Norinco, has been making MTU engines under license since 1986.

In 2010, Tognum opened a joint venture with Norinco to assemble large, high speed MTU diesel engines and emergency generators at a plant in the city of Datong in Shanxi Province. A major goal of the joint venture is to win orders for emergency backup generators for China's expanding roster of nuclear power plants, Tognum said in a press statement. MTU engines are also built under license at the Shaanxi Diesel Engine Heavy Industry Co Ltd, a subsidiary of one of China's two sprawling military and commercial shipbuilders.

Submarine diesel technology is hardly new, but these engines are built to exacting standards to ensure reliability under extreme conditions. MTU has been building them for more than 50 years. The engine delivered to China for the Song and Yuan classes, the MTU 396 SE84 series, is one of the world's most widely used submarine power plants. Each of the Chinese submarines has three MTU diesels, according to technical specifications listed in Chinese military affairs journals and websites.

China's military is reluctant to acknowledge the role of foreign technology in its latest weapons, preferring to recognize the performance of its domestic designers and arms makers. But articles in maritime magazines and naval websites have credited the close relationship between MTU and China's domestic industry for providing the Song class with “the world's most advanced submarine power system.”

In its promotional brochures, MTU says almost 250 of these engines in service with submarines around the world have racked up over 310,000 hours in operation. Some have also been fitted to nuclear submarines as back-up power plants, the company says. MTU also sells different versions of the 396 series for use in locomotives, power generation and mining.

A spokesman for the Federal Office for Economics and Export Control (BAFA), the German authority that has to approve dual-use exports, said exports of diesel engines built especially for military use would be illegal. Engines that can be used for both civilian and military purposes would have to be approved by BAFA, he said - and in the case of China, such dual-use engines “would probably not be approvable.” He declined to comment specifically, however, about the MTU diesel engine sales to China's navy.

Stealthy submarines

Top quality diesel engines like the MTU designs minimize vibration and noise, reducing the risk of detection by enemy sonar. In the hands of a capable crew, modern diesel submarines can be fiendishly difficult to detect. When using their electric motors, they are significantly stealthier than nuclear submarines such as those in service with the United States, naval warfare experts say. For a relatively modest investment, a diesel electric sub could sink a hugely expensive aircraft carrier or surface warship.

With whisper-quiet engines, China's best conventional submarines armed with modern torpedoes and missiles may pose the biggest danger to any potential adversary - including the U.S. Navy. Beijing's naval strategists are banking on their growing fleet of subs to keep the Americans and their allies far away from strategic flashpoints in the event of conflict, such as Taiwan or disputed territories in the East China Sea and South China Sea.

That means the Pentagon's favored method of modern warfare - parking carriers near the coast of an enemy and conducting massive air strikes - would be very risky in any clash with China.

The PLA navy has already demonstrated this capability. In 2006, a Song class submarine shocked the U.S. Navy when it surfaced about five miles from the U.S. aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk, well within torpedo range, in waters off the Japanese island of Okinawa. The Chinese boat had been undetected while it was apparently shadowing the U.S. carrier and its escorts, U.S. officials later confirmed.

PLA submarines are becoming much more active. Recorded Chinese submarine patrols increased steadily from four in 2001 to 18 in 2011, according to U.S Naval Intelligence data supplied in response to freedom of information requests from a Federation of American Scientists researcher, Hans M. Kristensen.

A senior U.S. Navy official declined to comment on German delivery of diesel engines to China, but said the United States is well aware of the challenges such submarines pose. “Diesel engines are notoriously difficult to detect, but we are also always investing in improving own capabilities to make our submarines quieter,” the official said.

[Avvakum]

Another dot connection to the idea that China seeks Communist world Hegemony- secure the Oilfields;

Arab monarchies eye stronger ties with China

2 hours ago

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Secretary General of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Abdullatif al-Zayani attends the GCC finance ministers meeting in Riyadh on October 5, 2013 (AFP Photo/Fayez Nureldine)

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Riyadh (AFP) - The six energy-rich Arab monarchies of the Gulf are seeking to strengthen ties with China, Gulf Cooperation Council chief Abdullatif al-Zayani said Wednesday after talks with the Chinese foreign minister.
Zayani held talks in Saudi Arabia with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and expressed "GCC interest in bolstering friendship and cooperation ties with China," a GCC statement said.

Wang was quoted as saying that Beijing wants to "expand economic, trade and investment relations" with GCC countries and spoke of the "strategic cooperation and relations (it has) with the GCC".
Wang arrived in Saudi Arabia as part of a regional tour during which he also visit Israel, the Palestinian territories, Morocco and Algeria.
Saudi media said he will be discussing with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saudi al-Faisal a "strategic partnership" between Beijing and Riyadh. It did not elaborate.

Gulf monarchies are wary of Washington's reluctance to provide military support to Syrian rebels and for its openness towards their regional archfoe Iran, and are looking to improve ties with other nations.

The Sunni-ruled monarchies, like Western powers, fear that Iran may develop nuclear weapons under the cover of its disputed nuclear programme, which Iran insists is for peaceful purposes only.
China, and the United States, are among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, which along with Germany, negotiated a landmark nuclear deal with Iran.
The GCC -- Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia -- has given a cautious welcome to the deal struck in November.

