Chinese Military,Political and Social Superthread

[CougarKing]

Not surprising considering that of those who emigrated to Canada on investor's immigrant visas, 70% came from Taiwan, the mainland or Hong Kong, IIRC.

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China's 'Wealth Drain': New Signs That Rich Chinese Are Set on Emigrating

By Xin Haiguang / Economic Observer / WorldCrunch Saturday, June 11, 2011

This post is in partnership with Worldcrunch, a new global—news site that translates stories of note in foreign languages into English. The article below was originally published in Economic Observer.

BEIJING — Is China facing a "Wealth Drain"? Do too many of the best and brightest — and above all, richest — Chinese dream of packing up their accumulated capital, and going to live abroad?

According to a new study, a majority of Chinese who have more than 10 million Yuan ($1.53 million) worth of individual assets find the idea of real—estate investment a lot less tempting than so—called "investment emigration." Nearly 60% of people interviewed claim they are either considering emigration through investment overseas, or have already completed the process, according to the 2011 Private Wealth Report on China published by China Merchants Bank and a business consulting firm Bain & Company. The richer you are, the study suggests, the likelier it is that you resort to emigration. And among those who possess more than 100 million yuan, 27 % have already emigrated while 47% are considering leaving.
(See: "On the Cutting Edge - China's Extraordinary Buildings")
The fact that more and more rich Chinese are seeking to emigrate is turning into a hot topic in China, and statistics prove that the trend is a real one. According to Caixin online, a Chinese website specialized in finance, the compound annual growth rate of overseas investment by Chinese individuals approached 100% between 2008 and 2010. The compound growth rate of the Chinese who used investments to emigrate to the United States in the past five years is 73%.

So why are wealthy Chinese so eager to leave their country? The simplest answer is that there are a lot of things in China that even the richest cannot buy (emigration is obviously not one of them). China's rich are fond of saying that nothing "is a problem if money can solve it." Among the irresolvable problems that spark emigration, there are material ones, and emotional ones.
The former includes issues like laws and regulations, the education system, social welfare, inheritance tax, quality of air, investing atmosphere, food safety, ability to travel, and so on. In short, these are the material factors that any State must provide to its people in order to ensure their happiness. In emerging countries such as China, these factors are still often found wanting.
Emotional reasons behind rich people's immigration are generally linked to the lack of a sense of personal safety, including safety of personal wealth, as well as fear about an uncertain future.
(See: "China Stamps Out Democracy Protests")
It thus appears that it is a certain "lack of well—being" that is pushing wealthy Chinese to emigrate. The results of the Private Wealth Report are very much in line with other studies. A recent Gallop Wellbeing Survey showed that most Chinese people feel depressed, even as China has sky—high economic growth rates that Europe and America can only dream of. According to the survey, which asked respondents to choose between "thriving," "struggling," and "suffering" to describe their situation, only 12% think themselves as "thriving," while 17% describe themselves as "suffering," and 71% "struggling." The number of Chinese who feel that their life is improving is comparable to the number of Afghans and Yemeni who feel the same way, while the number of persons feeling they are "struggling" is approximately the same as in Haiti, Azerbaijan and Nepal.
It is a paradox that, in a country where more and more people are getting richer by the day — albeit to the detriment of the poor, who have benefitted very little from the country's new wealth — the general feeling of well—being should remain at rock—bottom. The poor grumble while the rich flee.
The truth is that, unless they emigrate, the wealthy have to suffer from the same causes of unhappiness as the poor. Take food safety. Last year, when a Chinese woman living in Canada was asked by the International Herald Tribune why she had left her country, she said it was because of the Sanlu (toxic baby milk) case, and also because of the "hatred against the rich." Her answer highlights the fact that, as the gap between the rich and the poor is getting wider, and the poor are complaining more and more, the rich are also getting more nervous. Some rich people even worry that the "redistribution of wealth might start all over again."
(See: "Fellow Dissident on Liu Xiaobo's Nobel Peace Prize ")
Although the danger seems overblown for now, people are starting to wonder where the public hatred of the rich might lead. The wealthy also know that they bear some of the responsibility for the unequal distribution of wealth. The so—called "original sin of wealth" is not totally without foundation, and it is often difficult for the rich to stop enriching themselves. Fluctuating market conditions bring out a survival instinct that sometimes makes them commit illegal or immoral acts. Once they realize this, they often chose to avoid the trap by emigrating and starting afresh.
The situation would not be as serious, of course, if the number of people deciding to leave were low. But once a few personal choices take the shape of a massive drain, the consequences of their departure on the economy and on society, through the example they set, can be dire.
An even bigger cause of concern is that, when rich people pack their money and leave, not only are they no longer identifying with their country, but they are also avoiding their social obligations. While the reason behind these people's decision matters little, the undeniable fact is that they make money from this society, but they refuse to give anything back.
Rich people who decide to move to a foreign country should know that, by doing so, they are stoking the dissatisfaction among those who stay behind. The poor get angrier because they cannot leave, and their hatred towards the remaining rich grows even bigger. This is the most corrosive thing that can happen to a society.

 

[CougarKing]

The Chinese carrier SHI LANG//施琅 is reportedly armed:

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Shi Lang Is Official And Armed

June 9, 2011: In the last few months, the new Chinese aircraft carrier, the Shi Lang (formerly Varyag) has apparently had all of its weapons installed. The government has also officially admitted that the Shi Lang actually exists. Meanwhile, numerous unofficial photos have appeared showing the two main weapon systems that have been installed. Along each side of the ship are, first (near the bow, or front of the vessel) an 18 cell launcher for FL-3000N anti-missile missiles. Aft (rear of the ship), there is another FL-3000N. Right behind that is an AK-1030 automatic cannon. This gives the Shi Lang four FL-3000N and two AK-1030 systems. There may also be four more gun or missile systems amidships (in the middle), two on each side. But no one has gotten a clear photo of these yet. These might be the smaller AK-630.

The AK-1030 is an upgraded (to ten barrels) model of the older AK-730 (seven barrel) and AK-630 (six barrel), close-in anti-missile automatic cannon. All fire 30mm shells at incoming anti-ship missiles. The FL-3000N is similar to the American RAM anti-missile missile system, except that they come in a 24 missile and 18 missile launchers and are less accurate.

FL-3000N was only introduced three years ago, and uses smaller missiles than RAM. The FL-3000N missiles have a max range of nine kilometers (about half that for very fast incoming missiles). The 120mm, two meter long missiles use a similar guidance system to RAM, but are not as agile in flight.

