Friday, September 4, 2015

"Under Xi, China Prepares for Modern Warfare."

While Xi touted China’s commitment to peaceful development and promises to “never seek hegemony or expansion,” the V-day cavalcade painted an entirely different picture. China now possesses much of the hardware and capabilities of any other modern military power. Without Xi’s planned restructuring, however, this cutting-edge hardware will be wielded by a bureaucracy stuck in the 1950s. The stakes are high for President Xi: with domestic challenges increasingly prominent, the military component of Xi’s “Chinese dream” needs to be realized in order for Xi to continue to maintain credibility, party legitimacy, and leadership of the Chinese armed forces.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

As fake as China's economic growth and currency valuation has been, alongside how cheesy their trinket junk is in manufacturing AND considering the empty cities of concrete they built, I am seriously starting to think even the population numbers they report to the world are massively over inflated. Yeah China has nukes - acme nukes maybe- but we'll have to face one fact.... They STILL lack that little thing called quality control. Ironic ain't it? The central planners use that iron fisted grip to exert control of everything and everyone EXCEPT quality!

Chiu ChunLing said...

The key thing to understand is that China (not just Beijing) consider hegemony and expansion to be defined in terms of permanence. Invading another nation for limited, temporary objectives isn't either, while stationing troops in far-flung permanent bases and maintaining global power projection capabilities is both.

That means that Beijing has no intention of actually creating a U.S. pattern global military capability, nor of permanently maintaining their current level of readiness for advanced warfare. They are merely dissimulating to cover the fact that they fully intend to utilize the weapons they have developed within a fixed time frame to achieve specific results, after which they believe they'll no longer need to maintain such capabilities. What we can infer with certainty is that the possibility of deterring or directly countering a U.S. carrier group deployment (or several) is a central element of this plan, given the direction of Chinese military technology development. What is more difficult to pinpoint exactly (at least from the limited amount known about recent capability improvements) is the reason this would be necessary or exactly where and when it is envisioned as occurring (though nearer to China is more likely than further).

The fact that such a confrontation will only be meaningful to China if it results in a relatively permanent disruption of U.S. force projection capabilities and global influence strongly suggests that the military actions must be timed to coincide meaningfully with global economic and international conditions which would have significant impact on the future capacity of the U.S. government to fund the world's largest military budget. Thus, despite the appearance of China's military technology still being in development towards the capacity to directly challenge the U.S. in a major war, I am inclined to believe that open military conflict has been planned sooner rather than later.

Anonymous said...

The failure of civility in America would never make China ever never contemplate utilizing their military might for their own advantage, don’t ya know!

Especially when the leadership of China would like to get the people of China to be thinking of other things other than their own plights, don’t ya know in spades!

Chiu ChunLing said...

Another thing that many observers of the geopolitical situation with regard to China is that Chinese generally and Beijing in particular have completely different ideas about war, casualties in armed conflict, and the role of technology.

War in Chinese thought is a continuum which covers all international activity and most domestic activity by the government. Essentially, all objectives of government must be accomplished by either war or inaction, if the government is to actually do anything, it resorts to war, if war is not an appropriate means of accomplishing something, the government is limited to inaction. The deeper philosophical implications of this are not immediately relevant to the topic of Beijing's intentions, but there is one key takeaway, which is to understand that Beijing does not distinguish between 'peace' and 'war', they are always at war and everything they do is directed towards some inherently military objective.

Second, while China has a rich history of heroic figures of superlative capabilities, the legends of such heroes pretty much all end the same way...the more amazing they are, the more prosaic and common their downfall (living happily ever after is a western fantasy). A flawless victory isn't one where you trounce the enemy without ever taking casualties, but where you win without allowing the issue to come to open battle at all. This is in utter contrast to the American obsession with elite forces and 'game-changing' technological innovations which allow victory through completely lopsided combat outcomes. The Chinese don't eschew technical innovation or superlative levels of combat expertise because they are incapable of either (indeed, individual Chinese people historically excel at both). Chinese simply regard both as flawed approaches to armed contests, they calculate the cost of attrition without the assumption that anything is so good it can't be overwhelmed by sufficient numbers of individually inferior units. If a superlative unit is cost effective compared to the number of less capable units needed to defeat it, they they will embrace it, but otherwise they won't. Thus Beijing doesn't seek technological superiority, nor training troops so that they will never face combat unprepared. Second or third best is generally good enough to win a battle of attrition against the top of the line, taking cost into account (this also tends to be the thinking in commercial affairs, but competing on price isn't alien to western markets).

The idea of competing on cost effectiveness is entangled with Chinese reluctance to rely on 'bleeding edge' military technology, but a more important factor is that one can plan effectively how to effectively field proven technology, while one cannot do the same with technology that is really innovative and new. With known technology, you can rapidly pour resources into a military buildup and have a relatively firm idea of what it will cost and what you'll get for your investment. With unknown technology, you get the F-35 program. Over time, being the innovation leader in military technology doesn't do you any good unless you are absolutely secure against having it stolen before you get a chance to use it to win a major battle or two. And it costs far more than simply stealing technology...particularly if everyone else is depending on your nation to supply engineers and technicians to develop the technology you're going to steal...which is one of the dirty secrets both the Chinese and people who claim the Chinese aren't 'innovative' don't like said in public. But we have to face it, while most oversees Chinese in technology fields aren't engaged in espionage, there are so many that even a relatively small number of spies makes for a huge quantity of technology theft. And at least part of the reason there are so many is because so many are needed to move high technology programs forward at the pace being demanded.

Chiu ChunLing said...

It's certainly true that China, with an economy smaller than the U.S. but a population almost four times as big, faces limitations on producing some kinds of cutting edge technology. But by and large the biggest limitation is that Beijing has determined that most cutting edge military technology is not cost-effective. This is almost certainly the case when it comes to their copies of Russian technology, in almost all cases the only plausible reason they reduce the capabilities is because it makes the weapons more cost effective. I'm not convinced that Beijing is infallible, but probably the median IQ in the top party leadership is comparable or superior to my own, and they have access to a lot more information than I do (also, the ones who are not as smart as me tend to defer to the ones who are smarter, completely opposite how Americans make important decisions). If they think that America's technology advantage can be defeated by cost/effect offsetting, then it is foolish to let racist pride blind us to considering the possibility.

In the end, I certainly don't plan to let Beijing win, their hands are stained with too much blood already, and the coming war won't diminish their guilt. But I'm not going to blindly trust in the competence of our own unconstitutional and treasonous government to stop them. My best hope is that Beijing fundamentally misapprehends the fundamental strength and power of American individualism, and thus estimates that America will stay down a lot longer than may be the case if enough people are mentally prepared for what to do when the national government fails.

Anonymous said...

Those who think USA consumer shelf products replicate the Chinese Military gear are so wrong. This country has never fought a one on one war with those who have the same or better gear/ability. Most need to quit the brand of crack they are on and step into the real world.

Anonymous said...

Every tyrant needs an enemy scapegoat or he can't stay in power. People eventually add two and two and find the right answer, unless you refocus their thought processes.

Josh said...

If you've not read this it may prove interesting;
http://www.rense.com/general85/China'sPlanToConquer.htm

I don't know if it's factual or no but it follows what I've seen and read as to Chicoms.