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China's sudden show of force sent SDF jets scrambling-:)
asahi ^ | 1/2/2008 | TSUYOSHI NOJIMA, THE ASAHI SHIMBUN

Posted on 01/02/2008 2:41:33 AM PST by Flavius

TAIPEI--Aggressive military action by China's air force in the East China Sea triggered alarm in Japan that resulted in emergency scrambling by Self-Defense Forces fighter jets on two days in September.

Chinese bombers made more than 40 sorties in airspace around the disputed Chunxiao gas field, known as Shirakaba in Japanese. SDF jets were scrambled 12 times, according to Taiwanese military sources.

Japanese government sources later confirmed the account.

China's action initially was seen as provocative. However, Japanese experts say the exercise could have been part of the Chinese military's readiness in the East China Sea in the event of an emergency situation in Taiwan.

(Excerpt) Read more at asahi.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: china; h6; h6k; japan; pla; plaaf
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To: wastedyears
Some have, others have been neglected...as if we could rest indefinitely on our technology from 20 years ago...as if that was the be-all and end-all, and we would always have the best.

Hence Cheney as SecDef ordered the termination of B-2 production, and scrapping the F-14 tooling back in '92.

That tenet may no longer be valid:


61 posted on 01/02/2008 3:40:10 PM PST by Paul Ross (Ronald Reagan-1987:"We are always willing to be trade partners but never trade patsies.")
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To: Paul Ross

The tail assembly of that aircraft looks like the JSF F-35.

Just how much intel do the Chinese have?


62 posted on 01/02/2008 3:42:30 PM PST by wastedyears (Tell me why I had to be a powerslave... Iron Maiden March 14th, 2008)
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To: Soliton
But, they are arming them now with fairly sophisticated ALCMs. The Chinese production line for those aircraft opened up again recently and you can bet that the avionics and the electronics have been upgraaded for the purpose of using those ALCMs.

In spaces like the Western Pacific where their own continental air cover can protect them when firing numerous ALCMs on multiple targets in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, etc., they become somewhat more troublesome than if they were sent out long distances on their own.

63 posted on 01/02/2008 4:09:49 PM PST by Jeff Head (Freedom is not free...never has been, never will be. (www.dragonsfuryseries.com))
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To: Paul Ross

Exactly...and their production lines for these aircraft, signicantly upgraded, is now open again.


64 posted on 01/02/2008 4:10:30 PM PST by Jeff Head (Freedom is not free...never has been, never will be. (www.dragonsfuryseries.com))
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To: Flavius

There was a thread, maybe two, on this incident at the time.


65 posted on 01/02/2008 4:12:55 PM PST by RightWhale (Dean Koonz is good, but my favorite authors are Dun and Bradstreet)
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To: driftdiver
You put everyone in Shanghai in a gas line and look out, brother.” Can’t remember who did it but one of the emperors took every teacher in his province and invited them to a special party. They ended up burying them all alive.

I was afraid that would be interpreted differently from what I intended...sorry.

What I meant was gasoline lines.

I didn't mean Hitler style.

People oversell the "liberating influence of trade" with these nominal-communists, however, the consumerization of the chinese lower-to-middle class I believe wiggles the tightrope on which the Party has to tread.

If there were a massive interruption of oil in China (due to middle east or Sinopec corruption or whatever) then it would affect a large base of the socio-economic pyramid. And the chinese people have a temper!

The Party might be able to deflect that fury at the West via a big army draft, load everyone on a tanker and invade LA, but I don't think so. Seems more likely that the people would turn mob and throttle all the local bosses.

I believe that the Party is going to be a threat to the USA. But I do not believe that that necessarily means that they can count on the support of the people. And I also don't believe that the Party is safe -from- the Chinese people.

66 posted on 01/02/2008 4:45:04 PM PST by sam_paine (X .................................)
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To: flowerplough

No. The ChiComs will create the disturbance through use of spies and terrorism. They will then directly intervene to restore order.


67 posted on 01/02/2008 4:49:36 PM PST by rmlew (Felix sit novus annus)
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To: driftdiver
"China has controlled the same area for about 5000 years"

No, they really haven't. The best that can be said is that those controlling the area have found it useful to learn Chinese as a language.

