How Russia keeps China armed

WASHINGTON - China may have lost the latest skirmish with the European Union to get the latter to lift its arms ban, but Beijing is still able to buy what it needs - solid, serviceable hardware and technology - from Russia, former Soviet-bloc nations and Israel. And the embargo gives China greater incentive to develop its own weapons systems.

On Wednesday, the European parliament in Brussels voted, as expected, to maintain the EU embargo on arms trade with the People's Republic of China until the PRC improves its human rights record. It voted not to weaken national restrictions on such arms sales and said the ban should continue in force until the EU itself had adopted an improved code of conduct, providing legal restraints on arms experts. The current ban is largely voluntary, and strongly opposed by France and Germany.

No matter, China is still a big arms buyer, though economic constraints if maintained at the current level probably will keep Beijing from doing anything extraordinary, military-wise, for the next decade, experts say.

There is a famous incident recounted by the late Colonel Harry Summers, author of the classic 1982 book On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War. In it he notes that at the very end of the war he was in Hanoi trying to make an agreement on the former Republic of Vietnam. In the course of the conversation he said, "Well, at least we never lost a battle to you." One North Vietnamese general then replied, "That's true, but it doesn't matter."

Much the same thing might be said concerning the debate over lifting the arms embargo on China. While China does not have the most modern weaponry or military technologies, the reality is that it has most of what it needs and is not having great difficulties in procuring from other countries, outside the European Union and the United States, what it does need. So the European parliament vote is not that significant to China.

Where does China turn when it shops for military weapons? In a word, Russia. According to the Russian Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST), China constitutes the largest single importer of post-Soviet Russian arms and military equipment, with purchases ranging between 30% and 50% of Russia's entire annual deliveries.

Without those arms exports to China, Russia would lack the funds to modernize its own military. In fact, in the past Russia has prohibited the export of certain of its military aircraft, or production licenses, to China only to revoke the ban later on.

Rosoboronexport, the sole state intermediary agency for Russia's military arms sales and exports, estimated that sales will total US$4.1 billion this year, down from $5.1 billion in 2003. Aircraft and ships account for over half of the exports.

China purchased eight missile systems this summer from Russia and has already received 24 Su-30MKK fighters. Jane's Defence Weekly reported last month that China is in talks with Ukraine to obtain 42 turbofan engines to power its NAMC JL-8 basic jet trainer/light attack jet. The talks are a follow up on the 58 engines ordered in 1997 and since delivered to Beijing.

China is also reported to have launched preliminary talks with Ukraine on the potential acquisition of the Antonov An-124 and An-225 Mriya heavy-transport aircraft to address long-standing strategic lift requirements for the People's Liberation Army. The former is the world's largest production aircraft and can carry a payload of at least 120 tons. The latter is even bigger, with a payload capacity in excess of 250 tons.

In October, the Admiralteiskiye Verfi shipyard in St Petersburg turned over the first of two improved Kilo-class attack submarines to China's navy, PLAN (People's Liberation Army Navy). The two submarines were unveiled at the shipyard last summer and are part of a Russia-China deal worth $1.5 billion that was signed in May 2002. The contract called for five submarines. Two are being built by Admiralteiskiye Verfi, while two others are being built by Sevmash in Severodvinsk. The final one is being built by Krasnoye Sormovo in Nizhni Novgorod.

The Kilo is considered one of the most advanced diesel-electric submarines in the world and the subs will boost China's ability to conduct a naval blockade of Taiwan. According to a November 17 article in the Asian Wall Street Journal, by 2007 the PLAN force will have 12 Kilo-class subs. Most will be armed with "Club" anti-ship missiles, which have a range of 136 miles.

According to John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a non-profit research group in Alexandria, Virginia, "China has acquired an enormous number of Sukhoi [fighter aircraft] variants from Russia, as well as destroyers and subs." He thinks the debate over an embargo is unimportant. "The EU decision to keep the arms embargo on China is not relevant to China insofar as Taiwan, or asserting rights in the South China Sea, is concerned," he told Asia Times Online.

Sometimes when China is blocked from obtaining military systems it desires, that denial serves as an incentive to develop the arms and technology domestically. For example, in 2000, the US pressured Israel to back out of a $1 billion agreement to sell China four of its Phalcon phased-array radar systems, which would have been used for a Chinese AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System). Last week the Washington Post reported that China has developed its own AWACS, using a domestically produced advanced radar mounted on a Russian-made Il-76 transport aircraft, and is test-flying the first models for early deployment in the Taiwan Strait. The AWACS could be operational within one or two years, assuming the tests are successful.

