Sept. 11 Amuses Chinese Premier

Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji recently cracked a joke about the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Zhu told the joke to a captive audience of Asian executives during the April Bao business conference held on Hainan Island. Zhu's remarks came during a question-and-answer session with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

According to Zhu, "Japan bought many huge buildings in New York, but luckily they didn't buy the World Trade Center. If they had bought them, now the Japanese would be sadder than the Americans."

Zhu's joke was quickly followed by a long round of laughter and applause from the Asian businessmen. Ironically, Japan lost two citizens aboard one of the hijacked airplanes, and 24 Japanese citizens are still missing in the remains of the World Trade Center.

The remarks by Zhu underscore other events of Sept. 11 that received little or no coverage. On that fateful day a group of Chinese reporters were being given an official tour by the U.S. State Department. The Chinese reporters witnessed the terror attacks against the Twin Towers live on television along with several U.S. press members and their State Department guides.

According to several U.S. reporters, the Chinese journalists broke into cheers and applause when the second 767 struck the World Trade Center. Several Chinese journalists reportedly exchanged "high-fives" celebrating the successful attack on America.

The U.S. State Department guides, aware that the incident was now a major embarrassment, quickly shut down the TV set and hustled the Chinese journalists back to the PRC embassy.

The tension between Beijing and Washington may not be so obvious, but it still circulates beneath any official meetings. Chinese Vice President Hu Jintao is expected to visit Washington on Saturday. Hu plans to meet with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Hu's visit is considered important in that the 59-year-old vice president is expected to take President Jiang Zemin's spot in 2003 as top dog in the Beijing communist pack. According to press sources, Hu is not expected to make any big announcements during his visit to the White House. Political observers noted that he has scheduled few public appearances and will avoid talking about Taiwan, trade or human rights.

However, Hu has not been so shy when playing for the home audience. In Beijing, during a meeting to mark the 30th anniversary of the normalization of ties between the U.S. and China, he met with Henry Kissinger to talk about the future of Taiwan.

According to Kissinger, Hu sent a clear and forceful message that China expects the United States to capitulate to Beijing's eventual takeover of free Taiwan. Hu considers Taiwan a renegade province and refused to renounce the use of force to achieve unification.

Hu's remarks on force are not empty words. In April, U.S. intelligence agencies tracked 20 new Dong Feng 15 short-range missiles to a military base in Fujian province, directly across from Taiwan.

Chinese missile deployments opposite Taiwan have been continuing at a rate of at least 50 new missiles a year. The new shipment of DF-15s is part of a continuing Chinese buildup for a planned force of more than 1,000 modern missiles.

China's massing of ballistic missiles along its eastern seaboard has ratcheted up tensions on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. One response to Beijing's missile threat is for Taiwan to develop and test-fire indigenously developed short-range missiles.

In fact, Taiwan launched a three-day exercise in response to Beijing's deployment of new DF-15 missiles. The military exercise was held at the Chiupeng missile base in the island's southeast.

The red missile build-up has not escaped the attention of the U.S. Navy. Adm. Dennis Blair, commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, recently warned that while Chinese missiles "cannot make a decisive military difference yet," the buildup will at some point threaten the defense of Taiwan.

According to the Financial Times, Blair noted the United States would seriously consider supplying missile defenses to Taipei if Beijing continues to deploy new missiles.

Blair's concern over the DF-15 missile is well founded. The U.S. has no missile that can match the Dong Feng 15. The DF-15 is considered to be equal to the U.S. Army Pershing missile that was deployed during the 1980s but later withdrawn from service.

The reason the U.S. Army Pershing is not in service is because the Soviet Union and the United States banned short-range tactical missiles by a joint treaty in the 1980s. The Soviet Union dismantled its force of SS-20 Saber missiles, and the United States dismantled its Pershings because these tactical missile systems are considered to be too dangerous.

China, however, does not take U.S. air superiority as a joke. The Beijing leadership compensates for its lack of air power by deploying advanced missiles. U.S. intelligence agencies estimate that China has between 350 and 400 missiles deployed at bases within firing range of Taiwan. Their flight time is so short they can reach their targets within minutes.

Taiwan has no defensive systems to stop them, but Taipei would like to remedy this problem. After consultations with the Bush administration, Taiwan is expected to make a bid to procure the U.S. Patriot III theater missile defense system.

Taiwan's bid for a missile defense has not escaped Beijing's notice. Chinese Vice President Hu is expected to express his opposition to the proposed Patriot sale to Taiwan behind closed doors at the White House. Perhaps he can make a few wisecracks about the attack on the Pentagon while he meets with Bush and Cheney to object about missile sales to Taiwan.

If the leadership in Beijing considers the attack on the World Trade Center to be a subject for humor, then President Bush should remind Hu that the United States considers the defense of a free Taiwan no laughing matter. The ultimate joke on Beijing would be for the United States to sell Taiwan the defensive Patriot missiles it needs.