Missiles are increasingly preferred over cannon for short range anti-missile defense. Thus over the last decade, the U.S. Navy Phalanx 20mm autocannon anti-missile system has been more frequently replaced by SeaRAM. What's interesting about this is that SeaRAM is basically the Phalanx system, with the 20mm gun replaced with a box of eleven RAM (RIM-116 "Rolling Air Frame") missiles. The Phalanx was developed in the 1970s, and entered service in 1977 (about the same time as the original Russian AK-630).

RAM was developed in the 1980s, and didn't enter service until 1993. RAM has a longer range (7.5 kilometers) than the Phalanx (2-3 kilometers) and was originally designed to be aimed using the ship's fire control systems. Phalanx, on the other hand, has its own radar and fire control system and, once turned on, will automatically fire at any incoming missiles. The latest AK-630/730/1030 operate the same way. This is necessary, as some anti-ship missiles travel at over a 500 meters a second. With SeaRAM, you've got a little more time, and can knock down the incoming missile farther from the ship. This is important, because it was feared that a large, very fast anti-ship missile (which the Russians prefer, and sell to foreigners), even when shot up by Phalanx, might still end up having parts of it slam into the target ship. Since SeaRAM has eleven missiles ready to fire, it can also engage several targets at once, something the Phalanx could not do. The ten barrel Type 1030 is more powerful than Phalanx, with its 30mm shells having a range of four or more kilometers.

The RAM missiles are 127mm in diameter, three meters (9.3 feet) long and weigh 73.6 kg (162 pounds) each. The terminal guidance system is heat seeking. Basically, it uses the rocket motor and warhead from the Sidewinder air-to-air missile, and the guidance system from the Stinger shoulder fired anti-aircraft missile. SeaRAM missiles cost about $450,000 each, which is probably at least 50 percent more than the FL-3000N missiles. SeaRAM is meant to provide protection for combat support ships that normally have no defenses, or at least no combat radars and fire control system. The new LCS will use the SeaRAM as well.

The Shi Lang/Varyag is one of the Kuznetsov class carriers that Russia began building in the 1980s. Originally the Kuznetsovs were to be 90,000 ton, nuclear powered ships, similar to American carriers (complete with steam catapults). Instead, because of the high cost, and the complexity of modern (American style) carriers, the Russians were forced to scale back their plans, and ended up with 65,000 ton (full load) ships that lacked steam catapults, and used a ski jump type flight deck instead. Nuclear power was dropped, but the Kuznetsov class was still a formidable design. The 323 meter (thousand foot) long ship normally carries a dozen navalized Su-27s (called Su-33s), 14 Ka-27PL anti-submarine helicopters, two electronic warfare helicopters and two search and rescue helicopters. But the ship was meant to regularly carry 36 Su-33s and sixteen helicopters. The ship carries 2,500 tons of aviation fuel, allowing it to generate 500-1,000 aircraft and helicopter sorties. Crew size is 2,500 (or 3,000 with a full aircraft load.) Only two ships of this class exist; the original Kuznetsov, which is in Russian service, and the Varyag.

Like most modern carriers, the only weapons carried are anti-missile systems like AK-1030 and FL-3000N, plus some heavy machine-guns (which are often kept inside the ship, and mounted outside only when needed.) However, Russian practice was been to sometimes install long range anti-ship missiles as well. China may also do this with Shi Lang.

Plus another article from last month from the BBC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13692558

The head of China's General Staff of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) has confirmed that China's first aircraft carrier is under construction.

Gen Chen Bingde refused to say when the carrier - a remodelled Soviet-era vessel, the Varyag - would be ready.

A member of his staff said the carrier would pose no threat to other nations.

The 300m (990ft) carrier, which is being built in the north-east port of Dalian, has been one of China's worst-kept secrets, analysts say.

Gen Chen made his comments to the Chinese-language Hong Kong Commercial Daily newspaper.

Symbol of power
The PLA - the largest army in the world - is hugely secretive about its defence programme.

The carrier was constructed in the 1980s for the Soviet navy but was never completed. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the rusting hull of the Varyag sat in dockyards in Ukraine.

“
Start Quote

The giant, grey hulk of China's newest warship, 60,000 tonnes of steel, sits at a dockside in the port of Dalian, almost ready to set sail”

Read Damian Grammaticas' report from Dalian
A Chinese company with links to the PLA bought the Varyag claiming it wanted to turn it into a floating casino in Macau.

The carrier is thought to be nearly finished, and is expected to begin sea trials later this year.

But the BBC's Michael Bristow in Beijing says that does not mean it will then be ready to undertake operational duties.

Learning how to operate it - and fly planes off it - will take a few more years to master, our correspondent says.

Lt Gen Qi Jianguo, assistant chief of the general staff, told the Hong Kong Commercial Daily that even after the aircraft carrier was deployed, it would "definitely not sail to other countries' territorial waters".

"All of the great nations in the world own aircraft carriers - they are symbols of a great nation," he was quoted as saying.

Lt Gen Qi said China had always followed a "defensive" principle for its military strategy.


"It would have been better for us if we acted sooner in understanding the oceans and mapping out our blue-water capabilities earlier.

"We are now facing heavy pressure in the oceans whether in the South China Sea, East China Sea, Yellow Sea or the Taiwan Straits," he said.

China is engaged in maritime border disputes with several countries - including Vietnam and the Philippines.

The US, which has 11 fully-capable carrier strike groups, has also expressed concern about its rising naval ambitions.

The PLA has invested heavily in submarines. It is believed to be close to deploying the world's first "carrier-killer" ballistic missile designed to sink aircraft carriers while they are manoeuvring at sea up to 1,500km offshore, and it is building its own stealth fighter aircraft along with advanced carrier-based aircraft built from Russian designs.

All of these can target US bases, US ships and US carriers in Asia.

India is another emerging power pursuing a similar path - with an ex-Soviet carrier being modified for the Indian Navy, and work already under way on a first home-built vessel as well.

Over time, these developments will affect the maritime balance of power in Asia, says the BBC's defence and security correspondent Nick Childs.

China says other countries have nothing to fear, but its recent assertive diplomatic and military muscle-flexing has created waves in the region, he says.

Sorry to nitpick, but didn't they forget Spain in the list of nations with carriers above (with Janes as a source)? And I don't recall the Dutch having had carriers in recent years.

 

[a_majoor]

Many more nations have "carriers", but I believe most of them are actually helicopter carriers (like the new Japanese Hyūga class). A quick look at Wikipedia suggests that most nations owning aircraft carriers only have one or two, which leaves a big question about sustainability of operations. To have the ability to project power over sustained perriods of time usually requires three ships; one on station, one at sea (coming or going) and one in port undergoing replenishment and refitting. Another ship as insurance would be nice as well.

