Behind the China Missile Hype

To get things back to the missile hype, what do we know of supporting systems for the DF21 and US ability to install missile traps on the island chains?

Crossbows and gunpowder seem to have been invented independantly in the West (the Chinese contribution was saltpeter that was originally exported as a medicine, not a weapon ingredient). Export bans were on paper produktion technology and silk worms. Both were finally snatched through war and smuggling. The plow was exported without any troubles. China did have an export ban on multi-bow crossbows that were complicated to manufacture, but it's not clear if it was limited know-how or an explicit ban. Other great Chinese inventions are in salt mining (that was possibly invented independantly in the West or after hearsay knowledge). Porcellain production was also tried by the West, but they had no kaolin (notice the still Chinese name for the susbstance), until finding it per chance. The Chinese didn't make much of a secret about porcelain because they only knew one source for the suitable clay (the urine treatment for finer wares was know-how not exported to the Westeners).
Just to list a few examples, Chinese were open in exporting some know-how they didn't consider important and like everyone else guarded other knowledge as secret as possibly because their livelyhood depended on it. In my opinion state bans have much to do with the state participation in the economy.

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I highly doubt that account. That logic can easily be applied to what is accused of China today. I was reading in another forum where it was accused that the Chinese Wing Long UAV is stolen tech from the US Reaper. How did they come up with this conclusion? Simply because it looks similar? If that logic works then you can't say the West developed things independently when China and others have long had whatever long before.

I think I saw on a documentary on US TV that the Vatican had outlawed the crossbow that was from China on the power shift implications of such a weapon in the hands of the "wrong" people in Europe.

AssassinsMace said:

I highly doubt that account. That logic can easily be applied to what is accused of China today. I was reading in another forum where it was accused that the Chinese Wing Long UAV is stolen tech from the US Reaper. How did they come up with this conclusion? Simply because it looks similar? If that logic works then you can't say the West developed things independently when China and others have long had whatever long before.

I think I saw on a documentary on US TV that the Vatican had outlawed the crossbow that was from China on the power shift implications of such a weapon in the hands of the "wrong" people in Europe.

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People usually make that assumption that a lot of 'modern' Chinese military equipment are rip-offs of other, usually Western military equipments simply on three basis: 1. They look alike and perform alike 2. China has been caught spying multiple times 3. China has been caught stealing 'classified' information multiple times.

And no, the Vatican outlawed the Crossbow, but they outlawed 'European' ones, which were more powerful than Chinese leg-drawn ones (IIRC, the European ones had a draw-weight of 1200 lb, while the Qin dynasty leg-drawn ones had a draw-weight of about 360 lb, but historians dispute that, and say that the draw-weight of the Qin dynasty crossbow was 180 lb, and yes, technically speaking they are centuries apart, but Chinese development of Crossbows basically ended during the Song Dynasty regardless), and a reminder, that the crossbow isn't a Chinese monopoly, since the Greeks and Romans themselves developed and produced crossbows without knowledge of the Chinese beforehand.

IronsightSniper said:

People usually make that assumption that a lot of 'modern' Chinese military equipment are rip-offs of other, usually Western military equipments simply on three basis: 1. They look alike and perform alike 2. China has been caught spying multiple times 3. China has been caught stealing 'classified' information multiple times.

And no, the Vatican outlawed the Crossbow, but they outlawed 'European' ones, which were more powerful than Chinese leg-drawn ones (IIRC, the European ones had a draw-weight of 1200 lb, while the Qin dynasty leg-drawn ones had a draw-weight of about 360 lb, but historians dispute that, and say that the draw-weight of the Qin dynasty crossbow was 180 lb, and yes, technically speaking they are centuries apart, but Chinese development of Crossbows basically ended during the Song Dynasty regardless), and a reminder, that the crossbow isn't a Chinese monopoly, since the Greeks and Romans themselves developed and produced crossbows without knowledge of the Chinese beforehand.

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Yeah and the Western governments have vilified China for dealing with rogue nations like Iran only to find out recently that Europe, India, Japan and South Korea are now thinking about limiting their imports of Iranian oil. That's called manipulation of the facts. Where's the proof to link and said performance of China's hardware is the same as said stolen originals. It's like Lou Dobbs when he had his CNN show said that China stole weapons from the US that haven't been developed yet. How do you steal weapons that don't exist? That's said so the US can claim anything China develops in the future as stolen from them. Regarding the crossbow, well since it was an American source that said it was a Chinese crossbow, it has to be true. Just because it performs better that makes a difference? Funny how that wasn't the case when Japan was charged with stealing US tech and they made it perform better than the original. The crossbow is Chinese regardless of what spin.

AssassinsMace said:

Yeah and the Western governments have vilified China for dealing with rogue nations like Iran only to find out recently that Europe, India, Japan and South Korea are now thinking about limiting their imports of Iranian oil. That's called manipulation of the facts. Where's the proof to link and said performance of China's hardware is the same as said stolen originals. It's like Lou Dobbs when he had his CNN show said that China stole weapons from the US that haven't been developed yet. How do you steal weapons that don't exist? That's said so the US can claim anything China develops in the future as stolen from them. Regarding the crossbow, well since it was an American source that said it was a Chinese crossbow, it has to be true. Just because it performs better that makes a difference? Funny how that wasn't the case when Japan was charged with stealing US tech and they made it perform better than the original. The crossbow is Chinese regardless of what spin.

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lol. First things first, the US never claimed China stole anything from them; mostly because no one speaks for the US alone. American citizens however, popularly theorize that the Chinese do indeed steal and rip off their equipment. How much hardproof there is to this is as numerous as there is hardproof as any other discussion on the internet; zip.

