Chinese Military,Political and Social Superthread
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An article on how diplomacy is changing the balance of forces in the Indian Ocean away from China, with the "Quad" (US, Japan, India, Australia) holding joint exercises. The fact this goes unremarked in the US press is also an interesting data point:
https://strategypage.com/on_point/20201103202646.aspx
On Point: India's Naval Exercise Indicates Trump Administration's China Policy Improved Indo-Pacific Security
by Austin Bay
November 3, 2020
China's actions have certainly invited pushback, but until 2016, the Americans really didn't provide a great deal of leadership, allowing China to continue pushing the other nations in the region. If American foreign policy remains steady, China can be constrained in a 21rst century version of "containment strategy". If not, then who knows where this might go?
https://strategypage.com/on_point/20201103202646.aspx
On Point: India's Naval Exercise Indicates Trump Administration's China Policy Improved Indo-Pacific Security
by Austin Bay
November 3, 2020
China's actions have certainly invited pushback, but until 2016, the Americans really didn't provide a great deal of leadership, allowing China to continue pushing the other nations in the region. If American foreign policy remains steady, China can be constrained in a 21rst century version of "containment strategy". If not, then who knows where this might go?
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China claims it has now successfully tested the DF-21 against a moving ship. If true, this could mean a major change to the balance of power in the Western Pacific
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/chinas-military-expansion-will-test-the-biden-administration/2020/12/03/9f05e92a-35a7-11eb-8d38-6aea1adb3839_story.html
While AA/AD is essentially a reactive posture, it still means that traditional force projection and the right of innocent passage that are the cornerstones of American Grand Strategy are certainly going to be constrained in the Western Pacific without some major changes to strategy, tactics and even technologies. I have my doubts that any putative Biden Administration is going to make the necessary changes - I think we all remember the Obama Administration's "Pivot to Asia" was more theatrical than substantive, and the Democrats as a whole are certainly not going to take the aggressive measures necessary to root out Chinese influence in US politics, business and academia, much less continue aggressive trade actions and bolstering US allies in the region.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/chinas-military-expansion-will-test-the-biden-administration/2020/12/03/9f05e92a-35a7-11eb-8d38-6aea1adb3839_story.html
While AA/AD is essentially a reactive posture, it still means that traditional force projection and the right of innocent passage that are the cornerstones of American Grand Strategy are certainly going to be constrained in the Western Pacific without some major changes to strategy, tactics and even technologies. I have my doubts that any putative Biden Administration is going to make the necessary changes - I think we all remember the Obama Administration's "Pivot to Asia" was more theatrical than substantive, and the Democrats as a whole are certainly not going to take the aggressive measures necessary to root out Chinese influence in US politics, business and academia, much less continue aggressive trade actions and bolstering US allies in the region.
He may not have much of a choice if China pushes too hard against Japan, Australia, Phillipines, Indonesia, etc etc.
It'll be interesting to see just how much the dems bend & tippy toe before it becomes too much of a problem to ignore. :dunno:
It'll be interesting to see just how much the dems bend & tippy toe before it becomes too much of a problem to ignore. :dunno:
211RadOp
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Latest on the two Michaels.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/china-says-2-canadians-have-been-indicted-tried-1.5225036
https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/china-says-2-canadians-have-been-indicted-tried-1.5225036
Colin Parkinson
Army.ca Myth
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Hmm
One has to ask why they would invest money in this, unless they intend to push the Arctic routes?
https://www.highnorthnews.com/en/china-launch-satellite-monitor-arctic-shipping-routes?fbclid=IwAR22m94x5MnwJsOf1vj2AJXG-Snu7z4Sg_RvTErLaU5hDh6V8dfmAS2U1n0
One has to ask why they would invest money in this, unless they intend to push the Arctic routes?
https://www.highnorthnews.com/en/china-launch-satellite-monitor-arctic-shipping-routes?fbclid=IwAR22m94x5MnwJsOf1vj2AJXG-Snu7z4Sg_RvTErLaU5hDh6V8dfmAS2U1n0
lenaitch
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Colin P said:
They call themselves a 'near arctic' nation, whatever that means. All the better to manage their 'belt and road'
https://www.rcinet.ca/en/2020/11/30/decision-on-chinese-purchase-of-arctic-mine-delayed-former-general-against-it/
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Lots more at Daily Mail, I'd bet Canada and Canadian interests are as infiltrated as anyone:
Mark
Ottawa
Mark
Ottawa
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PRC nuking up, though not that much (yet?)--note hypersonics:
Note this nuke angle (and hypersonics):
Mark
Ottawa
Note this nuke angle (and hypersonics):
Mark
Ottawa
daftandbarmy
Army.ca Dinosaur
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“Quality may be better than quantity, but quantity has a quality all of its own.” V.I. Lenin 
The battle of Chosin Reservoir
Lessons from the battles between America and China, 70 years on
When America and China went to war
Seventy years ago this month, Mao Zedong’s peasant army inflicted one of the worst military defeats on America in the country’s history. Over two weeks his “volunteer” fighters drove an army of 350,000 American soldiers and marines and their Korean allies the length of North Korea, from the Chinese border to hasty evacuations by land and sea. Though the Chinese suffered terrible casualties in the process and the war would continue for another three years (and technically has not ended), the American-led un force never again threatened to reunify the peninsula.
