Report: China targeting all 'enemy space vehicles' including GPS satellites

EAST AND WEST by C. Northcote Parkinson. Written in 1963. Given the time frames involved span centuries, it's still a thesis worthy of consideration.

Time Magazine Review:
Parkinson's thesis is that the whole of civilized history can be reduced to the confrontation of the East and West, with "alternating phases of Oriental and Western ascendancy." The West set the pendulum in motion with the capture of Troy in about 1250 B.C., which launched the Greeks' thrust into Asia Minor. Since that time, the East has rebounded with two long periods of ascendancy—one following the Persian conquests under Darius (522 B.C.), the other from roughly A.D. 400 to 1000, when Buddhism was sweeping Asia and Europe was plunged in the Dark Ages. The West was ascendant from 331 B.C., when Alexander swept through Asia Minor and into India, to about A.D. 200, when Roman power in the Near East crumbled. The second era of Western ascendancy began around 1500 and extended to the mid-1800s.

It is Parkinson's argument that the pendulum is now swinging eastward. The first signs of the shift, he feels, appeared in 1850 with the Taiping rebellion in China, followed closely by the Indian Mutiny and eventually by the Boxer rising of 1900. But the crucial date is 1905, and the crucial event the destruction of the Russian fleet by the Japanese. Since then, Parkinson feels, the "established prestige of the West" has been shattered. (The destruction of the Japanese fleet by the U.S. Navy in World War II does not seem to impress him.) Parkinson does not believe that Eastern parity with the West "is even imminent," but believes that it will eventually come and that it will be up to Russia to fight the West's last rearguard action, as Byzantium once shored up the exhausted Roman Empire.

http://tinyurl.com/2t5l66

“Every dollar we spend on Chinese products is a bullet pointed at America.”

We’re so happy to hear that we’re not the only one’s that refer to dollars as Chinese bullets. We are having a “CHINA FREE” Christmas. No gifts will be given or accepted that are “Made in China”, period. The kids and grandkids have been warned. I suspect gift cards for restaurants will be big this year.

Let me explain where I'm coming from after assuring you that I'm not here to say you are wrong. I'm just voicing what my concerns are, and doing so as the devil's advocate as much as a display of what I am convinved will happen. That being said, I think it would be hard to overestimate what a threat the Chinese are truly becoming.

China is fast developing a military industrial complex that it will be very difficult for us to compete with. If they develop even 1/3rd the economy that we have, they will have exceded our level of military spending. If they match or double our GNP in time, we won't have a prayer of spending dollar per dollar. And that means their R&D will excede ours in time.

After I posted this I realized that I should have put a per captia statement in there.

No, we are not going to bankrupt China, Wallmart would never ever let that happen.

If they were the only ones, I'd still think you were pretty close to truth.

But, the last figures I saw indicated that the rapidly growing GDP of the Chinese would match that of the United States in about the year 3000 or so. I'm exaggerating because I don't remember the real date but in any case I don't think your grandchildren will be around to witness that event.

I see a lot of reports cross the transom. I take them with a liberal dose of (this is someone's best guestimate today) skepticism. I see a lot of those types of reports conterdicted within months by another report, or a public information statement from some government agency. If we were to take a look at China today, and then look at the predictions in 1980, what do you think those predictions would have been? What about 1990? Okay, what do you project for 2030? IMO, we just don't know.

I don't doubt what you have read. I don't even know if it's wise to think in the terms I have expressed here, but I do lean toward looking at worst case scenarios when dealing with a nation that has a track record like China's. Look at the standard of living in the United States. Look at how we think of things. Our officials have to think of public opinion. In China they think in terms like, how many citizens are we willing to destroy to maintain our rule. And then they do whatever they please.

We have no idea what the military spending is in China. We think we do, but then we get other surprises from time to time, so I'm not convinced that we do. The CIA had no idea Russia was on the verge of collapse. Our FBI, CIA and NSA didn't have a clue someone might use an airliner as a missile.

In China the government skims off more than our government could, because the standard of living is minimalist.

In any case you have to realize that at this point in time we are easily able to outspend the Chinese in the development of military technology and we have a huge head start. We may give them some technology but it will never be our best. We don't even give our best to the Brits. That's just U.S. policy, even under Clinton.