In this regard the Chinese PLAN is well served by its large fleet of submarines, the aircraft carrier would be more the visible symbol of power and presteige that can be paraded on visits and exercises.

 

[CougarKing]

The carrier is slated to have its first sea trials next week:

First China aircraft carrier sea trial ‘next week’
Agence France-Presse
6:01 pm | Tuesday, June 21st, 2011

China's first aircraft carrier is under restoration in a shipyard in Dalian in northeastern China's Liaoning province. AP File Photo

HONG KONG—China’s first aircraft carrier—a remodelled Soviet-era vessel—will go on sea trials next week, a report said Tuesday, amid escalating tensions in the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea).

China’s top military official reportedly confirmed earlier this month that Beijing is building a huge aircraft carrier, the first acknowledgement of the ship’s existence from China’s secretive defense program.

On Tuesday, the Hong Kong Commercial Daily, which broke the story of the vessel’s confirmation, quoted unnamed military sources saying the carrier will go on sea trials on July 1 but will not be officially launched until October.

The sources said the test has been expedited in view of rising tensions in the South China Sea—home to two potentially oil-rich archipelagos, the Paracels and Spratlys—in recent weeks.

China’s military “hopes it will show the strength of the Chinese maritime forces to deter other nations which are eyeing the South China Sea in order to calm tensions,” the sources said.

They added that the sea trial date was also picked to mark the 90th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party, but noted that factors such as weather could affect the planned test run.

China’s military did not immediately respond to an Agence France-Presse request for comment.

Tensions between Beijing and other rival claimants to the strategically vital West Philippine Sea have heightened recently.

The Philippines and Vietnam in particular have expressed alarm at what they say are increasingly aggressive actions by China in the disputed waters, but Beijing has insisted it is committed to resolving the issue peacefully.

Chinese officials have previously said its first aircraft carrier would not pose a threat to other nations, in accordance with Beijing’s defensive military strategy.

The Chinese aircraft carrier plan was confirmed when the chief of the General Staff of the People’s Liberation Army, Chen Bingde confirmed the ship’s existence in an interview with the Hong Kong paper.

He said the 300 meter (990-foot) former Soviet carrier, originally called the Varyag, was being overhauled. The ship is currently based in the northeast port of Dalian.

An expert on China’s military has reportedly said the carrier would be used for training and as a model for a future indigenously-built ship.

The Varyag was originally built for the Soviet navy but construction was interrupted by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The PLA—the largest army in the world—is hugely secretive about its defense programs, which benefit from a large military budget boosted by the nation’s runaway economic growth.

Plus tensions have been rising between China, Vietnam and the Philippines over the Spratleys since early this month:

The Philippines is sending its biggest warship to the Scarborough shoal in the West Philippine Sea after China sent its biggest civilian patrol ship to the disputed waters.

Radio Australia's reporter in Manila, Shirley Escalante, says the BRP Rajah Humabon will be sent to the Philippines' southwestern border, near the disputed Spratly Islands.

Navy chief Vice Admiral Alexander Pama says the warship will guard against intrusions in Philippine waters and "poaching".

link 1

while in Vietnam...

link 2


HANOI, Vietnam - Hundreds of people in Vietnam launched a third week of protests against China on Sunday amid escalating tensions in the disputed waters of the South China Sea, where both countries recently conducted live-fire military drills.
About 300 people gathered near the Chinese Embassy in the capital, Hanoi, and marched through the streets, yelling "Down With China!" and demanding that their powerful northern neighbour stay out of Vietnam's territory. Crowds also gathered in southern Ho Chi Minh City.

"We will fight for our country if the nation needs us," said student Nguyen Manh Ha, 20. "Not only me, but all Vietnamese people will die to protect our territory."

Protests are extremely rare in Vietnam and are typically quashed quickly by security forces, but Hanoi has allowed the demonstrations to go on for the past three Sundays.

"I'm here today to protect my country from an invading China," said Nguyen Long, 82, who fought in a short, bloody land border war with China in 1979. "I'm sure those in the embassy are listening to us shouting 'Down With China!'"

Relations between the communist countries hit a low point after two incidents in the past month involving clashes between Chinese and Vietnamese boats in the South China Sea.

Vietnam accuses Chinese vessels of hindering oil exploration surveys in an area 200 nautical miles off its central coast that it claims as its economic exclusive zone. China says Vietnam illegally entered its waters near the disputed Spratly islands and endangered Chinese fishermen.

The two sides have a long history of exchanging diplomatic jabs over maritime incidents, mainly involving areas around the believed resource-rich Spratly and Paracel islands, which are claimed all or in part by Vietnam, China and several other Asian countries. But the current spat has become much more hostile.

Vietnam held live-fire naval exercises off its central coast last Monday — the same day the government issued an order outlining who would be exempt from a military draft. On Friday, China announced it had also recently held three days and nights of drills in the South China Sea, though it did not give exact dates.

(...)

 

[FoverF]

the BRP Rajah Humabon will be sent to the Philippines' southwestern border, near the disputed Spratly Islands.

The BRP Rajah Humabon is a 68-year-old destroyer escort, with (according to wikipedia) no missile armament embarked.

Better hope nobody calls your bluff.

 

[CougarKing]

Chinese UAV spotted by MSDF Aircraft

By


James Simpson
– June 23, 2011

New Pacific Institute link

Lots of news today regarding Japanese confirmation of an operational UAV in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy. Blogger @JS_Susumu, from Surveillance to Go Nowhere, passed along this Sankei report from earlier in the day (June 23rd):

Confirmation of China’s UAV: Chinese Navy Training in the Pacific

Chinese naval UAV (top-right) spotted by the MSDF (Source: MoD)

Passing between Miyakojima and the main island of Okinawa, a Chinese naval fleet was sailing in the East Philippine Sea on a recent training operation when a Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force aircraft spotted a unmanned aerial vehicle in the air, it was announced today. This is the first confirmed sighting of a Chinese UAV. The Chinese fleet has been on a two-week long voyage in the Pacific Ocean to practice its gunnery and other skills. Between the evening of the 22nd and early dawn of the 23rd, the fleet passed between Okinawa and Miyakojima sailing northwest believed on its return to base.

According to the Ministry of Defense, on June 8th and 9th, the Chinese fleet set sail into the East China Sea in a southeastern direction, split into three groups including missile destroyers and frigates. While heading towards the East Philippine Sea after its training, an MSDF aircraft on patrol at the time spotted a UAV flying in the vicinity of the fleet and took photographs for further confirmation. The UAV is believed to have taken off and landed on the deck of one of the vessels.

