From the article: For Pentagon officials, alarm bells have been going off for the past two years as China's military began rapidly building and buying new troop- and weapon-carrying ships and submarines. The release of an official Chinese government report in December called the situation on the Taiwan Strait "grim" and said the country's military could "crush" Taiwan.
Earlier this year, Beijing passed an anti-secession law, a unilateral measure that upset the fragile political status quo across the Taiwan Strait. The law gives Chinese leaders a legal basis they previously did not have to conduct a military attack on Taiwan, U.S. officials said. The war fears come despite the fact that China is hosting the Olympic Games in 2008 and, therefore, some officials say, would be reluctant to invoke the international condemnation that a military attack on Taiwan would cause.
In the past, some defense specialists insisted a Chinese attack on Taiwan would be a "million-man swim" across the Taiwan Strait because of the country's lack of troop-carrying ships. "We left the million-man swim behind in about 1998, 1999," the senior Pentagon official said. "And in fact, what people are saying now, whether or not that construct was ever useful, is that it's a moot point, because in just amphibious lift alone, the Chinese are doubling or even quadrupling their capability on an annual basis." Asked about a possible Chinese attack on Taiwan, the official put it bluntly: "In the '07-'08 time frame, a capability will be there that a year ago we would have said was very, very unlikely. We now assess that as being very likely to be there." Air Force Gen. Paul V. Hester, head of the Pacific Air Forces, said the U.S. military has been watching China's military buildup but has found it difficult to penetrate Beijing's "veil" of secrecy over it. While military modernization itself is not a major worry, "what does provide you a pause for interest and concern is the amount of modernization, the kind of modernization and the size of the modernization," he said during a recent breakfast meeting with reporters. China is building capabilities such as aerial refueling and airborne warning and control aircraft that can be used for regional defense and long-range power projection, Gen. Hester said. It also is developing a maneuverable re-entry vehicle, or MARV, for its nuclear warheads. The weapon is designed to counter U.S. strategic-missile defenses, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The warhead would be used on China's new DF-31 long-range missiles and its new submarine missile, the JL-2. Work being done on China's weapons and reconnaissance systems will give its military the capability to reach 1,000 miles into the sea, "which gives them the visibility on the movement of not only our airplanes in the air, but also our forces at sea," Gen. Hester said. Beijing also has built a new tank for its large armed forces. It is known as the Type 99 and appears similar in design to Germany's Leopard 2 main battle tank. The tank is outfitted with new artillery, anti-aircraft and machine guns, advanced fire-control systems and improved engines. The country's air power is growing through the purchase of new fighters from Russia, such as Su-30 fighter-bombers, as well as the development of its own fighter jets, such as the J-10. Gen. Hester compared Chinese warplanes with those of the former Soviet Union, which were less capable than their U.S. counterparts, but still very deadly. "They have great equipment. The fighters are very technologically advanced, and what we know about them gives us pause for concern against ours," he said. Missiles also are a worry. "It is their surface-to-air missiles, their [advanced] SAMs and their surface-to-surface missiles, and the precision, more importantly, of those surface-to-surface missiles that provide, obviously, the ability to pinpoint targets that we might have out in the region, or our friends and allies might have," Gen. Hester said. The advances give the Chinese military "the ability ... to reach out and touch parts of the United States -- Guam, Hawaii and the mainland of the United States," he said. To better deal with possible future conflicts in Asia, the Pentagon is modernizing U.S. military facilities on the Western Pacific island of Guam and planning to move more forces there. The Air Force will regularly rotate Air Expeditionary Force units to Guam and also will station the new long-range unmanned aerial vehicle known as Global Hawk on the island, he said. It also has stationed B-2 stealth bombers on Guam temporarily and is expected to deploy B-1 bombers there, in addition to the B-52s now deployed there, Gen. Hester said.
It is probably not coincidence that's about the time that China started to really bring in the dollars:
China's economy has been growing at a rate of at least 10 percent for each of the past 10 years, providing the country's military with the needed funds for modernization. The combination of a vibrant centralized economy, growing military and increasingly fervent nationalism has transformed China into what many defense officials view as a fascist state. "We may be seeing in China the first true fascist society on the model of Nazi Germany, where you have this incredible resource base in a commercial economy with strong nationalism, which the military was able to reach into and ramp up incredible production," a senior defense official said.
I am glad that at least we have senior defense officials who aren't missing this. I certainly wish some of that acuity could be found among a few more of our political officials.
If they can't invade Taiwan in the next 2 years, they will in the next 5 or 10.
The Chinese are patient people, and there's nothing we can do to stop them from bulding a very powerful military machine, like ours.
In the past, China was not an expansionist power, and I doubt that they seek to be this time, but for Taiwan.
If China takes Taiwan what is to stop them from taking North and South Korea and perhaps even Japan? If China attacks Taiwan what choice is there but to fight them or wait until they take enough places to and look to Hawai?
I hope that some Freepers now understand why we are cozying up to Vietnam.
China and Vietnam are natural enemies, the US and Vietnam are not.
In 1979 Vietnam repulsed and defeated a Chines attempt to invade Vietnam.
Vietnam can be a very powerful ally
It must be procurement time again at the Pentagon.
As testement to the American people's continuing STUPIDITY, not only did we elect him twice, the REPROBATE Klintoon is still walking free, whereas sane societies would have executed him, or at the very least, imprisoned him for life.
Washington never ceases to amaze....where have they been the last few decades? This is not something Beijing has strategically developed overnight. This is something that has been in the works for several years ever since Chang took his people to Taiwan after WWII. The vast majority of westerns, while many claim to understand the Chinese, the vast majority do not even have a clue. To understand Chinese methodology, strategy, etc. requires a firm understanding in their history. There are very few in Washington who retain the capacity to understand the intent of Beijing. I have been to China several times and have lived among the Chinese not in traditional tourist dwellings but rather in their homes. There is concern Washington does not understand the Chinese the way it needs too. China IS becoming a superpower that will make the Russian Cold War look like a pea in the sea. Dealing with China will be by far the largest diplomatic task any administration in DC has ever faced before. China is no Iraq, no Russia, no Vietnam. It is much extensively more sophisticated, more advanced, more intelligent, more patient and more willing. Dialog and understanding is the key to peaceful diplomacy.