China Significantly Boosts Size of Navy and Air Force, Downsizes Army

An airman of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force operates an aircraft during a drill on the second flight training day of the New Year at Liaodong Peninsula on January 3, in Liaoning province, China. (Getty Images)

 

‘Transformational changes’ in military priorities are enhancing Beijing’s ability to flex its muscles far beyond China’s borders.

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (pla) is undergoing “transformational changes” to greatly boost the size of its navy and air force and to downsize its land-based army by nearly half, the nation’s official Xinhua news agency said on January 20.

“This new data is unprecedented in the history of the pla,” the agency wrote. As a result of the changes, it said, “the Army now accounts for less than 50 percent of the total number of pla troops; almost half of our noncombatant units have been made redundant.”

Pentagon Reports: Chinese Engaged in Global Power Play

(Photo Credit: Petty Officer 1st Class Chad McNeeley/U.S. Navy)

 

Defense Department warns One Belt One Road favors military and civilian projects that are a direct challenge to U.S. strategic interests.

A pair of reports this week from the Pentagon have sounded alarm bells for Washington, D.C., over China’s use of its ever-growing military, trade, and infrastructure networks, which they assert are being used to pursue a goal of global domination and direct confrontation with American interests around the world.

PLA Expanding Power Through Belt and Road Initiative

Randall Schriver / Getty Images

 

Schriver: U.S. to bolster Taiwan air defenses, submarines

China’s military is a key player in the Belt and Road economic initiative around the world that is being used to expand Beijing’s overall global power, a senior Pentagon Asian affairs official says.

Separately, the Pentagon is working with Taiwan’s government to bolster the island’s air defenses in the face of growing missile and aircraft threats from China, said Randall G. Schriver, assistant defense secretary for Asian and Pacific security affairs.

Russia’s Pivoting To The Horn Of Africa Via Eritrea & The UAE

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met Eritrea’s Foreign Minister Osman Saleh, August 31, 2018, Sochi, Russia

 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov lauded his country’s relationship with Eritrea and informed the world about Moscow’s plans to build a logistics center there.

He was speaking alongside his Eritrean counterpart at a press conference in Sochi after their bilateral meeting, which he also noted included discussions about building regional transport corridors, pipelines, and opening up a Russian language department in one of Asmara’s universities. Lavrov also said that the UNSC sanctions against Eritrea that were imposed in 2009 after reports that the country was aiding Somalia’s Al-Shaabab should be lifted, and he praised Eritrea for all that it’s done in the name of regional peace over the past few months in view of its rapidly moving rapprochement with Ethiopia that completely transformed the geopolitical situation in the Horn of Africa.

American Military Aircraft Targeted By Lasers in Pacific Ocean, U.S. Officials Say

Officials said all the incidents occurred in and around the East China Sea, typically where the Chinese military or other Chinese civilians operate. An Air Force bomber, above, in August on a flight over Japan, the East China Sea and Korean Peninsula. Photo: Gerald Willis/U.S. Air Force/EPA/Shutterstock

 

U.S. officials wouldn’t definitively confirm Chinese personnel were behind laser incidents

WASHINGTON—Lasers have targeted pilots of American military aircraft operating over the western Pacific Ocean more than 20 times in recent months, U.S. officials say, following a series of similar incidents in which Pentagon officials said Chinese personnel used lasers against U.S. pilots in East Africa.

Officials said all of the incidents occurred in and around the East China Sea, typically where the Chinese military or other Chinese civilians operate. The laser signals directed at American aircraft appeared to be coming from fishing boats operating in the area and from shore, multiple officials said.

China Plans Network of Indian Ocean Bases: Security Analyst

 

The Maldives is moving closer to China and Beijing may be interested in taking over the old British air base on Gan in the south of that archipelago

China has plans to establish a network of naval and air bases in the Indian Ocean, according to an article by David Brewster posted on the website of the Lowy Institute, the Australian think-tank, on May 15.

Brewster, who is with the National Security College at the Australian National University in Canberra, argues that Beijing’s aim is to support China’s growing strategic imperatives in the region.

Pentagon Confirms Chinese Fired Lasers at U.S. Pilots

Chinese People’s Liberation Army personnel attend the opening ceremony of China’s new military base in Djibouti / Getty Images

 

Incidents near Beijing’s Djibouti military base injured American air crews flying nearby

The Pentagon confirmed Thursday that Chinese nationals fired lasers near a military base in east Africa against U.S. military aircraft in the region, injuring several pilots.

Pentagon Press Secretary Dana White said the U.S. government made diplomatic protests to the Chinese government over several recent incidents of laser firings near China’s first overseas military base at Djibouti.