The Japanese were not there for a short period of time, but for over a decade, and they didn't leave because the Chinese outlasted them, they left because the US air force burned Japan to the ground. The Chinese had all the population you please at the time, but no internal unity, no military traditions, no bravery in the field to speak of, and emphatically did not have any unstoppable willingness to take any level of casualties the Japanese might inflict. As a fact, entire Chinese armies on paper numbering hundreds of thousands of soldiers, flat ran away from single Japanese divisions with bolt action rifles and a handful of light machineguns.

The Chinese fought much better in Korea, with Russian training, equipment, and help, as well as veteran troops from their civil war. But the US still inflicted 20 to 1 losses on them and upward, without being overwhelmed by numbers at all. The Chinese were overwhelmed by capital and firepower.

The Chinese fought OK against India, without either side being terribly serious about it or high losses for either side. But showed no brilliance in military operations, and didn't overwhelm anybody with numbers. Oh right, they barely had numbers, fighting India.

Then they fought very poorly against the veteran North Vietnamese, losing a hundred thousand men and never making it more than a few miles from the border. They had all the numbers you please, and the NVA did not have far superior capital for war, unlike the US in Korea. But the NVA were veterans and tough as nails, and the Chinese were conscripts and soft as suburbanites, and no government willingness to sustain losses translated down to the infantry in the field, and for that matter the tolerance for loss of prestige and public fiasco wasn't very high at the top, and they gave it up rather rapidly.

So much for the claim that Chinese soldiers will be more dedicated than others, and only an armaments disparity could ever beat them. For that matter, the armaments disparity with Japan was slight, though present - notably in the air. But basically the Chinese couldn't face even Japanese infantry with similar weapons - just like the NVA, the Japanese simply had superior soldiers to anything the Chinese could field.

And this is not a new development. China couldn't defend itself from western colonialists, before the Japanese. It couldn't defend itself from Russians before that - it was Japan that contained Russia in Manchuria, not Chinese armies. They couldn't hold out the Mongols. China was regularly invaded from the steppes, and tended to deal with it by assimilating the conquerors as a new ruling class, not by militarily defeating them.

China is a great nation because of its civilization, its arts, and in recent times its productive work and trade. It is not a great nation because of any military virtue it has ever possessed. It is in fact a tragedy that some in the leadership do not understand this and are seeking aggrandizement as a military matter - a procedure that emphatically does not work, in the long run or the short. But that is particularly doomed in the hands of a civilization with this track record, in which military achievement is literally a matter ancient history, and for whom nothing of consequence is in prospect by military means.

China would be vastly better off giving up on trying to wrestle with the rest of the world - doing so will only draw on it a containing coalition, already nearly formed under US auspices, that vastly outweighs it in every metric - including population. The neighboring states that do not wish to see China expand militarily have half again its population, five times its economy, and ten times its military power - minimum.

The US has had a determined policy for over 150 years that was friendly to China, expected great things from trade with China, and sought to keep all foreign imperialist powers out of the country, to help it achieve independence, and to ensure freedom to trade for those within China, and for others with it. Belatedly and after horrible internal errors and serious struggles, including a major war waged on China's behalf, a direct collision under its early communist government, and tens of millions killed by misguided policies of that government - this policy has, since Deng Xiaoping, been crowned with essentially complete success. To China's lasting enrichment, and potentially to the lasting benefit of the rest of the world.

To throw all that away on military adventurism would be a mistake at least as large as Mao's assorted economic catastrophes, and would probably kill as many Chinese and cost the country as many decades of fruitless wasted efforts. Time will show whether Chinese leaders are really that stupid. Or better yet, maybe some of the people of China will take matters into their own hands, reject the route of chestbeating competition and the ashes it will bring in train, and throw over the whole wretched business - and the leaders selling it.

That would be the civilized thing to do. Let's see whether China is actually civilized.

But trying to scare the world? Forget it. We weren't scared of Joe Stalin with atom bombs. We weren't scared by Hitler at the gates of Moscow. We aren't going to be scared off by a population statistic.

68 posted on 01/02/2008 4:50:04 PM PST by JasonC
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To: JACKRUSSELL
Dont Worry.

President Huckabee can go over to Beijing (once he finds it on a map after locating Asia--give him 35 minutes) and have a good heart to heart talk to the PRC leadership, in a non-arrogant manner, and they will be moved to tears seeing this American benevolence and will respect our weakness and tone down their aggression.

