China responds
Yesterday we talked about the B52s that this administration used to fly over the Senkaku/Diaoyou island chain in the East China Sea in order to challenge China’s unilateral declaration that the islands were part of their new Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ). Well today Australian News reports that China’s sole aircraft carrier is steaming toward the area;
In response, China has ordered its only aircraft carrier – the PNAS Liaoning – into the disputed waters.
This afternoon, China’s defence ministry said it “monitored” the US B-52 bomber flights in its newly-declared air defence identification zone
In a statement China’s defence spokesman Geng Yansheng said: “The Chinese military monitored the entire process, carried out identification in a timely manner, and ascertained the type of US aircraft.
“China is capable of exercising effective control over this airspace,” Geng added.
Politico says the carrier isn’t alone;
The official Xinhua News Agency said the cruise aims to test the Liaoning’s crew and equipment over long distances and a variety of sea conditions.
It said the ship was accompanied by two destroyers and two missile cruisers – elements of a standard aircraft carrier battle group – when it left its northern home port of Qingdao. The Liaoning has launched and recovered jet fighters but not yet been given its full complement of aircraft.
I guess we’re sending our new ambassador to Japan for her shake out cruise, too. Caroline Kennedy wasn’t pleased with China according to UPI:
In her first speech as ambassador, Kennedy said Wednesday Beijing’s unilateral decision raised tensions while voicing support for Japan’s efforts to ramp up its security measures, such as establishing a national security council, The Japan Times reported.
“Unilateral actions like those taken by China with their announcement of an East China Sea air defense identification zone undermine security and constitute an attempt to change the status quo in the East China Sea. This only serves to increase tensions in the region and create unnecessary risk,” Kennedy said at a welcome lunch in Tokyo.
Just when you things can’t look more grim, Joe Bite Me is headed to China next week, says NBC;
The senior administration official said that the visit will allow Biden to talk about China’s broader “emerging pattern of behavior.” A second official said that the U.S. believes China needs to help lower the tension, and that the move “causes uncertainty” in an uncertain region and raises the risk of “miscalculation and accidents.”
The official said that Biden will discuss how China operates in international space and “how they deal with areas of disagreement with their neighbors.”
I guess China will be foreclosing on us by Christmas. Thanks to Pinto Nag for a link in there somewhere.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden
test the Liaoning’s crew and equipment over long distances and a variety of sea conditions.
Uh, yeah, color me unimpressed, kids. These islands are barely 200 miles off the Chinese coast.
200 miles is “long distances”? I’ve had maneuvering watches where we steamed longer to hit the dive point.
Call me when they’re steaming just off the 12-mile limit outside San Diego.
Dear China,
Keep Joe.
Eggs
Excuse me, but ‘broader emerging pattern of behavior’?
Oh, I get it – no one in WDC or the Oval Office was paying attention when China announced the launch some time ago of its aircraft carrier and the accompanying battle group.
Wow. I am cotinually impressed with how out of touch this administration is and continues to be.
I read that the Liaoning is considered a “floating museum” — that the Chinese bought her in 1998 and fixed her up.
Yeah, well…we laughed at the Japanese just prior to WWII about their “toy airplanes,” too. This is not history that we need to repeat, please and thank you.
@4 The Liaoning is a converted Soviet rust bucket the Chinese Navy is using as a test bed for training and doctrine. It can only hold a few planes and it’s seaworthiness has barely been tested. It’s not supposed to be a blue water-worthy warship and may not even be a regionally-capable ship. Considering the distances of this disputed area, shore-based aircraft are more reliable.
What did the US expect to happen as China became more industrialized? That they would keep a 3rd world technology in their military?
China will make its’ military first nation capable, we had better get used to playing the same games with them we were playing with Russkies a short time ago…
Bite Me may be the country’s greatest security risk. That moron just says what pops into that cavern between his ears. And he’s going to meet with the Chinesers in Chiner? I bet he gets caught trying to swipe a piece of the Great Wall.
VOV–the carriers we have and the capabilities they posess are the results of nearly a century of innovation and improvements. We have half the aircraft carriers in the world. The Liaoning displaces just over 45,000 tons. That’s about what a WWII Midway-class carrier displaced.
While some may find the PLN a threat, they’re little more than a brown-water navy at this point, and will still take a generation to become anything more than a regional force.
However, given the region, that could prove to be problematic.
@8 But they will progress, they will continue to press for a 1st world military. China has always felt inadequate in the world, and for most of modern history with good reason.
