Sept. 11 Amuses Chinese Premier

Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji recently cracked a joke about the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Zhu told the joke to a captive audience of Asian executives during the April Bao business conference held on Hainan Island. Zhu's remarks came during a question-and-answer session with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

According to Zhu, "Japan bought many huge buildings in New York, but luckily they didn't buy the World Trade Center. If they had bought them, now the Japanese would be sadder than the Americans."

Zhu's joke was quickly followed by a long round of laughter and applause from the Asian businessmen. Ironically, Japan lost two citizens aboard one of the hijacked airplanes, and 24 Japanese citizens are still missing in the remains of the World Trade Center.

The remarks by Zhu underscore other events of Sept. 11 that received little or no coverage. On that fateful day a group of Chinese reporters were being given an official tour by the U.S. State Department. The Chinese reporters witnessed the terror attacks against the Twin Towers live on television along with several U.S. press members and their State Department guides.

According to several U.S. reporters, the Chinese journalists broke into cheers and applause when the second 767 struck the World Trade Center. Several Chinese journalists reportedly exchanged "high-fives" celebrating the successful attack on America.

The U.S. State Department guides, aware that the incident was now a major embarrassment, quickly shut down the TV set and hustled the Chinese journalists back to the PRC embassy.

The tension between Beijing and Washington may not be so obvious, but it still circulates beneath any official meetings. Chinese Vice President Hu Jintao is expected to visit Washington on Saturday. Hu plans to meet with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Hu's visit is considered important in that the 59-year-old vice president is expected to take President Jiang Zemin's spot in 2003 as top dog in the Beijing communist pack. According to press sources, Hu is not expected to make any big announcements during his visit to the White House. Political observers noted that he has scheduled few public appearances and will avoid talking about Taiwan, trade or human rights.

However, Hu has not been so shy when playing for the home audience. In Beijing, during a meeting to mark the 30th anniversary of the normalization of ties between the U.S. and China, he met with Henry Kissinger to talk about the future of Taiwan.

According to Kissinger, Hu sent a clear and forceful message that China expects the United States to capitulate to Beijing's eventual takeover of free Taiwan. Hu considers Taiwan a renegade province and refused to renounce the use of force to achieve unification.

Hu's remarks on force are not empty words. In April, U.S. intelligence agencies tracked 20 new Dong Feng 15 short-range missiles to a military base in Fujian province, directly across from Taiwan.

Chinese missile deployments opposite Taiwan have been continuing at a rate of at least 50 new missiles a year. The new shipment of DF-15s is part of a continuing Chinese buildup for a planned force of more than 1,000 modern missiles.

China's massing of ballistic missiles along its eastern seaboard has ratcheted up tensions on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. One response to Beijing's missile threat is for Taiwan to develop and test-fire indigenously developed short-range missiles.

In fact, Taiwan launched a three-day exercise in response to Beijing's deployment of new DF-15 missiles. The military exercise was held at the Chiupeng missile base in the island's southeast.

The red missile build-up has not escaped the attention of the U.S. Navy. Adm. Dennis Blair, commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, recently warned that while Chinese missiles "cannot make a decisive military difference yet," the buildup will at some point threaten the defense of Taiwan.

According to the Financial Times, Blair noted the United States would seriously consider supplying missile defenses to Taipei if Beijing continues to deploy new missiles.

Blair's concern over the DF-15 missile is well founded. The U.S. has no missile that can match the Dong Feng 15. The DF-15 is considered to be equal to the U.S. Army Pershing missile that was deployed during the 1980s but later withdrawn from service.

The reason the U.S. Army Pershing is not in service is because the Soviet Union and the United States banned short-range tactical missiles by a joint treaty in the 1980s. The Soviet Union dismantled its force of SS-20 Saber missiles, and the United States dismantled its Pershings because these tactical missile systems are considered to be too dangerous.

China, however, does not take U.S. air superiority as a joke. The Beijing leadership compensates for its lack of air power by deploying advanced missiles. U.S. intelligence agencies estimate that China has between 350 and 400 missiles deployed at bases within firing range of Taiwan. Their flight time is so short they can reach their targets within minutes.

Taiwan has no defensive systems to stop them, but Taipei would like to remedy this problem. After consultations with the Bush administration, Taiwan is expected to make a bid to procure the U.S. Patriot III theater missile defense system.

Taiwan's bid for a missile defense has not escaped Beijing's notice. Chinese Vice President Hu is expected to express his opposition to the proposed Patriot sale to Taiwan behind closed doors at the White House. Perhaps he can make a few wisecracks about the attack on the Pentagon while he meets with Bush and Cheney to object about missile sales to Taiwan.

If the leadership in Beijing considers the attack on the World Trade Center to be a subject for humor, then President Bush should remind Hu that the United States considers the defense of a free Taiwan no laughing matter. The ultimate joke on Beijing would be for the United States to sell Taiwan the defensive Patriot missiles it needs.

"To threaten Taiwan, China needs either (1) to nuke the place, in which case there is nothing to take over and probably no one left to do the taking either, or (2) invade. To invade they have to get across the strait. To get across the straight in their grab-bag of merchant and transport ships, they need to keep everybody else's navy and air force out of the area."

They can wait until we have our hands full in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. They can time it so that when the North Koreans move against the South, simultaneously with American involvement in the Middle East...that's when they attack. Keep our forces out of the area?...What forces are those, if the timing is right?

Have you forgotten an act of war--threatening to nuke Los Angeles--which was made only a few years ago? Have you forgotten knocking down our E-3A aircraft and stripping it of all intelligence material, over which we did precisely nothing?...

