China Space Program Ramping Up Capabilities, Pentagon Says

To ‘blind and deafen’ the enemy would be to use what the Chinese call ‘shashou jiang’, or what we’d call in English: ‘assassin’s mace‘ — something America today loves to complacently ignore.

China’s growing space prowess shows no signs of slowing, the U.S. Department of Defense said in its annual report to Congress on military and security developments involving the People’s Republic of China.

The Pentagon has been carefully monitoring China’s space activities, and pointed out that last year, the country conducted a total of 18 space launches and expanded its space-based intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, navigation, meteorological and communications satellite constellations. 

Entangling the dragon in Middle-Eastern quicksands

The quicksands of the Arabian Desert are notorious for swallowing up anyone trying to control the area. Historically, that’s what happened to Turkey, Britain, France, Russia and the US. Sooner or later, all discovered that instead of dominating the Middle East, they ended up being dominated by the region’s never-ending problems.

And that may also be the fate of China, the latest power to be lured by the idea that it has to engage in Middle-Eastern diplomacy. Unless decision-makers in Beijing are thoroughly prepared for what awaits, they will also find that the region can absorb all their energies, and usually for no practical effect.

China’s Strategy in Afghanistan

Beijing is keen to increase its involvement in the country following the planned U.S. withdrawal in 2014. But security problems may interfere.

For a relatively small drilling operation, China National Petroleum Corporation’s (CNPC) project in Afghanistan’s Sar-e-Pul province has a large footprint. Several layers of fences and containers serving as blast walls surround the extraction site, which includes dormitories, an office complex and various security structures. Throughout the day, trucks ferry in equipment and more containers. On the outside, the faces are all Afghan, but CNPC’s logo and bright red Chinese slogans are impossible to miss.

Philippines boosts military to resist ‘bullies’

Country relations in Asia are getting to the boiling point in regards to China. What we’re seeing within the region is an arms race to protect itself against the communist giant, and it’s not just the Philippines. For example, Japan seems to be silently going nuclear and going on the offensive to protect its disputed territory. Within the next ten years, we could see a situation where all countries within the Asian giant’s reach become strong enough combined that China will have no choice but to go on a ‘charm offensive’ and unite the continent under its political/military/economic umbrella rather than go to war with every neighbor. Having done this, combined with the United States suiciding itself from within and becoming more unreliable as a partner each day, it will have effectively taken out America’s hegemony in the Asia Pacific without having to go to war with it. However, because that nobody has a crystal ball (that works), a war or skirmish in the future shouldn’t be dismissed.

MANILA – Philippine President Benigno Aquino on Tuesday announced a US$1.8-billion (S$2.26b) military upgrade to help defend his country’s maritime territory against “bullies”, amid an ever-worsening dispute with China.

The announcement came on the same day that the Philippines filed a protest with China over the “illegal and provocative” presence of a Chinese warship and two other vessels at a Filipino-claimed shoal in the disputed South China Sea.

Trade Policy and Economic Decline

In a book titled SELLING US OUT, J.R. Martin writes of Chinese companies “exploiting loopholes in the U.S.-China tax treaty signed by the Reagan administration in 1986.” He asks what the Founding Fathers would say about our current trade deficit, and our indebtedness to communist-ruled China. Martin asks, “What would Washington and Adams think about the corrupt and destructive power of the two major political parties in America? How would they judge today’s capitalism?”

Asia’s Currency War

Global finance chiefs may have denounced it, but that has not stopped Japan joining other central banks in driving its exchange rate lower. With Australia and South Korea forced to respond, will the Asia-Pacific region be the main battleground in a global currency war?

China deploys Su-27 fighters in Tibet, can target key Indian air bases

New Delhi: China’s all-weather fighter base in Tibet is now widening its range of options in the event of a conflict with India. Intelligence intercepts and satellite monitoring has confirmed that China may have to some extent overcome Tibet’s extreme altitude and temperatures to operationalise an all-weather airfield near the Tibetan capital Lhasa.

Chinese hackers who breached Google gained access to sensitive data, U.S. officials say

Chinese hackers who breached Google’s servers several years ago gained access to a sensitive database with years’ worth of information about U.S. surveillance targets, according to current and former government officials.

The breach appears to have been aimed at unearthing the identities of Chinese intelligence operatives in the United States who may have been under surveillance by American law enforcement agencies.

China army developing advanced robot soldiers

Those who continue to think China isn’t advanced or can’t do any harm to the U.S. need to reassess the planet they live on. Within the next five to ten years, maybe sooner, the PLA could very likely be more advanced than the U.S. Military. It would be fair to say that they’re almost on equal footing now because there’s so much we don’t know buried in their black budget and state secrets, yet keep finding out from time to time. It would be fair to also say that roughly only 20% — 40% of their secrets are revealed.

BEIJING: China is developing robots with a lot more capabilities for battle, “information acquisition, command and control, and collaborative support,” official sources said. But the official Chinese media is saying its effort is different from the manner in which military robots have been developed in the US.

“The Chinese military has its own orientation and direction, and is very different from western militaries, such as the United States Armed Forces, in developing digitalized troops,” an official military publication said.

Two-Faced — Russia building up missile defenses while seeking to limit U.S. defenses

Another Gertz article with the same subject as a previous post:

Russia is engaged in a major buildup of both nuclear and conventional missile defense systems at the same time Moscow is seeking legal limits on U.S. missile defenses, according to U.S. officials.

The Russian military is developing and deploying an array of new and modernized anti-missile interceptors that are part of a strategic doctrine that calls for defending against what Moscow believes to be an increasing threat posed by offensive ballistic missiles, said U.S. officials with access to intelligence reports.

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Additionally, the Russians are upgrading the SH-08 nuclear-tipped anti-missile interceptors that have been deployed around Moscow for more than two decades.

Chinese military unit said to resume cyber spying

The clandestine army unit, known as Unit 61398, “went quiet for a while — they changed the nature of their activities, they removed some of the tools that they had been using inside of different companies,” said Richard Bejtlich of Mandiant, which specializes in defending companies from cyber attacks and purging malware from computer networks that have been breached.

Abe warns of possible military response to intruder subs

TOKYO — Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Tuesday Tokyo could mount a military response if foreign submarines enter its territorial waters while underwater, as Japan and China continue to squabble over islands.

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“These are serious acts. If submarines enter our territorial waters while underwater, we would have to implement maritime security action,” Abe told the Diet.