As they become an economic superpower they will continue to press for military superpower status as well. The current generation materials as you say are inadequate to the task at hand, but I think it’s unwise to not be prepared for China as a superpower and to plan accordingly.
We have a tendency to believe our trading partners will always be subservient to our wishes with respect to military pressure, with most trading partners that’s probably a realistic expectation. China will be the exception eventually, and they have in the past shown they are willing to throw money and people at problems to resolve them.
As a nation we should be prepared to understand what the future might hold and be proactive instead of what traditionally has been a reactive process.
Just my two cents….
Hey, what’s the difference between a the Chinese aircraft carrier and cheap plastic dolls made by exploited Chinese labor in a sweatshop?
The dolls will float, whereas the aircraft carrier probably won’t.
Shits and giggles aside, even if the Chinese manage to get that thing up and working sometime in the next decade (probably won’t), they’ll end up with a carrier that can hold a dozen fixed-wing planes plus some rotorcraft tops, there’ll be beastly crew conditions on board (the PRC and the CCCP never were very big on crew comfort), they’ll only be able to launch planes off that ski jump (precisely why we use steam catapults; the ski jump is enormously stressful on aircraft landing gear—and pilots’ sanity), and they’ll need an enormous logistical train to keep it all operating because it’s diesel powered, not nuclear powered. Hell, I don’t care if that thing does end up off the cost of San Diego or Honolulu—it can’t do anything. And amidst all this, they’ve still got to train carrier pilots and equip them with aircraft appropriate for carrier flight operations (both of which take time and money to learn to use effectively, and even to develop them at all). Then, they’ve got to tackle the problem of the fact that they have very few surface ships in their navy that are NOT obsolete, and the few that aren’t will become so quickly. You need tons of escorts for a carrier. The Chinese are blustering big with this declared restricted flight zone and diplomatic posturing to try to conceal the fact that they have zero military power that is actually capable of backing up their vitriolic threats. You wanna fight? Hey ho, let’s go.
Um, like, uh, ya know, um, uhhh, I uh, heard, um, Caroline like, Kennedy speak, uh, before. No, uh, way was that her, unless someone recorded it and she just moved her lips.
I would not be so sanguine about China’s navy. I read this site about once a week:
http://www.informationdissemination.net/
And he frequently discusses China’s high shipbuilding tempo.
You say that you are not impressed by their repainted Soviet aircraft carrier? Ya know, a whole lot of world commerce goes through the South and East China Sea and they surely don’t need an aircraft carrier to hose that up. In order to project power in that region, an American carrier group has to operate pretty close to the Chinese mainland so she would be exposed to land-based aircraft, Chinese electric submarines, and anti-ship missiles.
Imagine if the Chinese used an anti-ship missile to sink a supertanker in the East China sea. “Oh, we are sorry, it was an accident …” All of the oil headed for Japan and the Philippines would have to go far south near Australia and come in from the open Pacific. The Philippines would be threatened. Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos would be cut off.
Neutralizing the states bordering the China Sea would be a strong statement by the Chinese. If they were pretty confident that the US would not or could not respond, it doesn’t seem impossible.
We haven’t gone head to head with the Chinese since forever so there is a lot we don’t know. Given the history of our current President and VP and the tenor of the US about war in general, I would think that a certain degree of focus, not to say caution, would be in order.
Yes, and isn’t the timing on this interesting?
That it comes when so many senior officers and NCOs have been dismissed or forced to retire?
That they who know warfare are no longer available?
Why would Hussein Obama suddenly get ballsy and send Bufs over a disputed area? Unless he wanted to give the PRC the pretext to move against America’s long-time ally and capitalist, constitutional monarchy Japan.
Sun Tzu was Chinese. I wouldn’t mock the Chinese on anything to do with military strategy or warfare.
