October 23, 2024 - 10:00am
Last week, while inspecting a brigade of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Rocket Force, President Xi Jinping urged the group in charge of China’s nuclear capabilities to boost its readiness for battle and deterrence capabilities. Although this is not the first time that Xi has exhorted the PLA to be “ready to win wars”, the CCP leader now seems set on sending a clear signal to the West.
One reason for this is that the Rocket Force suffered a series of purges of its leadership almost a year ago. A second factor is timing. Last month, China successfully tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile launched in the Pacific for the first time in decades, an important milestone for the same Rocket Force that was rumoured to be filling missiles with water instead of fuel a few months ago.
Some have argued that the PLA corruption problems reported earlier this year weren’t real, and that China has been playing a kind of 4D chess by disseminating information about its army’s incompetence. Really, though, the PLA has deep-seated problems, but China is working to fix them. Xi’s directive to Rocket Force members to strengthen deterrence and discipline following a recent purge signals his resolve to prove he can improve China’s military power — not a decade from now, but today.
This focus on the Rocket Force’s deterrence capabilities shows that Xi wants Beijing’s rivals to take China seriously. The key of nuclear weapons is not to launch a surprise attack, but instead to avoid any situation in which they are needed. These arms are all about deterrence, and if you want to deter an opponent they must know you are capable of fighting back, rather than thinking your rockets are filled with water. This is the crux of Xi’s deal with the Rocket Force.
Xi has always wanted China to be taken seriously on the international stage, but now it may be more a matter of survival than pride. The uncertainty surrounding the national economy and the extension of Ukraine’s war front to East Asia — with rumours of North Korean troops deployed to aid Russia — might push China into an escalation where the PLA cannot afford to be unprepared.
The presidential visit to the Rocket Force followed a week of military drills around Taiwan due to the Chinese national day earlier this month. If in the past China would normally opt to swarm Taiwan’s airspace with hundreds of aircrafts, it now seems that the preferred method of intimidation involves a full naval encirclement, which is much closer to how a real invasion of the island would look.
Whether Xi intends to make good on his promise to reclaim Taiwan any time soon, or pressures the island’s government to maintain the status quo, he needs Western leaders to understand the enormous cost they would face if they intervene. He is also aware that regardless of who emerges victorious in the US election, once the dust settles he will be dealing with a new president aiming to look tough on China. In any case, Xi knows that if the CCP aims to have a “world-class army” by 2050, China’s armed forces must be ready to win wars by 2025.
Miquel Vila is a political consultant specialising in international affairs. He is also the executive director of the Catalonia Global Institute.
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SubscribeChina poses no threat whatsoever to the UK or its vital interests.
However no doubt the UK’s ruling “elite” will get the UK involved, pretending that the UK is a world policeman. It isn’t and shouldn’t try to be one.
It’s a tad awkward to join in when your entire energy policy depends on China.
What on earth are you on about ?
How does the UK’s energy policy depend on China ?
If anything, China is vitally dependent on oil and gas imports and – also being the world’s largest exporter – is the nation least able to deal with international trade disruptions.
China’s currently getting a free ride precisely because the US Navy guarantees the sea lanes and world trade. They get all the benefits and pay none of the costs.
Virtually all the world’s solar panels are made in China. Most of the wind turbine blades are made in China. Most of the world’s EV batteries are made in China and those that aren’t get their components from China. Many of the minerals required for electric motors come from China or a Chinese client state and 90% of global mineral processing happens in China.
That’s why UK energy policy depends on China.
Solar panels are not today a critical part of ourt energy policy. Nor are they difficult to manufacture here if we decided to do that.
Rare earth minerals are not rare at all and could be mined in many countries other than China. The US used to mine all of them 50 years ago.
I think it might be more correct to say that UK *renewable energy* policy depends on UK energy pricing. Since energy costs for UK industry are one of the most important reasons UK production is too expensive.
As usual in the UK, these are largely unforced policy errors that could be easily corrected – if we had sensible, practical politicians and civil servants.
Aye, there’s the rub.
Who ought, if anyone, to police the world and safeguard precious democratic freedoms over which vast amounts of blood has been shed?
Given the rise of corrupt, unaccountable, violent, technocratic demagogues who control mass media channels and horde power for themselves, considering it nothing to threaten, infiltrate, intimidate, torture, imprison, murder and / or execute anyone who ‘opposes’ their ‘rule’….
In answer to your question…not the UK, which should look after its own people and interests. How others govern themselves is not the business of the UK.
Are you taking about the USA?
Only candidate.
As we’ve seen in Washington for at least a generation, whichever party is in power there.
At the very core of China’s state ideology is the memory of the century of humiliation and impoverishment inflicted on China by the predatory western imperial powers in the 19th and 20th Centuries. At the forefront of the imperialist rape of China was Britain: the Opium Wars stand out as among the worst acts of vicious bastardry ever seen in international affairs. The Chinese have every right to seek revenge, one way or another, and the UK “ruling elite” know in their bones that it will come to them sooner or later.
