September 09, 2009
China Trains Afghani Police
Chinese news reports are taking a look at China's small but strategic border with Afghanistan, the Wahkan Corridor, a remnant of the "Great Game" between Russia and Britain. According to the China Defense website blog photos circulating within the Chinese Internet firewall purport to show Chinese police training Afghani police in the region. The USA has spent $10 billion training police in Afghanistan since 2001 with little effect....
Labels: defense, foreign relations
September 03, 2009
USA CHINA War Games
The head of the US Pacific Command (USPACOM), Admiral Timothy Keating, said in Australia that he would like to engage China in joint war games with the US Navy and the Australian military. According to Reuters both nations have agreed to invite the Chinese Ministry of National Defense to naval and possibly land exercises.....
Labels: australia, defense, navy, pentagon
July 21, 2009
Peace Mission 2009 Underway
Joint China-Russia war games begin July 22 in Manchuria. Called "Peace Mission 2009" the games will begin with consultations and strategy sessions in the Russian Far East capital Khabarovsk and then move to Jilin province for anti-terrorist operation exercises involving several thousand troops and Russian and Chinese air power. The first two "Peace Mission" war games were conducted under the guise of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The SCO no longer attempts any military alliance, thus the war games are just between Russia and China.
Although unrelated to the war games, the Chinese have revived their plan to produce a Chinese style C-130 transport plane. China has already produced a large number of Y-9 aircraft, modeled on the former Soviet An-12 transport. Each new Y-9 will be able to carry 132 paratroopers or 25 tons of cargo....
Labels: aerospace, defense, war
July 08, 2009
Big Muddy
Is the Obama surge in Afghanistan drawing in Chinese troops? Over the past few weeks a series of interconnected events have severely impacted the security of China’s western borders.
Just three short weeks ago the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit at Yekaterinburg, Russia, got press for a collective thumbing of the nose at the US dollar. The gathering gave the appearance of defying American hegemony not only in Central Asia but globally.
But a week later the Kyrgyzstan parliament and president unanimously gave the USA continued control of an air base to support the expanding AF-PAK conflict. The following day (June 23, 2009) Kyrgyzstan battled militants allied to the Taliban on its own turf. Later that week in the run up to President Obama’s surge in Afghanistan - an increase of 21,000 troops under the new commander in Afghanistan USA Gen. Stan McChrystal - special envoy to the region Richard Holbrooke spoke of “spillover” and the commander of NATO in Europe said they could not stop militants from moving into Central Asia as a result of the surge.
Underway now in the surge is “Operation Khanjar” which aims to push the Taliban out of the Helmand and Kandahar regions of Afghanistan. As soon as it began uprisings occurred throughout the region from Ingushetia to Chechnya to Xinjiang and beyond, even as far flung as Bangladesh.
The riots in Urumqi, capital of China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, appear to be economic not unlike last year’s brief tumult in Lhasa, Tibet. Numerous videos and photos capture only gang violence by young men and boys overturning private cars and buses and looting Chinese owned liquor stores (do Uyghurs drink?), tobacco shops, and restaurants, and the random killing of people on the street. Mobs are easily bought. The riots bear the hallmarks of classic PSYOP operations at worst or political interference at best. The predictable response from Beijing is a de facto martial law with troops and security forces in the area on alert. Perhaps this was the intent all along.
As recently as 2007, the SCO held massive war games in a show of cooperative power. But today, according to the group’s UN charter the SCO is focused primarily on all things business and “making joint efforts to maintain and ensure peace, security and stability in the region” is not a top priority.
There has been no coordinated reaction to the events of the last few weeks by the SCO let alone any collaboration on a military response. The SCO has to date failed to answer the NATO/USA challenge.
What remains now is how far will Obama’s war in Afghanistan go in pushing out “the bad guys” into Central Asia and whether it will result in the USA once again fighting a proxy war along China’s borders. Is America in the Big Muddy again?
Labels: defense, GWOT, military-industrial complex
January 16, 2009
Sino-US Scientists Achieve Invisiblity Cloak
In a positive display of USA-China cooperation in high tech, Duke University researchers say they are close to creating a type of "invisibility cloak". The research is financed by the USA Air Force and the Chinese National Science Foundation. The new technology has potential in many fields from wireless telecom to defense...
April 03, 2008
"Classic Espionage" (Updated April 3, 2008)
UPDATE: Chi Mak was sentenced to over 24 years in prison even though the documents Mak took and passed to unnamed Chinese operatives were unclassified. "Mak's attorney, Ronald O. Kaye, said his client was a scapegoat for other U.S. intelligence failures and a 'symbol of the government's cold war against the Chinese.'"
