June 30, 2006
Going nuclear

UK considered China nuclear attack to defend the Big Lychee from the Commies back in 1961. 20 years later Maggie decided to defend the Falklands without bombing Buenos Aires. And ironically 30 years later Mother England was busy creating new forms of quasi-citizenship to avoid a "flood" of Hong Kongers leaving the place pre-handover. That's tough love.

Update

Could it be a case of picking on someone your own size?

show comments right here »

[boomerang] Posted by Simon at 13:10
Permalink | Speak Up (16) | TrackBack (0)





June 28, 2006
Having a go

China's foremost sports commentator, Huang Jianxiang, is in trouble after getting a little carried away with Italy's last gasp, controversial win over Australia in the World Cup. What did he say?

"Grosso done it! He done it! Great Italian left back! Grosso alone represents the long history and tradition of Italian soccer! He is not fighting alone at the moment!" he continued. "Totti! He is about to take the shot! He shoulders the expectations of the whole world! It's a goal! Game over! Italy didn't fall to Hiddink's team this time! (Hiddink led South Korea to knock out Italy in the 2002 World Cup). Happy birthday to Paolo Maldini (born on July 26)! Long Live Italy!"

Huang then turned to the Socceroos and yelled,"Go home! Go home! But they don't need to fly back to Australia. It's too far away. Most of them live in Europe anyway. Bye-bye!"

Huang was not repentant for his controversial comments in the satellite linkup with the Beijing live program after match. "I am a human being, not a machine, and I can't be impartial all the time," he explained while being interviewed. "Australia reminded me of a lousy team which eliminated China in the 1981 World Cup qualifiers. Australia is just like New Zealand team that beat us in 1981," he explained. "It (Australia) is full of neutralized Australians who play and live in Britain. I don't care about the Australian team and don't want to see Australia have good results."

"Australia (which has joined the Asian Football Confederation) will fight for an Asian World Cup berth and it may not be good enough to contend with South Korea and Japan. But it will very likely take advantage of the Chinese team. So I don't like it."

Neutralized Australians? With Prime Minister John Howard currently shopping in Shenzhen, that doesn't bode well for my compatriots. Huang has now apologized. If he is so passionate about Italy, one shudders to think what he would be like if China had actually made the finals.

Meanwhile, in the interests of bringing you the finest from the China Daily, a NSFW gallery of nude photography in Hunan. Good to see the clampdown on "indecent" websites is paying off.

show comments right here »

[boomerang] Posted by Simon at 08:29
Permalink | Speak Up (17) | TrackBack (0)





June 27, 2006
Linkage

A couple of links:

1. Curzon from CA has posted an incredible travelogue of his journey from Vietnam, through China and onto Japan. It's an excellent combination of photos, commentary, history, thoughts and even sounds. It also demonstrates the difference between travelling and a journey.

2. Our "those crazy Japanese videos" deparment (via The 88s, who surmises "laowai with bras on their heads are very dangerous").

show comments right here »

[boomerang] Posted by Simon at 11:11
Permalink | Speak Up (3) | TrackBack (0)





June 26, 2006
News not fit to print*

The biggest story in the Hong Kong at the moment is one you won't find the pages of the SCMP.


* In English language papers.

show comments right here »

[boomerang] Posted by Simon at 13:21
Permalink | Speak Up (1) | TrackBack (0)





Monopoly money

China is busy considering an anti-monopoly law as another mark in its evolution towards a market economy. One can overlook the irony of a nominally Communist country introducing such a law. One can marvel at the differences between China's opening economy and its closed political monopoly. The article says:

"The aim of the law is to protect fair competition, prevent and check monopolistic behavior and maintain an orderly market place," Xinhua News Agency said of the draft law Saturday.

The draft law bans monopolistic agreements such as price-fixing and other forms of collusion, while providing guidelines on investigating and prosecuting monopolistic practices.

Meanwhile, supposed laissez-faire and free-wheeling Hong Kong has no such law despite cartels in everything from petrol retailing to supermarkets to property.

show comments right here »

[boomerang] Posted by Simon at 08:55
Permalink | Speak Up (4) | TrackBack (0)





June 24, 2006
Marx v. Mohammed

"In the left corner, in the red shorts, we have the Rabble-rouser of the Rhineland, the Terror of Trier, KAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRLLLL MARRRX! And in the right corner, in the green shorts, worn over the black salwar kameez, we have the Defender of the Faith, the Mac Daddy of Mecca, the MUUUUHHH-HHHAMMMAD!"

I thought it a Kapital joke today when I read about how some Muslim extremist fanatics were decrying the World Cup and the 'opium of football', and a 'plot aiming to corrupt Muslim youth and district them from jihad.'

It reminded me of the dour London-based German Karl Marx, who decried religions like Islam 'the opiate of the people'. It seems that the narcotic effect of religion (although fundamentalist Islam seems a bit more of a stimulant) is unequal to the oblivion-inducing result of the beautiful game.

What's wrong with a little opiate now and again, anyway?

show comments right here »

[boomerang] Posted by HK Dave at 16:07
Permalink | Speak Up (3) | TrackBack (0)





June 22, 2006
Vroom, vroom

Donald Tsang today paid special praise to Hong Kong's traffic network, believing that Hong Kong's competitive advantage comes from its traffic network.

I don't dispute that efficiency is key to Hong Kong's success. But it seems to me that sort of thinking, and the free rein government gives to the traffic and roads planning department, is the reason that all city planning is led by the nose by the road builders. That's why we have the most beautiful harbour in the world yet don't have a harbourfront promenade worth walking down. It's why a small proposed park in Wanchai will only be accessible through an underpass, and the initial plans for a park on the Central waterfront will not be put on top of buildings. That's also why streetside road pollution continues to clog our lungs.

I fear when reading this article that the top leadership of Hong Kong still haven't gotten the message - that the road planners cannot any longer be the key determinants of how our city looks. If anyone can refute my pessimism, please indulge me.

show comments right here »

[boomerang] Posted by HK Dave at 15:27
Permalink | Speak Up (3) | TrackBack (0)





King Don

It is time to draw one conclusion about Donald Tsang: he is a political genius. He's managed to turn West Kowloon into a non-issue. He managed to propose partial democratic reforms that he knew the democrat camp had to oppose, making them the blockage to further changes and securing the status quo for the next election cycle. He's been lucky enough to preside at a time where there are no killer diseases or stock market crashes (yet). He's won the praise of his masters in Beijing and even managed to silence the local pro-Beijing crowd, who accept him because they have to, no because they want to. Legco will approve his boondoggle: the new Tamar government HQ. The flimsy justifications continue, as Hemlock reports today:

is an article by construction workers’ union boss Choi Chun-wa in the South China Morning Post arguing that the Tamar project is essential as it will create 2,500 jobs for his gruff, sweaty, grimy, horny handed, malodorous members.