Israel has also been a long-standing supplier of advanced military technologies to China. According to the findings of a past US congressional committee chaired by Representative Christopher Cox (Republican-California), Israel has "offered significant technology cooperation to the People's Republic of China, especially in aircraft and missile development", including helping China build its current F-10 fighter jet. The Chinese F-10 is virtually identical to the discontinued Israeli Lavi fighter, an aircraft designed using $1.5 billion in US aid. The Lavi program, funded by the US and based largely on the F-16, was intended to provide Israel with its first domestically built fighter jet.

Israel also transferred to China its STAR-1 cruise missile technology that incorporates US stealth technology and is a version of Israel's Delilah-2 missile, which contains US parts and technology.

Perhaps the biggest constraint on advanced Chinese military modernization is economic, not political. According to Ted Carpenter, director of foreign policy studies at the Washington, DC-based Cato Institute, qualitatively, "they are still close to a generation behind the United States. Chinese progress will depend on how much economic resources they want to devote to it," he told Asia Times Online. "At the current level they would be hard put to do anything in the next decade."

David Isenberg, a senior analyst with the Washington-based British American Security Information Council (BASIC), has a wide background in arms control and national security issues. The views expressed are his own.

Don't know much about the General, but he does a pretty good job summing up the benefits (to the Communists) of keeping the myth of the Sino-Soviet Split alive after Stalin's death.

DEADLY FAILURES IN INTELLIGENCE ANALYSIS AND DEFENSE UNPREPAREDNESS
Benton K. Partin
Brig/Gen U.S.A.F. (Ret)
(9-15-96

Excerpt...

The Sino-Soviet Conflict Hoax

In 1957, as the Special Assistant for Advance Weapons Concepts in the Air Force Systems Command Headquarters, I started the Focused Energy Weapons Program. In 1958, I participated in a series of budget briefings in the Pentagon, in which I was defending the Focused Energy Weapons Program budget. In that series of briefings, I was shocked to see certain force structure assumptions based on the high risk hypothesis that there was a genuine and irreversible Sino-Soviet conflict.

What shocked me was the long term national risk. Two hypothesis could readily be made. One, the Sino-Soviet split was genuine and irreversible, or two, the Sino-Soviet split was either a hoax or was reversible. Force requirements would vary greatly between these two hypothesis, depending on the threat. At that time, I considered three levels of threat :

Case I: Dual Threat - - Communist China and Russia would team up if either were directly involved with the U.S. and its allies in a major conflict

Case II: Either Threat - - Either China or the Soviet Union would remain neutral if the other was involved in a major conflict with the U.S. and its allies.

Case III: Either Allied Threat - - Either Soviet or Chinese forces would join the U.S. and its allies in a major conflict with the other.

Our Risk

The risks involved here can easily be seen. If the assumption is made that the Sino-Soviet split is real and irreversible, and years ahead there is a confrontation by a Dual Threat, then the U. S. would be placed at extreme - - if not fatal - - risk. It would be like passing at the crest of a hill on a busy single lane highway. Much would be placed at risk for little possible gain. Neither the legitimacy of the Sino-Soviet split nor its irreversibility could be assured with sufficient confidence to not consider it a potential hoax. We are now those years ahead and we are confronted by a Case I Dual Threat plus an expanded communist controlled world. The naive liberal and leftist solution is to surrender by "convergence" into their global scheme.

Their Gain

I continued collecting information on the Sino-Soviet split for another decade. While attending the Air War College in 1967, I had the opportunity to review the 1928 Program of the Communist International. I concluded that the Sino-Soviet conflict, as a hoax, was one of the highest payoff strategies of the entire communist world movement in its then 200 plus year history. I then wrote a thoroughly documented 155 page report on the Sino-Soviet split hoax entitled: Sino-Soviet Conflict, Competition and Cooperation: Risks in Force Structure Planning. The proposed wide distribution of the report was turned down by the approving group because one member was a propagandist for the legitimacy of the split Several hundred copies were unofficially distributed to key senior leaders.