[vector7]

Xi Jinping preparing the PLA for war: Xinhua commentary

• Staff Reporter
• 2013-12-29
• 17:16 (GMT+8)

\A special PLA unit undergoes a training exercise in east China's Shandong province on Nov. 15, 2013. (Photo/CNS)

The large-scale military exercise — dubbed "Mission Action 2013" — involving 40,000 soldiers of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) in October was personally approved by Chinese president Xi Jinping to prepare his troops in the event of war, according to a strongly-worded commentary published Saturday on the website of China's official Xinhua news agency.

The long-winded 7,500-word piece said Xi, who also heads the Communist Party and is chairman of the Central Military Commission, has repeatedly emphasized the goal of building a strong army since ascending to power at the 18th National Congress last November — a goal which has become more important since that time due to major changes in China's international strategic situation and its national security situation. These include rising tensions with Japan over the Diaoyutai islands (Diaoyu to China, Senkaku to Japan) in the East China Sea, strained relations with the unpredictable North Korea, concerns over the increased US military presence in the Asia Pacific, and a slate of violent incidents at home involving ethnic minorities which have been labeled "terrorist" attacks.

During a visit to Guangzhou, the capital of southern Guangdong province, to witness a naval exercise last December, Xi told his troops of his dream of rejuvenating the "great Chinese nation," which he said cannot be achieved without a powerful army with Chinese characteristics.

The commentary said it was important to develop the country's military through proper propaganda and education, the clarification of ideas and implementing strategies in every aspect of army building in a realistic and pragmatic manner. The PLA must persevere to modernize as well as expand and strengthen its military strategies to deepen preparations for potential conflict to ensure that the troops are ready if called upon not only to fight, but to win, the article added.

Noting that the pivotal third plenum of the 18th CPC Central Committee last month is incorporating national security and military reforms into China's overall reform strategy, the commentary said that the fundamental goal of the reforms is to increase the efficiency and battle-readiness of the military. Major goals of the reforms include fully bringing China's military into the information age, revamping the command system for joint combat, and reforming the leadership structure.

Other reform goals include optimizing the size and structure of the army, adjusting and improving the proportion between various troops, and reducing non-combat institutions and personnel.

The commentary highlighted a number of Xi's visits to various PLA military zones across the country over the past year, saying that it illustrates his affection and care for the troops. In particular, Xi visited the Beijing Military Region on Aug. 1 this year to celebrate the founding of the PLA, and two months later personally oversaw "Mission Action 2013," the large-scale joint military exercise in which 40,000 troops maneuvered over 30,000 kilometers by road, rail, sea and air to test the logistic capabilities of the PLA in real war situations.

To demonstrate that he is serious about reforming China's military, Xi has also included high-ranking PLA officers in his ongoing anti-corruption sweep, increased supervision of PLA activities and cut down on excess and extravagance within the army, the article said.

[vector7]

China could defeat US in East Pacific conflict by 2020: Russian analyst

• Staff Reporter
• 2013-12-30
• 14:55 (GMT+8)

The Chinese destroyer Zhengzhou is commissioned for the East China Sea fleet of the PLA Navy on Dec. 26. (Photo/Xinhua)

China could soon defeat the United States and its allies in a naval conflict in the East Pacific, says Vassily Kashin, a senior research fellow at the Moscow-based Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies.

In a commentary published on Dec. 27 on the website of the Voice of Russia, the Russian government's international radio broadcasting service, Kashin says it is "highly probable" that by 2020 China could defeat the US in a local conflict in the east part of the Pacific or slow down the transportation of US forces to the region after it completes its current cycle of reforming and rearming the People's Liberation Army.
"China could be able of reaching its political goals even before the US localizes all the necessary forces for a full-scale counterattack," Kashin said.

The US army has developed the "AirSea Battle" concept to counteract joint efforts made by Iran and China to stop the build-up of American forces in neighboring regions, Kashin said. The AirSea Battle concept envisions three main courses of action; the destruction an adversary's intelligence, the destruction of the adversary's means to isolate a combat area, and the destruction of an adversary's armed forces.

However, Kashin said that China has been preparing against the strategy via a large-scale countering of intelligence and control systems by means of electronic warfare, cyber attacks and the use of anti-satellite weapons.

"China will be able to launch a massive highly accurate non-nuclear strike against US facilities used by transportation and military infrastructure in the region by reducing abruptly the speed of building up American forces," he wrote.

Compounding the problem is that the US only has South Korea and Japan as its military allies in the region, said Kashin, who adds that while Taiwan has an armed forces, it remains "extremely vulnerable" for strikes from the mainland and may be unable to use its military capability in the event of a US-Chinese conflict for political reasons. The Philippines, on the other hand, could be more of a distraction to American forces than help, Kashin said, adding that allies in Europe are unlikely to be interested in helping.

"The US may simply have to accept defeat," Kashin said, meaning that the most obvious way to protect American interests in East Asia is to increase its permanent presence of armed forces in the West Pacific, even if it means encountering further problems in maintaining a military presence in the Middle East.