According to my trusty Casio magic solar-powered calculator, that adds up to a mere HK$2,040,000 per job. For that, we could give 5,000 unskilled, underemployed members of our workforce who can’t afford to live here a million dollars each plus a one-way ticket back to their mainland pig farms, thus relieving our heartbreaking underclass-in-poverty problem and improving the dreadful, Third World gini coefficient at a stroke. When the gap between rich and poor is measured in hundreds of miles, everyone will be happy.

When The Don tucks his legs under his new desk from his top floor corner office in this $5 billion building, he'll be entitled to smile and reflect on his success as a politician.

show comments right here »

[boomerang] Posted by Simon at 13:06
Permalink | Speak Up (5) | TrackBack (0)





June 21, 2006
Oops

From Manchuria to the moon: Editor's Note: A previous version of this story included a graphic of the Japanese flag instead of the Chinese flag. We regret the error.

One can see how the flags of Japan and China got mixed up, them being so similar and all.

Thanks to MM for the find.

Update LfC managed to save a screenshot of Japan's conquest of China's moon.

show comments right here »

[boomerang] Posted by Simon at 22:01
Permalink | Speak Up (3) | TrackBack (0)





The looming China crisis

George Friedman at StratFor is not a believer in the Chinese economic boom. He looks at the problems China faces in its transition to a market economy, models for dealing with these problems and the domestic and international political implications. You may not agree with his analysis but it's thought-provoking reading.

China: Crisis and Implications
By George Friedman

The Chinese government is continuing efforts to cope with its runaway economy. The People's Bank of China has raised interest rates. Banks have been told to curb lending. The government has said that it will implement procedures to rein in foreign acquisitions at low prices -- or, in other words, to block fire-sales of Chinese companies. As a recent headline in the Japan Times put it, "China's Monetary Surge Dooms Its Boom."

A lot of things have gone into dooming China's boom, and the money surge is one of the more immediate problems. However, as we have argued (and this article should be read in the context of past analyses), the end of the Chinese boom was inevitable. The issue now is how all of this will play out in China and in the world.

What must be understood is that China now is moving from an economic problem to a socio-political one. The financial problem is a symptom; the fundamental problem is that tremendous irrationality has been built into the Chinese economy. Enterprises that are not economically viable continue to function through infusions of cash. Some of the cash comes from borrowing, some by exporting at economically unsustainable prices. The result is a squandering of resources. The reasons that this continues have nothing to do with economic rationalism and everything to do with political and social reality.

If interest rates were to rise and lending were to become disciplined, many of China's enterprises would fail. This would bring several consequences.

The rest is continued below the jump.

First, and most important, it would result in a massive increase in unemployment. At this point, the irrationality has been going on for years. It is not only state-owned enterprises that are economically unsustainable; many newer enterprises, including those in which Western companies have invested, are not succeeding. When we look at the figures for nonperforming and troubled loans, they amount to nearly half of China's gross domestic product. That represents a lot of irrationality, a lot of financial failures and a lot of unemployment. And unemployment is a political and social problem. The question is whether China politically can afford the economic solution.

Second, lending has become a system for maintaining the political solidarity of China's elite. Loans have been made not only to avoid the problem of unemployment; they also were made as part of political arrangements that allowed the Chinese Communist Party and regional party organizations to avoid conflict and divisions. As long as the pie was growing, everyone could have a piece. But if the pie starts contracting, there will be losers and winners. The question of who will go bankrupt and who will not will become a highly divisive and potentially destabilizing political crisis. Again, the economic solution -- austerity -- and political reality may run counter to each other.

Obviously, China has massive cash reserves. These may not be massive enough to cover the financial crisis, but they are sufficient to allow the government to put off addressing the problem for a while. China also has the ability to promulgate rules and regulations that allow bankrupt entities to continue functioning. However, it always must be remembered that on the other side of a bad loan is a damaged creditor. A loan that can be deferred by fiat is an asset that can no longer be used. When you avoid economic disaster for the debtor, you transfer the pain -- and potentially the disaster -- to the creditor. And since the creditor is normally the economically healthier entity, you postpone the death of the weak by weakening the strong. The more you do this, the worse it becomes. Thus, whether the Chinese use cash reserves to postpone the problem or use regulation to do so, the net result will be buying time at the cost of increased pain.

China's Likely Path

Asia has been here before. Japan encountered this problem around 1990, and East and Southeast Asia encountered it in 1997. Roughly three models for dealing with the problem exist:

* Japan model: Use reserves and formal and informal measures to avoid actions that would trigger massive bankruptcies and unemployment. Accept economic stagnation for the better part of a generation.

* South Korea model: Move rapidly to restructure the economy, using economic and political means. Control social unrest with security measures. Move out of the problem in a matter of years.

* Indonesia model: Lacking resources to manage the crisis, suffer both financial dysfunction and political strife among the elite and between regions.

Japan was able to do what it did because it is a highly disciplined, cohesive society, in which shared pain is viewed as preferable to social dislocation. South Korea was able to do what it did because the magnitude of its crisis was relatively less than Japan's, and because the state had the means for suppressing unhappiness. Indonesia failed to do what it needed to do because it lacked resources and political power.

Other countries have fallen somewhere along this continuum. China will make its own path. However, it should be pointed out that China is not socially similar to either Japan or South Korea. Like Indonesia, China is a diverse and divided nation. The Communist Party lost its moral standing in the 1970s. As with Suharto's government, its legitimacy now derives from the fact that it has created prosperity. When prosperity slows down or stops, the Party cannot fall back on inherent legitimacy, as was the case with the system in Japan. And the wildly diverse levels of economic development make a single, integrated solution, as was used in South Korea, unlikely. The most likely direction for China, therefore, is massive social and political instability.

Now, the Communist Party may lack moral authority, but it does wield tremendous power. The People's Liberation Army and the various security forces are an enormous presence in China. Indeed, the government already is using its security forces aggressively, cracking down on dissent and against at least some business leaders, in anticipation of coming troubles. The ability to suppress unrest is not trivial. Therefore, the most likely path for China in a post-boom environment is to increase suppression and reimpose systematic dictatorship.

This is not an absolute given. There are many in the Party who now are arguing that China has abandoned its Communist principles and its social base. In other words, they want to reach out to the peasants in the interior, who have benefited little from the boom and who resent the prosperity of the coastal regions. The idea is to use these peasants in a process of renationalization -- or, at least, a process in which the free market is dramatically limited and at least some of the wealth is redistributed.

This goal makes little economic sense, but what China needs economically is unsupportable socially and politically. Imposing a crushing austerity for five to ten years would solve the economic problem, but it is unlikely that the political center could hold. Indeed, if the Chinese were to follow this course, they could do it only with massive political suppression at the same time.

