I read about China’s J-20 Stealth Fighter at the Huffington Post. Sinophobes seem to be all a Twitter saying, “The J-20 would pose the greatest immediate threat to Taiwan and undermine the Taiwan air force’s advantages.”
However, the US is currently the only country in the world with operational stealth fighters and bombers, and China is years away from deploying stealth aircraft.
As for China’s aircraft carrier, in April 2009 CCTV reported that China wanted an aircraft carrier and would eventually build their own.
China Businessasks, “Will China’s future aircraft carriers be a threat to other nations?”
In fact, China’s first aircraft carrier is a very old, used Russian-made aircraft carrier and may be operational by 2012.
Wu Huayang, Deputy Political Commissar of the PLA Navy, says China has the economic and technological capacity to build its own aircraft carriers. Western military experts believe that China will eventually build five.
Liang Guanglie, China’s Defense Minister, says, “China will not be the only major country without an aircraft carrier to protect the country’s maritime security.”
Even Japan has an aircraft carrier, its first since World War 2. It was launched in 2009. In fact, Japan is planning to build six-light carriers. Sounds sinister to me. No wonder China wants stealth and aircraft carriers after what the Japanese did to China in World War 2.
An outdated list at Wiki shows that the US has 67 aircraft carriers with 11 in service and the United Kingdom has 40 with two in service. India has two with one in service. Even Thailand has a light aircraft carrier.
For stealth, the US has the F-117 Nighthawk (about 64 were built), the B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber (20 are active), the F-22 Raptor (168 built and 187 planned) and the R-35 Lightning II (13 test flight aircraft).
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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I often find Al Jazeera to be one of the best sources to find unbiased and educational reports of China, and in August 2010, Al Jazeera’s Inside Story questioned if China is attempting to become a major, global military power and if following the US example to modernize the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will achieve this goal.
Inside Story starts out showing a Chinese military parade with troops marching in precision much as I did in the U.S, Marine Corps when taking part in military parades after serving in Vietnam. It’s just that Americans seldom see the American military on parade. Believe me, the precision you will see at the beginning of this Al Jazeera video is no different from military precision in the United States military. The style of how they march may be different but the precision is the same.
While serving in the US Marines 1965 to 1968, I took part in military parades where Marines were required to be perfect while marching, doing drills with unloaded weapons, and standing in the summer heat at attention for hours without batting an eyelid.
If a Marine passed out in the heat, it helped if he or she fell while still standing stiffly at attention all the way to the ground. The chewing out that might come later wouldn’t be as harsh.
Al Jazeera English – Inside Story, Modernizing China’s Military – 23:24 minutes
On the 83rd anniversary of the PLA, the Liberation Army Daily said, “China’s army should modernize to boost combat capability using the US as an example.”
The Liberation Army Daily reported, “History and reality have shown again and again that a country which does not have a world view is a backward one. A military which lacks global vision is one without hope.”
To discuss this issue, Al Jazeera convened three military experts from around the globe: Shunzi Taoka from Japan, Lei Wang of Harvard University, and Richard Weitz of the Hudson Institute in Washington D.C.
Lei Wang says that the topic of a modern military in China is not new. It is a topic that has been discussed in China for centuries. He points out that in the 19th century many countries invaded China, which caused people to rethink how to protect China.
Wang says, modernizing the Chinese military will serve economic achievement, China’s role in global peace keeping, and fighting global terrorism. In fact, Wang points out that Chinese troops are always the first to reach a site in China devastated by a natural catastrophe to provide aid and protection to the people.
Richard Weitz agrees that the Chinese military has been modernizing all through its history, which means more than two thousand years. In fact, the Chinese military was technologically superior to the Roman Empire at the time of the Han Dynasty, and maintained that position for centuries until the 19th century.
Shunzi Taoka says he is not typical Japanese. He says he does not believe in the theory that China is a military threat. He points out that China’s navy is no match for the US, and China’s military expansion is over emphasized.
Lei Wang then says that the key mission of the Chinese military is to protect all of China’s economic development—not to intervene or invade other countries. He says, “It is important to look at the culture of Chinese and to also look at what China has done…” and China is now part of global trade and feels a responsibility to provide global protection for free trade. To achieve that goal, the military must be modern.
When asked about China’s military secrecy, Richard Weitz says that is somewhat understandable. However, he points out, we have seen cooperation. China has become a major contributor to UN global peacekeeping operations on the ground.
Shunzi Taoka says to see China as an enemy of the United States as the Soviet Union was during the Cold War is outdated. China is too heavily invested in America and depends on American trade for its economic development. China is very, very different from the Soviet Union.
In fact, China sponsors the US with economic support.
In summation, all three military experts did not see China as a military threat to other nations.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.
In the Western media, we often hear about America’s leaders and their concerns for the size of China’s military.
Look at these facts and decide why China has a large military. Then you will know why Chinese generals laughed when they heard about the concerns of America’s leaders.
China’s military often has important roles in disasters like the earthquake that struck Southwest China, and the military must deal with violent, internal strife in Tibet and with Islamic extremists in Xinjiang province. It is no secret that there are Cantonese who, after two thousand years, still want to break from Beijing. There has also been unrest in rural China due to the slow pace of lifestyle improvements there.
Soldier carrying injured Chinese girl after major earthquake
America’s total active military equals almost 1% of the population with close to three million men and women in uniform. America has a dozen aircraft carriers, more than fifteen-hundred navy ships, and almost twenty-three thousand military aircraft.
China has less than .25% (that is less than 1% if you missed the decimal) of its population in uniform—a quarter of America’s ratio with about three million troops. China has one aircraft carrier and a navy that is less than half the size of America’s. China’s airforce has about twenty-five hundred aircraft—a ten to one ratio in America’s favor.
Nuclear Weapons—America has 10,000 and China less than 400.
China’s defense budget was about sixty-billion in 2008 compared to more than five-hundred billion spent in the United States. America is spending closer to seven hundred billion this year while China is cutting defense spending due to the world’s economic crises. The Chinese plan to put the money cut from the defense budget into the private sector. Do you think something like that will ever happen in the United States?
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
His latest novel, Running with the Enemy, was awarded an honorable mention in general fiction at the 2013 San Francisco Book Festival.
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