The crossbow wasn't Chinese because it was European. The fact that you heard it from a US TV program probably meant you either heard wrong or it wasn't a US TV program. In any case, Pope Innocent II, I should correct myself, only banned crossbows from being used against Christians.

EDIT: I should mention that the crossbows in question were actually of similar draw-weight (350 lb even) to the Qin dynasty leg-drawn ones. The difference was that the European ones could be drawn by your hands and the Qin dynasty ones had to be drawn with both legs.

IronsightSniper said:

lol. First things first, the US never claimed China stole anything from them; mostly because no one speaks for the US alone. American citizens however, popularly theorize that the Chinese do indeed steal and rip off their equipment. How much hardproof there is to this is as numerous as there is hardproof as any other discussion on the internet; zip.

The crossbow wasn't Chinese because it was European. The fact that you heard it from a US TV program probably meant you either heard wrong or it wasn't a US TV program. In any case, Pope Innocent II, I should correct myself, only banned crossbows from being used against Christians.

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If the US has never claimed it, then so the people we hear say it... lie? Many in the government claim China steals all the way up to the President. Didn't he just talk about intellectual property rights in his latest State of the Union speech?

I don't watch anything else but Western TV since I live in the US and I don't speak any other language well. So it was a US program. Joseph Needham, the director of Needham Research Institute of Cambridge University, will tell you otherwise.

When those caucasion mummies were found in what is Western China today, people were saying Europeans actually invented everything that was thought to be Chinese. They even claimed Europeans introduced the wheel to China. Did they have any proof of this? Nope. And who were these mummies? They said they were a bunch of nomads that "borrowed," aka stole, from different cultures in the region. But somehow they concluded that everything Chinese is actually European because these mummies discovered in China were from a people who stole what they could from all different cultures in the region that wasn't anywhere near Europe.

AssassinsMace said:

I highly doubt that account. That logic can easily be applied to what is accused of China today. I was reading in another forum where it was accused that the Chinese Wing Long UAV is stolen tech from the US Reaper. How did they come up with this conclusion? Simply because it looks similar? If that logic works then you can't say the West developed things independently when China and others have long had whatever long before.

I think I saw on a documentary on US TV that the Vatican had outlawed the crossbow that was from China on the power shift implications of such a weapon in the hands of the "wrong" people in Europe.

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The crossbow can be tracked in Europe via the Greek gastraphetes and oxybeles. These were improved into the ballista that was produced from individual missile weapons to siege artillery sizes. In the Middle Ages the ballista was further improved on the Iberian peninsula into the esprignal that in turn competed with the Medieval crossbow. In Europe there's a great discussion about the crossbow-gap in between findings and sources from the battle of Hastings and the Late Roman Age. it has not yet been solved, but linguistically there are clear signs for a continued use of the concept in some Romanized areas, albeit calling the crossbow "ballista".
In China they used a very different approach to crossbows with a long draw length, several bolts and even the very successful repeating crossbow. But there are no signs that specific mutual inventions influenced each other. Multiple bow weapons and the repeating crossbow of Chinese design (we had our own much more complicated design in the West that never worked) are not known in the Western part of Eurasia and torsion artillery is not known form the Eastern parts of Eurasia. This may have to do with the people in between who rode small horses, used bows while mounted and the closest they got to crossbows was by arrowglides to their bows.

It's an often repeated myth that the Vatican outlawed crossbows. There are several different versions of the corresponding council and none explicitly outlaws crossbows. All of them are adverse to the use of missile weapons against Christians. The church had no qualms with butchering non-Christians, including Christian heretics. You have to see these documents in the light of the papal struggle for a peace of God with the aggressiveness within the Christian community directed to more noble tasks than infighting - go on a crusade. As the English (archers) and Scandinavian (crossbowmen) massed missile troops were to proof the social order, based on nobles as heavy cavalry with close combat weapons only, could be threatened by these weapons and the high clergy (they were the younger brothers of the nobles) had preached that order as God's will. Wilhelm Tell and Robin Hood are famous insurgents against that order who relied on the mastery of their missile weapons.
You could compare the situation to the enforced disarmaments of Chinese armed border peasant communities that provided excellent archers, but had the potential to rebel against the Son of Heaven and his order and wreak havoc with their bows.

What Europeans definitely hold the Chinese accountable for are the iron stirrups that created our knightly nobility in the first place and it took us quite a lot of bloodshed to get rid of them again. But this system could have also worked with the Celtic horned sattles we already had, although a stirrup is much better. It seems you just send us as stirrups and nothing to shoot the guys using them.

But we should open a new threat for this because it has little to do with the DF21.

And this is why nothing you guys claim can be as conclusive as you make it. You guys are on a slippery slope and as I've demonstrated your logic can be easily be turned against you and all we get is more spin. You even admit that there are different versions or no one in an "official" capacity charges China steals? So we're supposed to go by what you say as official? And who are you?

It's clear now that these guys are just looking for excuses to peddle their views. They are not interested in the discussion or subject, only in spreading prejeduce and cares little if little inconvenient things like facts and history get in their way.

It is pointless trying to reason with them, best just to ignore them and actually discuss what most people came in this thread to discuss.

What I find ironic is that Americans conveniently forget that many Chinese (as well as other nationalities such as Germans and Ex-Soviets) scientists and engineers helped pioneer many of their touted innovations. The same calibre of people now work for China, how else would China be able to developed so rapidly in 30 years. Remember China was poorer than Ethiopia on the eve of the cultural revolution, China is now miles ahead of India or just about every other developing country. Lets not forget that the Chinese diaspora is 50 million, so if you want to attribute China's success to anyone it will have to be another Chinese.