The Ministry of Defense released the photograph of the UAV, as shown above, with an accompanying statement:

On the Chinese Naval Fleet Movements
From June 22nd (Wed) to the 23rd (Thurs), the TAKANAMI, CHOUKAI, and KURUMA from MSDF Escort Flotilla 2 (based at Sasebo), sighted an 11-ship  Chinese naval fleet consisting of three Sovremenny-class destroyers, one Jiangkai II-class frigate, one Jiang-wei II frigate, two Jiang-wei I frigates, a Fuqing-class oiler, a Dajiang-class auxiliary submarine rescue vessel, a Tuzhong-class fleet tug, a Dongdiao-class electronic intelligence ship, in an area of sea approximately 110 km northeast of Miyakojima, heading northwest from the Pacific Ocean to the East China Sea.

In addition, from June 8th (Wed) to the 9th (Thurs), the fleet was spotted in an area of sea approximately 100 km northeast of Miyakojima, heading southeast from the Pacific Ocean to the East China Sea, after which it was confirmed to have engaged in gunnery practise in an area of sea approximately 450 km southwest of Okinotorishima as well as unmanned aerial vehicle and onboard helicopter flight training and seaborne replenishment.

Kyle Mizokami is following up on these translations with some further analysis and speculation: read more here.

[Special thanks and H/T to @JS_Susumu for all his translation help]

 

 

[a_majoor]

Interesting consequenses if true....

http://the-diplomat.com/china-power/2011/07/02/how-china-kills-creativity/

How China Kills Creativity By Jiang Xueqin
July 2, 2011
         
Nowadays people may admire China’s economy, but not Chinese creativity. Chinese architecture and art, music and movies are derivative, and many a Chinese enterprise is merely a carbon copy of an American one. China’s best schools may produce the world’s best test-takers, but the United States’ best schools produce the world’s most creative talent.

In his book The Social Animal, David Brooks outlines the four-step learning process that teaches students to be creative: knowledge acquisition (research), internalization (familiarity with material), self-questioning and examination (review and discussion), and the ordering and mastery of this knowledge (thesis formulation and essay writing).

However, this isn’t a linear process, Brooks points out, which means that the learner ‘(surfs) in and out of his unconscious, getting the conscious and unconscious processes to work together – first mastering core knowledge, then letting that knowledge marinate playfully in his mind, then wilfully trying to impose order on it, then allowing the mind to consolidate and merge the data, then returning and returning until some magical insight popped into his consciousness, and then riding that insight to a finished product.’

‘The process was not easy, but each ounce of effort and each moment of frustration and struggle pushed the internal construction project another little step,’ David Brooks continues. ‘By the end, (the learner) was seeing the world around him in a new way.’

But what permits our brains to turn a chaotic sea of random facts and knowledge into an island of calm understanding? Believe it or not, it’s our emotions that permit us ultimately to become creative thinkers. In his book The Accidental Mind, the neuroscientist David J. Linden explains how emotions organize our memories:

‘In our lives, we have a lot of experiences and many of these we will remember until we die. We have many mechanisms for determining which experiences are stored (where were you on 9/11?) and which are discarded (what did you have for dinner exactly 1 month ago?). Some memories will fade with time and some will be distorted by generalization (can you distinctly remember your seventeenth haircut?). We need a signal to say, “This is an important memory. Write this down and underline it.” That signal is emotion. When you have feelings of fear or joy or love or anger or sadness, these mark your experiences as being particularly meaningful…These are the memories that confer your individuality. And that function, memory indexed by emotion, more than anything else, is what a brain is good for.’

What this means is that memories are ultimately emotional experiences, and that effectively learning must involve the learner emotionally. The very best US schools are seen as such because they inspire their students to be curious, interested, and excited; China’s very best schools gain their reputation by doing the opposite.

Thinking is the conscious effort of applying our memories to understand a new external stimulus, and creativity is asserting individual control over this process to create a synthesis between memory and stimuli. In other words, thinking is really about applying previous emotional experiences to understand a new emotional experience, whilst creativity is the mixing of old and new emotional experiences to a create an entirely new and original emotional experience.

The best US education institutions endow students with creativity by providing a relaxed and secure learning environment in which students share in the refined emotional experiences of humanity by reading books and developing the logic necessary to share in collective emotional experiences through debate and essay writing. A dynamic learning environment allows students at many US schools to feel joy and despair, frustration and triumph, and it’s these ups and downs that encode the creative learning process into our neural infrastructure and make it so transformative.

A Chinese school is both a stressful and stale place, forcing students to remember facts in order to excel in tests. Neuroscientists know that stress hampers the ability of the brain to convert experience into memory, and psychologists know that rewarding students solely for test performance leads to stress, cheating, and disinterest in learning. But ultimately, the most harmful thing that a Chinese school does, from a creativity perspective, is the way in which it separates emotion from memory by making learning an unemotional experience.

Whatever individual emotions Chinese students try to bring into the classroom, they are quickly stamped out. As I have previously written, from the first day of school, students who ask questions are silenced and those who try to exert any individuality are punished. What they learn is irrelevant and de-personalized, abstract and distant, further removing emotion from learning.  If any emotion is involved, it’s pain. But the pain is so constant and monotonous (scolding teachers, demanding parents, mindless memorization, long hours of sitting in a cramped classroom) that it eventually ceases to be an emotion.

To understand the consequences of Chinese pedagogy, consider the example of ‘Solomon Shereshevskii, a Russian journalist born in 1886, who could remember everything,’ whom David Brooks writes about in The Social Animal:

‘In one experiment, researchers showed Shereshevskii a complex formula of thirty letters and numbers on a piece of paper. Then they put the paper in a box and sealed it for fifteen years. When they took the paper out, Shereshevskii could remember it exactly…Shereshevskii could remember, but he couldn’t distil. He lived in a random blizzard of facts, but could not organize them into repeating patterns. Eventually he couldn’t make sense of metaphors, similes, poems, or even complex sentences.’

Shereshevskii had a neural defect that prohibited his brain from prioritizing, synthesizing, and controlling his memories to permit him to formulate an understanding of self and the world. Like many a Chinese student today, he could experience, but he could not feel.

Chinese schools are producing a nation of Shereshevskiis, students with photographic memory and instant recall, but who can never be creative.

 

[vhaust]

After several years of non-Chinese education in the maths and sciences (post-secondary studies),
I find that when a student doesn't memorize certain shortcuts,
the exam cannot be completed on time,
and when a student tells a teacher that the time allocation wasn't enough,
he/she will tell the student that's how it is and it is not a problem
because some students still manage to get A's.
Teachers also have to maintain a certain grade distribution and time constraint
is very effective in this regard since students have different thinking and writing speed.
To be an A student, one must memorize certain shortcuts.

