Category: China

RAND Gets Paid to Support Bloated Defense Budgets

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In looking at the Rand study, I neglected part of the bigger picture, that they are to a large degree paid by the Department of Defense to provide data supporting larger defense budgets.

Thus their study on the F-22 and F-35 showing that China would do them like a drunk sorority sister was part of a policy of pumping up the Chinese threat in order to justify larger budgets:

A new RAND study suggests U.S. air power in the Pacific would be inadequate to thwart a Chinese attack on Taiwan in 2020. The study, entitled “Air Combat Past, Present and Future,” by John Stillion and Scott Perdue, says China’s anti-access arms and strategy could deny the U.S. the “ability to operate efficiently from nearby bases or seas.”

I think that some of the problems, particularly with a defense procurement system that is as dysfunctional as the Bush family, are real, but the intended audience of this is Congressional appropriations committee.

It’s not a call for military reform, it’s a call for more of the same.

What Roubini and Meyerson Said

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Nouriel Roubini, in The Decline of the American Empire, and Harold Meyerson, in The Drums of Change, both make a very similar point: that America’s time as the sole unchallanged “hyperpower” is coming to an end.

I would have to say that Meyerson is far less interesting than Roubini, he simply notes that the Chinese are growing more powerful by the day, and that Russia is exerting its muscles in its immediate neighborhood.

Roubini, on the other hand, makes it clear that he believes that, “three factors suggest that the US has squandered its unipolar moment and that the decline of the American Empire – as the US was in effect a global empire – has started.” (emphasis mine)

His factors are:

  • Excessive reliance on hard military power, and to unilateral a foreign policy.
  • That other powers, China, a unified Europe, a resurgent Russia, and the rise of regional powers such as Brazil, South Africa, and Iran will mean that the US will find more peers and near peers in the future.
  • That the, “US squandered its economic and financial power by running reckless economic policies, especially its twin fiscal and current account deficits”, which are increasingly financed by foreign governments and foreign investors.

He notes that the movement of foreign reserves from Treasuries to sovereign wealth funds in search of better returns is indicative of the fact that those creditors are nearing a point where they will make demands.

Speaking for myself, and not the good Dr., I would also note that the American way of life, or more accurately the standards of living for the top 1% and the phony economy of Wall Street, have not been sustainable for decades, and the transformation of the US from the largest creditor nation into the largest debtor nation during the Reagan administration shows this.

The IOC: The First Bastards Up Against the Wall When the Revolution Comes

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The IOC just meekly assented to allowing the Chinese government to filter internet access for the reporters at the games, despite promising otherwise just weeks ago.

What a bunch of losers.

That being said, ShaMao’er asks the question that immediately comes to mind, “The same old question… why are they so dumb?”

Meaning the Chinese government. They had to know that this would be found out in short order, and they had to know that the consequences of being found out would be worse than anything that a reporter pulled off Amnesty International’s web site.

My only guess is that is about a need to be in control trumped their need to get good foreign press.

A number of analyses have suggested that the primary audience that is being targeted by the PRC for the Olympics is internal, not external, and that would explain this action.

Epic Fail: Condoleeza Edition

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Condoleeza Rice, once more attempting to make the world look like it did before the USSR collapsed, has failed again, this time in attempting to form a NATO style security union.

In 1992, she suggested that Boris Yeltsin not be accorded the formalities of a head of state, because she thought that the USSR was coming back “real soon now”, and since then, she has done her level best to recreate a Soviet style menace out of Russia.

I imagine it’s because her so called area of expertise (see the Yeltsin example above), the USSR, has gone away, and so she is trying to recreate academic relevance.

Don’t worry dear, you sucked at being a Sovietologist too.

Economics Update

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Weekly unemployment filings are up 16K from last week, which is not good, but better than forecast, though, as I’ve said before, the weekly data is noisy and not very useful.

On the other hand, the Philadelphia Fed Business Outlook Survey is definitely downbeat, though not as grim as I would have anticipated.

China has problems. While its growth rate slowed to only 10.1% annually(!), inflation remained well above 7%.