69 posted on 01/02/2008 5:14:10 PM PST by AmericanInTokyo (Your FR Pledge: Bookmark It Today! "I Won't Support Mitt/Rudy/McCain/Huckster in General Election")
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To: JasonC

“We weren’t scared of Joe Stalin with atom bombs. We weren’t scared by Hitler at the gates of Moscow. We aren’t going to be scared off by a population statistic.”

We were petrified of Joseph Stalin. He killed millions of people. We were also scared of Hitler once the war got going, hence to all out battle against him. Once we knew what he really was we were even more scared.

The massive chinese army is not a statistic. They may not have the best technology yet but they have the money and we are giving them time. To discount them is foolish.


70 posted on 01/02/2008 5:15:03 PM PST by driftdiver
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To: yorkie; Borax Queen; Czar
Chinese bombers made more than 40 sorties in airspace

This all thanks to Americans buying Chinese....at all the Wal-Marts and sundry other places. "We" are equipping the Chinese military.

71 posted on 01/02/2008 5:16:20 PM PST by nicmarlo
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To: flowerplough

China is just checking on reaction times.


72 posted on 01/02/2008 5:17:06 PM PST by Uriah_lost ("I don't apologize for the United States of America," -Fred D Thompson)
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To: driftdiver
Perhaps, the Japanese were brutal but did not have the size or population to control China for a long time.

Read up on the Rape of Nanking (300,000 civilian casualties deliberately inflicted, in particularly inhumane ways -- even the highest ranking Nazi in the city was so appalled he personally appealed to Hitler about it) and then get back to me on the population imbalance.

NO cheers, unfortunately.

73 posted on 01/02/2008 5:32:37 PM PST by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
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To: wastedyears
Just how much intel do the Chinese have?

Here in Silicon Valley it is said that half the Chinese who are here are spying on us.

The other half are spying on them...

74 posted on 01/02/2008 5:39:28 PM PST by null and void (To anger a conservative, lie to him. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth. - M203M4)
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To: wastedyears
The tail assembly of that aircraft looks like the JSF F-35. Just how much intel do the Chinese have?

Only theyknow for sure. We're only able to guess. But it looks bad because we know that the Defense contractors have had major breaches...which they won't reveal for commercial self-protection:

Cyberspies Target Silent Victims

Alan Paller [SANS Institute, Bethesda Md] believes that the 10 most prominent U.S. defense contractors--including Raytheon (nyse: RTN - news - people ), Lockheed Martin (nyse: LMT - news - people ), Boeing (nyse: BA - news - people ) and Northrop Grumman (nyse: NOC - news - people )--have, for the past 14 months, been the victims of the same sort of cyberespionage that has recently plagued the Pentagon. He and other experts warn that the classified military technology research held by these private sector companies is even more vulnerable to hackers than the data stored on government computers. And while the U.S. government publicizes its security breaches, researchers say these commercial contractors almost always keep their data losses out of the public eye.


75 posted on 01/03/2008 2:35:41 PM PST by Paul Ross (Ronald Reagan-1987:"We are always willing to be trade partners but never trade patsies.")
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To: driftdiver
Be as scared as you please. I'm not. China might be stupid enough to confront the US military openly - if it does, their will get their heads handed to them. Mess with the best, die like the rest.
76 posted on 01/03/2008 4:04:21 PM PST by JasonC
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To: JasonC
We weren't scared of Joe Stalin with atom bombs.

Yes, we were.

And we were right to be.

77 posted on 01/07/2008 10:22:44 AM PST by Paul Ross (Ronald Reagan-1987:"We are always willing to be trade partners but never trade patsies.")
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To: wastedyears

The tail assembly of that aircraft looks like the JSF F-35.

Just how much intel do the Chinese have?


Well, they have the internet. A wonderful place to get information.


78 posted on 01/07/2008 11:14:51 AM PST by UCANSEE2 (Just saying what 'they' won't.)
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To: nicmarlo
This all thanks to Americans buying Chinese....at all the Wal-Marts and sundry other places. "We" are equipping the Chinese military.

Thanks to all the globalists and unfettered capitalists who have made it impossible to purchase products in many categories unless they are manufactured in China.

79 posted on 01/07/2008 11:18:10 AM PST by steve86 (Acerbic by nature, not nurtureā„¢)
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To: steve86

I stand corrected. You are right. Unfortunately, there are also too many willing Americans willing to buy cheap Chinese instead of going without or buying American when available...


80 posted on 01/07/2008 1:06:44 PM PST by nicmarlo
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