China will ‘take off the gloves’ if Trump continues on Taiwan, state media warns

Taiwan military march during the National Day celebrations. Photo: AP

 

Beijing: China will “take off the gloves” and take strong action if US President-elect Donald Trump continues to provoke Beijing over Taiwan once he assumes office, two leading state-run newspapers said on Monday.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal published on Friday, Trump said the “One China” policy was up for negotiation. China’s foreign ministry, in response, said “One China” was the foundation of China-US ties and was non-negotiable.

Trump broke with decades of precedent last month by taking a congratulatory telephone call from Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, angering Beijing, which sees Taiwan as part of China.

“If Trump is determined to use this gambit in taking office, a period of fierce, damaging interactions will be unavoidable, as Beijing will have no choice but to take off the gloves,” the English-language China Daily said.

China already moving to test Trump

Threatening to penalize US automaker, fortifying South China Sea islets

BEIJING — Eager to see how Donald Trump backs up his hard-line rhetoric, the Chinese government is taking steps to elicit responses from the U.S. president-elect on the economic and foreign policy fronts.

An official of the National Development and Reform Commission has revealed that an unnamed U.S. automaker is to be fined for instructing dealerships in China to fix prices, according to the English-language newspaper China Daily. Trump has responded by meeting with Wilbur Ross, his pick for commerce secretary.

China Could Control the Global Internet After Oct. 1

ICANN Chairman Steve Crocker speaks during the opening of the ICANN meeting in Singapore on Feb. 9, 2015. The U.S. plan to relinquish control of ICANN opens the door for China to have greater influence over the global internet. (Roslan Rahman/AFP/Getty Images)

 

The handover of ICANN, the body that governs domain name registration, fits into a strategy by the Chinese regime to determine how the Internet is run

In November 2014, Li Yuxiao, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Cyberspace, stated, according to the state-run China Daily, “Now is the time for China to realize its responsibilities. If the United States is willing to give up its running of the internet sphere, the question comes as to who will take the baton and how it would be run?”

“We have to first set our goal in cyberspace, and then think about the strategy to take, before moving on to refining our laws,” he said.

Li’s comments were in response to news, also in 2014, that the United States would relinquish its remaining federal government control of the internet by ending its contract between the Commerce Department and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which is scheduled for Oct. 1.

DEATH DRONES: China building cruise missiles powered by killer artificial intelligence

Terrifying new ‘fire and forget’ weapons will use robotic technology to steer themselves toward a target

China is developing a new range of killer cruise missiles fitted with technology which will effectively turn them into killer robots.

Dubbed “death drones”, the missiles will use artificial intelligence (AI) to guide themselves in flight and potentially even choose new targets.

China claims base with ‘military facilities’ in disputed Spratlys is to rescue fishing boats

China is building a base in the disputed Spratly Islands for an advanced rescue vessel complete with drones and underwater robots.

Chen Xingguang, political commissar of the ship, said the ship is scheduled to be deployed in the second half of the year, the official China Daily reported on May 23.

China Reacts to Obama’s State of the Union: America is in Decline

In his State of the Union address on Wednesday, President Obama mentioned China a total of three times.

One was to praise China’s commitment to cut carbon emissions. The second was to encourage American manufacturing executives to bring back jobs from China. The third was a call-to-arms to prevent China from writing the trade rules in the Asia Pacific.

China watchers inhaled sharply at this third point, given the sensitivity in China about who should be calling the shots in Asia. However, the media coverage in China of Obama’s remarks has been surprisingly restrained, suggesting that the leadership does not want to encourage anti-American nationalist fervour at the moment.

China to Set Up Satellite, Radar Network to Strengthen Maritime Power

Beijing:  China will set up an offshore observation network, including satellite and radar stations, to strengthen the country’s maritime power, the official China Daily reported on Friday, in a move that could exacerbate tensions in the region.

Many of China’s neighbours, including Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam, have expressed concern at China’s military build-up and increasingly assertive posture in the region.