 

[a_majoor]

Worrying news on the financial front:

http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2011/06/30/could-china-be-the-next-greece/?xid=rss-topstories&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+time%2Ftopstories+%28TIME%3A+Top+Stories%29

Could China Be the Next Greece?

Posted by Roya Wolverson Thursday, June 30, 2011 at 2:00 pm

There's a lot of finger wagging going on in the world about America's profligate ways. And a lot of comparisons between the budget troubles of the U.S. and the horrors facing Greece. The West, the story goes, stupidly spent  beyond its means while emerging markets wisely saved their pennies for rainy days like these. But the West isn't the only part of the world grappling with fiscal troubles. Growth darling China has its own debt problems, and some analysts think those could wreak far more havoc on the global economy than what's going on Greece.

The Chinese government, which just produced its first national audit of local finances, announced this week that local governments could owe as much as 30% of China's GDP. That's a good deal more than the government's official debt load of less than 20% of GDP. And some analysts are putting China's real debt levels at three to four times those levels.
(Read: Dear Greece, Why Not Just Default?)

The Financial Times reports:

    "If you take a very broad view of the Chinese government's contingent liabilities rather than explicit debt on the books then the number comes to well over 150 per cent of China's GDP in 2010," according to Victor Shih, a political economist at Northwestern University in the US.

If the China bears turn out to be right, just how bad could things get? London hedge fund manager David Yarrow said in a recent investor's letter that Europe's debt crisis is far less worrisome because people have adjusted to the idea, and so markets know what's coming. But whether China can handle its debt troubles is still up for debate. And a debt implosion in China would wreak far more damage, partly because it's not something markets have priced in.
(Read: Hard of Soft Landing for China? How About No Landing)

One reason for that is that no one knows how indebted China really is, since its government is prone to fuzzy math (even fuzzier, perhaps, that the government of Greece). The Economist's Ryan Avent chalked up a good graph to estimate China's total debts in light of the local debt announcement, including what China owes for splashing out on things like high speed rail and bad bank loans. He has some upbeat conclusions to offset the scary new estimates about local debts:

    [China's debts are] not much higher than they have been across a period in which the Chinese economy grew extremely rapidly. Yes, local government borrowing soared behind efforts to keep the economy humming through the global crisis. But that rise has been offset by falling national and bank-restructuring bills.

All told, Avent estimates China's debt-to-GDP ratio is roughly 80%, which, if coupled with China's expected 5% and 9% over the next few years and fairly conservative spending, would put China back in the black in no time. That's a lot different than the situation in Greece, where debt levels are equally high, but growth is nowhere in sight and lenders are pulling away. There's also the fact that, unlike in the U.S. and in Greece, China is toting around some $3 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, which makes it easy to raise money in a flash when times get tough.

But here's where things get tricky. For China to keep up its growth rate, its consumers must continue to spend. That's a tough bet if inflation continues to rise. Of course, Avent argues just the opposite. Inflation, combined with China's "repressed" financial system (it's not easy for the average Joe in China to get a good loan or find places other than housing to invest), allows the government to easily pay back creditors by siphoning off the savings of its people, he says. An interview I did last year with Princeton University's JC de Swaan explains how this works:

    The government has historically focused on favoring the corporate sector, particularly on its exporters. A good example is the government controls on deposit yields and lending rates. Historically, China has had low deposit yields, which have predominantly hurt households because they're the savers. And they've had low lending rates, which have predominantly helped the corporate sector, and particularly many factories and exporters.

That may help out the government's balance sheet in a pinch, but it also leaves Chinese consumers struggling to spend more than they already do, which is the key component to China's growth. Meanwhile, China's biggest consumers, Europe and the U.S., are headed down the drain. A sharper slowdown in the West, combined with China's tricky leadership handover next year, could knock down China's growth rates a good deal lower than many expect. And if there's anything to be learned from Greece and the U.S., it's that growing your way out of debt doesn't always go as planned. China isn't Greece yet, but it isn't out of the clear either.

Read more: http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2011/06/30/could-china-be-the-next-greece/#ixzz1R6CwWibF

 

[CougarKing]

Is it just me or the tail looks like it came from China's J7 fighter though from nose to wing, it looks like it got inspiration from the American F4 Phantom?

China’s Carrier Jet Trainer

In case ya’ll didn’t see this earlier, it’s a snapshot of China’s new carrier jet trainer dubbed the JT-9 that China Defense Blog spotted on the PLA Daily website. Yup, building this trainer is a serious step toward qualifying pilots to fly off China’s soon-to-be complete aircraft carrier Shi Lang. The PLAN intends to use that ship to figure out how to operate an aircraft carrier — one of the world’s most complex and powerful weapon systems — successfully.

Here’s a great broken English translation of what the little jet is designed to do from the Chinese site:

“This type of fighter trainer will be mainly used by the pilots of the ship-based fighters to conduct simulated take-off and landing training on carrier deck.”

These simulated take-offs and landings are probably being done at several mock-ups of the Shi Lang’s flight deck — complete with arrestor cables and a ski jump ramp — reported to exist in China. Once pilots learn the basics of flying off a carrier, they’ll likely move on to the J-15 — an upgraded Chinese version of Russia’s Sukhoi Su-33 naval fighter.



Read more: Defense Tech link

 

[CougarKing]

link

Ocean floor muddies China's grip on '21st-century gold'
By Richard Ingham | AFP – Sun, 3 Jul, 2011


China's monopoly over rare-earth metals could be challenged by the discovery of massive deposits of these hi-tech minerals in mud on the Pacific floor, a study on Sunday suggests.

China accounts for 97 percent of the world's production of 17 rare-earth elements, which are essential for electric cars, flat-screen TVs, iPods, superconducting magnets, lasers, missiles, night-vision goggles, wind turbines and many other advanced products.

These elements carry exotic names such as neodymium, promethium and yttrium but in spite of their "rare-earth" tag are in fact abundant in the planet's crust.

The problem, though, is that land deposits of them are thin and scattered around, so sites which are commercially exploitable or not subject to tough environment restrictions are few.

As a result, the 17 elements have sometimes been dubbed "21st-century gold" for their rarity and value.

Production of them is almost entirely centred on China, which also has a third of the world's reserves. Another third is held together by former Soviet republics, the United States and Australia.

But a new study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, points to an extraordinary concentration of rare-earth elements in thick mud at great depths on the Pacific floor.

Japanese geologists studied samples from 78 sites covering a major portion of the centre-eastern Pacific between 120 and 180 degrees longitude.

Drills extracted sedimentary cores to depths that in place were more than 50 metres (165 feet) below the sea bed.

More than 2,000 of these cores were chemically tested for content in rare-earth elements.

The scientists found rich deposits in samples taken more than 2,000 kilometres (1,200 miles) from the Pacific's mid-ocean ridges.

