Posted on 09/29/2009 7:56:30 PM PDT by Saije
For the first time in a decade, Beijing on Thursday will showcase its latest armored vehicles, ballistic missiles and fighter jets in a demonstration of military ambition meant to befit the nation's economic rise.
The display of hardware -- part of the nation's 60th anniversary celebrations -- will no doubt stoke national pride. But it's also a chance for China to show an international audience that the world's third-largest economy is investing heavily in defense technology, a strategic sector that Beijing believes will strengthen its regional security and global influence.
Expected to be on display is a new generation of missiles that could potentially strike American naval ships and pound Taiwanese soil from the Chinese mainland. It is the product of two decades of enhanced military spending aimed at overhauling a woefully inefficient and technologically challenged fighting force.
"They have been focusing on catching up in areas where the technological disparity has been the greatest, and cultivating pockets of excellence within the" People's Liberation Army, said David Yang, a political scientist at Rand Corp. "That said, the PLA is a massive, even ponderous, organization, and its professionalization and modernization will remain an arduous process for years to come."
With 2.3 million members, the Chinese army is the largest standing army in the world. Beijing has spent years trying to overcome the army's long-held image as a poorly equipped force consisting mostly of rural enlistees. The army lacks combat experience, having last engaged in a major conflict in 1979 with Vietnam.
Earlier this year, officials announced heavy recruitment of college graduates. More important, Beijing has increased military spending each year by double-digit percentages. China's official military budget was $70.3 billion this year, up sharply from $14.6 billion in 2000, according to Washington-based GlobalSecurity.org.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
That’s awfully nice of them to show us the technology that Chinese political contributions bought.
And in the United States of America, the Empire State Building will be red and yellow in recognition of China’s 60th birthday... What an upside down, inside out time we live in.
I read about these so-called ballistic missiles. They look like they could literally slice through the ship, breaking it in two just by the kenetic force alone. Thank you Clinton, for helping our “friends”. Unbelievable and sickening.
Two years ago, I would have said “bring it on”. Today, I’m more than worried. Obama is such a wuss and a sympathizer with the communist in the world, I have some concern about our future.
Um, how are these carrier killers going to hit the subs raining cruise missiles down on their launch sites, clearing the way for the surface Navy?
When do you think they plan to use them?
They will never hit an American ship.
OK, maybe if they sell some to Iran or to nutjobs on the black market, Cole style, 10 years from now, once.
But the Chinese military deliberately? Not a chance.
Anyone want to give me odds?
Hopefully this war will be fought only in the back rooms of banks and investment houses. And on the aisles of Wal-Mart.
“They will never hit an American ship.
OK, maybe if they sell some to Iran or to nutjobs on the black market, Cole style, 10 years from now, once.
But the Chinese military deliberately? Not a chance.
Anyone want to give me odds?”
As Obama would say, this is above my pay grade but isn’t that point not that they actually would but that they could? And that as a result we have to calibrate our own actions to make sure we don’t do anything that could lead to war even if it probably wouldn’t? Because you never know. Same thinking behind why it’s a bad thing if Iran gets nuclear weapons. It’s not for sure they’d use them but it changes everyone else’s behavior.
Not being an expert, I read about their accuracy. I believe ICBM’s have accuracy rated in meters. And while these missiles are not ICBM’s they are ballistic in the speeds they maintain. I read these missiles are fitted with guidance systems to do exactly what you said they can’t do.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=507484
Public Relations: The Empire State Building this week will illuminate red and yellow, celebrating China’s 60 years of communist rule. There are many things to appreciate about China, but communism isn’t one of them.
What was the Empire State Building thinking in lighting up in celebration of China’s long communist rule?
Amid all the charming reasons the classical 102-story skyscraper colors the Gotham sky at night — the 70th anniversary of “The Wizard of Oz,” El Museo del Barrio’s reopening, Columbus Day and Gabrielle’s Angel Foundation, according to its Web site — China stands as a negative outlier.
Cynics call it recognition that the Chinese, who buy U.S. debt, now own us. But this looks more like a thoughtless confusion of China with its communist government, in perhaps the same impulse that prompts some to set up kitschy eateries bearing photos of Mao.
Recognizing China’s regime with bright lights does New York’s most visible landmark no honor at all.
China’s 6,000-year-old history and civilization are loaded with things to celebrate — from its invention of paper money and fireworks, to its great cuisines, its Taoist philosophy, the daring historic voyages of Sanbao (a possible model for Sinbad), millions of Overseas Chinese, and perhaps the awed arrival of Marco Polo into the Middle Kingdom, which ignited the Age of Exploration.
Much of the story of civilization is rooted in the West’s longing to connect with China — and this is not a finished story. In 1989, China saw brave young people stand up to tanks in the name of liberty at Tiananmen Square, an event surely worthy of the Empire State Building’s honor as a beacon of freedom.
So it’s discordant and jarring to see the tyranny that’s plagued China for 60 years now the object of the skyscraper’s approbation.
“Would the Empire State Building honor the government of Sudan or the birth of Nazi Germany?” asked Thor Halvorssen, whose Human Rights Foundation has an office in this building. “It’s sad that a symbol of free enterprise honors the butchers of Beijing.”
Communism is the root of the honor and nothing has harmed China so much. The nightmare began with Mao Zedong in 1949. He imported the alien ideology that is still around, diluted only because the authorities made such an economic hash of the country. By Mao’s 1976 death, his successors had no choice but to open up.
Before that, the communist regime was responsible for wars, purges and famine on a scale untold in human civilization. According to University of Hawaii historian R.J. Rummel, the communist regime is responsible for the deaths of nearly 77 million people.
Wasn’t the silkworm missile supposed to be an anti-carrier missile when it first came out?? As I recall, that’s what drove the development of the Close-In Weapons System, or Sea-Whiz gatling gun...it shot the missile and then shredded the pieces...
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