Flashback: China's threats

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Chinese General Warns May Nuke Hundreds of US Cities

Guardian | July 16, 2005
By Jonathan Watts

COMMENT:
Oh how bottomless the Memory Hole is. Less than a year ago a representative of the Chinese government declared pubicly that China could destroy hundreds of US cities at a moments notice. It was allowed to be forgotten as soon as it was released but the manufactured threat of Iran is being paraded in front of the viewing public non-stop. The Bush Administration and the Media at large have been pushing and inflating the Iran "Nuke" threat when the "nukes" in question are peaceful nuclear reactors for use in supplying affordable energy to the people of Iran.

China is brandishing its biggest guns in our faces and they are ignored. Iran wants to give its people a reliable energy source and we threaten to attack them. There is no evidence that they have any intention of making weapons and they are a front page threat. China has one of the biggest nuclear arsenals in the world and is flaunting it and no one seems to be concerned.

The source of the disconnect is entirely transparent. Iran sits on a strategic resource and is a smaller, easier target which happened to be in the NeoCon's sights from the beginning anyway. Take a look back down the Memory Hole and remember how the "evidence" was created to support a strike on Iraq and you will see the same pattern with Iran. These guys are one trick ponies and we are all bearing witness to their obvious trickery all over again.

A senior Chinese general has warned that his country could destroy hundreds of American cities with nuclear weapons if the two nations clashed over Taiwan.

Major general Zhu Chenghu, a dean at the National Defence University, said he was expressing a private opinion, but his comments, the most inflammatory by a senior government official in 10 years, will fuel growing concerns in Washington about the rise of China.

Speaking at a lecture arranged by the foreign ministry and attended by several foreign correspondents on Thursday, Mr Zhu said China was prepared to initiate non-conventional warfare over Taiwan. "War logic dictates that a weaker power needs to use maximum efforts to defeat a stronger rival," he was reported as saying by the New York Times.

"If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition on to the target zone on China's territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons."

Echoing threats last made in 1995, Mr Zhu, who has a reputation as a hawk in Chinese military circles, said his country was ready to sustain heavy casualties in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other heavily populated areas.

"We Chinese will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all of the cities east of Xian," he said. "Of course, the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese."

Although Mr Zhu said war was unlikely, his proposal that China should adopt a first-strike nuclear option against the US will alarm the Pentagon.

China tested its first atomic bomb in 1964, but it claims that its arsenal of nuclear weapons is the smallest among the five nations on the UN security council.

According to a recent article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, China has only 18 intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to the US mainland. Most sit in their silos unarmed.

However, US intelligence predicts that over the next 15 years, China will expand its IBM force to 75-100 strategic nuclear warheads targeted primarily at the US. They will be mounted on a new mobile solid-fuel rocket, the Dong Feng-31, and, possibly, miniaturised for launch from China's submarine fleet.

The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, recently expressed concern about Beijing's growing military power. Such strategic fears come at a time of rising Sino-American tensions over the bilateral trade deficit and competition for global energy resources.

The Chinese government refused to comment on Mr Zhu's statement, but in recent weeks the state-run media has carried several articles rebutting US claims about a military build-up. Earlier this month, Major General Ding Jiye, head of the finance office of the People's Liberation Army, said the 12.6% rise in defence spending this year was in line with economic growth and was mainly used to improve the living conditions of soldiers.

The China Daily, the English-language paper aimed at an overseas audience, focused on the planned reduction of 200,000 military personnel from the 2.5 million-strong army by the end of this year.

Analysts say China has learned from the collapse of the Soviet Union that it would be economic suicide to attempt an arms race with the US.

But there are still risks of a clash over Taiwan, a self-governing island that China considers part of its territory and the US has vowed to protect.

The president of the European commission, José Manuel Barroso, urged his hosts yesterday to resume dialogue with Taiwan before 2008.

"This will also greatly advance China's international standing and reputation as a global player with a particular responsibility for peace and security in east Asia," said Mr Barroso, who was on his first official trip to China.

