China's Emergence as a Superpower (2015 onwards)

[davidbfpo]

The title is from a short quote by the late Singaporean leader Lee Kwan Yew of China’s rise, in full it was:

It is not possible to pretend that this is just another big player. This is the biggest player in the history of the world.

Now who said this?:

Taking the long view, we simply cannot afford to leave China forever outside the family of nations, there to nurture its fantasies, cherish its hates and threaten its neighbours.

The BBC's China Editor has a profile of President Xi Jinping’s, where she concludes:

Xi’s China has so far married great wealth with great repression. If he continues to cage his tigers, clean up his comrades and silence discordant voices, the existential questions may be for others. Not since Chairman Mao has China’s dream of greatness rested so heavily on one man.

Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/...ts_Chairman_Xi

[AdamG]

BEIJING has outlined plans to become the world’s biggest superpower within the next 30 years.
Opening a five-yearly national congress, Chinese President Xi Jinping set out his time frame for the country to become a “global leader” with international influence.
In his 3 ½ hour speech, Mr Xi urged a reinvigorated Communist Party to take a stronger role in society and economic development to better address the nation’s “grim” challenges.
Speaking in the massive Great Hall of the People near Tiananmen Square, Mr Xi laid out his vision of a ruling party that served as the vanguard for everything from defending national security to providing moral guidance.
He also called for the party not only to safeguard China’s sovereignty but also to revitalise Chinese culture, oppose “erroneous” ideology and promote religion that is “Chinese in orientation”.

CHINA’S BIG PLAN
Senior analyst in defence strategy and capability at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Dr Malcolm Davis, told news.com.au Mr Xi’s message was loud and clear.
Dr Davis said Beijing wanted to replace the US as the world’s dominant superpower, an idea many people have dismissed as absurd as recently as a few years ago.*
“China just doesn’t want to be a just regional superpower, it wants to be the superpower,” he said.
Dr Davis said Beijing wanted to challenge US supremacy and reshape the region according to China’s interests and economic development.
However, he acknowledged China faced several domestic challenges which stood in the way of its long-term goal, including suppression of democracy and freedom of speech.
Dr Davis also said Beijing faced a huge demographic problem with an increasing ageing population and declining birthrate.
This, in turn, would further impact on economic growth.

* Unless you'd been following along at SWJ.
http://www.news.com.au/finance/work/...d5ca89a2479e94

[AdamG]

Get Ready for an Imperial China
Investors need to wake up to a leader with a very different vision for China
https://www.wsj.com/articles/get-rea...ina-1508919166

See also http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-41746245

[davidbfpo]

An IISS event last month with Professor Graham Allison talking about his new book (published May 2017) and entitled 'China and the United States: destined for war?'. There is a recording to listen to (68 mins).
Link:http://www.iiss.org/en/events/arunde...d-for-war-3469

The book is 'Destined for War: Can America and China Escape the Thucydides Trap?' and on Amazon USA as a 'best seller', where the summary ends with:

explains why Thucydides’s Trap is the best lens for understanding U.S.-China relations in the twenty-first century. Through uncanny historical parallels and war scenarios, he shows how close we are to the unthinkable. Yet, stressing that war is not inevitable, Allison also reveals how clashing powers have kept the peace in the past — and what painful steps the United States and China must take to avoid disaster today.

Link with 150 reviews and mainly 5*:https://www.amazon.com/Destined-War-...ydides+Trap%3F

[Bill Moore]

Of course we would like to avoid the trap, but the trend line remains negative.

http://www.atimes.com/article/pla-wa...iwan-airspace/

Li Kexin, a minister of the Chinese Embassy, warned that the day a US warship visits Kaohsiung will be the day the People’s Liberation Army reclaims Taiwan, when asked to comment on a law passed by the US Congress that authorizes port calls by the US Navy to the island.

Taipei-based Liberty Times, however, said that symbolic posturing aside, Chinese warplanes were unlikely to make further provocations, such as by flying far inland above major Taiwanese cities.

That assessment soon drew a backlash on the mainland, with Beijing’s mouthpiece Global Times prodding the PLA to conduct direct flyovers of towns and cities on the island, even above Taipei.

Heck, why we're all getting the nationalistic feeling revved up and huffing and puffing, I recommend parking 7th Fleet in Taiwan's ports and daring China to do something about it.

[AdamG]

According to a U.S. government source who described recent intelligence assessments on the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) on the condition of anonymity, China recently conducted two tests of a new missile known as the DF-17.
The first test took place on November 1 and the second test took place on November 15. The November 1 test was the first Chinese ballistic missile test to take place after the conclusion of the first plenum of the Communist Party of China’s 19th Party Congress in October.

Parts of the U.S. intelligence community assess that the DF-17 is a medium-range system, with a range capability between 1,800 and 2,500 kilometers. The missile is expected to be capable of delivering both nuclear and conventional payloads and may be capable of being configured to deliver a maneuverable reentry vehicle instead of an HGV.
Most of the missile’s flight time during the November 1 flight test was powered by the HGV during the glide phase, the source said. The missile successfully made impact at a site in Xinjiang Province, outside Qiemo, “within meters” of the intended target, the source added.

The DF-17, per current U.S. intelligence assessments, is expected to reach initial operating capability around 2020.
“Although hypersonic glide vehicles and missiles flying non-ballistic trajectories were first proposed as far back as World War II, technological advances are only now making these systems practicable,” Vice Admiral James Syring, director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, remarked in June, during a testimony before the U.S. House Armed Services Committee.