The Party's Tangled Web

Therefore, one likely path is the reimposition of dictatorship, followed by whatever economic solutions the leadership might want to make. But there is a problem here: The interests of Party and People's Liberation Army leaders in Shanghai diverge from those of the central government. These leaders are deeply involved in the financial process of the coastal area, in bringing in foreign investment, in taking advantage of the nonmarket access to capital. They have no inclination to stop. Indeed, their wish is to see the irrational boom continue as long as possible.

There are splits in the interests of regional Party leaders, as well as a split between the regions and Beijing. The interests of coastal leaders lie not with Beijing so much as with Tokyo, New York and London. They have integrated themselves in the international financial system, and they are busy making plans for sustaining their regional enterprises in the event of a crisis. Meanwhile, Party leaders from the interior are demanding that these actions be stopped and that investment flow to their regions instead. Beijing is riding two horses that are running in very different directions.

Beijing well might fall off the horses. China has a history of cycling between a dictatorial system that closes it off from the world (a poor, but equal and stable China) and a system in which China is open to the world but torn apart from the inside out. Consider: Mao marched into the interior, raised a peasant army, came back and liquidated the internationalist bourgeoisie in 1948. He closed off the country and united it, throwing out the foreigners. Under the other model, preceding Mao, the country was open to foreigners, who tore it apart in regional conflicts while the interior starved.

The end result of China's economic crisis, therefore, will be a deep-seated political crisis. Only ever-increasing amounts of money have allowed China to maintain the current political alignment. Without that, it has two options. The first is a return to some sort of dictatorship from Beijing, under which economic problems would be dealt with inefficiently but unambiguously. The other is to accept a split between the coastal regions and the interior, the weakening of Beijing's authority and a period of instability and intense regionalism. It all depends on the political moves Beijing is making now, but our bet would be on the latter course. The instruments of power that Beijing has are too complicit in the financial crisis, and have too many diverging interests, to make the first option likely.

Geopolitics and Ripple Effects

Two possible geopolitical models emerge from this. Under one -- in its extreme form -- China returns to some sort of geopolitical Maoism. It encloses itself from the world, becomes increasingly bellicose but is limited by its own geography in what it can do. Under the other model, China slowly fragments and becomes a cockpit for the ambitions of foreign economic interests -- backed up by political and military power, with regional Chinese officials collaborating with foreigners to continue economic development. Oddly, the latter model would be more destabilizing to the world than the former, inasmuch as everyone will want to maintain their investments in China and expand them. In this scenario, China would again be a magnet for problems.

Mind you, these are not absolutes, but represent extremes on a continuum. There is surely a model under which Beijing would muddle through, as have the Japanese or Indonesians. No coherent strategy would emerge; it would all be tactical. It is difficult for us to see how this would not lead to regional destabilization, but then, China might be able to live with that. How it handles the unemployment and displaced peasant issue, however, is yet another question. This is a possible mid-point on the spectrum, but not in itself likely, it would seem.

As for the effects on the international economy, there has been a great deal of discussion about China's ownership of U.S. Treasury instruments and the consequences if that money were withdrawn in a crisis. In fact, this is the last thing that is going to happen. If China has a massive financial crisis, no one -- including the Chinese government -- is going to shift money from a safe haven into an uncertain cauldron. In crisis, the tendency would be a flight to safety. That means that rather than being pulled out, money would surge into the U.S. market -- legally and illegally, from the Chinese standpoint.

It is interesting to correlate the massive U.S. market surges that began in 1991, after the recession, and intensified dramatically in 1997 and 1998, with trends in Asia. In both cases, these surges followed major economic crises in rapidly expanding Asian economies. The events were, in our opinion, linked. The crisis in Japan in 1990 and 1991 led to major capital flight and helped to fuel the U.S. market rise. Similarly, the impending and expected East Asian meltdown in 1997 produced massive capital flight from Taiwan, South Korea and elsewhere to safer havens. A massive withdrawal from the U.S. market is the last thing to be expected.

What are in danger, of course, are foreign investments in China. There is the obvious financial issue: Many of these investments were not economically viable to begin with. But there is a political problem as well. The Party is going to have to blame someone for China's troubles, and it will not be the leadership. The obvious culprits will be corrupt officials and their paymasters in the international banking system. The truth or falsehood of the charge will matter little; corrupt officials and bankers already are being arrested, in the early stages of the crisis. As the situation intensifies, we would not be surprised to see foreigners investigated for corrupt practices as well.

But the bottom line is this: China has a history of nationalization and expropriation, and the party that enacted those measures is still in power. No one would have believed that the Party of Mao possibly could have become what it is today, but one should not assume that the evolution of the Chinese Communist Party is complete. Leaders could find that they have reason to re-enact some of Mao's own economic policies. We would be surprised to see a complete return to Maoism. We would not, however, be surprised to see the Party deliberately reverse some transactions that are no longer in its interests or (as and if things get more intense) take even more radical steps. It is still a Communist Party, it might be useful to recall.

Ultimately, the choice that China is now making is how quickly it will allow the consequences of its economic irrationality to unfold. The economic answer to the problem is to let shaky enterprises fall -- but the political cost of doing so will be too great, and a solution has already been long delayed. The longer an economic solution is delayed, the less one becomes possible and the more intense becomes Beijing's need to address the problem with political and security solutions. The more dependent the Chinese become on such measures, the more catastrophic will be the consequences if these solutions don't work.

China is long past the point of being able to solve the problem easily. The question is simply whether to buy time and pay in intensity, or force the crisis now. At some point, there no longer will be a choice. But the single most important thing to understand is that China does not really have an economic crisis any longer. The time for that has come and gone. There is now a political crisis at hand.



show comments right here »

[boomerang] Posted by Simon at 09:18
Permalink | Speak Up (6) | TrackBack (0)





June 20, 2006
Putting the "p" in polite

Dodgy survey reinforces stereotypes

Who even knew Readers' Digest still existed in this day and age? The good people from RD conducted a global politness survey, based on several tests conducted in various cities. The survey was massively biased against Hong Kong because it included a test to see if people would hold doors open for others. In Hong Kong an open door is good for only two things: barging through or closing quickly. Putting its legitimacy in question, the survey found New York the most polite city in the world. Hong Kong was equal 25th along with Bangkok and some place in Europe with not enough vowels, just tipping out touchy Taipei, those rude bastards in Singapore, surly Seoul, cranky Kuala Lumpur and melancholy Mumbai. The survey seems to exhibit cultural bias, with the top cities being primarily Western and the bottom Asian. Or perhaps Asia is just home to a lot of rude pr!cks. Any visitor to New York will quickly realise Asia does not have a monopoly on rudeness.

The list is below the jump. No need to thank me.