This humiliation was made worse by the fact that General Douglas MacArthur, the force’s megalomaniacal supremo, had only weeks before assured Harry Truman that the Chinese would not cross the Yalu river. His commanders duly denied that they had. When that became incredible, they claimed the cruelly ill-equipped Chinese—wearing cotton uniforms and canvas shoes for a high-altitude war fought at minus 30°C—were not a serious foe. An American general called them “a bunch of laundrymen”.
It was classic superpower hubris, deserving of the contempt expressed by Xi Jinping at a grand 70th-anniversary event in October. Having emerged victorious from the second world war, with fewer casualties than any other major participant (America’s covid death-toll is almost equal to its second-world-war combat toll), America in 1950 had a dangerous sense of impregnability, a racially infused contempt for Asian capability and a few generals with absurdly inflated status, including MacArthur. It might seem little wonder that America, consumed by the contemporary embarrassment of its president’s effort to steal an election, is barely commemorating its first and only war with China.
That does not denote shame, however. Notwithstanding Americans’ dewy-eyed view of their forces, public knowledge of their victories and defeats is similarly thin. American schools do not teach much military history and democracies do not mobilise people through a militaristic view of the past. In the case of the Korean war, the first “limited” war of the nuclear age, before that concept was well-understood, the forgetting has merely been especially pronounced. Yet the war retains cautionary lessons for both sides.
On one level it encapsulated the superpower’s enduring ability to self-correct. This was apparent even amid the debacle—as illustrated by the battlefield recollections Lexington heard this week from Jack Luckett, a 91-year-old retired marine. He was occupying a ridge above Chosin Reservoir, close to the northernmost point of MacArthur’s advance, on the night of November 27th 1950. Awakened by explosions, he saw a column of Chinese—eight men across—advancing in the glow of the defensive flares they had triggered. “We were vastly outnumbered,” he said. “We opened fire but they kept on coming. They were blowing bugles and firing on us while pouring down both sides of the ridge.”
Mao’s intelligence chiefs had assured him that, for all their superior technology, American soldiers lacked the belly for a fight. The ensuing 17-day battle, which Mr Luckett fought through until frostbite laid him low, gave the lie to that. Surrounded by 120,000 Chinese, the 1st Marine Division broke out and made a heroic fighting retreat through the frozen mountains. The marines—and a small British contingent fighting alongside them—suffered terrible casualties; only 11 of Mr Luckett’s company of 250 survived unscathed. Yet they evacuated their wounded and equipment while inflicting a far heavier toll on the Chinese. Mr Luckett’s marine division was reckoned to have disabled seven Chinese ones.
For a military institution whose small size, relative to the us army, has fuelled a tradition of mythologising and introspection, “Frozen Chosin” ranks alongside “Iwo Jima” in importance. “It’s not an overstatement to say marines credit the marines who fought in Korea with ending the debate about whether there should be a marine corps,” says General Joseph Dunford, a former marine-corps commandant (and recently retired chairman of the joint chiefs of staff). His father celebrated his 20th birthday at Chosin reservoir on the day of the Chinese attack.
In the soul-searching that followed the American retreat, notes Max Hastings, a British historian, it is possible to see a familiar debate about the kind of superpower America should be. Deaf to the entreaties of allies, MacArthur refused to accept the limits to American power that his incompetence had helped display. He wanted to nuke the Chinese. Truman resisted and, after MacArthur sneakily appealed to his Republican backers in Congress, sacked the revered general. It may have cost him a second term. It also set a gold standard for civil-military relations that has since prevailed.
Truman’s multilateralism and restraint were also vindicated when his Republican successor, Dwight Eisenhower, maintained his conduct of the war. Better military leadership had by then stabilised the situation. America and China would both settle for their initial aims: respectively, securing South Korea, which would become one of the big successes of the late 20th century, and securing a Korean buffer against America’s presence in Asia. America lost 40,000 lives in the process; China maybe ten times as many.
