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China's military ambition fuels Asian arms race  

Prophecy News Watch
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China's growing military ambition, matched only by its growing military spending, is fuelling a rapid Asian arms race.

Beijing deploys the world's biggest army, its defense spending is rising faster than any other power and, to cap it all, its forces will this month carry out their first spacewalk.

With India, Japan and Russia also investing heavily in defense, a new Asian arms race is under way. According to official figures, Beijing's military budget this year is 418 billion yuan - £35 billion - a rise of 17.8 per cent on 2007. This already exceeds Britain's defense budget of £34 billion and places China's military spending second only to the US.

According to figures from Jane's, the military specialists, it has risen by 178 per cent in the past seven years, even after adjusting for inflation. At this rate, China will spend £180 billion - half of the Pentagon's current budget and five times Britain's - by 2020.

But the greatest change is not in how much China is spending, but where the investment is going. Under Chairman Mao, China regarded the army as a massed revolutionary block whose sheer scale would simply absorb any threat, foreign or domestic.

Only since the first Gulf War in 1991 has China started focusing on the new generation of military hardware it may face in the event of war. Beijing's military planners know they cannot rely on China's size alone as a deterrent.

The result has been a three-pronged strategy. China is upgrading technology while downsizing the army. The first prong is to increase the number of short- and medium-range missiles it has aimed at Taiwan, the future of which is China's number one military priority.

The second is to build a navy capable of projecting power into the Pacific and beyond, both to deter US intervention on Taiwan's side and to guard vital shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean. But this will not be a classic "blue water" navy with a global reach - China still has no aircraft carriers.

The third prong is the outermost line of defense: a space and anti-satellite program that may one day be strong enough to threaten US weapons and guidance systems. This is asymmetric warfare at its most dramatic.

China's submarine building program is at last starting to show success after years in which it relied on Russian imports. Beijing is presently building two submarines capable of launching nuclear missiles and another boat designed for attack missions. Once these reach completion, China's navy will have five ballistic missile submarines - compared with Britain's four - and seven other nuclear submarines. Projecting power across thousands of miles of ocean is the only purpose for a fleet of this kind.

This helps explain why India is building a nuclear submarine of its own and leasing another from Russia. India's navy presently enjoys a slender advantage over China in that it possesses one aircraft carrier and is acquiring another two. In practice, however, China's superior submarine fleet probably negates this gain.

In the past, China's alliance with Pakistan worried India most. There are historical tensions too - China and India fought a bloody border war in 1962 over disputed territory in the Himalayas.

But of greatest importance is a long-term rivalry for pre-eminence in Asia between the world's most populous nation and its biggest democracy.

On the other hand, some observers say both countries are too busy with other threats to be too concerned with each other. A study by Jane's Industrial Quarterly concluded that that helping their industrial base was a major reason for the military build-up by both India and China. Their shared aim is to replace Russian military imports and boost their own exports, while gaining knock-on benefits for civilian industry.

To the extent there is an armed race between the two powers, it may be a means of giving weight to their rising international status.

"There is a feeling that China needs to have a modern military to be able to have a seat at the top table internationally,'' said Matthew Smith, a Jane's military economist.

China space mission article hits Web before launch

A news story describing a successful launch of China's long-awaited space mission and including detailed dialogue between astronauts launched on the Internet Thursday, hours before the rocket had even left the ground.

The country's official news agency Xinhua posted the article on its Web site Thursday, and remained there for much of the day before it was taken down.

A staffer from the Xinhuanet.com Web site who answered the phone Thursday said the posting of the article was a "technical error" by a technician. The staffer refused to give his name as is common among Chinese officials.

The Shenzhou 7 mission, which will feature China's first-ever spacewalk, is set to launch Thursday from Jiuquan in northwestern China between 9:07 a.m. EDT and 10:27 p.m. EDT.

The arcticle, dated two days from now on Sept. 27, vividly described the rocket in flight, complete with a sharply detailed dialogue between the three astronauts.

Excerpts are below:

"After this order, signal lights all were switched on, various data show up on rows of screens, hundreds of technicians staring at the screens, without missing any slightest changes ...

'One minute to go!'

'Changjiang No.1 found the target!'...

"The firm voice of the controller broke the silence of the whole ship. Now, the target is captured 12 seconds ahead of the predicted time ...

