Posted on 06/08/2005 9:52:35 PM PDT by CHARLITE
You don't need a fortune cookie to learn that China isn't playing straight with the rest of the world. The men in Beijing may be taking some of their clues from the most important page of Mao Tse-tung's Little Red Book: "Every Communist must grasp the truth, 'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.'"
We've been lulled into thinking the Chinese brand of "free markets" will move that country toward democracy. Maybe someday, eventually, it will. But free markets must be accompanied by personal freedoms and representative government, and that isn't happening. In fact, there are disturbing signs of a military build-up and deception about it at the highest levels of the Chinese government today.
It's the Chinese armory that concerns the defense secretary. "I just look at the significant rollout of ballistic missiles opposite Taiwan, and I have to ask the question: 'If everyone agrees the question of Taiwan is going to be settled in a peaceful way, why this increase in ballistic missiles opposite Taiwan?'"
The Rumsfeld speech reflects the buzz of the China watchers in Washington, where the publication of a new book expands the latest thinking. "China: The Gathering Threat," by Constantine Menges, takes its title from Winston Churchill's famous warning about the lessons of World War II: "There never was a war in all history easier to prevent by timely action ... but no one would listen. We surely must not let that happen again."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
...and because we are at the other end of an economic rifle barrell (visa vi, the huge number of US bonds held by the Chinese government), we are powerless to do anything unless we are willing to gut what's left of our economy when they dump our debt on the open market. Next stop -economic oblivion and the Twilight Zone.
My big concern is their new AShM capability. Some of their new "ship killers" are damned scary.
The jury is still out on this. Odds are they can't do very much. The ChiComs have a lot on paper but very little in reality.
I remember the stink about when we (spy action ?) let the USSR get the technology (from Norway, Sweden - ?) to make quiter props for their subs.
Did that stop us from being able to track them? Hell no.
China is quickly becoming the new cold war bad guy, with an intersting twist.
Military wanna be, economic (at least for the US) heavyweight.
Ah, the age old saying.....Nuke 'em, nuke 'em now!
LVM
The best ASM they have is a poor copy of a Sunburn missile. The Sunburn is not considered a serious threat to the USN. It's pretty old technology, and we know all about it and how to defend against it.
Also they only have a handfull(3-4) of ships capable of launching it. Those ships are actually ex-Soviet era as well. We probably know where they are at all times. It's actually kind of easy to do this as the PLAN hardly ever leaves port, except for the odd sub run into the Indian ocean.
It was the Japanese that sold numerical control milling machines to the ChiComs. Sadly they were made in America.
Sorry, I meant Soviets, not Chicoms in my last.
"except for the odd sub run into the Indian ocean."
Or into the waters around Okinawa. :-) I know someone who worked in Japan (Yokosuka) when they served in the Navy. This same person also worked in SOSUS. When the story about a sub spotted near Okinawa broke a few months ago, this former CMDR said, matter of factly, that is was a Chinese sub. A few days later, the news oulets confirmed that the "mystery sub" was Chinese.
Yes. If/when that happens you can say hello to 10% mortgage rates and the end of the housing boom, which is the only thing powering this economy.
--Prevailing "conventional wisdom" circa 1930s
People in our govt see certain people willing to 'play ball' on issues so no need to sink the whole ship over it.
Its cheaper for us to keep China as is, rather than to try to rebuild it after things fall apart....
Plus lots of people will probably die should we go all out to put them under. We are talking civil war and popular unrest in a country with a billion people...
There was also a statement by the Japanese Defense Minister that it had been tracked right from it's pier. While that was more than he should have said, I suspect it was true. That particular sub class (Han) is one of their nuke boats but by our standards it's a target. The boat actually tried to get to the pacific by going through some Japanese Islands. The Japanese in response have stationed several hundred of their Marines to these Islands. (My guess is to protect them as potential military installations.) At any time they (or us) could have put a helicopter over the top of the sub and dropped a torpedo on it's head.
FL-7 Feilong-7
China and Russia are the only two countries to have successfully developed supersonic anti-ship missiles, which represent the future direction of anti-ship weapons. The majority of anti-ship missiles are high subsonic. In addition to developing the C-101 and C-301 supersonic anti-ship missiles which are fairly large in size, China has developed the more compact Feilong (Flying Dragon)-7 supersonic anti-ship missile which can be carried on airplanes and warships. The Feilong-7 has an effective range of 32 kilometers and a speed of Mach 1.4. It has powerful anti-jamming capability and its supersonic flight makes terminal interception difficult. The warhead of the "Feilong-7" can pierce solid armor and destroy large and medium-sized surface warships.
Some folks think that because we won the cold war that communism is dead. Far from it. China has never given up the quest for world domination. Every time you buy an item made in that slave state, you are paying for a bullet that will be used against us.
dang, and I was all set to ping ya to this...
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