The politeness survey:

1 New York, USA 80 per cent
2 Zurich, Switzerland 77 per cent
3 Toronto, Canada 70 per cent
4 Berlin, Germany 68 per cent
San Paulo, Brazil 68 per cent
Zagreb, Croatia 68 per cent
7 Auckland, New Zealand 67 per cent
Warsaw, Poland 67 per cent
9 Mexico City, Mexico 65 per cent
10 Stockholm, Sweden 63 per cent
11 Budapest, Hungary 60 per cent
Madrid, Spain 60 per cent
Prague, Czech Republic 60 per cent
Vienna, Austria 60 per cent
15 Buenos Aires, Argentina 57 per cent
Johannesburg, SA 57 per cent
Lisbon, Portugal 57 per cent
London, UK 57 per cent
Paris, France 57 per cent
....

20 Amsterdam, Netherlands 52 per cent
21 Helsinki, Finland 48 per cent
Manila, Philippines 48 per cent
23 Milan, Italy 47 per cent
Sydney, Australia 47 per cent
25 Bangkok, Thailand 45 per cent
Hong Kong 45 per cent
Ljubljana, Slovenia 45 per cent
28 Jakarta, Indonesia 43 per cent
29 Taipei, Taiwan 43 per cent
30 Moscow, Russia 42 per cent
Singapore 42 per cent
32 Seoul, South Korea 40 per cent
33 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 37 per cent
34 Bucharest, Romania 35 per cent
35 Mumbai, India 32 per cent



show comments right here »

[boomerang] Posted by Simon at 17:36
Permalink | Speak Up (11) | TrackBack (1)


» Let's Visit Asia links with: Asian Cities Are NOT Rude!




Movie pirates

Conventional wisdom says China's intellectual property rights (IPR) are close to non-existant. Piracy is rampant and the exception that proves the rule is the tight control over China's Olympic merchandise. That said, even the same association can't quite work out how much it's costing. Two articles from today's Standard. First:

Piracy cost filmmakers US$2.7 billion (HK$21.06 billion) last year, with domestic firms shouldering more than half those losses, according to a study commissioned by a trade group representing the major Hollywood studios. China's film industry lost US$1.5 billion in revenue to piracy, while US studios lost US$565 million, according to data released Monday by the Motion Picture Association...Some 93 percent of all movie sales in China were of pirated versions of films, according to the latest study.
Makes you wonder about the 7% that buy originals at 5 times the price of copies. The key is to note that China's film industry suffers far more than America's. But from an op-ed in the same paper:

California Democratic congresswoman Diane Watson, whose district includes parts of Hollywood, said roughly 95 percent of all CDs and DVDs manufactured in China are counterfeit. She quoted the Motion Picture Association of America, claiming that its member companies lost about US$244 million in revenue to Chinese piracy last year.
Same association, two vastly different numbers. Maybe the MPAA uses Chinese statisticians to put the numbers together?

Who's to blame here? Is it the average Chinese worker, who earns maybe 5,000 yuan a year and can either buy a copy for 5 yuan or the original for 10 times as much? Is it China's government, who's domestic industry and creativity suffers far more from piracy than Hollywood? Or is it the outdated business and pricing models of foreign companies in the Chinese market?

Update 21/6

AP points to an excellent piece on the Variety blog that also shows the MPAA numbers are fantasy and rubbery (but what else can you expect from Hollywood?), as well as making some other telling points about these "losses".

show comments right here »

[boomerang] Posted by Simon at 08:57
Permalink | Speak Up (12) | TrackBack (0)





June 19, 2006
The Doctor calls

Blogger and wannabe gadly George Adams emails:

2000 people a day may see your site - a pathetic number given the effort you put into promoting it - but I see an awful lot of litter bins, chewing gum on pavements, dog crap and obnoxious tourists. Does that mean they are good too? Discuss.

Stop trying so hard and stop cutting and pasting so much. And the centre column idea is manic.

See you again in 2007.

Pip, pip.

George

Thanks for visiting, George.

show comments right here »

[boomerang] Posted by Simon at 10:14
Permalink | Speak Up (8) | TrackBack (0)





June 17, 2006
Talking my language

A recent conversation with an American over the vexed topic of immigration:

Yank: "The problem with the Mexicans is they don't integrate. They don't learn the language or the culture and just keep to themselves and then wonder why people resent them."

Me: "How long have you lived in Hong Kong?"

Yank: "Four years. Why?"

Me: "How much Cantonese can you speak?"

show comments right here »

[boomerang] Posted by Simon at 21:53
Permalink | Speak Up (17) | TrackBack (0)





June 15, 2006
Rumpus About Spicy Food

Fare thee well friends, co-contributor to HK Dave has been caught in temporal limbo. My body clock, despite my valiant attempts to resist it by succumbing to influenza, etc, is now gradually settling into Central European Time thanks to the feast of football available.

Now as my wife is Korean, I have a great deal of sympathy for the Korean team. This was magnified tenfold by the incredible welcome I got from the citizens of Cheju as I was visitor there at the last World Cup. I was therefore on the Seoul Times website looking for interesting stories about the football. And that's when I stumbled upon the picture (faintly NSFW).

The caption for the picture accompanying this article purports to be about spicy Sichuan cuisine offered up at the Seoul Hilton's Taipan restaurant.

I remember when reading James Clavell's Noble House, one character said that in Cantonese 'taipan' means 'brothel-keeper' instead of 'boss'. It seems appropriate - I knw Sichuan food is supposed to be spicy, but this seems to go entirely too far!

show comments right here »

[boomerang] Posted by HK Dave at 15:34
Permalink | Speak Up (3) | TrackBack (0)





June 14, 2006
Dancing dollars

I never understood this craze for ballroom dancing, but maybe I need to re-assess things.

show comments right here »

[boomerang] Posted by Simon at 13:27
Permalink | Speak Up (2) | TrackBack (0)





Book Review: Gweilo

Gweilo by Martin Booth

Nostalgia typically doesn't translate well into book form, especially when the author's topic is himself. But Martin Booth's Gweilo is an exception to the rule. The reason? Because Booth has actually written a character study dressed up as a memior. Set against a Hong Kong recovering from Japanese occupation in World War 2, Booth paints a portrait of a woman who was far ahead of her time in her open-mindedness, her intelligence, her forthrightness and her foresight. Who is this woman? His mother. Now while many little boys worship their mother, it would truly seem that in Booth's case she was an exceptional woman.

Booth's book is deceptively easy to read, which shows how well it has been written. A young Booth dives head-first into the Hong Kong milieu and ends up far richer for the experience. His father, on the other hand, was the very caricature of an English expat, in Hong Kong under suffrance and worried about his wife and child "going native". There are still many parallels with today's expats in the two kinds of experiencces.

This book shouldn't be restricted to those with an interest in Hong Kong in the early 1950s, although it will give a first-hand window into those times. It is also an exceptional memoir thanks to its strongly drawn protaganist. Well worth a read.

show comments right here »

[boomerang] Posted by Simon at 13:22
Permalink | Speak Up (5) | TrackBack (0)





Counting games

The Don recently claimed that 70% of Hong Kongers support his newest white elephant - the Tamar government headquarters proposal. From his place on the top floor, The Don can gaze across the harbour (pollution permitting) at West Kowloon and ponder what next in his edifice complex. Meanwhile, 50 floors below in the basement, LegCo members can continue lamenting their low pay and why they should at least earn as much as the civil servants they question in LegCo sessions. It's all about respect, you see.