'The air pressure in the cabin is normal!'

"Ten minutes later, the ship disappears below the horizon. Warm clapping and excited cheering breaks the night sky, echoing across the silent Pacific Ocean."

China developing new missile able to threaten U.S. aircraft carriers          

reuters.com

When the National Day parade rolls down Beijing's streets next week, foreign observers will look beyond the goose-stepping soldiers for signs that China is developing a new missile able to threaten U.S. aircraft carriers.

If China is able to mount systems that support an anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM), it could force the U.S. carrier fleet to keep a greater distance, American defense analysts said, changing U.S. strategy for defending Taiwan should war break out.

On October 1, all eyes will be on the Avenue of Eternal Peace to see if China displays a Dongfeng 21-D missile, with maneuverable fins to help it find a moving target at sea, as well as a more finalized launch vehicle.

"The ASBM is far from operational, but it is close enough to make a splash," said Eric McVadon, a retired rear admiral whose 35-year naval career included a defense attache post in Beijing.

"It is something big. It represents the ability to make the U.S. think twice before sending carrier strike groups into the Western Pacific."

China is using the parade, which involves hundreds of thousands of marchers, to celebrate its modernization and the spectacular economic growth of three decades of reform.

Ten years ago, the military parade showcased new fighter jets and a model of an intercontinental ballistic missile.

This one will highlight achievements like the budding space programme -- illustrated in a topiary display along the route -- and the army's rescue work after a devastating 2008 earthquake in Sichuan.

New weaponry and priorities will stand out. This week, Defense Minister Liang Guanglie outlined plans to transform naval and air forces to project power far from China's shores [ID:nPEK236704].

EYE ON TAIWAN

Current warming ties between China and Taiwan make a military confrontation less likely, but both sides are still heavily armed against each other. The United States has committed to help the island defend itself in case of war.

The United States uses its carriers to maintain a presence near Taiwan and in much of the Pacific. It sent a carrier group through the Taiwan Strait to counter Chinese saber-rattling a few months before Taiwan's 1996 presidential election.

A weapon like an ASBM -- or even a credible threat -- that could keep U.S. ships far out at sea for longer would buy China the time to overwhelm Taiwan's defenses in the event of conflict.

An ASBM deployed from Chinese territory would have a range of about 1,500 km (930 miles), enough to reach far beyond Taiwan and cover much of Japan and the Philippines.

An ASBM would be an "asymmetric" weapon, since a carrier group has inadequate direct defense against it, especially if confronted with multiple missiles, unlike the more traditional submarines or bombers which a carrier group can counter.

McVadon credits China for choosing to develop missiles, rather than take the more uncertain route of trying to directly match the U.S. strength in ships and submarines.

"China's great success has been that it went to missiles," said McVadon, now director for Asia Pacific Studies at the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis in Washington.

"It was a prudent decision to get around our strengths. They really made the right call."

Other analysts caution that successfully modifying the Dongfeng series missile to hit ships would not be enough to successfully hold an aircraft carrier at bay.

"Seeing it in the parade is not hard evidence that the missile is operative," said Matthew Durnin, a Beijing-based researcher with the World Security Institute. He recently coauthored a paper on the challenges of developing the systems -- including satellites -- needed to properly guide an ASBM.

"But U.S. intelligence believes that if this is credibly developed and deployed, it would change carrier strike group deployments."

Durnin predicts China will test the missile within the next two years, to prove it can hit a ship at sea. He estimates it will be about five years before China has the satellites in place to fully track a moving target on the vast Pacific.

"It will be very expensive to develop all the supporting infrastructure for such a system, and whether the Chinese will make the necessary investments is fundamentally a political question," said David Yang, a political scientist at RAND Corp. who has also written on the ASBM system.

Minister Liang said the Second Artillery Corps, which holds the keys to the country's nuclear weapons, would soon also control some conventional weapons. American strategists believe the ASBM could fall under that service's remit.

Even without full satellite cover, the threat to carrier groups is credible if China is able to launch multiple missiles and cripple, but not necessarily sink, a carrier or its escorts.

"I'm not forecasting its usage. They are doing it hoping it will deter, and never be used in combat," McVadon said.

"We may never know how well it works."