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Amid China Threat US To Hold Mammoth Naval Operations In Pacific

AFP | February 17 2006

Amid persistent warnings about China's growing military clout, the US military said Tuesday it would hold one of its biggest naval exercises in the Asia Pacific this summer.

The large-scale operations will involve several carrier strike groups, each of which includes at least three warships, an attack submarine and a support ship.

Four carriers would be involved in three military maritime exercises -- one of them touted as the world's largest -- between June and August in the region, Commander of the US Pacific Fleet Admiral Gary Roughead said in Washington.

Two of the exercises are expected to be largely confined to US forces and held in the Western Pacific while the third involving navies from at least eight countries, including Australia, Chile, Japan, South Korea and Peru, would occur near the Hawaiian Islands.

While the war games would boost bilateral and multilateral cooperation and improve military preparedness, it "also provides a deterrent for anyone who would wish us ill," Roughead told a forum organized by the US-based Asia Society, which aims to bridge ties between the two sides of the Pacific.

A major Pentagon review of US military strategy earlier this month singled out China as the country with the greatest potential to challenge the United States militarily.

The Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), conducted every four years, said a key goal for the US military in the coming years will be to "shape the choices of countries at a strategic crossroads."

The QDR report noted China's steady but secretive military buildup since 1996.

Some analysts also see recent Sino-Russian rapprochement as a sign of a desire to wrest military and economic power in the Asia-Pacific region from the United States, which is linked by half century military alliances with Japan and South Korea.

It has been at least 10 years since four aircraft carriers have operated in the Pacific Ocean at one time, the Hawaii-based Roughead said, adding that the increased activity was in line with findings of the QDR released on February 6.

His spokesman Navy Captain Matt Brown said it could be the largest combined aircraft carrier operations in the Pacific since the Vietnam War. Aside from the Japan-based Kitty Hawk, the other carriers to be involved in the exercises are the San Diego-based Ronald Reagan and one more each from the Pacific and Atlantic fleets.

"I think for an East Coast carrier to be operating in the Pacific -- probably Vietnam was the last time we had East Coast ships operating up in the Western Pacific," he explained.

Elaborating on the exercises, Brown said, "As the QDR mentioned, it is important for us to be focusing on the Pacific, to be working with friends and allies in the Pacific.

"And we think that the carriers are a capable multimission platform for gaining familiarisation for forces operating in the Western Pacific."

Citing the massive US-led tsunami relief operations last year in Asia, Brown said, "Our leaders in Hawaii were able to pick up the phone and call counterparts in Singapore, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, New Delhi and rapidly exchange information because they knew each other.

"In a situation where there is a disagreement, wouldn't it be nice to pick up the phone and refer back to rely upon a long term established relationship to hopefully prevent that conflict," he asked.

Brown also said that the US military hospital ship "Mercy," deployed last year to help tsunami-hit Indonesia, will leave this spring on a five-month mission to Southeast Asia.

"We are still working on the locations," he said. "This is follow on to the tsunami experience because we found that it was important and the people benefited and is good to do it again," he said. Mercy is one of two American hospital ships.

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China Rushes to Complete $100B Deal With Iran

By Peter S. Goodman
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, February 17, 2006; 5:39 PM

SHANGHAI, Feb. 17 -- China is hastening to complete a deal worth as much as $100 billion that would allow a Chinese state-owned energy firm to take a leading role in developing a vast oil field in Iran, complicating the Bush administration's efforts to isolate the Middle Eastern nation and roll back its nuclear development plans, according to published reports.

The completion of the agreement would advance China's global quest for new stocks of energy. It could also undermine U.S. and European initiatives to halt Tehran's nuclear plans, possibly generating friction in Beijing's relations with outside powers.

