Posted on 12/29/2010 9:10:15 PM PST by bruinbirdman
China is preparing for conflict 'in every direction', the defence minister said on Wednesday in remarks that threaten to overshadow a visit to Beijing by his US counterpart next month.
"In the coming five years, our military will push forward preparations for military conflict in every strategic direction," said Liang Guanglie in an interview published by several state-backed newspapers in China. "We may be living in peaceful times, but we can never forget war, never send the horses south or put the bayonets and guns away," Mr Liang added.
China repeatedly says it is planning a "peaceful rise" but the recent pace and scale of its military modernisation has alarmed many of its neighbours in the Asia-Pacific, including Japan which described China's military build-up as a "global concern" this month.
Mr Liang's remarks come at a time of increasingly difficult relations between the Chinese and US armed forces which a three-day visit by his counterpart Robert Gates is intended to address. A year ago China froze substantive military relations in protest at US arms sales to Taiwan and relations deteriorated further this summer when China objected to US plans to deploy one of its nuclear supercarriers, the USS George Washington, into the Yellow Sea off the Korean peninsula.
China also announced this month that it was preparing to launch its own aircraft carrier next year in a signal that China is determined to punch its weight as a rising superpower. The news came a year earlier than many US defence analysts had predicted.
China is also working on a "carrier-killing" ballistic missile that could sink US carriers from afar, fundamentally reordering the balance of power in a region that has been dominated by the US since the end of the Second World War.
US Navy commander, Admiral
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
There is no nationalism in the Muslim world. Muslims dominate many nations but there is little evidence of national pride in any of them. Only Islam unites them.
Right or wrong, the Muslim world feels helpless against the West and lashes out.
No, the exact opposite is true. Muslims feel all-powerful because of the delusions of Islam. They have "lashed out" for as long as Islam has existed. Since their founder Mohammed instituted "lashing out" as a way to please Allah from the very beginning. Long before there was a "West."
Stick to your ChiCom propaganda. It is marginally better informed than that nonsense you just posted about Muslims.
Yes, I agree. I didn't have another word for it, but it is similar in sentiment to nationalism. Except, in their case, it is to their religion.
No, the exact opposite is true. Muslims feel all-powerful because of the delusions of Islam.
I wouldn't say they feel all powerful in a worldly sense. Even the most radical Muslims can clearly see that there is a significant gap between what they have and what the rest of the world have in terms of combat capabilities. Now, when they take into account their martyrdom and their hope of 40 virgins in the after life, then, yes, they will feel all powerful in an eternal sense if not in a temporal sense.
Stick to your ChiCom propaganda. It is marginally better informed than that nonsense you just posted about Muslims.
In general, I will. But I feel I also know something beyond the realm of Chinese relations with the outside world.
There goes our super duper surprise attack plan.
Well said. I agree. Who would take them on out of the blue, at least, without a lot of build up to some unforseen crisis? I only know one country that remotely would, and that would be the North Koreans. It would be a rabidly stupid thing to do, but then they’re rabid....
Knowledge of Chinese relations is certainly your most shopworn self-delusion.
Ah, but that is not what TigerEye said.
TigerEye said, and it is a righteous fact, that no country is going to attack China.
Chinas security is in her own hands. The only war that China would face is the one she starts.
If, as you firmly believe, she will not start a war, then there won't be one.
Defense Minster Liang is being provocative and dare I might say... War mongering?
Is there no wise leader in Beijing who can reel him in? It makes the rest of us think that which you so firmly state will never occur!
There is no nationalism in the Muslim world. Muslims dominate many nations but there is little evidence of national pride in any of them. Only Islam unites them.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Muslims do not feel any allegiance to any government or nation. They do however respect and feel allegiance to “dar islam”. This is land that is muslim controlled. When a dar islam land is threatened by a non muslim entity, all muslims in the world go there to fight and they do so on an individual basis. It is not like our NATO agreement where one government will send official military aid to another.
Exactly.
Well, no, not outright. He said this instead:
When you provoke war in every direction you ought to prepare for war from every direction.
How else am I suppose to interpret it? And please don't split hairs. But what he was implying, is that China will be the one that provokes conflict, i.e., start the war. And that, I don't believe will happen.
Defense Minster Liang is being provocative and dare I might say... War mongering?
I don't believe so. He's just saying the nation should be ready to defend itself. China's build up of her military capabilities is not out of proportion to her growing economic strength. China, after all, has a GDP that is now larger than Japan. Does it not make sense that her military capabilities and her ability to defend herself reflect it? And when you consider purchasing power parity (PPP), is more than twice the size of Japan.
And some economic forcasters predict China will have the largest economy as early as 2020 using nominal figures and even sooner using PPP measures. So, China isn't allocating her national resources beyond a reasonable proportion, e.g., North Korea, etc.
And China's dependence on foreign sources for commodities and energy make it more vital that she is able to defend against disruptions in the flow of those resources.
shopworn, maybe. But that's only because there is so much propaganda about China in the Western media. But self-delusion .... absolutely not. If you can show me that China is spending beyond a reasonable allocation of funding for a peacetime budget, then I will concede. You can even use Pentagon estimates which is three times that of China's claim.
But I am not self-delusional. China is not spending beyond a reasonable military budget for peacetime. If she was preparing for agression, would she not be spending up to 50% of her GDP readying herself for war? But instead, China is spending anywhere from 1 1/2% to 4 1/2% of her GDP on military, depending on whether you believe China or the Pentagon. Either way, its not over reaching.
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