UPDATE (April 1, 2008): Pentagon weapons analyst Gregg William Bergersen plead guilty to one count of criminal information conspiracy yesterday in US District Court. Last week Chinese born Chi Mak, a retired 65 year old engineer, plead guilty in California. No other details are available. These are unusually swift trials and convictions. Beijing's Foreign Ministry denies any knowledge of these conspiracies. The FBI, Navy, and Air Force investigators behind these espionage cases have not shown any evidence that any information was actually procured or received by the Chinese government.
Previous posts:
Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Liu Jianchao had this to say in a press briefing on Thursay (Feb. 14):
"Q: Not long ago, the US alleged that they had arrested four Chinese spies. Do you have any response? What is China's position on the espionage issue?First post (February 11, 2008):
A: We have taken note of the report. The so-called accusation against China on the issue of espionage is utterly groundless and out of ulterior motives. We urge the US to abandon its Cold War mentality and put end to the groundless accusations and do more to contribute to mutual trust and friendship between our two peoples."
What do the following have in common? The FBI, Boeing, the Pentagon, upcoming elections in Taiwan and the United States, the Space Shuttle, and the US Air Force's unhappiness with its share of the near $1 trillion USA defense budget?
They are "all the elements of a classic espionage operation" Kenneth L. Wainstein, USA Assistant Attorney General for National Security gushed in a release first reported by the chief purveyor of anonymous Pentagon secrets Bill Gertz in his Washington Times column and picked up by the Associated Press today.
There are actually two separate stories in the "operation" according to today's Justice Department announcement of espionage arrests. First the New Orleans - Pentagon connection centered on the efforts of Tai Shen Kuo to buy information on Taiwan arms sales from a Pentagon analyst. Mr. Tai is described in an AP report as a "furniture salesman" but someone with the same name is listed on the Internet as the CEO of Houma, Louisiana, based G T L International, a business services consultancy. There are a lot of GTL companies found on the Internet ranging from shadowy conglomerates of "The Global Group" based in Mumbai, India, to carriers in France.
The other witch hunt is against a Chinese native 72 year old retired Rockwell International (now part of Boeing) employee. Shades of Wen Ho Lee?
The first spy ring, if true, is entirely the result of US Government actions. Beijing would not need to counter American technology transfers to Taiwan if Washington would abide by the 1982 joint communique on ending arms sales to Taiwan.
It will be interesting to see the impact of this latest Chinese spy scandal on the elections in Taiwan on March 22 and the campaigns of USA presidential contenders Obama, Clinton, and McCain. I believe it is the first sign of a China bait and bash that will come to dominate the "news" cycle for the rest of the year with peaks next month, August, and October.
Labels: boeing, china, defense, espionage, military-industrial complex, pentagon, spy, taiwan
June 12, 2007
China's defense spending catching up to USA?
So says a headline release from the Scripps Howard News Service sans the question mark. The spin (why haven't we seen this headline on Drudge yet?) is a ridiculous misreport of the latest report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) that watches arms expenditures around the world.
According to the report the USA remains by far the world's biggest war machine with well over half a trillion dollars in annual arms spending. China is actually listed at number four after the UK and France. According to the report the top five military-industrial complexes and their 2006 revenues were: the USA $529 billion (46% of the entire world's weapons spending); the UK $59 billion; France $53 billion; China $50 billion (not even 10% of USA spending); and Japan $44 billion.
The Scripps Howard piece uses the purchasing-power-parity (PPP) equivalent figure for China at $188 billion. But that is specious unless the news services also explains that measured by PPP China is the second largest economy in the world just behind the USA.
If we're going to parse the data, a more revealing measure, provided in the SIPRI report but completely unreported, is military spending on a per capita basis. The USA spends $1,756 for each of its (legal) citizens versus only $37 spent per person by China on its "war" machine.
According to the report the USA remains by far the world's biggest war machine with well over half a trillion dollars in annual arms spending. China is actually listed at number four after the UK and France. According to the report the top five military-industrial complexes and their 2006 revenues were: the USA $529 billion (46% of the entire world's weapons spending); the UK $59 billion; France $53 billion; China $50 billion (not even 10% of USA spending); and Japan $44 billion.
The Scripps Howard piece uses the purchasing-power-parity (PPP) equivalent figure for China at $188 billion. But that is specious unless the news services also explains that measured by PPP China is the second largest economy in the world just behind the USA.
If we're going to parse the data, a more revealing measure, provided in the SIPRI report but completely unreported, is military spending on a per capita basis. The USA spends $1,756 for each of its (legal) citizens versus only $37 spent per person by China on its "war" machine.
Labels: arms, china, defense, industrial, military, spending, u.s., war
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