I'm not sure what frame of reference you are coming from here, so I'll just explain how I see it and you can express how you see it from yours afterwards.

Yes we did have a huge head start. Let's agree to that. What concerns me is that we are fairly sure China obtained our neutron bomb technology. We are also sure they received ICBM gyro technology and our MIRV technology. We had John Huang operating out of the White House under Clinton. Huang had a top level security clearance and was getting top level CIA briefings. Huang was appointed to the Commerce Department, continued getting top level CIA briefings and was known to leave his office right after them, walk across the street and fax documents to Asia.

I would submit we have no idea how much damage this buffoon did to our nation, or the damage many others could have done.

You seem relatively confident China hasn't been given the keys to the kingdom. I will tell you that I am not.

IMO China has been gifted with a lot. It's also my opinion that their R&D is working overtime right now. We do know we have given them our latest electronics technology. What they will do with that nobody can really say, but my guess is that they are going to pour every nickle they can into nation building ball buster military advancements.

We shall see what they come up with.

Thanks for the response.

Personally, I have no doubt that what the Chinese are doing is using the international student exchange program as a way to train their military officers in science and engineering fields.

Sort of like the Japanese in the 1930s? I recall a story from 1942 (details are fuzzy). After the surrender of US Army personnel to the Japanese at Battan, the Japs, as a matter of course, stole cigarette lighters, wrist watches and rings from the surrendering American troops.

As they were marching away into captivity, an English speaking Japanese officer came along the line of American prisoners, calling out "Who here graduated from USC in 1932?"

A bedraggled officer spoke up that he had. The Japanese officer held up a recently looted gold 1932 USC class ring, and asked if it belonged to the American officer. When the American officer admitted that it was his, the Japanese officer handed it to him, then pointed to the gold USC class ring on his own hand and said "Class of '36."

There are no weapons caches, but the intel collected and the mass education in technical/scientific fields is invaluable.

Example:

• (intel) The F117s taking off from Germany (Spangdahlem) in the Balkan conflict were collected on by Serbs living in Germany. The enemy was getting at least a partial picture of what we were doing based on reports from Serb expats living in Germany using cell-phones and calling in sightings of certain aircraft as well as take offs etc. From general collection to measure our national strategic intent, public perception, industrial espionage, or collection on issues of national security, these “open source” assets can be very valuable. Let me get more detailed- A trade show on defense or an air show can be a huge open source method to glean all sorts of information on force modernization, disposition, etc. of US military.

• (training) It is no secret that some of the technicians and scientists who were involved in building the first Indian nuclear device were at least in part (specific fields) US trained. In China a car mechanic gets the title “engineer” bestowed upon them. Reality is that while they quote on quote have all these engineers and scientists, in mass they don’t have the know how and the institutions to convey this knowledge. You send a few thousand to the US among real normal exchange students. You send a few hundred to Germany, France, Great Britain and Italy. You send some to Russia’s premiere academies. What you end up with is a huge and vast influx of technical know-how that was preprogrammed. In other words, the PLA knows they have specific requirements and they are not randomly letting these things happen. You have a certain number of mechanical, electrical, engineers, chemistry, physics slots that you see as needed 5, 10, 20 years down the road and are training people (Often for specific programs such as India did). We are training the technical and scientific brains that are developing new Chinese jets, laser or communication systems, radars, etc.

So while I don’t foresee any weapons caches, they are collecting and training in the US through these “open source” techniques. The point you make that is very valid is that there are thousands of them; and because they have this mass they can get a very comprehensive picture if they plan this out well, which I’m sure they did.

One thing that people are not mentioning in this discussion is the fact that the leadership of China is COMMUNIST, and therefore, paranoid about any existing competing systems.

I think this is of more import in the discussion than the vague references to the Chinese culture.

In the discussion of China, it’s pointless to mention every time you address what it is doing, the Communist leadership. That leadership speaks for China. That leadership devises policy and implements it. The people do not.

If you’d like a statement of policy concerning the Chinese populace, I am willing to point out that we have no beef with the general Chinese citizen. I think they are a bright people, very dedicated to the work ethic, and to be respected on a number of levels. It is however unfortunate that many of them will die as a result of our nation helping to arm it’s leaders.

It’s unfortunate that many of ours will also.