[neverdem]

China Newsphoto via Reuters
Chinese soldiers gave demonstrations Tuesday after completing three months of training at a base in Hubei Province in the center of the country.

Looks like a SKS with a polymer stock.

[wk4bush2004]

China may have a new generation of leaders but they are no better than the previous. President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao have not renounced the use of force against Taiwan and despite calling for China's "peaceful rise" they continually aim to build up and modernize the PLA.

I think that if the EU lifts the embargo, we should ban all military technology sales to them.

I also think that British Aerospace is smart in pledging not to get involved in arms sales to China because that would damage relations with the US.

[neverdem]

[Penner]

Senator Richard G. Lugar, the Indiana Republican who is chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said that if the ban is lifted - as European leaders have said they plan to do in coming months - Congress could react with "a prohibition on a great number of technical skills and materials, or products, being available to Europeans."

Somebody should tap Senator Lugar on the shoulder and tell him that we've outsourced all of those technical things, so threats like this won't work anymore.

[snowsislander]

The new intelligence reports indicate that since Mr. Bush came to office, China has raced ahead with one of the most ambitious military buildups in the world - including building 23 new amphibious assault ships that could ferry tanks, armored vehicles and troops across the 100 miles to Taiwan, and 13 new attack submarines.

"Their amphibious assault shipbuilding alone equals the entire U.S. Navy shipbuilding since 2002," one intelligence official said.

Extrapolate those figures out a few years, and we will forever regret making a bellicose totalitarian state wealthy.