Communist China = classic Big Bully.

Reason: bullies can dish it out, but can't take it.

Example: Chinese journalsts (and others) cheered the distruction of the WTC 3,000 people.

President Bush delivered a speech and an ultimatum. The speech was jeered by the people who should have been frightened, and the ultimatum(s) ignored.

We stomped the offending a$$es without further preamble. No muss, fuss or posturing.

Now harken back to Kosovo, in the '90's, when a stray bomb damaged China's po widdle embassy building, killing two or three people, if I remember correctly.

China stamped and screamed and threatened and bawled and cried and...well, you get the picture. Clinton gave China an apology, and though I dislike the guy intensely, even his administration seemed clearly annoyed with China's childish tantrum.

I'm sure you see the contrast, too.

Scew you, Hu.

What nobody seems to notice is that 300-400 missles with only conventional warheads don't mean diddly in military terms. They are a political and annoyance weapon only, even at 10 times that scale.

There have been three large scale campaigns of missle attacks on civilian population centers with conventional HE warheads in history. I leave out minor affairs like Iraq's few scuds at Israel and Saudi during the gulf war, which were just pinpricks.

In the "war of the cities" during the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq fired 520 ballistic missles at Iran. Most of them targeted at Teheran relatively late in the war. They caused a total of 2000 KIA and 6000 WIA. Each missle could be expected to kill 3-5 people and wound 10-15.

Late in WW II, the Germans fired not a few hundred, but around 3000 V-2 rockets, mostly at London and Antwerp. They killed a few thousand people and wounded a number in the low tens of thousands. Each missle killed 1-2 people and wounded 5-10. The main reason for the difference from the Iraqi experience is that the earlier model missles were substantially less accurate, with only about half hitting targets the size of large cities.

Earlier in WW II, in the summer and fall of 1944, the Germans launched not a few hundred, or a few thousands, but around 20,000 V-1 "buzz bombs", the first cruise missles, mostly at London in the summer, and at Antwerp later on, after ground forces overran the launching sites at put London out of range. (They also fired around 1200 V-1s from aircraft, at British targets). These killed about 10,000 people, and wounded about 40,000. Each buzz bomb fired thus accounted for only 0-1 KIA and 2 WIA. The main reason for the lighter result was that around half of them were shot down in flight by aircraft or flak, and another half missed even city sized targets. Even the ones that got through and hit urban areas on average killed 1-3 people and wounded 5-10.

While the loss of civilian life was certainly regrettable in each of these cases, and in the case of the much larger scale German WW II attacks (combined) involving a significant destruction of housing, and some serious diversion of military effort to shoot down V-1s and to bomb launch sites, the net effect was neglible in military terms. With a few hundred missles, you just don't do anything militarily serious even to a large city, let alone a whole nation.

They are purely weapons of spite. They are intended to frighten the civilian population of the targeted countries, and to cause wanton destruction to civilians out of simply hatred, but their bark is far worse than any militarily relevant bite. They are not accurate enough to be used at targets much smaller than cities, and their blast effect is too small to make up for this. Only hyper-accurate "smart" weapons can do anything militarily important with 1000 lb or 2000 lb conventional warheads.

50 more such weapons are meaningless. The Germans fired *5000* V-1s in the first 40 days of the "V-1 blitz" in the summer of 1944. And only made Londoner's lives harder, without helping the German army in the Normandy fight, beyond diverting some Allied aircraft to respond.

To threaten Taiwan, China needs either (1) to nuke the place, in which case there is nothing to take over and probably no one left to do the taking either, or (2) invade. To invade they have to get across the strait. To get across the straight in their grab-bag of merchant and transport ships, they need to keep everybody else's navy and air force out of the area.

They can't hope to keep our navy out if we come in - their whole navy has less modern naval combat power than some single Russian ships. And they would be hard pressed even to keep the Taiwanese air force from controlling the skies over the straits. They have only a handful of first line aircraft purchased from the Russians. They have a large number of MiG-21s of 1960s vintage, and an enourmous number of MiG-19s of 1950s vintage. But against F-16s they might as well be in biplanes. Only their top of the line late model Russian fighters are worth a darn, and they are outnumbered by the Taiwanese airforce. To say nothing of ours.

I am sure China's intentions are as bad as you please. And there is every reason to keep an eye on them, as they try to upgrade their military. And to keep Taiwan ahead of them by military help. But the peace there has not been kept for the past 40 years due to loving intentions on the part of the Chi-coms. It has been kept by a healthy fear of getting their asses kicked. Which they have every reason to believe would happen if they went tomorrow. Which is why they didn't go today.

Peace is kept by superior military power in the hands of the peace-loving, not by benign intentions among communist dictators. That communist dictators do not have benign intentions, especially toward us, is not exactly news. And 50 more - or 500 more - conventionally armed ballistic missles don't change the military power equation at all.

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