Posted on 09/07/2010 8:12:18 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
China’s young officers and the 1930s syndrome
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Economics Last updated: September 7th, 2010
Vietnam and the United States staged a demonstration of their military ties last month amid mounting tensions with China over the South China Sea.
I try to remain optimistic that the US and China will work out a more or less amicable way to run the world for the next half century, a “Chimerica” of interwoven superpowers.
But it was slightly disturbing to hear the warnings of a distinguished China-watcher at a closed-door session of the annual Ambrosetti conference on Lake Como.
(This gathering of the global policy elites at Villa D’Este is a hardship assignment for Telegraph hacks. It fell to me again this year, but somebody has to do it.)
“China’s military spending is growing so fast that it has overtaken strategy,” said Professor Huang Jing from the Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore. (He kindly let me quote his remarks.)
“The young officers are taking control of strategy and it is like young officers in Japan in the 1930s. They are thinking what they can do, not what they should do. This is very dangerous.
“They are on a collision course with a US-dominated system”.
Harvard Professor Niall Ferguson rattled me even further with a talk warning that the Chimerica marriage of the last generation is “on the rocks”.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.telegraph.co.uk ...
I think that China is now a country that has logic, instead of an artistic temperment running their nation. When they had artists who held the soldier in low esteem, they got colonized easily by the other powers. After the revolution, people with scientific (and none to compassionate) personalities run things. Soldiers are the top of the heap and with the US becoming run by artists, well, go figure we’re becoming low on the totem pole.
Communist China is building it’s economy, military, and industrial base to ensure full, efficient production. If we don’t do the same, along with Europe, then we are going to end up getting bullied and follwing the dictates of the Chinese for the next century, maybe even two centuries.
The sheer numbers make comparisons to Japan irrelevant. How many Japanese were there in the ‘30s, maybe 100M? How many Chinese today?
Not to mention the other resources Japan lacked, and China doesn’t lack.
Even if theyhad launched the third wave and blew up the oil tank farm and the drydocks, the Pearl Harbor task force was not geared up for an invasion, and it would have taken 6 months or better to mount one. Japan was stretched to the limit with operations already underway. In that 6 months re-inforcements would have arrived and tehy would not have been able to do it. It would have put a serious damper on US naval operations though, and they might have been able to take Midway.
Just my humble opinion.
I think that if they had gained a toehold, the Imperial Army would have for the first time faced a heavily armed civilian population. Something they had never faced. And then the reinforcements from the Mainland and of course, not understanding the terrain or language, would have caused substantial losses.
The other populations were not properly armed and China was torn apart by civil war at the time of the invasion and Nanking. The US was united and even the Japanese politburo understood the reality of their mistake. Although, simply taking Hawaii would have given them a foothold.
That explains all the secret nuclear sub pens and the rush to build a huge blue water navy. Yep nothing going on there, just trying to stay competitive in a growing economy.
Besides, based on China's recent frenzy to secure overseas source of necessary resources, China appears to have a different opinion. They sure lack oil. They dream for much bigger empire, which need a lot more resources to maintain.
In addition, China has not been tightly glued political entity. Disparate regions and ethnicity have always provide the strong potential for breakup. It is held together basically by brute force, with some added carrots. Maintaining the empire creates a huge overhead, without which various regions will go their own separate ways. The momentum of breakup usually starts with angry peasants. Heavy taxes, bad harvest, and corruption all provides fuel for large-scale rebellion, which ambitious people harness to advance their own ambition of becoming new hegemon. This could create long period of devastating civil war. If such a prospect become overwhelmingly likely, this would give another rationale for PLA to act on their ambition.
I think you are correct.
Even during the height of Mao communism, in port cities all over the world there were the “overseas Chinese” in well established and prosperous communities. They were doing business, sometimes better than the locals.
The chains and shackles have been relatively released and the tremendous entrepreneurial ability is becoming a force all across the world as the overseas unite with the home folks to engage the world from strong and well established business offices.
The competition will be intense, especially as the Indian subcontinent is awakening and becoming a force in world commerce.
The soviets captured eastern Europe purely as a buffer to prevent recurrence of invasion. The Russians should be watching their east. China will not necessarily invade, they will just migrate and absorb.
Our task is to continue innovating.
Not good
About 70m, compared to China's 600m. Japan's population is around 128m today, compared to China's 1.3b.
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