In that report, written 29 years ago, I listed 50 advantages to the implementation of the 1928 program if the West could be convinced of the legitimacy and irreversibility of the Sino-Soviet split. The first ten of those advantages to implementing the World Communist Program were as follows:

"1. It justified a major reduction in Free World forces and, at the same time, justifies a high level of defense preparedness for both Russia and China." [It resulted in an inversion of the balance of power in the world.]

"2. It induced a complacent, do nothing, if not indifferent attitude toward the critical military balance of power." [It became politically incorrect to even question the Sino-Soviet conflict's legitimacy.]

"3. It Justified a more aggressive Soviet program in 'competition' with China in Asia, Africa and South America." [They were both involved in the generation and support of communist "Wars of National Liberation".]

"4. The 'peaceful coexistence' role of the U.S.S.R. and the supposedly more aggressive role of China complement each other in reducing the Free World For example: one approach worked better in Syria and the other approach worked better in Tibet." [That performance has been repeated many times.]

"5. The Sino-Soviet split helped get the U.S. committed in a big way, but not too big for Russia and China, in a land war in Southeast Asia - - supported by both Russia and China." [While we were dissipating Forces in Vietnam they were consolidating power in the Middle East and North Africa.]

"6. The alleged breakup of the world communist monolith into supposedly 'loose and pluralistic grouping(s) of communist states,' justifies for many the disintegration of the Free World Alliances buildup over many years, for containing communism. 'Polycentrism in the East breeds polycentrism in the West.'" [29 years later, we have a new rendition in Perestroika and a communist world push for a "comprehensive" UN controlled security system under a communist dominated UN. Effort to move NATO into East Europe is part of the dialectic.]

"7. The split justifies a repolarization of the world struggle along specious and phoney lines, i.e , 'The basic conflict is not between the U.S. and Russia, nor ever between the U.S. and China. It is between Soviet Communism and Chinese Communism." [Disinformation.]

"8. The Sino-Soviet split has been used to justify a weakening of NATO, i e., "it may have outlived its usefulness." [The central push is now for former Soviet Union countries to come into new groupings in the move toward a "comprehensive" security system.]

"9. The Sino-Soviet split hoax, along with the war in Vietnam, has been used to force the isolation of America on the international scene." [Today, the U.S.A. almost stands alone in opposing a second five-year term for Boutros-Ghali as Secretary General of the United Nations.]

" 10. The Sino-Soviet split and the resulting reapproachment between East and West European countries has contributed to the rise of nationalism in East Europe and a weakening of the West European coalition." [Orchestrated for convergence.]

Report Conclusions - - (written 29 years ago!)

"1. For military force structure planning purposes, the Sino-Soviet conflict must be considered a hoax so as to reduce, if not minimize, long-term national risk."

"2. There is sufficient documented evidence available to severely challenge the popularly held view that the Sino-Soviet split is genuine, deep and irreversible."

"3. From all the arguments and evidence supporting the hypothesis of a genuine split, there are at least as good arguments, and perhaps more consistently reliable information which supports the idea that the popular view of the Sino-Soviet split is specious, misleading and a masterful deception."

"4. The Sino-Soviet split payoff to the communist world, even as a highly advertised genuine conflict, is so great that both Russia and China would be foolish not to exacerbate it for the eyes and ears of the Free World."

"5. The Sino-Soviet split, as a hoax, is one the highest payoff operations of the entire world communist movement since its very beginning."

"6. The Sino-Soviet split payoff to the Communist World, as a hoax, is sufficiently great to make the deception a major foundation - - if not cornerstone of Sino-Soviet foreign policy. Almost no expense or inconvenience would be too great to assure the continued Western faith that the split is genuine."

"7. In the Free World, the Sino-Soviet split thesis offers something to everyone. Almost everyone wishes to believe it. Disbelief creates too many problems in required actions. Therefore, there is a natural propensity to reject any idea that the Sino-Soviet split is not genuine. Moreover, with all the affirming publicity, much stemming from within the Sino-Soviet Camp, we are well conditioned to believe it in much the same way Pavlov's dogs responded to the bells."

"8. The 1928 Program of The Communist International tempered by personality factors, historical necessity, and opportunism, provides a consistent, coherent, reasonably predictably model of understanding of the world socialist movement and Sino-Soviet relations. The popularly held model of Sino-Soviet conflict understanding is inconsistent, incoherent, and unreliable as a basis for prediction and expectation."

"9. Part of the foundation on which the Sino-Soviet split thesis is built, is in fact specified as part of the 1928 COMINTERN Program."