First know your enemy
That Americans are not more interested in this momentous past ultimately reflects their restless democracy, which is too consumed by contemporary dramas to dwell on history. Current appearances notwithstanding, it is the source of American strength. Yet it is important to underline two lessons from America’s war with China. In a fog of misunderstanding, each side fatally underestimated the other. And each had a flawed idea of the other’s red lines, the tripwires that turn competition into conflict. The situation today might look very different. The two countries’ interdependence and mutual awareness are on another plane. But their potential for underestimation and misunderstanding is still hauntingly present; and perhaps growing with their rivalry.
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/12/10/lessons-from-the-battles-between-america-and-china-70-years-on
The battle of Chosin Reservoir
Lessons from the battles between America and China, 70 years on
When America and China went to war
Seventy years ago this month, Mao Zedong’s peasant army inflicted one of the worst military defeats on America in the country’s history. Over two weeks his “volunteer” fighters drove an army of 350,000 American soldiers and marines and their Korean allies the length of North Korea, from the Chinese border to hasty evacuations by land and sea. Though the Chinese suffered terrible casualties in the process and the war would continue for another three years (and technically has not ended), the American-led un force never again threatened to reunify the peninsula.
This humiliation was made worse by the fact that General Douglas MacArthur, the force’s megalomaniacal supremo, had only weeks before assured Harry Truman that the Chinese would not cross the Yalu river. His commanders duly denied that they had. When that became incredible, they claimed the cruelly ill-equipped Chinese—wearing cotton uniforms and canvas shoes for a high-altitude war fought at minus 30°C—were not a serious foe. An American general called them “a bunch of laundrymen”.
It was classic superpower hubris, deserving of the contempt expressed by Xi Jinping at a grand 70th-anniversary event in October. Having emerged victorious from the second world war, with fewer casualties than any other major participant (America’s covid death-toll is almost equal to its second-world-war combat toll), America in 1950 had a dangerous sense of impregnability, a racially infused contempt for Asian capability and a few generals with absurdly inflated status, including MacArthur. It might seem little wonder that America, consumed by the contemporary embarrassment of its president’s effort to steal an election, is barely commemorating its first and only war with China.
That does not denote shame, however. Notwithstanding Americans’ dewy-eyed view of their forces, public knowledge of their victories and defeats is similarly thin. American schools do not teach much military history and democracies do not mobilise people through a militaristic view of the past. In the case of the Korean war, the first “limited” war of the nuclear age, before that concept was well-understood, the forgetting has merely been especially pronounced. Yet the war retains cautionary lessons for both sides.
On one level it encapsulated the superpower’s enduring ability to self-correct. This was apparent even amid the debacle—as illustrated by the battlefield recollections Lexington heard this week from Jack Luckett, a 91-year-old retired marine. He was occupying a ridge above Chosin Reservoir, close to the northernmost point of MacArthur’s advance, on the night of November 27th 1950. Awakened by explosions, he saw a column of Chinese—eight men across—advancing in the glow of the defensive flares they had triggered. “We were vastly outnumbered,” he said. “We opened fire but they kept on coming. They were blowing bugles and firing on us while pouring down both sides of the ridge.”
Mao’s intelligence chiefs had assured him that, for all their superior technology, American soldiers lacked the belly for a fight. The ensuing 17-day battle, which Mr Luckett fought through until frostbite laid him low, gave the lie to that. Surrounded by 120,000 Chinese, the 1st Marine Division broke out and made a heroic fighting retreat through the frozen mountains. The marines—and a small British contingent fighting alongside them—suffered terrible casualties; only 11 of Mr Luckett’s company of 250 survived unscathed. Yet they evacuated their wounded and equipment while inflicting a far heavier toll on the Chinese. Mr Luckett’s marine division was reckoned to have disabled seven Chinese ones.
For a military institution whose small size, relative to the us army, has fuelled a tradition of mythologising and introspection, “Frozen Chosin” ranks alongside “Iwo Jima” in importance. “It’s not an overstatement to say marines credit the marines who fought in Korea with ending the debate about whether there should be a marine corps,” says General Joseph Dunford, a former marine-corps commandant (and recently retired chairman of the joint chiefs of staff). His father celebrated his 20th birthday at Chosin reservoir on the day of the Chinese attack.
In the soul-searching that followed the American retreat, notes Max Hastings, a British historian, it is possible to see a familiar debate about the kind of superpower America should be. Deaf to the entreaties of allies, MacArthur refused to accept the limits to American power that his incompetence had helped display. He wanted to nuke the Chinese. Truman resisted and, after MacArthur sneakily appealed to his Republican backers in Congress, sacked the revered general. It may have cost him a second term. It also set a gold standard for civil-military relations that has since prevailed.