But how did the government discover this magical 70%? Was it through a scientific polling of the public? Or an ad hoc exercise in working backwards from a result? The SCMP yesterday:

A senior official yesterday refused to be drawn on the basis for Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen's claim that there was 70 per cent support for the Tamar project. Speaking on a radio phone-in programme, Director of Administration Elizabeth Tse Man-yee said the figure was the sum of different opinions collected through various channels. "Over the past few months, we have done internal analysis," she said. "We also paid attention to newspaper editorials, letters from the public, and people who made calls to radio phone-in programmes. We gathered and organised all this information.

"We have scientific grounds to do our analysis. We understand the public has different views about Tamar. We've also refined our project according to the feedback. "We've reduced development density and maximised opportunities for public enjoyment of Victoria Harbour. We've responded to public worries."

Ms Tse's comment came a day after a poll of 1,033 people, commissioned by the South China Morning Post, found only 28.1 per cent wanted a government complex to be built at Tamar.

Ms Tse said the poll result reflected the government's findings, as 28 per cent indicated the site should be a venue for recreation and cultural events while 26.4 per cent wanted a green park. "When we look at the reality, over half of the Tamar development project is for recreational land use," she said, referring to the government's plan that over half of the space at Tamar will be open.

Will the government release the detailed compilation of these numbers? Would such a slap-dash approach even pass muster in local high schools? What will ESWN say? And if this is how the government conducts surveys, perhaps Hong Kong's a better place without such democracy.

show comments right here »

[boomerang] Posted by Simon at 10:33
Permalink | Speak Up (2) | TrackBack (0)





June 08, 2006
Hui's running Hong Kong?

Today's SCMP front page: Tsang's pick shunned so he'll ask Hui to stay

The Don wants his mate John Tsang, who took a demotion in order to line up for the Chief Secretary job. But Mr Tsang worked for the hated Chris Patten for a couple of years, which makes him ineligible in the eyes of those who really run Hong Kong. Rafael Hui, the incumbent, has consistently said he wants to quit in June 2007. So we're going to have a Chief Secretary who doesn't want to be there, a Chief Executive who can't get his candidate up and an administration that is taking it as read that it will still be running the place after the supposed Chief Executive election next year.

Wouldn't it be cheaper if we gave up the pretence and let Beijing actually run Hong Kong?

show comments right here »

[boomerang] Posted by Simon at 14:33
Permalink | Speak Up (2) | TrackBack (0)





Asia Blog Awards 2006/7

I've passed the mantle of running the Asia Blog Awards over to the very capable Chris at Asiapundit.

It's already underway: go and check out the Asia Blog Awards 2006/7.

show comments right here »

[boomerang] Posted by Simon at 13:10
Permalink | Speak Up (0) | TrackBack (5)


» Vasectomy links with: Vasectomy
» Relocation links with: Relocation
» Distance Education links with: Distance Education
» Eye Surgery links with: Eye Surgery
» 无聊小站 links with: Asia Blog Awards 2006-2007




June 02, 2006
New team addition

Subject to something raising my ire, my contributions in this space are likely to be limited for the next week or so. Don't blame me...

Blame her:

IMG_5136.jpg



show comments right here »

[boomerang] Posted by Simon at 22:01
Permalink | Speak Up (13) | TrackBack (0)





China's rule of Hong Kong

In contrast to the earlier StratFor piece I linked on the perceived China military threat to the US, in Slate there is an article discussing why the idea of a rising China threat is a godsend for American military programs. I found the link via MR, where Alex Tabarok says:

Read the whole thing [the Slate article] for an assesment of China's true capabilities. Even more important is that rich, capitalist nations are much less dangerous than poor, communist nations. Consider how well China has treated Hong Kong. Moreover, democracy will not be long in coming to China.
My emphasis. The democracy point one can argue - for mine the CCP have enough of a grip to continue walking the tightrope between hardline political control but some kind of capitalist market economy.

Far more worthy of discussion is the statement (without any supporting evidence) Consider how well China has treated Hong Kong. One could certainly argue that one. China has partially let Hong Kong get on with things since 1997 under the "one country, two systems" formula, but only within certain bounds. There have been several "interpretations" of the Basic Law by the NPC, ignoring or contradicting locally made legal and/or political decisions. While not openly admitted, a system of self-censorship exists in the media and politics when it comes to "sensitive" topics. Sure the PLA aren't marching down Lockhart Rd., but they don't need to. Hong Kong needs China far more than China needs Hong Kong - witness the perpetual hand wringing by Hong Kong's worthies over the Big Lychee's place in the Motherland. In the 10 years since China took over, the city has had the Asia crisis, Tung Che-hwa, the Article 23 marches, the right of abode cases, the controversy over Donald Tsang's appointment, the ridiculous rotten boroughs of the functional Legco constituencies, SARS and more.

I throw the question open to my wise readership - how well has China governed Hong Kong?

show comments right here »

[boomerang] Posted by Simon at 21:43
Permalink | Speak Up (4) | TrackBack (1)


» Hong Kong links with: Hong Kong




HK's Free World Cup Broadcasts

I read with interest an article in today's [unlinkable] SCMP about how locally, Wharf Cable is being circumvented as the sole source of broadcasting the World Cup 2006 from Germany. Many people, including myself, have actually watched football matches live without subscribing to Cable TV, simply by making proper use of our broadband connection. Services like TV Ants, or PP Live, for instance, are broadcasting football feeds taken from stations from around the world (but almost entirely from China, many of which are on a peer-to-peer network basis). However, the big question was, is it legal? A government spokesman from the Intellectual Property Department has said that it was legal to watch it, as long as it is just streaming and you do not actually record the games.

I found this most interesting. It is probably illegal to upload a stream from a cable tv box, because chances are that whoever is doing it does not have permission from their own cable TV partner. It is also illegal to record, because then you would be inferring that you had a private right to own that content (all it would take would be a simple download of video capture software from the Internet). But it is apparently perfectly legal to just watch online.

Now I got into this because the building I live in, which is in Cyberport, was developed by PCCW, who naturally were slow in allowing Wharf Cable, which competes with PCCW's own NOW Broadband TV, to run cable into our building. So short of turning up in a Wanchai bar every time I wanted to watch a match, I desperately tried to find ways of watching a streaming version of matches played by my beloved Arsenal team. And that is how I stumbled upon this service, which provides a wide variety of mainland and even other cable TV feeds (HBO, CNN, etc). There are also websites whose sole purpose is to figure out in advance the Byzantine programming arrangements of say, a sports channel in Guangdong, and can tell you with certainty when and on which mainland stations those matches will be broadcast. It goes without saying that you can do this anywhere in the world with your broadband connection, not just in Hong Kong.