The material had taken hundreds of millions of years to accumulate, depositing at the rate of less than half a centimetre (0.2 of an inch) per thousand years. They were probably snared by action with a hydrothermal mineral called phillipsite.

At one site in the central North Pacific, an area of just one square kilometre (0.4 of a square mile) could meet a fifth of the world's annual consumption of rare metals and yttrium, says the paper.

Lab tests show the deposits can be simply removed by rinsing the mud with diluted acids, a process that takes only a couple of hours and, say the authors, would not have any environmental impact so long as the acids are not dumped in the ocean.

A bigger question is whether the technology exists for recovering the mud at such great depths -- 4,000 to 5,000 metres (13,000 to 16,250 feet) -- and, if so, whether this would be commercially viable.

In an email exchange with AFP, lead author Yasuhiro Kato, a professor of economic geology and geochemistry at the University of Tokyo, said the response from mining companies was as yet unknown, "because nobody knows the presence of the (rare-earth) -rich mud that we have discovered."

"I am not an engineer, just a geoscientist," Kato said. "But about 30 years ago, a German mining company succeeded in recovering deep-sea mud from the Red Sea. So I believe positively that our deep-sea mud is technologically developable as a mineral resource."

The market for rare-earth elements has tightened considerably over the last couple of years.

China has slashed export quotas, consolidated the industry and announced plans to build national reserves, citing environmental concerns and domestic demand.

These moves led to a fall of 9.3 percent in China's exports of rare-earth metals last year, triggering complaints abroad of strategic hoarding and price-gouging.

Japanese industry sources also said China temporarily cut off exports last year during a territorial row between Asia's two largest economies.
...

 

[Pieman]

^^ I know where I am going to be directing my investments. Any company trying to suck mud off the bottom the ocean...trying to think of a way to do that too...

 

[a_majoor]

Deep sea mining was conceptually demonstrated as far back as the 1960's, (although the actual resource of interest turned out to be a Soviet Ballistic Missile submarine...), so Chinese manipulation of these resources will drive investment towards reviving these abilities.

Happy hunting.

 

[CougarKing]

Not sure what to make of this projection: (note: for those unaware, the BRICs acronym stands for emerging economies such as Brazil, Russia, India, China)

Source: Business Insider link

 

[Antoine]

Interesting debate on CPAC

www.cpac.ca/forms/index.asp?dsp=template&act=view3&pagetype=vod&hl=e&clipID=5823

MUNK DEBATE ON CHINA

On June 17th, 2011, the Aurea Foundation held the seventh semi-annual Munk Debate in Toronto. The participants debated the question "Does the 21st century belong to China?" Historian and author Niall Fergusson and David Daokui Li from Tsinghua University's School of Economics and Management in Beijing argued for the resolution. Henry Kissinger, U.S. Secretary of State from 1973 to 1977, and Fareed Zakaria, CNN Host and Editor-at-Large of TIME Magazine, spoke against the resolution.

 

[CougarKing]

Seems the proteges of the pro-central planning twits such as Chen Yun and Li Xiannan, who opposed a pro-market reformists like Premier Zhao Ziyang in the 1980s, are getting their way, again:

link

By staff reporter Yu Hairong 07.05.2011 13:38

Economist: China's Market-Oriented Reforms in Retreat

Wu Jinglian, researcher at the Development and Research Center at the State Council, said reforms to the state economy have undergone a reversal of momentum since the start of the 2000s

(Beijing) - China's "market forces have regressed" as government agencies have started to play a more obstructive role in resource allocation, Wu Jinglian, one of China's foremost economists, said on July 4.


Although the state economy no longer contributes a major portion to gross domestic product, it maintains a monopoly in sectors like petroleum, telecoms, railways and finance, Wu said in a keynote speech in the opening ceremony of a global conference sponsored by the International Economic Association.
Governments at various levels also have a huge hold over major economic resources such as land and capital, said Wu, who serves as a researcher of the Development and Research Center at the State Council.

China still lacks a legal foundation that is indispensable for a modern market economy. Government officials intervene in the market at their will through administrative means, said Wu.

China's market forces gained vigor when the pricing of goods was liberalized in the early 1990s and millions of township enterprises were privatized at the turn of the last century, said Wu.

Entering the 2000s, however, the reform of state-owned enterprises suffered a setback, and SOEs have inhabited an increasingly assertive role in the market at the expense of private businesses. "The government has acted more intrusively in the name of macro-economic regulation," said Wu.

In China, there have been two distinct views over the origins of China's rapid economic growth.

One view attributes the achievement to the "China model" marked by the domination of the state economy and the forceful regulation over the economy by the government.

The other view holds that the high-speed growth was the result of market-based reforms and the liberation of the entrepreneurial spirit of the people.

For this question, Wu noted the current growth model is unsustainable and has been built on investment that exploits resources and damages the environment.

Another consequence of strengthened government control over the distribution of resources and active intervention in economic activity is more corruption and a larger wealth gap, said Wu.

 

[a_majoor]

Not everything is coming up roses for China; internal stresses could derail much of the gains the Chinese have made. As Edward has pointed out in the past, the "Red Dynasty" needs to continue to keep economic expectations met in order to retain the "Mandate of Heaven". A destabilized China would be a huge hole in the global economic system, so we should keep a cautious eye on what is happening in China in the future:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303544604576430103921843770.html?mod=wsj_share_facebook

China's Bumpy Road Ahead
Unrest, inflation and an aging populace stand in the way of the Middle Kingdom's touted domination
By IAN BREMMER

When exactly will China take over the world?

The moment of truth seems to be coming closer by the minute. China will become the world's largest economy by 2050, according to HSBC. No, it's 2040, say analysts at Deutsche Bank. Try 2030, the World Bank tells us. Goldman Sachs points to 2020 as the year of reckoning, and the IMF declared several weeks ago that China's economy will push past America's in 2016. There's probably someone out there who thinks China became the world's largest economy five years ago.


In an interview with WSJ's John Bussey, Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer insists that for China to become the economic powerhouse it is predicted to become in this century, the Chinese must fundamentally restructure their economy.

But let's not get carried away. There's a good deal of turmoil simmering beneath the surface of China's miracle. Consider these recent snapshots:

• In Hunan, farmers pushed off their land by aggressive property developers discover that local authorities are not on their side. A farmer sets himself on fire, and protests spread quickly from town to town.

• A chemical spill into a Chinese river cuts off water supplies to Harbin, a city of four million people, sparking public fury.

• In Inner Mongolia, a Han Chinese truck driver kills a local herdsman in a hit-and-run accident, and ethnic unrest flares for days.