Truman’s multilateralism and restraint were also vindicated when his Republican successor, Dwight Eisenhower, maintained his conduct of the war. Better military leadership had by then stabilised the situation. America and China would both settle for their initial aims: respectively, securing South Korea, which would become one of the big successes of the late 20th century, and securing a Korean buffer against America’s presence in Asia. America lost 40,000 lives in the process; China maybe ten times as many.
First know your enemy
That Americans are not more interested in this momentous past ultimately reflects their restless democracy, which is too consumed by contemporary dramas to dwell on history. Current appearances notwithstanding, it is the source of American strength. Yet it is important to underline two lessons from America’s war with China. In a fog of misunderstanding, each side fatally underestimated the other. And each had a flawed idea of the other’s red lines, the tripwires that turn competition into conflict. The situation today might look very different. The two countries’ interdependence and mutual awareness are on another plane. But their potential for underestimation and misunderstanding is still hauntingly present; and perhaps growing with their rivalry.
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/12/10/lessons-from-the-battles-between-america-and-china-70-years-on
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Anybody ever consider the security side of some things? Globe and Mail summary of full article behind paywall:
Full story:
Mark
Ottawa
Full story:
Mark
Ottawa
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The United States reacts to joint Russian/Chinese patrols in the Pacific and Arctic. Of course this calls into question our ability to respond, especially in a meaningful way over a prolonged period of time:
www.washingtontimes.com
Remainder of story at link
Air Force shows off might in Arctic
The U.S. Air Force flexed its muscle in a dramatic show of force this month, amid heightened concern at the Pentagon over the prospect of expanding great power military competition with nations such as Russia and China.
www.washingtontimes.com
Remainder of story at link
MilEME09
Army.ca Veteran
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Apologise, Afghanistan tells China after busting its espionage cell in Kabul
Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security has detained 10 Chinese citizens accused of operating a terror cell in Kabul
China caught red handed by Afghanistan, Afghanistan refused to keep it quiet.
I hate to sound overly simplistic, or crass. But the Chinese government really are some of the ultimate forms of scum in the modern world.
No need to elaborate here, and I wouldn't even know where to begin if I started.
Tentacles in everything, trying to influence governments, educational institutions, local politicians, national politicians, etc etc. And for what purpose?
Let governments decide what is best for their people, without coercion. Allow educational institutions to be just that, places to learn & grow.
All this 'shadow coercion' is really starting to piss me off. Ever think the rest of the world doesn't want to emulate you China, for obvious reasons?
No need to elaborate here, and I wouldn't even know where to begin if I started.
Tentacles in everything, trying to influence governments, educational institutions, local politicians, national politicians, etc etc. And for what purpose?
Let governments decide what is best for their people, without coercion. Allow educational institutions to be just that, places to learn & grow.
All this 'shadow coercion' is really starting to piss me off. Ever think the rest of the world doesn't want to emulate you China, for obvious reasons?
MilEME09
Army.ca Veteran
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They have been playing the long game, recently it was exposed that party members had become deeply involved in major political and corporate entities around the world include the defense and pharmaceutical industries. It is no wonder they are able to control information as well as they do. We really need to up our counter espionage game as they have agents of the Chinese state everywhere.I hate to sound overly simplistic, or crass. But the Chinese government really are some of the ultimate forms of scum in the modern world.
No need to elaborate here, and I wouldn't even know where to begin if I started.
Tentacles in everything, trying to influence governments, educational institutions, local politicians, national politicians, etc etc. And for what purpose?
Let governments decide what is best for their people, without coercion. Allow educational institutions to be just that, places to learn & grow.
All this 'shadow coercion' is really starting to piss me off. Ever think the rest of the world doesn't want to emulate you China, for obvious reasons?
MilEME09
Army.ca Veteran
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Trump was briefed that China sought to pay non-state actors to attack US forces in Afghanistan | CNN Politics
United States President Donald Trump received unconfirmed information earlier this month that China sought to pay non-state actors to attack American forces in Afghanistan, a senior administration official told CNN.
www.cnn.com
First Russia, now China paying for attacks on coalition forces.
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I'm pretty sure Dick Fadden (former Director CSIS and DM of DND) was saying this years ago. I met him briefly, and he was probably the sharpest senior official I ever encountered. None of this should be a shock to anyone that's been paying attention over the last decade or so. Unfortunately, too many in Ottawa choose to turn a blind eye to reality and continue to ignore what was written in their introduction to international relations textbooks back in university. That, or they are complicit...
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