I have found thereby that Chinese gray-market ingenuity has engendered a viewing population on Broadband TV that would otherwise not exist, and has succeeded where so many other broadcasters have failed. The key, obviously, is having content people will pay for...

show comments right here »

[boomerang] Posted by HK Dave at 13:07
Permalink | Speak Up (8) | TrackBack (0)





June 01, 2006
Move over Bill Bryson
“Chiuchow people are the Jews of China,” Boris informs us. “They make lots of money. So they like to renovate temples like this to give everyone the impression that they are honourable.”
Why doesn't he give up his day job and start writing travelogues instead?

show comments right here »

[boomerang] Posted by Simon at 13:22
Permalink | Speak Up (3) | TrackBack (0)





Stratfor on China's potential military threat

George Friedman from Stratfor talks about the US perceptions of a Chinese threat. Whether you agree or not, it's cetainly thought provoking:

The U.S. Department of Defense released its annual report on China's military last week. The Pentagon reported that China is moving forward rapidly with an offensive capability in the Pacific. The capability would not, according to the report, rely on the construction of a massive fleet to counter U.S. naval power, but rather on development and deployment of anti-ship missiles and maritime strike aircraft, some obtained from Russia. According to the Pentagon report, the Chinese are rapidly developing the ability to strike far into the Pacific -- as far as the Marianas and Guam, which houses a major U.S. naval base.

Whether the Chinese actually are constructing this force is less important than that the United States believes the Chinese are doing this. This analysis is not confined to the Defense Department but has been the view of much of the U.S. intelligence community. There is, therefore, a consensus in Washington that the Chinese are moving far beyond defensive capabilities or deterrence: They are moving toward a strike capability against the U.S. Seventh Fleet.

If this analysis is correct, then the reason for U.S. concern is obvious. Ever since World War II, the United States has dominated all of the world's oceans. Following that war, the Japanese and German navies were gone. The British and French did not have the economic ability or political will to maintain a global naval force. The Soviets had a relatively small navy, concerned primarily with coastal defense. The only power with a global navy was the United States -- and the U.S. Navy's power was so overwhelming that no combination of navies could challenge its maritime hegemony.

In an odd way, this extraordinary geopolitical reality has been taken for granted by many. No naval force in history has been as powerful as the U.S. Navy. The U.S. Navy does not have the ability to be everywhere at all times -- but it does have the ability to be in multiple places at the same time, and to move about without concerns of being challenged. This means, quite simply, that the United States can invade other countries, anywhere in the world, but other countries cannot invade the United States. Whatever the outcome of the invasion once ashore, the United States has conducted the Iraq, Kosovo, Somali, Gulf and Vietnamese wars without ever having to fight to protect lines of supply and communications. It has been able to impose naval blockades at will, without having to fight sea battles to achieve them. It is this single fact that, more than any other, has shaped global history since 1945.

The rest is continued below the jump.

.

Following the Soviet Strategy?

The Soviets fully understood the implications of U.S. naval power. They recognized that, in the event of a war in Europe, the United States would have to convoy massive reinforcements across the Atlantic. If the Soviets could cut that line of supply, Europe would be isolated. The Soviets had ambitious goals for naval construction, designed to challenge the United States in the Atlantic. But naval construction is fiendishly expensive. The Soviets simply couldn't afford the cost of building a fleet to challenge the U.S. Navy, while also building a ground force to protect their vast periphery from NATO and China.

Instead of trying to challenge the United States in surface warfare, using aircraft carriers, the Soviets settled for a strategy that relied on attack submarines and maritime bombers, like the Backfire. The Soviet view was that they did not have to take control of the Atlantic themselves; rather, if they could deny the United States access to the Atlantic, they would have achieved their goal. The plan was to attack the convoys and their escorts, using attack submarines and missiles launched from Backfire bombers that would come down into the Atlantic through the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom (GIUK) gap. The American counter was a strong anti-submarine warfare capability, coupled with the Aegis anti-missile system. Who would have won the confrontation is an interesting question to argue. The war everyone planned for never happened.

Today, it appears to be the Pentagon's view that China is following the Soviet model. The Chinese will not be able to float a significant surface challenge to the U.S. Seventh Fleet for at least a generation -- if then. It is not just a question of money or even technology; it also is a question of training an entirely new navy in extraordinarily complex doctrines. The United States has been operating carrier battle groups since before World War II. The Chinese have never waged carrier warfare or even had a significant surface navy, for that matter -- certainly not since being defeated by Japan in 1895.

The Americans think that the Chinese counter to U.S. capabilities, like the Soviet counter, will not be to force a naval battle. Rather, China would use submarines and, particularly, anti-ship missiles to engage the U.S. Navy. In other words, the Chinese are not interested in seizing control of the Pacific from the Americans. What they want to do is force the U.S. fleet out of the Western Pacific by threatening it with ground- and air-launched missiles that are sufficiently fast and agile to defeat U.S. fleet defenses.

Such a strategy presents a huge problem for the United States. The cost of threatening a fleet is lower than the cost of protecting one. The acquisition of high-speed, maneuverable missiles would cost less than purchasing defense systems. The cost of a carrier battle group makes its loss devastating. Therefore, the United States cannot afford to readily expose the fleet to danger. Thus, given the central role that control of the seas plays in U.S. grand strategy, the United States inevitably must interpret the rapid acquisition of anti-ship technologies as a serious threat to American geopolitical interests.

Planning for the Worst

The question to begin with, then, is why China is pursuing this strategy. The usual answer has to do with Taiwan, but China has far more important issues to deal with than Taiwan. Since 1975, China has become a major trading country. It imports massive amounts of raw materials and exports huge amounts of manufactured goods, particularly to the United States. China certainly wants to continue this trade; in fact, it urgently needs to. At the same time, China is acutely aware that its economy depends on maritime trade -- and that its maritime trade must pass through waters controlled entirely by the U.S. Navy.

China, like all countries, has a nightmare scenario that it guards against. If the United States' dread is being denied access to the Western Pacific and all that implies, the Chinese nightmare is an American blockade. The bulk of China's exports go out through major ports like Hong Kong and Shanghai. From the Chinese point of view, the Americans are nothing if not predictable. The first American response to a serious political problem is usually economic sanctions, and these frequently are enforced by naval interdiction. Given the imbalance of naval power in the South China Sea (and the East China Sea as well), the United States could impose a blockade on China at will.

Now, the Chinese cannot believe that the United States currently is planning such a blockade. At the same time, the consequences of such a blockade would be so devastating that China must plan out the counter to it, under the doctrine of hoping for the best and planning for the worst. Chinese military planners cannot assume that the United States will always pursue accommodating policies toward Beijing. Therefore, China must have some means of deterring an American move in this direction. The U.S. Navy must not be allowed to approach China's shores. Therefore, Chinese war gamers obviously have decided that engagement at great distance will provide forces with sufficient space and time to engage an approaching American fleet.