"10. The Future of a free and independent United States and Free World depends to a considerable extent on an accurate understanding of the alleged Sino-Soviet conflict and taking appropriate courses of action."

"11. Assuming as true the model of understanding of the Sino-Soviet split and the world revolutionary processes, hypothesized, developed, and tested in this paper, we should expect the following:"

Predictions - - (made in 1967 - - 29 years ago)

"a. Secret Sino-Soviet cooperation in the democratic penetration, subversion, economic warfare and - - in the more backward countries - - externally supported flagrant aggression and orchestration of wars of national liberation." [Proven by time.]

"b. Continued efforts of communist forces to expand the war in Southeast Asia to increase U.S. commitments." [Proven by time.]

"c. That India will either move peacefully and reliably into the Marxist camp or the liberation struggle will soon move into the violent phase." [Moved toward the Marxist camp.]

"d. The Marxist world will soon exercise hegemony over the Moslem Middle East." [Mostly done.]

"e. A gradual increase in the numbers of Wars of National Liberation in the more advanced 'semi-colonial' countries." [Done. In Canada the conflict thesis is French Separatist, in the U.S.A. it is racial, in Ireland it is Protestant vs. Catholic, in Rwanda it is tribal, Tutsi (mostly Christian) versus Hutu (mostly Animist).]

"f. A continued, but reduced, public exacerbation of the Sino-Soviet split thesis by both Russia and China until they are ready for a major showdown with the U.S. " [Proven by time.]

"g. An increased level of urban guerilla warfare and arson in the U S in concert with increased violence in South Vietnam and increase pressure against mobilization." [Watts, D.C., TET, Tricontinental Congress, etc.]

"h. A globally coordinated attempt by the Marxist world to over saturate U S. commitments, to force a U.S. back down in Southeast Asia, with tactical nuclear weapons if necessary." [Dunkirk type evacuation, Tricontinental Congress success.]

"i. The above sequence fulfillment would be regarded as the completion of another step - - in the struggle for world domination - - that was basically programmed in the 1920's."

Report Conclusions Continued

"12. The strategy of deterrence and massive retaliation tended to ignore the gradual revolutionary processes of wars of national liberation, as they were originally planned and are still being conducted - - with some refinements."

" 13. The strategy of flexible response reacts to wars of national liberation after they have reached the violent phase, and after they have undergone many years of previolent preparation. A more applicable strategy is needed."

" 14. Although there are many causes on which the pre-violent phase of wars of national liberation feed - - and if causes do not exist they are created - - however, under the 1928 Program hypothesis, it is orthodox, doctrinary and practical that the liberation forces require and are provided, external assistance from the Marxist world."

" 15. The World Socialist Movement has progressed to the point where the advantages accruing from the Sino-Soviet split thesis will start to diminish. Under the 1928 Program hypothesis, world socialist solidarity will then become more popularly acclaimed. [Proven by time - - the chiefs of state have already hugged and kissed in public in the treachery of the Leninist/Gramscian Perestroika deception.]

Sino-Soviet Split - - A Disinformation Program!

When KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn published his book New Lies For Old in 1984, I could ascribe considerable confidence to it because the chapter on the Sino-Soviet split was in total agreement with my research and analysis of the same subject at the Air War College 17 years before. Golitsyn called the Sino-Soviet split a DISINFORMATION PROGRAM -- I called it a HOAX.

We both identified it as a high payoff Sino-Soviet strategy. What is so amazing is - - that to my knowledge - - our own senior intelligence people have never deduced the Sino-Soviet split as a disinformation program or a hoax - - at least not for publication. With the new intelligence monopoly being set up under challengeable leadership, it will become even more politically incorrect to call it what it really is. He who controls the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) controls future capabilities.

In Golitsyn's 1995 book, The Perestroika Deception, he concludes that the Sino-Soviet split is the main Soviet disinformation program on which all other disinformation programs depend.

Complex as it may seem, the Sino-Soviet split dialectic is rather simple and straightforward when compared to the dialectics involved in the U.S. "winning the Cold War," the "disappearance of the Soviet threat," the "disintegration of the Soviet empire," and the "democratization of the former Soviet Union" (now ruled by former communists, ex-communists, non-communists and communists).

If at the end of World War II, all of the Chiefs of State in Eastern and Western Europe were former Nazis, ex-Nazis, and Nazis, would anyone believe that we had won World War II?

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