@13-Richard, yeah, they could cause problems that way, but you’ve got to keep the opposite side of the coin in mind. Such a move would hurt China tremendously. I know it’s somewhat hard to believe given the way the media portrays the trade deficit and China’s stake in our debt, but China is actually far, far more dependent on our capital and markets than we are on their products. Not to mention that most of their oil (more than eighty percent) and all their trade with Europe and Africa (where many Chinese corporations have significant investments and which is a big source of raw materials for them) passes through the Strait of Malacca, which in many places is less than five miles wide, with a tremendous amount of navigation choke points. If China tried something as blatantly imperialistic as what you’re suggesting, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia have all got more than enough military force to completely shut it off (hell they wouldn’t even need naval power-artillery batteries on the shoreline in many places could hurl shells far into the inland on the other side of the channel, and they would do the job just fine). And the rest of the world isn’t going to stay quiet while your hypothetical conquest of Southeast Asia goes down. I really don’t believe that even Barack Obama is feckless enough not to at least use his presidential power to embargo trade with China completely and totally. Not to mention military intervention-even in the unlikely event that China managed to close the sea to our carrier groups, America has still got the best submarine force int he world. China’s navy has got no chance of invading Taiwan or the Phillipines with their combined militarized and our subs, and probably couldn’t blockade them, either. All in all, the Chinese military threat is currently a paper tiger. Will their power exponentially increase in the future, requiring American military power to grow in order to check it? Sure. Will that happen in the NEAR future? No. That’s the point-currently, china’s posturing in the islands dispute is exactly that.… Read more »
@17 — thanks for the reply and your perspective. I was suffering under the delusion that the majority of Chinese imported oil arrived via pipelines from Central Asia. A bit of research revealed that is not the case.
The Chinese currently consume about 9.9 million barrels of oil per day (MBD) where about 5.3 MBD of that total (53%) is imported. Of the 5.3 MBD, about 45% (2.4 MBD) comes from Saudi Arabia, Angola, Iran, and Oman. That has to come by ship. The only likely pipeline connections are Russia and Kazakhstan — about 9% (0.47 MBD). Thus, about 90% of Chinese oil imports come via ship and, as you pointed out, probably via the Straits of Malacca.
I accept that it would be easy to close the Straits thus depriving China of about 40% of their total daily oil consumption. So military considerations aside, open conflict seems unlikely for economic reasons. However some kind of US-embarrassing event like the shoot down over Hainan would be a gift beyond price.
What about general hell-raising just to keep everyone paying attention to China instead of looking at Iran while they busily make weapons-grade plutonium? The US doesn’t have to pull two carrier battle groups out of dry dock for general hell-raising and, from the Chinese perspective, it has the additional salutary effect of further weakening Mr. Obama.
The Chinese cannot afford to lose global (US) trade due to regional military superiority.
Population is to large and they are exerting themselves against the Indians, Japanese and Russians.
I would argue SR, but I believe EL is more appropriate.
Loosely translated, rattle your sabers but make sure your people are fed and somewhat happy. Especially with the leadership exchange (handover) down the road.
Hondo, you said: “I really don’t believe that even Barack Obama is feckless enough to” do something basically stupid.
Hondo, he is exactly that feckless and stupid enough to do something so butthead stupid it could start an actual war. I have no desire to spend time guessing what he might do, but you forget that bodaprez is a slacker, a dilettante, didn’t even want to do the debates for the 2nd elections, and spent 11 years in the Illinois State Legislature voting ‘present’, because he couldn’t make up his mind how to vote. He doesn’t have a clue how completely dumb his decisions are, nor does he even make those decisions. They all come from the ‘night stalker’ behind the throne. They truly do.
We don’t need a war with china! How many here want to go and fight a war with china ? Remember tomorrow’s Thanksgiving! Be sure to see the movie alice’s restaurant when it comes on tv! PEACE!
Alice’s Restaurant? Isn’t that like about 4 decades before you were conceived, you phony baloney?
@18-What sort of general hell-raising are we talking about here? And what long-term goal do they stand to achieve from doing so? Obama is on his way out, and his political power is waning. That isn’t the narrative the media is pushing, but it’s the inevitable thing that happens to all second term presidents. We’re already seeing it. The first indicator was how badly the administration’s push for gun control failed. Have you noticed the extent to which there has been dissent in the Democratic Party over the Obamacare woes? Nobody in that party except diehard cadres like Pelosi and Reid are pushing the narrative that, “It’s all temporary, and you see initial woes with every huge reform like this” or “It’s strictly a minor temporary technical trouble, and once it’s resolved we won’t have any trouble” that would have characterized their argument if this had been in BHO’s first term with the election still ahead. Instead, BHO faces harsh criticisms, demands for fixes, legislative pushes that run contrary to his agenda, and defections. This effect applies internationally as well as domestically. In the same way that the Democrats won’t hitch their future in 2014 to a president with only three years left in his term, the Chinese won’t hitch their strategy in becoming the dominant power in SE Asia on weakening a president with only three years left in his last term in office anyway. If the Chinese make a serious move between now and 2016 (and I still don’t buy that they have enough leash with their foreign trading partners or the military power to swing it) it’ll have to be something that will yield tangible results for them as opposed to focusing on demeaning Obama’s prowess or just general hell-raising like you say. Also, just trying to distract us while Iran enriches uranium is a questionable strategy. What does it benefit them? Let’s face it-even China isn’t thrilled about provoking a ginormous war, Israeli intervention, attempted closure of Hormuz, etc. Who does it benefit to destabilize the Middle East? People often assume that China will back up… Read more »
@21 VWP, go choke on a Turkey leg. Nobody wants to pick a scrap with China.