Simply building this capability does not mean that Taiwan is threatened with invasion. For an invasion to take place, the Chinese would need more than a sea-lane denial strategy. They would need an amphibious capability that could itself cross the Taiwan Strait, withstanding Taiwanese anti-ship systems. The Chinese are far from having that system. They could bombard Taiwan with missiles, nuclear and otherwise. They could attack shipping to and from Taiwan, thereby isolating her. But China does not appear to be building an amphibious force capable of landing and supporting the multiple divisions that would be needed to deal with Taiwan.

In our view, the Chinese are constructing the force that the Pentagon report describes. But we are in a classic situation: The steps that China is taking for what it sees as a defensive contingency must -- again, under the worst-case doctrine -- be seen by the United States as a threat to a fundamental national interest, control of the sea. The steps the United States already has taken in maintaining its control must, under the same doctrine, be viewed by China as holding Chinese maritime movements hostage. This is not a matter of the need for closer understanding. Both sides understand the situation perfectly: Regardless of current intent, intentions change. It is the capability, not the intention, that must be focused on in the long run.

Therefore, China's actions and America's interpretation of those actions must be taken extremely seriously over the long run. The United States is capable of threatening fundamental Chinese interests, and China is developing the capability to threaten fundamental American interests. Whatever the subjective intention of either side at this moment is immaterial. The intentions ten years from now are unpredictable.

As the Pentagon report also notes, China is turning to the Russians for technology. The Russian military might have decayed, but its weapons systems remain top-notch. The Chinese are acquiring Russian missile and aircraft technology, and they want more. The Russians, looking for every opportunity to challenge the United States, are supplying it. Now, the Chinese do not want to take this arrangement to the point that China's trade relations with the United States would be threatened, but at the same time, trade is trade and national security is national security. China is walking a fine line in challenging the United States, but it feels it will be able to pull it off -- and so far it has been right.

U.S. Defense Policy: Full Circle

The United States is now back to where it was before the 9/11 attacks. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld came into office with two views. The first was that China was the major challenge to the United States. The second was that the development of high-tech weaponry was essential to the United States. With this report, the opening views of the administration are turning into the closing views. China is again emerging as the primary challenge; the only solution to the Chinese challenge is in technology.

It should be added that the key to this competition will be space. For the Chinese, the challenge will not be solely in hitting targets at long range, but in seeing them. For that, space-based systems are essential. For the United States, the ability to see Chinese launch facilities is essential to suppressing fire, and space-based systems provide that ability. The control of the sea will involve agile missiles and space-based systems. China's moves into space follow logically from their strategic position. The protection of space-based systems from attack will be essential to both sides.

It is interesting to note that all of this renders the U.S.-jihadist dynamic moot. If the Pentagon believes what it has written, then the question of Afghanistan, Iraq and the rest is now passé. Al Qaeda has failed to topple any Muslim regimes, and there is no threat of the caliphate being reborn. The only interesting question in the region is whether Iran will move into an alignment with Russia, China or both.

There is an old saw that generals prepare for the last war. The old saw is frequently true. There is a belief that the future of war is asymmetric warfare, terrorism and counterinsurgency. These will always be there, but it is hard to see, from its report on China, that the Pentagon believes this is the future of war. The Chinese challenge in the Pacific dwarfs the remote odds that an Islamic, land-based empire could pose a threat to U.S. interests. China cannot be dealt with through asymmetric warfare. The Pentagon is saying that the emerging threat is from a peer -- a nuclear power challenging U.S. command of the sea.

Each side is defensive at the moment. Each side sees a long-term possibility of a threat. Each side is moving to deflect that threat. This is the moment at which conflicts are incubated.U.S. Perceptions of a Chinese Threat
By George Friedman

The U.S. Department of Defense released its annual report on China's military last week. The Pentagon reported that China is moving forward rapidly with an offensive capability in the Pacific. The capability would not, according to the report, rely on the construction of a massive fleet to counter U.S. naval power, but rather on development and deployment of anti-ship missiles and maritime strike aircraft, some obtained from Russia. According to the Pentagon report, the Chinese are rapidly developing the ability to strike far into the Pacific -- as far as the Marianas and Guam, which houses a major U.S. naval base.

Whether the Chinese actually are constructing this force is less important than that the United States believes the Chinese are doing this. This analysis is not confined to the Defense Department but has been the view of much of the U.S. intelligence community. There is, therefore, a consensus in Washington that the Chinese are moving far beyond defensive capabilities or deterrence: They are moving toward a strike capability against the U.S. Seventh Fleet.

If this analysis is correct, then the reason for U.S. concern is obvious. Ever since World War II, the United States has dominated all of the world's oceans. Following that war, the Japanese and German navies were gone. The British and French did not have the economic ability or political will to maintain a global naval force. The Soviets had a relatively small navy, concerned primarily with coastal defense. The only power with a global navy was the United States -- and the U.S. Navy's power was so overwhelming that no combination of navies could challenge its maritime hegemony.

In an odd way, this extraordinary geopolitical reality has been taken for granted by many. No naval force in history has been as powerful as the U.S. Navy. The U.S. Navy does not have the ability to be everywhere at all times -- but it does have the ability to be in multiple places at the same time, and to move about without concerns of being challenged. This means, quite simply, that the United States can invade other countries, anywhere in the world, but other countries cannot invade the United States. Whatever the outcome of the invasion once ashore, the United States has conducted the Iraq, Kosovo, Somali, Gulf and Vietnamese wars without ever having to fight to protect lines of supply and communications. It has been able to impose naval blockades at will, without having to fight sea battles to achieve them. It is this single fact that, more than any other, has shaped global history since 1945.

Following the Soviet Strategy?

The Soviets fully understood the implications of U.S. naval power. They recognized that, in the event of a war in Europe, the United States would have to convoy massive reinforcements across the Atlantic. If the Soviets could cut that line of supply, Europe would be isolated. The Soviets had ambitious goals for naval construction, designed to challenge the United States in the Atlantic. But naval construction is fiendishly expensive. The Soviets simply couldn't afford the cost of building a fleet to challenge the U.S. Navy, while also building a ground force to protect their vast periphery from NATO and China.

Instead of trying to challenge the United States in surface warfare, using aircraft carriers, the Soviets settled for a strategy that relied on attack submarines and maritime bombers, like the Backfire. The Soviet view was that they did not have to take control of the Atlantic themselves; rather, if they could deny the United States access to the Atlantic, they would have achieved their goal. The plan was to attack the convoys and their escorts, using attack submarines and missiles launched from Backfire bombers that would come down into the Atlantic through the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom (GIUK) gap. The American counter was a strong anti-submarine warfare capability, coupled with the Aegis anti-missile system. Who would have won the confrontation is an interesting question to argue. The war everyone planned for never happened.