• Rioting in Xinjiang province spins out of control, forcing a state Internet shutdown across an area three times the size of California.

• In the coastal city of Xintang, security guards sent to break up a protest by migrant workers push a pregnant woman to the ground, igniting a firestorm that only paramilitary forces in armored personnel carriers can handle.


Reuters
A boy rides a cart carrying his grandparents outside Beijing. As more Chinese reach retirement age, the need to provide pensions and health care will lead to unprecedented costs.

China's security services are the world's best at containing large-scale riots, and these protests do not represent any form of coherent opposition to Communist Party control. Most of the protests are directed at local officials and are fueled by local grievances, and three decades of double-digit growth has earned the Chinese leadership deep reserves of public patience.

But this is a country that measures its annual supply of large-scale protests in the tens of thousands. For 2006, China's Academy of Social Sciences reported the eruption of about 60,000 "mass group incidents," an official euphemism for demonstrations of public anger involving at least 50 people. In 2007, the number jumped to 80,000. Though such figures are no longer published, a leak put the number for 2008 at 127,000. Today, it is almost certainly higher.

There is certainly no credible evidence that China is on the brink of an unforeseen crisis, but all that public anger points to enormous challenges on the road ahead. Emerging powers like India, Brazil and Turkey can continue to grow for the next 10 years with the same basic formula that sparked growth over the past 10. China, on the other hand, must undertake enormously complex and ambitious reforms to continue its drive to become a modern power, and the country's leadership knows it.

The financial crisis made clear that China's dependence for growth on the purchasing power of consumers in America, Europe and Japan creates a dangerous vulnerability. Those who insist that it's possible to map the precise arc of China's rise seem to assume that China's leaders can steadily shift the country's growth model toward greater domestic consumption, by transferring enormous reserves of wealth from China's powerful state-owned companies to hundreds of millions of new consumers.

That's quite an assumption. Despite the best efforts of policy architects in Beijing, the share of household consumption in China's economic growth last year actually moved in the other direction, in part because there are political powerbrokers within the elite who have made too much money from the old model to fully embrace a new one.


Getty Images
Overturned police cars line the street after a riot in Xintang in June. China has tens of thousands of large-scale protests a year.

Moreover, as the gap between rich and poor continues to widen, social unrest will almost certainly force tighter state restrictions on free expression and free assembly. That could promote a violent backlash if rising expectations for material success aren't met. Most dangerous of all for the ruling party's future, factions within the government might not agree on how the state should respond to a sudden convulsion of organized unrest.

China's demographics will provide another serious challenge. The country's labor force is becoming more expensive as China urbanizes and moves up the value chain for manufacturing. The population is also getting older, as the one-child policy and other factors leave fewer young people to join the labor force. As more Chinese reach retirement age, the need to expand and reinforce a formal social safety net to provide pensions and health care for hundreds of millions of people will add unprecedented costs.

Given that so much of China's growth is still coming from infrastructure projects and other state-directed investments, the impact on an already overtaxed environment could shock the system. Land degradation, air quality and water shortages are urgent and growing problems. China's capacity to tolerate a deteriorating environment is higher than in most developing markets (to say nothing of the developed world), but the chances for an environmental incident to provoke a dangerously destabilizing event are growing by the day.

Then there's inflation, which hit a 34-month high in May, according to China's National Bureau of Statistics. Food prices surged 11.7%. An over-expansionary monetary policy, higher transportation costs related to urbanization, and large-scale wage hikes are just a few of the variables that ensure the government will have a harder time containing inflation in the years ahead.

Finally, as popular demand, expressed online and in China's blogosphere, plays a larger role in how Chinese policy-makers make decisions, unhappy citizens will check the state's ability to implement strategic policies. That, too, could limit China's longer-term economic growth.

Even if China's leadership makes major progress on domestic reform, it will find that the international environment is becoming less conducive to easy economic expansion. Higher prices for the oil, gas, metals and minerals that China needs to power its economy will weigh on growth. The exertions of all those other emerging market players will add to the upward pressure on food and other commodity prices, suppressing growth rates and undermining consumer confidence, which have been the most important sources of social and political stability in China.

What about China's relationship with the United States? Strong growth in China, coupled with America's unsustainable fiscal policies, high unemployment and weakened consumer demand, will generate friction between the world's two largest economies—in particular, by significantly increasing the likelihood of protectionism on both sides. That's a problem for American companies looking for access to Chinese consumers, but it's far more troublesome for the Chinese, who rely more on U.S. fiscal stability, investment, technology and consumption.

If nothing else, the colossal challenges that lie ahead for China provide an abundance of good reasons to doubt long-term projections of the country's economic supremacy and global dominance. As Yogi Berra once said, "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future."

—Mr. Bremmer is the president of Eurasia Group, a consulting firm that specializes in political risk assessment. His most recent book is "The End of the Free Market."

 

[a_majoor]

A happier topic; China's long term plans for space exploration:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/07/china-space-station-lunar-rovers-and.html

China space station, lunar rovers, and Mars mission

Photo of the Tiangong 1 module undergoing testing earlier in 2011. Credit: China Manned Space Engineering Office

China's second moon orbiter Chang'e-2 on June 9, 2011 set off from its moon orbit for outer space about 1.5 million km away from the earth.

* Scientists decided to let it carry out additional exploratory tasks as the orbiter still had fuel in reserve.

* Scientists hope the satellite can continue operations until the end of 2012.

* Besides the current operations, China's ambitious three-stage moon mission will include a moon landing and launch of a moon rover around 2012 in the second phase. In the third phase, another rover will land on the moon and return to earth with lunar soil and stone samples for scientific research around 2017.

Tiangong 1 (English: Heavenly Palace) is a Chinese orbital laboratory module intended to form part of a space station complex. The launch of this module is planned for October 2011.

* The 8.5-tonne Tiangong-1 will be put into preset orbit in 2011

The space module is expected to carry out China's first space docking, with the Shenzhou-8 spacecraft, which will be launched in the second half of 2011 after Tiangong-1.

The source said experts are currently building the Shenzhou-8 and testing the Long March II-F carrier rocket on which the Tiangong-1 is expected to be launched.

Two other spacecraft, the Shenzhou-9 and Shenzhou-10 spaceships, will be launched in 2012 and will also dock with Tiangong-1

The third phase of the lunar exploration program is planned for 2017, entailing the use of the CZ-5/E heavy launch vehicle. On the basis of the lander mission, a lunar sample return mission will be undertaken, with up to two kilograms of lunar samples being returned to Earth.

After that, a manned lunar landing might be possible in 2025–2030.

China-Russian Mars Exploration

Yinghuo-1 is a joint Chinese-Russian Mars-exploration space probe scheduled for launch in 2013.