Caijing, a respected financial magazine based in Beijing, reported on its Web site on Thursday that a Chinese delegation comprised of officials from the National Development and Reform Commission -- a top economic policy body -- intends to visit Iran as early as next month to conclude an agreement. The deal would clear China Petrochemical Corp., also known as Sinopec, to develop the Yadavaran oil field in southern Iran.

Beijing and Tehran are attempting to swiftly conclude a deal in the next few weeks, ahead of the possible imposition of international sanctions against Iran, according to a report published in Friday's editions of The Wall Street Journal. The report relied upon unnamed Iranian government officials. Sanctions could hinder Chinese investments in Iran.

Chinese officials declined to comment, and calls to Sinopec's offices went unanswered. In a written statement, the Iranian Embassy in Beijing asserted that the two nations have been working together on energy development, "following the rule of mutual benefits and respect in all bilateral cooperation."

A deal would cement a memorandum of understanding signed by China and Iran in October 2004. The framework agreement pledges that Sinopec will develop the Yadavaran field in exchange for the purchase of 10 million tons of liquefied natural gas a year for the next quarter-century.

Analysts in China said the deal should primarily be seen as part of Beijing's global reach for new energy stocks to fuel its relentless development -- a drive that has in recent years led Chinese companies to invest in Indonesia, Australia, Venezuela, Sudan and Kazakhstan. China is now locked into a high-stakes competition with Japan for access to potentially enormous oil fields in Russia.

But the speed with which China and Iran are moving to conclude their agreement and begin development appears to signal Beijing's intent to limit the United States-led drive for sanctions against Iran to curb what the Washington describes as Tehran's rogue effort to develop nuclear weapons.

As one of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, China can veto a sanctions proposal within the international body, or at least threaten to do so to restrict the bite and breadth of such an initiative.

"The timing is really interesting," said Shen Dingli, an international relations expert at Fudan University in Shanghai. "China and Iran appear to be collaborating not only for energy development but also to increase the stakes in case sanctions are imposed. This is a subtle message that even if sanctions are passed, you could have limited sanctions without touching upon oil. China is saying, 'This is my cheese. Don't touch.' "

China's voracious appetite for energy is increasingly guiding its foreign policy. China has used the threat of a Security Council veto to limit sanctions against Sudan, the African nation in which China's largest energy firm, China National Petroleum Corp., is the largest investor in a government-led oil consortium. China is the largest buyer of Sudan's oil, as well as the largest supplier of arms to its ruling regime. The Sudanese government has been accused of massacring villagers to clear land for further energy development and of committing genocide in its efforts to crush separatist rebels in the western region of Darfur.

China's pursuit of an energy deal with Iran comes as Tehran has announced the resumption of its uranium enrichment program. Tehran says this work is merely aimed at generating energy, while the Bush administration asserts it is a precursor to the development of nuclear weapons and has been lobbying its allies to take a hard line while threatening sanctions.

China has joined the international chorus in urging Tehran to halt its nuclear plans. But China's aggressive pursuit of an oil deal with Iran underscores how energy security has become a paramount concern for Beijing at a time of relentless industrial growth. Government forecasts show China's demands for imported crude oil swelling from about one-third of its total needs to about 60 percent by 2020.

Analysts assume that the Iranian field could produce as much as 300,000 barrels of oil per day, making it one of the larger overseas operations for a Chinese company. Sinopec would hold a 51 percent stake in the Yadavaran project, according to the Caijing report, while India's Oil and Natural Gas Corp. would hold 29 percent. The rest of the venture would be divided among Iranian companies and perhaps other outside investors.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this article.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

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www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/5/26/154053.shtml

New Chinese Jets Superior, Eagle Loses to Flanker

Charles R. Smith
Wednesday, May 26, 2004



China is about to receive 24 advanced Sukhoi Su-30MK2 Flanker fighters from Russia. The new fighter jets are reported to be the naval versions of the Sukhoi Su-30MKK fighter.

The new Chinese fighters are reportedly equipped with enhanced anti-ship strike capabilities including the Kh-31 Krypton supersonic anti-ship missile.