Today, it appears to be the Pentagon's view that China is following the Soviet model. The Chinese will not be able to float a significant surface challenge to the U.S. Seventh Fleet for at least a generation -- if then. It is not just a question of money or even technology; it also is a question of training an entirely new navy in extraordinarily complex doctrines. The United States has been operating carrier battle groups since before World War II. The Chinese have never waged carrier warfare or even had a significant surface navy, for that matter -- certainly not since being defeated by Japan in 1895.

The Americans think that the Chinese counter to U.S. capabilities, like the Soviet counter, will not be to force a naval battle. Rather, China would use submarines and, particularly, anti-ship missiles to engage the U.S. Navy. In other words, the Chinese are not interested in seizing control of the Pacific from the Americans. What they want to do is force the U.S. fleet out of the Western Pacific by threatening it with ground- and air-launched missiles that are sufficiently fast and agile to defeat U.S. fleet defenses.

Such a strategy presents a huge problem for the United States. The cost of threatening a fleet is lower than the cost of protecting one. The acquisition of high-speed, maneuverable missiles would cost less than purchasing defense systems. The cost of a carrier battle group makes its loss devastating. Therefore, the United States cannot afford to readily expose the fleet to danger. Thus, given the central role that control of the seas plays in U.S. grand strategy, the United States inevitably must interpret the rapid acquisition of anti-ship technologies as a serious threat to American geopolitical interests.

Planning for the Worst

The question to begin with, then, is why China is pursuing this strategy. The usual answer has to do with Taiwan, but China has far more important issues to deal with than Taiwan. Since 1975, China has become a major trading country. It imports massive amounts of raw materials and exports huge amounts of manufactured goods, particularly to the United States. China certainly wants to continue this trade; in fact, it urgently needs to. At the same time, China is acutely aware that its economy depends on maritime trade -- and that its maritime trade must pass through waters controlled entirely by the U.S. Navy.

China, like all countries, has a nightmare scenario that it guards against. If the United States' dread is being denied access to the Western Pacific and all that implies, the Chinese nightmare is an American blockade. The bulk of China's exports go out through major ports like Hong Kong and Shanghai. From the Chinese point of view, the Americans are nothing if not predictable. The first American response to a serious political problem is usually economic sanctions, and these frequently are enforced by naval interdiction. Given the imbalance of naval power in the South China Sea (and the East China Sea as well), the United States could impose a blockade on China at will.

Now, the Chinese cannot believe that the United States currently is planning such a blockade. At the same time, the consequences of such a blockade would be so devastating that China must plan out the counter to it, under the doctrine of hoping for the best and planning for the worst. Chinese military planners cannot assume that the United States will always pursue accommodating policies toward Beijing. Therefore, China must have some means of deterring an American move in this direction. The U.S. Navy must not be allowed to approach China's shores. Therefore, Chinese war gamers obviously have decided that engagement at great distance will provide forces with sufficient space and time to engage an approaching American fleet.

Simply building this capability does not mean that Taiwan is threatened with invasion. For an invasion to take place, the Chinese would need more than a sea-lane denial strategy. They would need an amphibious capability that could itself cross the Taiwan Strait, withstanding Taiwanese anti-ship systems. The Chinese are far from having that system. They could bombard Taiwan with missiles, nuclear and otherwise. They could attack shipping to and from Taiwan, thereby isolating her. But China does not appear to be building an amphibious force capable of landing and supporting the multiple divisions that would be needed to deal with Taiwan.

In our view, the Chinese are constructing the force that the Pentagon report describes. But we are in a classic situation: The steps that China is taking for what it sees as a defensive contingency must -- again, under the worst-case doctrine -- be seen by the United States as a threat to a fundamental national interest, control of the sea. The steps the United States already has taken in maintaining its control must, under the same doctrine, be viewed by China as holding Chinese maritime movements hostage. This is not a matter of the need for closer understanding. Both sides understand the situation perfectly: Regardless of current intent, intentions change. It is the capability, not the intention, that must be focused on in the long run.

Therefore, China's actions and America's interpretation of those actions must be taken extremely seriously over the long run. The United States is capable of threatening fundamental Chinese interests, and China is developing the capability to threaten fundamental American interests. Whatever the subjective intention of either side at this moment is immaterial. The intentions ten years from now are unpredictable.

As the Pentagon report also notes, China is turning to the Russians for technology. The Russian military might have decayed, but its weapons systems remain top-notch. The Chinese are acquiring Russian missile and aircraft technology, and they want more. The Russians, looking for every opportunity to challenge the United States, are supplying it. Now, the Chinese do not want to take this arrangement to the point that China's trade relations with the United States would be threatened, but at the same time, trade is trade and national security is national security. China is walking a fine line in challenging the United States, but it feels it will be able to pull it off -- and so far it has been right.

U.S. Defense Policy: Full Circle

The United States is now back to where it was before the 9/11 attacks. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld came into office with two views. The first was that China was the major challenge to the United States. The second was that the development of high-tech weaponry was essential to the United States. With this report, the opening views of the administration are turning into the closing views. China is again emerging as the primary challenge; the only solution to the Chinese challenge is in technology.

It should be added that the key to this competition will be space. For the Chinese, the challenge will not be solely in hitting targets at long range, but in seeing them. For that, space-based systems are essential. For the United States, the ability to see Chinese launch facilities is essential to suppressing fire, and space-based systems provide that ability. The control of the sea will involve agile missiles and space-based systems. China's moves into space follow logically from their strategic position. The protection of space-based systems from attack will be essential to both sides.

It is interesting to note that all of this renders the U.S.-jihadist dynamic moot. If the Pentagon believes what it has written, then the question of Afghanistan, Iraq and the rest is now passé. Al Qaeda has failed to topple any Muslim regimes, and there is no threat of the caliphate being reborn. The only interesting question in the region is whether Iran will move into an alignment with Russia, China or both.

There is an old saw that generals prepare for the last war. The old saw is frequently true. There is a belief that the future of war is asymmetric warfare, terrorism and counterinsurgency. These will always be there, but it is hard to see, from its report on China, that the Pentagon believes this is the future of war. The Chinese challenge in the Pacific dwarfs the remote odds that an Islamic, land-based empire could pose a threat to U.S. interests. China cannot be dealt with through asymmetric warfare. The Pentagon is saying that the emerging threat is from a peer -- a nuclear power challenging U.S. command of the sea.

Each side is defensive at the moment. Each side sees a long-term possibility of a threat. Each side is moving to deflect that threat. This is the moment at which conflicts are incubated.



show comments right here »

[boomerang] Posted by Simon at 09:40
Permalink | Speak Up (6) | TrackBack (1)


» Chinese Military Power links with: Chinese Military Power