Political and Military Analysis on China

ABC78 said:

China's Role as a Global Power
May 14, 2013

Sidney Rittenberg talked about U.S. relations with China, its new leadership and international role, and where he thinks the nation is headed both politically and economically. Sidney Rittenberg is the co-author of the book, The Man Who Stayed Behind. Mr. Rittenberg was sent to China as a linguist for the U.S. Army during World War II. After the war he decided to stay in China, where he remained for more than 30 years. He became politically active, eventually joining the country’s Communist Party and worked with many of its leaders including Mao Zedong. He was imprisoned twice by the government for 16 years during China’s Cultural Revolution on accusations of being a foreign spy. The Washington State China Relations Council hosted this event in Seattle.

Rittenberg was also a friend of Xi Zhongxun father of Xi Jinping

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Dolcevita said:

Long but Good Stuff

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China sees American sea power in East Asian waters as threatening to itself, its regional aspirations, and possibly its global access. So it is mounting a challenge with anti-ship missiles, submarines, and a growing fleet of its own. However, the United States will not relinquish its sea power, which it sees as needed to maintain its influence and stability, despite China's growing might, in this vital region.

History shows that rivalries between established and rising sea powers tend to end badly, to wit: Britain versus Germany before World War I and the United States versus Japan before World War II. In this case, technology that enables the targeting of surface ships, especially aircraft carriers, favors the challenger, China. The United States can exploit technology more boldly than it has previously to make its sea power less vulnerable by relying more on submarines, drones, and smaller, elusive, widely distributed strike platforms. Yet, such a U.S. strategy could take decades and even then be vulnerable to Chinese cyber-war.

Therefore, in parallel with making its sea power more survivable, the United States should propose an alternative to confrontation at sea: East Asian multilateral maritime-security cooperation, with China invited to join. While China might be wary that such a regional arrangement would be designed to contain and constrain it, the alternative of exclusion and isolation could induce China to join...

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advill said:

Shows how accommodating the Americans are. This ex-US citizen (?), a member of the Communist Party is definitely pro-China, regardless of having been imprisoned for several years by the Chinese for being an American Spy. Well, good to hear him about his thinking of present-day PRC - after all that's what democracy is all about...... However, I wonder if any Chinese dissidents, exiled in the US would be allowed to speak at a forum in Beijing? Perhaps one day, when there are enlightened Chinese leaders.

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In this month's influential Communist Party magazine Qiushi Journal, General Liu Yazhou wrote that the People's Liberation Army continued to be held back by the same blind adherence to past practice that led to the Qing dynasty's downfall.

Liu, who is political commissar at the National Defence University, argued that the refusal to set aside "old thinking" left the army at risk, despite huge advances in equipment and technology in recent years.

"The most backward army is not the poorly equipped one, but the one filled up with old thinking," Liu wrote. He called on the party to remove barriers to innovation and spend less time on political training and propaganda campaigns exaggerating the military's capabilities.

The army "should try hard to awake from its obsession with self-proclaimed glories, such as [China is] a 'resourceful superpower', and [the PLA is] a 'victory troop'," Liu said. It is not the first time Liu - the son-in-law of late president Li Xiannian - has sounded the alarm for change in the country's institutions.

His 2004 essay "Western Theory" called on Beijing to enact political reform. Three years ago, he gave an interview to the Phoenix Weekly in which he said China must embrace US-style democracy or risk a Soviet-style collapse.

This month, Ming Pao Monthly reported that Liu had published a "manifesto of military reform" in 2008 carrying a similar call for change in the PLA.

In this latest commentary, Liu steered clear of the sensitive term "democracy". Instead, he called on the Communist Party to seize what he said might be its last chance to push "military reform with Chinese characteristics".

He argued that such reform was consistent with President Xi Jinping's orders to "listen to the party, be capable of victory". Ho Leong-leong, a Hong Kong-based political commentator, said Liu appeared to be using such slogans to help ensure party members heard his central point.

"The so-called Chinese characteristics in this article are just political rhetoric aimed at passing the censorship of the party's mouthpiece Qiushi," Ho said. Ni Lexiong , a Shanghai-based military expert, also saw Liu's commentary as a call for political reform. It was warning that the military was heading for another humiliating defeat if it failed to make political reform part of its modernisation drive.

"Political reform will provide a sustainable political foundation to support military development, because both the US and Japan achieved great military achievements after they successfully set up democratic systems," Ni said.

Liu noted the Chinese military had missed out on the last two big revolutions on military technology: the widespread use of firearms in the 17th century and the mechanisation of warfare after the first world war.

He said military technology in such countries as the United States was now undergoing a similar revolution, with a greater focus on cyberwarfare and a shift to smaller military units that can be deployed quickly to any environment. Failing to recognise such changes would be to repeat the mistakes of the Qing dynasty.

The authorities "would inevitably face resistance, risk, unrest and cost," he said. "If [leaders] take [political] cost and risk too seriously, they will be overcautious and indecisive and miss their last historic opportunity."

Antony Wong Dong, a Macau-based military expert, said Liu's articles could be seen as an attempt to scare the party into introducing political reform.

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Equation said:

Or what about Edward Snowden, or Julian Assange get a chance to talk about real democracy in a Washington forum without getting persecuted by the US government? Maybe than Capital Hill will finally stop obeying their 1%er masters and be more enlightened to listened to the common masses (middle class and tax payers) for once.

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