posted by chinawhite
“ . . no submarine was sunk. The five built can still be spotted (401-405) . .
noisy when first arrived but most have finished the second mid-life upgrade which dramatically changed . . modern FCS and the ability to fire missiles
under water. [Edited by Don W]
America’s media is moribund. Waiting for a decent burial. Example? The new Katie Curric on CBS Evening News had Rush Limbaugh featured in its 2nd
show. Once a hypocritical drug addict, but now a reformed but unrepentant drug addict, Limbaugh hasn’t had a new thought for a decade. Fred
Friendly and Edward Murrow would roll over in their respective graves to learn CBS was kowtowing to the Far Right Wing of American politics. As a
Chinese person you know what “kowtow’ means but for my American friends, let me remind them to “kowtow” in old China meant to lay your head on
the floor and the Emperor would position his foot on your head, so that if he believed you had betrayed him of even disappointed him, he could easily
crush your skull. That was a position of extreme humility. My only consolation vis a vis Limbaugh is that Roy Black reputedly charged him $5 million,
cash, up front. Plus expenses. It proved to be money well spent. Always go first class when you can. Ops, I digress.
OK, back to China. Let me restate my case. Since 1949, when the Chinese Communist Party under Mao Zed ong won the mainland, China has not invaded
any of its neighbors. There have been “heated” border disputes with the USSR and Vietnam. Those are now resolved and never constituted an
“invasion” by either of the disputants. China itself is invasion proof. The US planned to use 1.5 million soldiers and marines to invade Japan in
1945. We had 13 million men and women under arms on VJ-Day. Any serious invasion of mainland China would require at least 10 X that number. An
impossibility. The US mainland is similarly situated. So that kind of irrational thinking can be ended.
I pose all of this to frame my question, What is the nature of the ‘threat” we in American are foreseeing from China? In 1999, China resolved the
two similar issues over Hong Kong and Macao. I think everyone knows there is but one remaining and outstanding issue from China’s perspective. It
is Taiwan.
I am not well founded, anthropologically speaking, and so I’m not able to address the issue how the Formosans - we called them that - I call them
that to delineate a time line - feel towards reunification with mainland China. I assume the 1949 exodus of Nationalist Chinese - a political divide
not an ethnicity divide - to the island of Taiwan where about 7 X their number were already in residence, have been absorbed into the general
population. In other words, the old soldiers are all dead.
OTOH, Taiwan’s most recent election was described as the first truly democratic election. The Party gaining control of Taiwan is anti-unification.
One can deduce that if the Party felt the necessity of taking a position, then the matter of re-unification is in fact a viable issue on Taiwan. The
United States and more specifically the Seventh Fleet, is a wild card that its mere presence seems to bring predicable results. Our fleet has been in
the Taiwan Straits since 1949, nearly 60 years. Two generations. There are few Americans alive today who have any personal recollections of the
frequent artillery exchanges on Qemoy and Matsu islands following 1949. After China joined the nuclear club, the exchanges ended. Which makes one
wonder which side was provoking the exchanges. Of course, over here it was accepted ritual that the evil Chinese Communists always started the trouble
and us good guys were merely responding in self defense. Does this have a familiar ring?
Which brings me back, somewhat circuitously to Chinese weapons and armored vehicles. All the old National Geographic pictures of Taiwan show it to be
a large island filled with rice paddies. The new Chinese 8 wheel and 6 wheel armored cars or whatever you call them, would be well suited for combat
on Taiwan, whereas, an M1A1 Abrams would be useless. So we have 3,000 tanks we can’t use, and China has a few hundred vehicles it can use for close
support for its massive infantry. Because China has nukes, and the means - you guys say - to deliver them to at least Seattle and San Francisco, that
mens the US will not defend Taiwan with nukes. (Another reason Iran wants nukes.) Whether China’s SSBNs can get close enough to our West Coast to
make Chicago vulnerable is uncertain. I’m sure we have 2 or 3 killer subs assigned to each of the Chinese nuclear subs. And a “do not cross”
line drawn around Hawaii.
It looks to me as if China is subtly getting itself positioned to make a move on Taiwan, perhaps in this decade? If the Dems win Congress on November
7, they will quickly neuter Bush43, as was Nixon, by cutting off his money supply, so re-unification could happen sooner than later.
