From the Washington Post:
The Pentagon’s annual report to Congress on China’s military power, released this week, reveals that Beijing’s buildup has advanced well beyond what most analysts considered likely just 10 years ago. Some highlights: The new arsenal of the People’s Liberation Army includes more than 700 missiles deployed opposite Taiwan, a fleet of sophisticated diesel electric submarines, a growing nuclear submarine capability and advanced destroyers armed with lethal anti-ship cruise missiles. By making the potential cost of any U.S. intervention in the Taiwan Strait extraordinarily high, Beijing has accomplished its decade-long goal of establishing a credible military threat to Taiwan — as well as a deterrent to the United States. The question is, what next?
The report points to some answers. With a growing dependence on oil imported from the Middle East and Africa, Chinese strategists are talking about creating a blue-water navy to secure Beijing’s energy supply lines. The military may be reconsidering its nuclear “no-first-use policy” and examining ways to secure China’s territorial claims in the South China and East China seas. Simply stated, as China’s military power has grown, so too, it appears, have the strategic tasks that it may be assigned. This shouldn’t be surprising. Our own history teaches that as a nation’s power grows so do its ambitions.
So the country who jails protesters (HT Free Thoughts) and bloggers and do not respect Human Rights at all has a new arsenal … to secure its energy supply lines. And that “No more blood for oil”?
Is this the only thing we have to worry about? NOPE: Sometime ago I posted this:
This is a map of an article from The Guardian about the nuclear weapons market. You see who is in the middle, do you? The article says:
Hundreds of millions of pounds of equipment was imported into the African country over a three-year period before the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington in 2001 and has since disappeared, according to Guardian sources.
They are talking of Sudan, country in which China has been the most aggresive of the foreign suitors seeking to tap Sudan’s oil reserves and the cause of even more refugees, that are now fleeing for security and from Chinese firms.
So China (and Russia) are opposing sanctions on Sudanese leaders and are protecting them (HT: Atlas Shrugs) and blocking Human Rights in Sudan.
And then we have the “Spanish Connection“, of course, thanks to Zapatero:
Zapatero has voiced his support for the “One-China” policy and strong opposition to Taiwanese independence – supporting national reunification instead. In his zest to improve bilateral relations, the Spanish president endorsed the removal of the UN imposed arms embargo against China in early 2005, against U.S. objections. Zapatero has also lobbied his EU counterparts for Chinese WTO market economy status with the hope of an economic windfall. Bilateral trade between the two countries continues to accelerate at a record pace, reaching $4 billion in the first five months of 2005. In 2004, trade between the two countries stood at $ 7.2 billion, up 38 percent from 2003.
So he is recognizing “national realities” in Spain, wherever they’re asked, but he does not recognise Taiwan!!! This man is surprising! (hmm, at the least).
Anyway, he was no university “professor” in Leon, he was a teacher at the most. This is just a problem a translation: when say a “profesor” that is translated as a “teacher”. Anyway, International Media keep on telling that he was a “professor” which is a “teacher” of a higher rank.
At least he did something useful:
While in China, Zapatero witnessed the launch of the Airbus (Beijing) Engineering Centre, the company’s second-largest engineering center outside of Europe. He also oversaw the signing of an agreement for 20 Airbus A330 jets worth $3.1 billion to be delivered to Air China beginning in May 2006.
While leaving alone the parents of one of the scandals of last year in Spain: The Guadalajara’s fire -link in Spanish-, in which 11 firefighters were dead, because the Castilla-La Mancha autonomous Government rejected the aid Madrid Government was going to send. The reason? Castilla-La Mancha is governed by PSOE and Madrid’s one is governed by PP. The rumours said then that he made the trip in advance at what it was planned so as to avoid the popular -from the people, not the party- rage.
But this is not all: Zapatero has asked for a lift of EU’s embargo to China, -and French Government said at that time that “EU should sell weapons to China, so it has less weapons” (point 5), but they do not add that is only an excuse to revitalize their own weapon industries, also here-. But the best of al this link is this paragraph:
Zapatero expressed Spain’s admiration for his host country, which he called “the modern China, which is becoming a great global power”.
In fact, I have a lot of admiration for Chinese culture and dissidents. I do not admire at all a country in which dissidents are forbidden to have a lawyer -even if they have been illegally detained, in which education and health care are prohibitively expensive for most of the population, and who has tightened even more the freedom of expression. You only have to look at the founder of Communist China to know why I do not admire this country but his people, who keep on fighting for freedom (Ht: Barcepundit) and against corruption:
The most common cause of this unrest is government corruption, particularly among Communist Party members.
You mean there is corruption in communist China? They have even signed the UN Convention against corruption.
Yes, there is. In fact, the corruption is mostly about the seizing of land to give it to developers. That is plainly land robbery, because people are NOT given any compensation and are leaving in tents after their outing. If you do not believe it just see this video, courtesy of Sky News -founded at Barcepundit -:
Even if I do not critizise Israel -Israelis have enough with Palestinians-, I do not quite see why they have been selling weapons to China, besides profit, that is. A very good article here on Middle East Quarterly, where they dicuss this affair. A paragraph of it is very important:
The antagonisms which result from such Sino-Israeli dealings may also erode the willingness of Washington to expend diplomatic capital with other states on behalf of the Jewish state. Israel has often benefited from Washington’s interventions as the State Department prods hostile countries to mitigate their opposition and unfriendly ones to reexamine their policies toward the Jewish state. The Washington factor played a key role in the decision by Pakistani leaders, especially President Pervez Musharraf, to make pro-Israel statements on occasion.[22] The same consideration influenced the Indian government’s January 1992 decision to normalize relations with Israel. New Delhi announced the decision to establish full diplomatic relations, for example, hours before Prime Minister Narasimha Rao left for the United States to attend the summit meeting of the U.N. Security Council where he was slated to meet President George H.W. Bush.
With a rising of anti-semitism in Europe and with China in a very obscure position over Iran, is really Israel going to pursue this politics? I really think this would not be very wise for them to damage the only real ally they have in the world.
But if Israeli position is striking, is ever much more astonishing Russia’s position:
The Pentagon has said in an annual China Military Power Report that China buys about 95 percent of its new weapons from Russia. The 2006 Annual Report said that Russia remained the leading supplier of weapons to China and continued to cooperate with the country on a variety of technical and logistics issues, which allowed China to maintain and modernize its large military potential. According to Pentagon analysts, China has bought Su-27 Flanker fighters and Su-30 Flanker interceptors, AA-12 Adder medium-range air-to-air missiles, SA-10 Grumble, SA-15 Gauntlet and SA-20 Triumph surface-to-air missiles, 3M-54E (SS-N-27B) anti-ship cruise missiles, Kilo-class diesel submarines, Modern-class destroyers, Il-76 Candid transport planes and Il-78 Midas in-flight refueling tankers. The report said China had recently increased its efforts aimed at forcing Russia to sell the most advanced weaponry to the country, although Russia was historically cautious about the transfer of modern military technologies to its Asian neighbor. The Pentagon said in 2000-2005 China had concluded a series of military hardware supply deals with Russia worth $13 billion, and had already received $11 billion worth of weaponry under these deals.
Very clever…
Tags: blogosphere, China, dissidents, European Union, France, Human Rights, Release Hao Wu, Spain, USA, Zapatero
Chinese new arsenal and its implications…
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