I doubt revenge is the foremost motive.
China probably seeks the respect and authority that being one of the greatest powers is accorded. Any emotional satisfaction at the position will be merely ancillary.
Europe will reach net zero double quick. First, offshore your manufacturing to China. Second, shutter your native energy supply sources and plan to replace them with new ones dependent on China. Lastly, get involved in a conflageration with China that will severely disrupt supply chains we depend on for goods and energy. Hey presto, consumption curtailed and it’s all the fault of “circumstances” and those dastardly Chinese.
Why else would European governments apply taxes to domestic industry that aren’t applied to imports from Chinese industry? It doesn’t help the planet. It doesn’t help the tax base. It doesn’t help you win elections. And it doesn’t help Europeans.
Getting rid of nuclear power? minus 5% GDP
Forcing intermittent renewables onto your grid? minus10% GDP
Replacing your combustion engine car industry with Chinese EVs? minus 10% GDP
Having an ally who blows up your gas supply? Priceless
Some things money can’t buy.
For everything else, there’s the American Empire.
President Biden has done quite a bit to protect the United States from China. One —bipartisan—bill is already in motion for manufacturing semi-conductors, chips and other components/equipment back to the United States. Green technologies are also being used and manufactured in the United States. Whatever you think about alternative energy, it is creating jobs, and bringing components back here (it was also a bipartisan bill).
The only jobs we’ve seen so far, after billions spent, are sketchy door to door salesmen offering to glue panels of glass onto our roofs.
Seven and a half billion was spent on charging stations – resulting in exactly seven charging stations, for example.
Huge amounts of debt and massive amounts of inflation are the only consequences we’ve seen from Biden’s Green Leap Forward, all in the cause of preventing a far off, highly conjectural maybe.
Hopefully in November we’ll step away from this sophomoric madness.
What a load of codswallop
Go study Chinese military history
They are not in the business of starting wars
Their whole modus Operandi is about ending Wars
A absolute certainty about war is that it
Matters not how battles you lose
It’s the Last battle you win
And always that winner is the one
Who can replenish their Personnel and equipment losses not only the fastest but in a ever expanding manner
Two little examples for you The Pentagon have openly stated that China is 428 times more efficient
In Naval ship building than the USA
Last after successful trials China
Commissioned new Assault rifles ,
Light and heavy machine guns to the PLA
What were the Numbers
1. Assault rifles 1.2 million
2 Light machine guns 280, 000
3. Heavy Machine guns 88000
What was the time scale from placement or order and receipt by
The PLA 29 days
Furthermore The J 20 stealth fighter of which upon its 1 St induction Western Air Warfare experts had a good old belly laugh
And said it’s heavy Airframe was completely the wrong way to go
Well as usual those who laugh first
Laugh Last
The Pentagon now acknowledge that due to its heavy Airframe unlike the light F 35 plagued with soaring
Upgrade and maintainence costs
And still awaits a decision upon a new engine
Stating that the J20 is a formidable
Enemy with it greater speed , operational time / distance, ability to fly higher and far faster for long periods , heavier weapon load and crammed with the latest radars and jammers etc
All attributed to it’s heavy Airframe
That in a cost effective and rapid manner accommodates updates as required
China is effectively putting into service 120 / annum J 20 , S
Far less the rapid development of
A Sixth generation fighter both for
Carrier and Land based operations
Unreadable. Use normal punctuation and spacing please.
It’s not the weapon. It’s the soldier that wields it.
One of the great historic slogans of the Chinese PLA in the days when they took on supposedly better resourced Kuomintang troops .
Fewer and fewer young people are joining the military here in the United States, and those who join are in terrible shape—physically and mentally. Basic training has become a joke. I could do it, and I’m out of shape, old and suffer from chronic pain. I taught seniors in high school, and years back I had a student who proudly told me that she had been accepted into the marines. She was obese. When I lifted my jaw up from the floor, I said “That’s amazing” (that she was going to defend our country. We’re doomed.
The West supports a one China policy so we should not expect to see a war if (or more likely when) China insists on uniting Taiwan with Beijing. Xi probably wants the re-unification of China to be his crowning glory.
I didn’t know that the West supports a one China policy.
Presumably the West hopes that that One China will come about when the Nationalist regime emerges from its last redoubt – Taiwan – and reconquers the mainland that it lost in 1949?
If that’s what the West wants I think it’s going to be disappointed.
At present US supports the ‘One China Policy’ according to agreement:The United States’ One-China policy was first stated in the Shanghai Communiqué of 19721. The policy acknowledges that Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States does not challenge that position1.
But as we know the US often makes it’s own rules. The red line for China will be if US decides to support Taiwan independence. And with the ‘Hawks’ of Washington it is possible.
They’d be fools not to prepare, given what’s being aimed at them. Maybe they’ve learned something from how things were ramped up against Russia.