Honestly, I think that the fix here is simple, let the Yuan rise some, which would decrease the relative cost of imported energy, and slow exports to cool down the economy, but I do not expect the Chinese central bank to do this.

Housing starts jumped 9.1%, only because of change in NY City building codes, allowing for more multi-residential building. Otherwise it would have been -4%, and construction of single-family homes dropped by 5.3%, hitting a 17 year low.

Seeing as how the Europeans have inflation concerns too, and are talking about ratcheting up rates, it;s not surprising that the dollar fell today.

Oil continues its slide, dropping below $130/bbl for the first time in over a month, though retail gasoline holds at yesterday’s record.

God Hates the Beijing Olympics

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Insurrection in Tibet, Earthquake Algae Bloom, Floods, and The most protested torch relay in history.

And now a plague of locusts in China.

I agree with the author of the piece, “Locusts? What is going on here? The litany of near-biblical woes would seem to lack only a famine, frogs and smiting of the first born.”

Dude, I understand that you are all officially atheists and all in the PRC, but slaughter a few dozen goats or something.

You’ve done something to piss him off.*

*Note: this is humor, not serious. I’m making a joke in bad taste, not suggesting that God is actually punishing the Chinese people.

China Closing In On Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile

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It’s derived from their CSS-5 intermediate range missile and uses technology similar to that of the Pershing II, which had a CEP in the single digit meter range.

The current version has a range around 1800 km and a nuclear warhead that weighs around 600 kg. I imagine an anti-ship (carrier killer) version would have a similar range and a similar weight warhead.

In any case if one of these hits a flight deck at mach 4 or so, the warhead is guilding the lily.

Bush had the US Army Torture People for the Chinese

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Just when I can’t imagine it get any worse, we have a report that U.S. Soldiers did the ‘Dirty Work’ for Chinese interrogators.

I believe that I have said on a number of occasions that Bush and His Evil Minions™ are objectively pro torture. By this, I mean that the want to torture.

They don’t care if it gives good information. They don’t care if the blowback creates more terrorists. They don’t care if it exposes Americans to torture.

They simply want to torture for some sick psycho-sexual gratification. How else can you explain them telling soldiers to torture prisoners on behalf of the totalitarian communist regime of the People’s Republic of China?

U.S. military personnel at Guantanamo Bay allegedly softened up detainees at the request of Chinese intelligence officials who had come to the island facility to interrogate the men — or they allowed the Chinese to dole out the treatment themselves, according to claims in a new government report.

Buried in a Department of Justice report released Tuesday are new allegations about a 2002 arrangement between the United States and China, which allowed Chinese intelligence to visit Guantanamo and interrogate Chinese Uighurs held there.

According to the report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine, an FBI agent reported a detainee belonging to China’s ethnic Uighur minority and a Uighur translator told him Uighur detainees were kept awake for long periods, deprived of food and forced to endure cold for hours on end, just prior to questioning by Chinese interrogators.

This leaves me stunned. This is evil on a level that I would have thought beyond even them.

I was misinformed.

Well Hello Dalai Lama

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Well, China is now saying that it will hold talks with representatives of the Dalai Lama, and I just could not resist the pun.

The Dalai Lama has welcomed the opportunity to talk, though state run media seems to indicate that the Chinese are not quite as eager to talk as they are eager to be thought of as willing to talk, with the standard “running dog” screeds continuing.

My guess is that in the end, nothing meaningful happens, and that the Chinese claim that the Tibetans were unreasonable.

New Chinese Boomer Deploys to Hainan Island

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The Chinese appear to aggressively moving towards some sort of submarine based deterrent according to this report by the Federation of American Scientists.

They have a satellite picture (commercial resolution) of one of the boomers at a dock:

There appears to be significant development at the Yulin naval base to accommodate this, including tunnels and a demagnetization facility.

The reports that the island is very near the edge of the continental shelf, which means that the subs could get into deep water quickly, which is typically where you want a boomer, except, of course for the fact that US boats have been doing deep water for the past 50 years.

If China gets a meaningful SSBN deterrent, it represents a threat to US military power, though it is probably a stabalizing factor, because it prevents a nut like Lynne Cheney from going postal on a nuclear level on them with nuclear weapons.