Hypersonic gliders, by virtue of their low-altitude flight, present challenges to existing radar sensor technology enabling missile defenses. By flying at a low altitude instead of reentering from a much higher apogee on a ballistic trajectory, adversary radars would detect HGVs with less time for an interception to take place before the payload can reach its target.
HGVs, however, are considerably slower in the final stages of their flight than most reentry vehicles on a ballistic trajectory. This may leave them vulnerable to interception by advanced terminal point defense systems.
In a report detailing new ballistic and cruise missile threats to the U.S. released this year, the U.S. National Air and Space Intelligence Center observed that “Hypersonic glide vehicles delivered by ballistic missile boosters are an emerging threat that will pose new challenges to missile defense systems.”

https://thediplomat.com/2017/12/intr...glide-vehicle/

See also
http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...naval+war+2015

[AdamG]

[AdamG]

Beijing has stepped up pressure on Taiwan and relations have become increasingly frosty since Tsai took office in May last year, as she refuses to acknowledge Taiwan is part of "one China".
China views self-ruling Taiwan as part of its territory, to be reunified at some point.
Tsai warned that China's frequent air and naval drills showed that "its intentions for military expansion in the region are getting more and more obvious".
According to Taiwan's defence ministry, Chinese warplanes conducted 25 drills around Taiwan between August 2016 and mid-December this year.
The latest known drill took place on December 20 when several Chinese planes, including fighters and bombers, passed through the Bashi Channel south of Taiwan to the Pacific and back.
Earlier this year, China sent its only aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, through the Taiwan Strait during a drill as a show of strength, but it did not enter Taiwanese waters.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world...tary-expansion

[AdamG]

Roughly 33 percent of the PLAAF and PLANAF’s combat aircraft are old second-generation fighters of limited combat value against peer opponents, save perhaps in swarming attacks. Another 28 percent include strategic bombers and more capable but dated third-generation designs. Finally, 38 percent are fourth-generation fighters that can theoretically hold their own against peers like the F-15 and F-16. Stealth fighters account for 1 percent. However, the technical capabilities of aircraft are just half the story; at least as important are training, organizational doctrine and supporting assets ranging from satellite recon to air-refueling tankers, ground-based radars and airborne command posts.

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the...t-chinas-23901

[davidbfpo]

An AP article that starts with Pakistan and goes much further afield, e.g. Tanzania.
Link:https://apnews.com/0956dd7edd7344cfa...ancial-hurdles

[AdamG]

BEIJING — American and European companies involved in joint ventures with state-owned Chinese firms have been asked in recent months to give internal Communist Party cells an explicit role in decision-making, executives and business groups say.
It is, they say, a worrying demand that threatens to put politics before profits, and the interests of the party above all other considerations. It suggests that foreign companies are no longer exempt from President Xi Jinping’s overarching vision of complete control.
“The creeping intrusion by the party apparatus into the boardrooms of foreign-invested enterprises has not yet manifested itself on a large scale, but things are certainly going down that path,” said James Zimmerman, a managing partner of the law firm Sheppard, Mullin, Richter and Hampton and former chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, who is instructing clients to “push back.”
The party’s demand would give its cells a formal role in approving management decisions, such as investment plans or personnel changes. And that is ringing alarm bells.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...14d_story.html

[davidbfpo]

Almost amusing, even if other nations also seek to learn, this Chinese gift may harm how African nations see China:

In 2012, the Chinese government “graciously offered” African States a gift and constructed the African Union’s HQ in Addis Ababa. The act of soft diplomacy proved to be a rather self-serving maneuver to spy on the activities and discussions being conducted by leaders of the exclusive continental group.

Link:https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/201...s-addis-ababa/

(Added)
A BBC report that cites Kuang Weilin, the Chinese ambassador to the AU:

Certainly, it will create problems for China-Africa relation.

Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-42861276

[AdamG]

BEIJING — The Chinese New Year began with the traditional lighting of firecrackers on Friday, but the country's military has been working on incendiaries on an entirely different scale.
Over the past year, the nation that invented gunpowder has been rolling out an array of high-tech weapons that some experts say could threaten the global superiority of the United States.
"The U.S. no longer possesses clear military-technical dominance, and China is rapidly emerging as a would-be superpower in science and technology," said Elsa B. Kania, an adjunct fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank.
The Chinese People's Liberation Army "might even cut ahead of the U.S. in new frontiers of military power," she added.

Article touches on five categories.
1. An electromagnetic railgun
2. High-tech warships
3. Familiar fighter jets
4. A hypersonic glide vehicle
5. Artificial Intelligence
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/t...ts-say-n848596

[AdamG]

Imagine all the fun Beijing's operatives can have staging out of this place.

One of the symbols of New York luxury is now in the hands of Beijing.
The Chinese government has taken control of Anbang Insurance Group, a Beijing-based conglomerate that has aggressively acquired overseas companies and properties including the Waldorf Astoria in New York City. The move highlights the complexities the US faces as more and more Chinese companies—often with opaque ownership structures—attempt to purchase stateside companies. An ostensibly private holding can, seemingly overnight, change status.

https://qz.com/1214009/new-yorks-wal...se-government/

[AdamG]

A prominent Chinese lawyer, Li Baiguang died Monday in the Chinese city of Nanjing under "mysterious" circumstances, according to Bob Fu, a US-based activist and Christian pastor who has known the lawyer for over 10 years.
Li was admitted to the No. 81 Military Hospital with a minor stomach ache, but had been otherwise healthy, Fu said, citing a relative of Li's. He was declared dead hours later from liver complications, according to the activist.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world...upporters-say/