China Confirms Third Test of Hypersonic Missile

China on Wednesday confirmed that it carried out a third flight test of a new hypersonic strike vehicle that U.S. officials say is part of efforts by Chinese nuclear forces to penetrate U.S. strategic missile defenses.

A Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman told state-run news media the Dec. 2 test was routine.

“Scientific experiments carried out by China within its borders are normal ones conducted according to its schedule, and they are not directed against any specific country or target,” the Defense Ministry stated through a spokesman. The comments were reported in the official China Daily newspaper.

SCO exercise Peace Mission 2014 to involve 7,000 troops

 

SHANGHAI, August 19. /ITAR-TASS/. The Peace Mission 2014 antiterrorist exercise of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) will be the largest ever in the organizations’ history, a Chinese military official said on Tuesday.

“It’s the first time that so many troops and so much weaponry have been deployed in joint drills under the SCO aegis,” Wang Ning, chief director of the drilla and deputy chief of the general staff of the People’s Liberation Army, told the China Daily newspaper. Drones, Airborne Early Warning (AEW) aircraft, air-defense missiles, tanks and armored vehicles have joined the anti-terrorist drills in north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region that will be held from August 24 to 29.

China’s President Xi urges greater military use of space

BEIJING (Reuters) – Chinese President Xi Jinping urged the air force to adopt an integrated air and space defence capability, in what state media on Tuesday called a response to the increasing military use of space by the United States and others.

While Beijing insists its space program is for peaceful purposes, a Pentagon report last year highlighted China’s increasing space capabilities and said Beijing was pursuing a variety of activities aimed at preventing its adversaries from using space-based assets during a crisis.

Fears of a space arms race with the United States and other powers mounted after China blew up one of its own weather satellites with a ground-based missile in January 2007.

A detailed analysis of satellite imagery published in March provided additional evidence that a Chinese rocket launch in May 2013, billed as a research mission, was actually a test of a new anti-satellite weapon.

China plans world’s longest underwater tunnel: China Daily

BEIJING, Feb. 14 (Xinhua) — China is planning to build the world’s longest underwater tunnel beneath the Bohai Sea by 2026, according to a Friday report in the China Daily

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“Once approved, work could begin as early as 2015 or 2016,” Wang Mengshu, a tunnel and railway expert at the Chinese Academy of Engineering who has worked on the plan since 2012, was quoted as saying by the paper.

Replace dollar with super currency: economist

The World Bank’s former chief economist wants to replace the US dollar with a single global super-currency, saying it will create a more stable global financial system.

“The dominance of the greenback is the root cause of global financial and economic crises,” Justin Yifu Lin told Bruegel, a Brussels-based policy-research think tank. “The solution to this is to replace the national currency with a global currency.”

China military to launch joint command system

New system said to result in more coordinated and combat-capable forces to efficiently respond to a crisis, but not targetted  [sic] at any country

 The Chinese military is to establish a joint operational command system “in due course”, with observers saying this will result in more-coordinated and combat-capable forces to efficiently respond to a crisis.

Setting up the system is a basic requirement in an era of information, and the military has launched successful pilot programmes in this regard, the Ministry of National Defense told China Daily on Thursday.

China to reap harvest of NSA scandals

The best warfare strategy is to attack the enemy’s plans, next is to attack alliances. – Sun Tzu, The Art of War

A growing chorus of nations is decrying Washington’s unrestrained cyber espionage. However, there is only one country with both the means and motivation for using mounting international resentment to challenge American hegemony. The NSA surveillance of America’s allies has opened up two vital fronts in which China can erode American global dominance.

Submersible taps mineral deposits in S. China sea

Jiaolong, the manned deep-sea submersible, is helping China tap a treasure of iron-manganese deposits that were first discovered in the South China Sea on Wednesday.

Tang Jialing, an oceanaut on the submersible, told Xinhua News Agency that although the exact area of the deposits was still unknown, he was sure that it was large.