China's Emergence as a Superpower (2015 onwards)

**AdamG** · 01-02-2016

BEIJING - China has created three new military units and will update equipment as well as modernising its command structure, state media said on Friday, as part of a major overhaul of the armed forces announced by President Xi Jinping in November.

Xi's push to reform the military coincides with China becoming more assertive in its territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas. China's navy is investing in submarines and aircraft carriers and its air force is developing stealth fighters.

At a ceremony on Thursday, Xi inaugurated a new general command unit for the army, a missile force and a strategic support force for People's Liberation Army (PLA), state news agency Xinhua said.

State television showed Xi handing over a large red flag to Li Zuocheng, the new head of the land command force. Li was previously commander of the key Chengdu military region, which includes restless and strategically vital Tibet.

The missile force is taking over from the Second Artillery Corps to control the country's nuclear arsenal but keeping the same commander, Wei Fenghe.

Xinhua said Xi urged the new unit to "enhance nuclear deterrence and counter-strike capacity, medium- and long-range precision strike ability, as well as strategic check-and-balance capacity to build a strong and modern Rocket Force".

His reforms include establishing a joint operational command structure by 2020 and rejigging existing military regions, as well as cutting troop numbers by 300,000, a surprise announcement he made in September.

In a separate report listing the powerful Central Military Commission's recommendations on the reform process, Xinhua said the troop cuts will focus on non-combat personnel.

Phasing out old equipment and developing new weaponry as well as reducing the number of models operated will be another big feature of the reforms, Xinhua said.

China has been moving rapidly to upgrade its military hardware, but integration of complex systems across a regionalised command structure has been a major challenge.

The troop cuts and broader reform programme have proven controversial, though, and the military's newspaper has published a series of commentaries warning of opposition to the reforms and concern about job losses.

Xi has also made rooting out deeply entrenched corruption in the military a top priority, and dozens of senior officers have been investigated and jailed. —Reuters

- See more at: http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story....g2Af9tjl.dpuf

**Firn** · 01-07-2016

China's jittery investors/speculators and the opaque regulators with rather counterproductive, often-changing rules offer a first-class movie.

Great stuff. Overall the service factor seems to do very well, put the index is mostly composed by SOE, among them many manufactores. But then again value and price are two different concepts and not necessarily tied closely together, at any rate not in the Chinese stock market.

Lots of movement in the reserves and the currencies, too...

**davidbfpo** · 01-30-2016

China's controversial campaign to hunt down alleged white-collar criminals living abroad netted 857 fugitives last year, the country's public security ministry said....Of those repatriated last year, 366 turned themselves in, the ministry said in a statement on its website late Wednesday -- implying that nearly 500 were seized against their will. The wanted individuals were returned from 66 countries and regions, the ministry said, including the United States, Spain and Italy, and over 70 percent had lived outside China for five years or more.

Link:http://www.iphone.afp.com/afpv3/AFP_....doc.7g9kn.htm

It would be interesting to know if any of those "visited" by Chinese representatives and not persuaded / seized later were legally extradited. How many nations would decline a request?

**Bill Moore** · 02-06-2016

http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/a...4de47-62731673

After the Rise: China Enters Uncharted Waters

Although its previously explosive economic growth has slowed, China’s growing geopolitical clout continues to reshape the balance of power, regionally and beyond. From its relations with the U.S. and its aggressive actions in the South China Sea, to its regional foreign policy and economic prospects, China remains a mixed bag of promise, risk and uncertainty.

The article summarizes many challenges that China presents to the regional and global order. I only pasted one of these challenges below.

New Order: China’s Challenge to the Global Financial System

China is an economic titan, but until recently, its impressive rise had not been accompanied by a vision to reshape the global economic order, Daniel McDowell wrote last April. However, with the introduction of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the promotion of the yuan as a global currency, that began to change, as Beijing slowly works to revise foundational elements of the U.S.-led economic order.

**AdamG** · 02-12-2016

Taiwan was once the principal target of China’s hybrid warfare activities. Not any more, says Michael Raska. Members of the European Union have also become the focus of Beijing’s strategic influence operations, especially those countries that are part of China’s 16+1 regional cooperation formula.

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/Digital-Libra...g=en&id=195268

**davidbfpo** · 05-09-2016

From an IISS Strategic Comment, it starts with:

Amid the troubles visible in China’s economy, statistical problems and anomalies are rising to the surface, bringing into doubt some bedrock economic indicators. Arguably the most important of these is China’s vaunted trade surplus. A large gap between payments recorded by China’s banks and the value of imports and exports reported by Customs has led several economists to wonder publicly how to measure China’s trade volumes. It is already well established that hundreds of billions of dollars in ‘hot money’ flows through the trade account. It is also well known that banks do not make payments in trade with reference to General Administration of Customs (GAC) documentation, so there is good reason for the numbers to differ. Balance of payments data shows that, in net terms, money is leaving China despite the reported surplus. But few have systematically questioned or examined the trade surplus.

It ends with:

Only with last summer’s stock-market debacle did scepticism about the Chinese economy and financial picture become predominant. But even that failed to prepare the world for a full reassessment of China’s economy. Large trade discrepancies are one troubling aspect of the uncertainty surrounding China. They make a currency crisis, once unthinkable, look more likely. In turn, such a crisis could reveal that much of what investors and analysts thought they knew about China’s economy – from its export power to its foreign-exchange reserves, from the health of its banks to the size of its GDP – has been substantially overstated.

Link, full text is behind a pay-wall:http://www.iiss.org/en/publications/...a-economy-99a6