China’s Xi Says The Task Of Building A Strong Navy “Has Never Been More Urgent”

 

While most of the world remains fixated on Syria and Russia, China’s PLA Navy is in the midst of an unprecedented provocation in the South China Sea as a fleet of Chinese warships conducts its 3-day combat war drills in the waters south of Sanya, the southern tip of China’s Hainan Island.

With China’s presence in the waters off its southeastern coast growing increasingly threatening, President Xi Jinping declared on Thursday that the task of building a strong navy “has never been as urgent as present”. His remarks were part of a speech made during the country’s largest fleet review since 1949.

Berlin’s Beacon Policy

BERLIN(Own report) – Germany and the three remaining major West European EU member countries should formulate a joint foreign policy and implement it even without an EU-wide consensus, demands Norbert Röttgen, former Chair of the Committee of Foreign Affairs in the German Bundestag. Such an approach would be inevitable, because a foreign policy consensus in the EU is impossible “within the foreseeable future,” although rapid and resolute activity is needed to reach an “equal footing with the USA and Russia.” Experts are proposing, as an alternative, the introduction of foreign policy decisions being taken at majority votes. This would mean that EU countries – against the will of their respective governments – could, for example, be forced into serious conflicts with third countries. Reflecting major shifts in the global political fabric, these proposals have become elements of an intense debate within Berlin’s political establishment. The German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) is warning against the escalation of conflicts, for example, with China, and the military does not rule out the possibility of Berlin’s loss of power, through the potential disintegration of the EU.

China to build naval dock at Djibouti base

China intends to build a pier at its base in Djibouti so that People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) vessels can dock there, the South China Morning Post reported military sources as saying on 27 September.

China Makes First Show of Force From New Foreign Base

Chinese military personnel took part in a show-of-force demonstration at its new base in Djibouti following an alleged incursion by “Japanese frogmen.”

 

 

Chinese soldiers demonstrated their combat readiness during a show-of-force event at their new base in Djibouti, located on the Red Sea, and is China’s’s first base on foreign soil.

Satellite images reveal massive underground bunker at China’s naval facility in Djibouti

Satellite image shows bunker complex at China’s base in Djibouti. / Stratfor / Twitter

 

Satellite images show that China may be gearing up to use its new military base in Djibouti as far more than just the naval logistics hub Beijing claims it to be, analysts say.

Other than a noticeable lack of docks at the facility, one feature that stood out in the images was a 250,000-square-foot underground bunker complex.

CIA analyst: Beijing poses a greater threat than Russia

China’s new type of domestically-built destroyer, a 10,000-tonne warship, is seen during its launching ceremony at the Jiangnan Shipyard in Shanghai, China June 28, 2017. Photo: Reuters

 

In an unusually candid talk, agency’s Michael Collins said China’s growing confidence and resolve – fueled by inaction against Chinese hegemony over the past several years – are a worry

A senior CIA analyst has offered a rare public glimpse into American intelligence analysis of China. Michael Collins, deputy assistant director and head of the agency’s East Asia mission center, believes more attention should be focused on China and that recent public angst about Russia is distracting America from the threat posed by China.

“There’s been a lot of talk about Russia as a competitor, a country that sees the liberal international order as something they don’t necessarily subscribe to, that is actively engaged in trying to undermine US influence in various areas around the world, and that has [the] capability to do it,” Collins said at a security forum in Aspen, Colorado.

Why communist China’s first foreign military base? Location, Location, Location

Chinese People’s Liberation Army-Navy troops march in Djibouti’s independence day parade on June 27.

 

UNITED NATIONS — Nearly six hundred years ago, huge Chinese fleets plied the Indian Ocean sailing as far as Arabia and the East African coast.

The epic seaborne expeditions carried out between 1405 and 1432 under Adm. Cheng Ho and during the glorious Ming Dynasty were larger and far more encompassing than subsequent Portuguese and Dutch voyages almost a century later. China’s Imperial Court sought trade, tribute, and exotic treasures, not formal colonization nor religious conversion.

China Warns Japan: “Get Used To Our Warplanes”, Sends Spy Ship Near Alaska

 

In an unexpectedly brazen rattling of sabers, just days after China deployed troops to its first foreign base in Djibouti, a move which the Global Times clarified is “about protecting its own security, not about seeking to control the world, Beijing made a less than subtle reversal, when it told Japan on Friday to “get used to it” after it flew six warplanes over the Miyako Strait between two southern Japanese islands in a military exercise.

It all started late on Thursday night, when Japan’s defense ministry issued a token statement describing the flyover by the formation of Xian H-6 bombers, also known as China’s B-52, earlier that day as “unusual”, while noting that there had been no violation of Japanese airspace.