Some lingering issuese: China’s steady economic growth — and its military might and when it could use it….which could be sooner than many think if Bill Gertz is correct.
Gertz, the Washington Times’ writer with solid military and intelligence sources, offers a troubling piece that basically says China is developing militarily at a break-neck pace and could move to take over Taiwan — a move that could spark military confrontation with the United States:
China is building its military forces faster than U.S. intelligence and military analysts expected, prompting fears that Beijing will attack Taiwan in the next two years, according to Pentagon officials.
U.S. defense and intelligence officials say all the signs point in one troubling direction: Beijing then will be forced to go to war with the United States, which has vowed to defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack.
China’s military buildup includes an array of new high-technology weapons, such as warships, submarines, missiles and a maneuverable warhead designed to defeat U.S. missile defenses. Recent intelligence reports also show that China has stepped up military exercises involving amphibious assaults, viewed as another sign that it is preparing for an attack on Taiwan.
“There’s a growing consensus that at some point in the mid-to-late ’90s, there was a fundamental shift in the sophistication, breadth and re-sorting of Chinese defense planning,” said Richard Lawless, a senior China-policy maker in the Pentagon. “And what we’re seeing now is a manifestation of that change in the number of new systems that are being deployed, the sophistication of those systems and the interoperability of the systems.”
If you boil it down, more than ever it means: big trouble for Taiwan, a challenge for U.S. policy makers and a call for the military to have lots of scenarios ready…just in case:
China’s economy has been growing at a rate of at least 10 percent for each of the past 10 years, providing the country’s military with the needed funds for modernization.
The combination of a vibrant centralized economy, growing military and increasingly fervent nationalism has transformed China into what many defense officials view as a fascist state.
“We may be seeing in China the first true fascist society on the model of Nazi Germany, where you have this incredible resource base in a commercial economy with strong nationalism, which the military was able to reach into and ramp up incredible production,” a senior defense official said.
For Pentagon officials, alarm bells have been going off for the past two years as China’s military began rapidly building and buying new troop- and weapon-carrying ships and submarines.
Bottom line: Watching China’s economy, its military development and any news coming out of China is now more important than ever. And its also more important than ever for the United States to shore up enduring alliances to counter any possible future China threat.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.