(BTW, the mission commander on the E-3A should have been court-martialled for allowing this information to fall into the hands of the Chinese--or the designers should have been tried for failing to install a fail-safe destruct system, but that's another matter).

--Boris

I wonder if in the future it's not going to get harder (rather than easier) for China to invade Taiwan, sans nukes of course.

I'm thinking of some of the newer technologies being deployed, and developed, particularly the sensors and battle management. To mix metaphors and muddy things up, the Taiwan military (with our help) could build a "neural network" of sensors covering the straits over time, that would basically provide a digital map of the straits in real time, from the smallest gnat to the most innocuous fishing boat. That could be sent real time via satellite to submarines and other hunter killers.

I expect that the Chinese would get the first wave of missiles off, but the second wave (under this thinking would be destroyed by cruise missiles prior to launch, and any attack boats or transports would be floating coffins.

That is, unless the Chinese open up with nukes, which would be incredibly stupid of them because of what our (and the world's) response would be.

I for one am not going to forget the Chinese who laugh at 9/11, any more than I forget the Palestinians.

By all means remember that the Chinese and the Palis celebrated 9-11. They are not our friends. What still somewhat staggers me however is how much the logic of scare-mongering seems to have wiped out some people's capacity to think clearly. Knowing that someone is our enemy is distinct from believing he will kick our ass.

Some seem unable to wrap their minds around this (I am not including you), because they regard denial of the proposition "they are about to kick our ass" as a denial of dangerousness, and then just magically flip that over to "not our enemy". Hello? Enemies include everyone whose ass we would kick. Most of the people who dislike us in the world, most of its bastards, refrain from attacking us every day not out of tender loving feelings, but out of a robust sense that they'd be clobbered, and would not enjoy the experiment. Which is all I have ever said about China. So I hardly need a reminder of what they celebrated.

As for the one wave of missles thing, I think the naval war is simpler even than that. When we shoot at their ships, their ships will go boom. The reason is simple - their ships have next to no modern air defenses, of the sort required to shoot down incoming missles. There navy is also small compared to ours.

They've got like 2 recent Russian DDs with as much air defense as a Perry class frigate, the least defended major surface combatants in our navy. Their others have either nothing (most of them), or a few SAMs mostly meant to drive away aircraft, and every other ship they've got would rapidly be overloaded.

I mean, the SAM capacity of their whole navy is about that of the largest Russian surface vessel. We could overload all of it, and destroy every vessel they have, even if every SAM they carried took out one incoming missle - all with a salvo from a tiny fraction of our fleet. Meanwhile, even if they got off every SSM they carry - which they never would, lacking range, survivability, etc - we would get 4 pops at each incoming, plus chaff, plus phalanx, etc.

And that is just surface stuff. They also have to deal with an enourmous number of subs far quieter and more capable than anything they've got. And a fleet arm arm tossing ASMs at them from over the horizon. They are not remotely in our weight class in naval or air power. Only the Russians are, as a distinct second on the naval front, but with modern vessels with large batteries of SAM and SSM capable missles, numerous highly capable attack subs, etc.

That is why they spend so much effort on the diplomatic side of blustering us off. They know their only prayer of seizing Taiwan militarily is if we stay out of it. They thought that quite possible under Clinton, which is why they probed so much. They do not think it remotely possible under Bush, which is why they aren't bothering to. Instead they are waiting and playing "stack the missles", moaning diplomatically and trying to head off additional weapons procurement by Taiwan.

Their plan is to browbeat Americans out of the notion of defending Taiwan, to give them a chance in some future appeasement-minded administration to take on Taiwan solo. Against an alliance, especially one including us, it is impossible. Japan's navy is stronger than China's. India's is comparable. Each of them has a better air force. And the list of their potential enemies is rather long. They don't even outnumber that potential enemy list in population terms, since it includes India. And their economy is a tenth the size, their air and sea power even worse than the economic power ratio.

Peace in the far east in recent decades has rested firmly on greater military power in the hands of countries in favor of peace, us first among them. It still does. Not intentions, not that they aren't bastards and enemies of ours. Capabilities - they are weak bastards. They *talk* way above their weight. But it is bombast.

On the sensor net idea, I will just say this. I recall a conversation with a security affairs analyst type several years ago, talking about the Taiwan strait problem. I asked him whether number of older bits of equipment might still matter - MiG-19s and gunboats, that sort of thing. His response was brief, clipped sentences. "Liquid environments. Sensor technology. No problem."

Trouble is, Bush doesn't seem to be any more insightful or have much more originality than Chauncey the Gardener or any of the macadamia nut-fudge leftist politicoes who have the cameras on them.

The following are excerpts from a March 23, 2002 Washington Times piece by Bill Sammon.
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"MONTERREY, Mexico: ----- ------- yesterday said Americans are duty-bound to 'share our wealth' with poor nations and promised a 50 percent increase in foreign aid, but 'We should give more of our aid in the form of grants, rather than loans that can never be repaid,' he said. 'We should invest in better health and build on our efforts to fight AIDS, which threatens to undermine whole societies.'

"In addition to the moral, economic and strategic imperatives of increasing foreign aid, ----- ------- said, it could also help in the war against terrorism.

"'We will challenge the poverty and hopelessness and lack of education and failed governments that too often allow conditions that terrorists can seize and try to turn to their advantage"

Here's a small political quiz. Who is quoted above?

a) George McGovern
b) Bill Clinton
c) Kweisi Mfume
d) Al Sharpton
e) Jesse Jackson
f ) Alan Dershowitz
g) George W. Bush

Hint: He's very popular here at Free Republic.

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