Quote Originally Posted by JeffC View Post
In the meantime, here are a few reasons why China should be regarded as a future military threat.

1. In most of it's 4,000 + year history, it has dominated Asia as a military and cultural power.

2. Sun Tzu's The Art of War is the world's oldest manual of military strategy, and his principles are still applied with success today.

3. Chinese martial arts are the origin of all Asian martial fighting forms, and have influenced those of the rest of the world, including our own.

4. The U.S. has no existing defense for implementation of an Unrestricted Warfare attack, as proposed by two Chinese Colonels in 1998, and which is being implemented in China's current cyberwarfare strategy.

5. "China continues to invest heavily in the modernization of its military, particularly in strategic weapons and capabilities to support power projection and access denial operations." Read the PREPARED STATEMENT OF
MR. RICHARD P. LAWLESS DEPUTY UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR ASIAN & PACIFIC SECURITY AFFAIRS BEFORE THE U.S.-CHINA ECONOMIC AND SECURITY REVIEW COMMISSION THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2007
1. I think Japan managed to dominate Asia, far more than China in recent history. Modern China is a product of an adaptive form of Communism, not it's 4,000 years of culture. They got their asses handed to them on a plate by the Vietnamese in 1979.

2. Sun Tzu's art of War/Strategy is not highly regarded by the Chinese military, at least not the former PLA members I have talked to. Even Mao came unstuck when they tried to export "On Guerilla Warfare" to non-Confucian based cultures.

3. Martial Arts is nothing to do with warfare.

4. The two Chinese Colonels are no better informed than anyone else. It's a typical product of Chinese military thought, that sounds clever, but that probably falls short in performance.

5. So they say. The Chinese military budget is smoke and mirrors of the worst order.

NOW - I am not saying the Chinese are not a threat, but I work in the Far East, I have worked with the Chinese, and they are no more skilled, cunning or clever than we are. They just don't have democracy to hold back ambition, but they are severely constrained by things like status, face and image.

Why would we assume them to be more capable than the Russians?