The probe will be 750cm long, 750 cm wide and 600 mm high. Weighing 115 kg, it is designed for a two-year mission, according to Chen Changya, a researcher at the Shanghai Institute of Satellite Engineering.

China Mars Plans

The China Academy of Space Technology, designers of the Shenzhou spacecraft and lunar probes, is trying to draft a technical plan for Mars exploration.

The Mars probe will be "intelligent" enough to detect faults and correct them by itself, and able to navigate without relying on commands sent from Earth.

Another obstacle to be overcome involves establishing a monitoring network for deep space, consisting of large-caliber antennas and communication facilities, which China is currently constructing.

Qian Weiping, chief designer of the lunar probe Chang'e-2 mission's tracking and control system, said in January that the network will be completed in 2016.

The network's partial completion in 2012 will provide enough support for a Mars probe.

 

[CougarKing]

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

China building indigenous aircraft carrier

Written by defenceWeb Wednesday, 13 July 2011 12:34

Defence Web link

China has already started work on its first completely indigenous aircraft carrier, at the same time as it prepares to put the refurbished Soviet-era Varyag to sea. China is steadily modernising its armed forces and is seeking to build up a carrier force over the coming decades.

Japan’s The Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reported that an officer in the Chinese military said China is constructing a fully indigenous carrier, and that the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) will soon have two operational carriers: the Varyag and the new vessel.

The newspaper quoted military sources close to developments in the Chinese Navy as saying that the domestically made carrier is being built in a shipyard on Changxing Island in Shanghai.

Security around the shipyard on Changxing Island has been significantly beefed up since the beginning of the year, which military sources attributed to the start of construction of the carrier.

The sources said the new carrier would most likely be a medium sized vessel, similar to the Varyag, and carry Jian-15 jet fighters, which China has developed from the Sukhoi Su-33. The fighters will likely take off from a ski jump-style flight deck as is done on the Varyag.

Although the new aircraft carrier is said to be modelled after the Varyag, military sources said China has acquired the technology to construct an aircraft carrier on its own. China has long studied foreign aircraft carriers and bought the blueprints for the Varyag along with the rest of the ship in 1998. Since 1985 China has acquired four retired aircraft carriers for study, including the Australian HMAS Melbourne and the ex-Soviet Minsk and Kiev.

Meanwhile, the US Defence Department’s 2010 report, "Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China," said China would be able to operate two or more aircraft carriers in the coming decade.

The experts quoted by The Yomiuri Shimbun said that China is also constructing destroyers with air-defence missiles to defend the carriers.

At the moment the Varyag is being readied for its maiden voyage, which will take place next month, according to the Hong Kong Commercial Daily. The launch was delayed for a month due to mechanical problems.

The Varyag, which a Chinese firm bought from the Ukraine in 1998 for US$20 million, is currently being refurbished by the Chinese navy in the port city of Dalian in northeast China and will be officially launched around October next year. It will most likely be followed by two completely indigenously built aircraft carriers. The cost of building a medium-sized conventionally powered, 60,000-tonne carrier similar to the Russian Kuznetsov class could exceed US$2 billion.

The US Office of Naval Intelligence has estimated the vessel would be launched as a training platform by 2012 and be fully operational after 2015. China would be the third Asian country to have a carrier after India and Thailand, something that has caused unease in the region.


The carrier will likely raise concerns in neighbouring countries, including Japan, whose ties with China have been strained over the Senkaku Islands; and Vietnam and the Philippines, which have territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea.

At the beginning of last month, China's defence minister sought to reassure Asia Pacific neighbours that his country's growing economic and military power was not a threat.

General Liang Guanglie told the annual Shangri-La security conference in Singapore that the modernization of the People's Liberation Army was in line with the country's economic growth and to meet its security requirements.

"We do not intend to threaten any country with the modernization of our military force. I know many people tend to believe that with the wealth of China's economy, China will be a military threat," he said, speaking dressed in full military uniform.

"I would like to say that it is not our option. We didn't seek to, we are not seeking to and we will not seek hegemony and we will not threaten any country."

But Liang said the situation in the South China Sea where a territorial dispute with Vietnam and the Philippines heated up last month was now stable.

"China is committed to maintaining peace and stability in the South China Sea," he said adding it stood by a 2002 code of conduct signed with members of the Association of South East Asian Nations to resolve peacefully the rival claims over the resource-rich region.

China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan all claim territories in the sea, which covers an important shipping route and is thought to hold untapped oil and gas reserves.

China's claim is by far the largest, forming a vast U-shape over most of the sea's 648,000 square miles (1.7 million square km), including the Spratly and Paracel archipelagos.

Tension also increased with Vietnam last month after Hanoi said a Vietnamese oil and gas exploration ship had its surveying cables cut by Chinese boats.

The modernization of China's navy will also shake up stability in the Asia-Pacific region, which has been primarily maintained by the United States' overwhelming military power.

China is also working on a ballistic missile that could pose a serious threat to US aircraft carriers, which Washington could deploy to seas around Taiwan in the event of a crisis with the self-ruled island, which China claims as its own territory.

China’s carrier ambitions and maritime force projection will have implications for the Gulf of Aden region, as the PLAN currently has a task force of ships on station there to escort merchant ships through the pirate-infested waters.

The ninth naval escort group left China for the Gulf of Aden earlier this month. The task force comprises the Type 052B destroyer Wuhan, and the Type 054A frigate Yulin, as well as the supply ship Qinghaihu. The ninth task force group carries a total of 878 seamen and officers on board, including dozens of Marines.

China sent its inaugural convoy escort group to the Gulf of Aden in December 2008 in what that nation's first operational deployment outside its own waters since the Fifteenth Century. To date, Chinese navy fleets have escorted 3 968 ships from countries all over the world and rescued 40 ships attacked by pirates.

 

[CougarKing]

China building electromagnetic pulse weapons for use against U.S. carriers

China's military is developing electromagnetic pulse weapons that Beijing plans to use against U.S. aircraft carriers in any future conflict over Taiwan, according to an intelligence report made public on Thursday.

Portions of a National Ground Intelligence Centerstudy on the lethal effects of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and high-powered microwave (HPM) weapons revealed that the arms are part of China’s so-called “assassin’s mace” arsenal - weapons that allow a technologically inferior China to defeat U.S. military forces.

EMP weapons mimic the gamma-ray pulse caused by a nuclear blast that knocks out all electronics, including computers and automobiles, over wide areas. The phenomenon was discovered in 1962 after an aboveground nuclear test in the Pacific disabled electronics in Hawaii.

“The DF-21 medium-range ballistic missile has been mentioned as a platform for the EMP attack against Taiwan,” the report said.