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ConfusedUs | 09-14-2008 10:30 PM
China's military ambition fuels Asian arms race China's military ambition fuels Asian arms race China's growing military ambition, matched only by its growing military spending, is fuelling a rapid Asian arms race. By Richard Spencer in Beijing 13 Sep 2008 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...arms-race.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph...60_886060c.jpg China's military ambition is at the heart of frantic Asian arms race Beijing's military planners know they cannot rely on China's size alone as a deterrent Photo: REUTERS Beijing deploys the world's biggest army, its defence spending is rising faster than any other power and, to cap it all, its forces will this month carry out their first spacewalk. With India, Japan and Russia also investing heavily in defence, a new Asian arms race is under way. According to official figures, Beijing's military budget this year is 418 billion yuan - �35 billion - a rise of 17.8 per cent on 2007. This already exceeds Britain's defence budget of �34 billion and places China's military spending second only to the US. According to figures from Jane's, the military specialists, it has risen by 178 per cent in the past seven years, even after adjusting for inflation. At this rate, China will spend �180 billion - half of the Pentagon's current budget and five times Britain's - by 2020. But the greatest change is not in how much China is spending, but where the investment is going. Under Chairman Mao, China regarded the army as a massed revolutionary block whose sheer scale would simply absorb any threat, foreign or domestic. Only since the first Gulf War in 1991 has China started focusing on the new generation of military hardware it may face in the event of war. Beijing's military planners know they cannot rely on China's size alone as a deterrent. The result has been a three-pronged strategy. China is upgrading technology while downsizing the army. The first prong is to increase the number of short- and medium-range missiles it has aimed at Taiwan, the future of which is China's number one military priority. The second is to build a navy capable of projecting power into the Pacific and beyond, both to deter US intervention on Taiwan's side and to guard vital shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean. But this will not be a classic "blue water" navy with a global reach - China still has no aircraft carriers. The third prong is the outermost line of defence: a space and anti-satellite programme that may one day be strong enough to threaten US weapons and guidance systems. This is asymmetric warfare at its most dramatic. China's submarine building programme is at last starting to show success after years in which it relied on Russian imports. Beijing is presently building two submarines capable of launching nuclear missiles and another boat designed for attack missions. Once these reach completion, China's navy will have five ballistic missile submarines - compared with Britain's four - and seven other nuclear submarines. Projecting power across thousands of miles of ocean is the only purpose for a fleet of this kind. This helps explain why India is building a nuclear submarine of its own and leasing another from Russia. India's navy presently enjoys a slender advantage over China in that it possesses one aircraft carrier and is acquiring another two. In practice, however, China's superior submarine fleet probably negates this gain. In the past, China's alliance with Pakistan worried India most. There are historical tensions too - China and India fought a bloody border war in 1962 over disputed territory in the Himalayas. But of greatest importance is a long-term rivalry for pre-eminence in Asia between the world's most populous nation and its biggest democracy. On the other hand, some observers say both countries are too busy with other threats to be too concerned with each other. A study by Jane's Industrial Quarterly concluded that that helping their industrial base was a major reason for the military build-up by both India and China. Their shared aim is to replace Russian military imports and boost their own exports, while gaining knock-on benefits for civilian industry. To the extent there is an armed race between the two powers, it may be a means of giving weight to their rising international status. "There is a feeling that China needs to have a modern military to be able to have a seat at the top table internationally,'' said Matthew Smith, a Jane's military economist. "Both India and China require a huge amount of military modernization just to bring them up to present-day standards. They are building from a very low base.''

hypervel | 09-15-2008 03:32 PM
Re: China's military ambition fuels Asian arms race Let 'em go at it for a while. US needs to get out of other people's biz..lick it's wounds..but we COULD sell them weapons. MIC would LOOOOVE that!

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