@21-Find me a person on this thread who has been advocating a war with China. Just one.
vwp-every one of us here got everything we wanted at Alice’s Restaurant-including Alice! Turns out that guys like you and Arlo just didn’t have what it took to please her.
Ms. Kennedy,
Don’t be like your grandfather … Regarding the Nazi’s.
Be like your father and draw a line in the sand.
Ah … Sorry to inform everyone here but all War Colleges models have predicted and fully expect an armed conflict with China sometime at or before 2020. Conflict will start over disputed land such as Taiwan and or airspace as indicated above.
Since the relaxing of US Commerce Department regulations in the early 1990’s (thanks Clinton) and China’s systematic frontal assault and theft or every bit of technology developed by the US, China has built a was machine that will challenge the US and allies. This war has already started. DoD 2 years ago said, “we are at war with unfriendly nations” when discussing the cyber realm. We all know who that is, it is China.
So don’t be fooled … China is our enemy, just like Russian Federation, Iran … Oh the French too. I hate the Frnch!
@ 25. Once the US reverses the manufacturing dominance from China to US. I advocate crushing our enemy. If they want a fight … Bring it on. We have been preparing for it since 1945.
@22, Ex-PH2, I’m positive vwp was conceived some night on a payday weekend out behind some shabby bus depot!
MCPO, have you seen the french Battle Flag? It’s a white cross on a white background!
Master Chief, I told my mother 50 years ago that one day, the USA would be at war with China and the Russians would be our allies.
She said that was impossible, the Soviet Union was our enemy.
I corrected her. I said ‘No, Russians. The Soviet Union will die off some day.’
That was because in my high shoocl world history class, we had been going over the Bolshevik Revolution and the resulting loss of middle class and capitalism (which drives an economy UPWARD) and we (my fellow students) knew instinctively that communism was a failure as an economic model and one day the USSR would collapse. I enjoyed rubbing Ma’s nose in it when the USSR did just that.
Russia will be prepared for it. The US may be unprepared.
Sorry, ‘shoocl’ should be ‘school’. A shoocl is where you learn to shoot guns.
No airplanes aboard, no care
Happy thanksgiving everyone! Just finished watching alices restaurant on television, that movie never gets old! They also play alices restaurant massacre on the radio. You can get anything you want at alices restaurant step right in its around the back just a half mile from the railroad tracks! You want to know if I’m moral enough to join the army after littering? By the way right after 9-11 there was a wonderful cartoon of the little napalmed vietnamese girl running down the road with world trade buildings crashing down behind her! No war with china PEACE!
Seriously, it’s a holiday, it’s Jonn’s board, but there are times I just want to dickpunch a hippie fuckstick like you just for the funny noises you’d make.
Again, show me where ANYONE here is calling for war with China. Certainly nobody is calling for it with this administration, given their propensity to fuck up even a wet dream.
Despite what you may hear in the media, the Chinese need us a whole shitload more than we need them. Trade with us alone accounts for nearly 1/8 of their GDP, whereas our exports to them account for less than 1 percent of our GDP.
And go read some Mill, numbnuts.
It is very difficult to assess just who the occupier in chief is pushing to be our first adversary in the next war. No one but him seems to want another war, but he doesn’t seem to care.
@#35. Sparky, let me know if/when you do, I’ll bring the popcorn and adult beverages.
Well, China has sent fighter jets into the airspace near those disputed islands to see who is there.
http://news.msn.com/world/china-sends-fighter-jets-to-new-defense-zone
So, when is China buying its next flattop?
How ’bout a sub? Do I hear a sub? Quick, someone order one from the sub sandwich king!!!
Geez!
China may need us more than we need them; but let’s also not forget that in 1940 Japan’s largest overseas trading partner was the US.