Can China Invade Taiwan?

Beyond the Rim---We ignore China's growing military power at our peril.

Wall Street Journal

By MARK HELPRIN
December 13, 2004; Page A16

From the beach at Santa Monica on a clear day in fall, with 3,000 miles of this country invisible at one's back, the Pacific horizon is a precisely etched line empty of event and set in alluring color. But beyond the rim lie two things now tightly interwoven: China, and the destiny of the United States.

There never was and never will be a "unipolar" world. The existence of one pole being conditioned upon the existence of another, the notion of such a thing is as sloppy conceptually as the thinking of the "leading international relations specialist," recently quoted in the Washington Post, who lamented that "The border . . . is becoming a dividing line."

The short unhappy life of whatever passed for unipolarity is emphatically over not merely because the strategy of the moment has allowed a small force of primitive insurgents in Iraq to occupy a large proportion of American military energy, but because China is now powerful and influential enough, at least as a "fleet-in-being," to make American world dominance inconceivable. And in the longer term, China is bent upon and will achieve gross military and economic parity with the United States.

*
China is methodically following the example of Meiji Japan in moving from a position of inferiority to one of military equality with far superior rivals, by deliberate application of a striking phenomenon of economics that is to the military relation between states what the golden section is to architecture. Consider a hypothetical country of 10 million people, and a $1 billion GNP, that devotes 10% of its $100 per capita GNP to defense. The people are left with $90/year, suffering one day in 10 to support a $100 million military outlay. But after 18 years of 8% economic growth and 2% population increase per annum, it becomes a hypothetical country of 14 million souls, a GNP of $4 billion, and a per capita GNP of $285. If the people retain only three-quarters of this, they are still almost two and a half times richer than they were before, and the military budget can safely rise to $1 billion. Thus, the GNP increases by a factor of four, per capita GNP more than doubles, and defense outlays swell by a factor of 10.

The Meiji called their variant of this, Fukoku Kyohei, "rich country, strong arms." To contemporary Americans and Europeans accustomed to low-single-digit economic growth and periodic recession, an 8% annual growth rate over 18 years might seem too hypothetical. But between 1980 and the present, China's GDP has grown at an average annual rate, like the 9.7% of 2004's first half, of just under 10%. It is probably safe to say that any diminution of real growth as a result of inflation is roughly offset by gains in the unreported black economy, and clearly ironic that while in China a bunch of former Maoists appreciates the potentiality of high growth, in America the left thinks it unworthy of putting the nanny state at risk.

China's steady expansion is impressive enough, but of greater significance is the 16.2% growth, in 2003, of the industrial/technical sector that has made China a mercantile power and not only contributes to social stability by providing consumer goods but assimilates and replicates Western military technology. Though the data vary according to source and time, they are all of the same complexion. In the CIA's reasonable analysis, China's is the world's second largest economy, with a GDP, expressed in purchasing power parity (PPP), of $6.5 trillion. The resultant $5,000 per capita PPP GDP, given the risks of China's transition to a market economy and the concomitant instabilities to be avoided, leaves less room at the margin for military expenditure than if stability were not in question, and China in 2003 devoted only 3.5% of GDP to defense. This moderation is simultaneously an effort to preserve social peace and a realistic view of the effective pace of military reform and technological transformation. Nonetheless, in 2003 at least $60 billion went to defense, thrice the expenditure of 10 years before.

That sum, while less than a fifth of American outlays other than the costs of the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, does not reflect adjustment for PPP, which, though not as powerful a multiple as in the civilian sector (due to the nature of military goods, and procurement abroad) should boost equivalent Chinese military spending to at least $100 billion. Imagine then if China, as it easily could, were to double its GDP in the next eight or nine years, and, taking advantage of a parallel increase in gains per capita, double the defense share of GDP. It would then have (PPP) defense outlays roughly equivalent to ours.

China, however, moves with great deliberation, and many signs suggest that it is aiming for parity in 20 or more years time and in synchrony with advances in technology and military doctrine.

China is at risk if, as is its wont periodically, it runs off the rails into civil war, anarchy, or revolution. But the true counter-revolutionary import of the 11th Party Congress reforms of 1978 is that, unlike the former Soviet Union, China is making its transition to the free market in careful strides so as not to be forced backwards. Though neither ideal nor democratic, its incremental economic and policy choices are carefully calibrated, redolent of compromise, and configured for the survival and stability of the state. And the more time that passes, the more the development of its internal markets will protect its now mercantile economy from the gyrations of world markets.

With its new economic resources China has embarked upon a military traverse from reliance upon mass to devotion to quality, with stress upon war in space, the oceans, and the ether -- three areas of unquestioned American superiority. China is establishing its own space- based assets and developing the means to counter others. It would neutralize American strategic superiority as the aging U.S. arsenal is reduced and it augments its own. Its submarine program is directed to the deployment of its strategic force and denial of successively greater bands of the Pacific -- eventually reaching far out into blue water -- to the safe transit of American fleets. It sees America's advantage in informational warfare both as something to be copied and as a weak link that, by countermeasure, can be shattered. In short, it harbors major ambitions.

When China was great, it sent out military expeditions by land and sea into a large part of what was for it the known world, and despite robotic protestations to the contrary it will do so again. It has already begun what it itself might at one time have called imperial expansion, driven not by ideology but the need for markets and raw materials. Major crude oil importation, begun only recently, is one-quarter the volume of U.S. crude imports, leading China to compete for petroleum not only in the Middle East but in South America and at least six countries in Africa. This it can do with its immense $400 billion balance of payments reserves and ability to supply high quality manufactured goods at all levels to its potential oil suppliers.

An example of China's growing power to interfere with crucial U.S. interests is the new Sino-Persian $100 billion trade agreement, the perfect complementarity of which -- manufactures and military goods in exchange for oil and Islamic endorsement -- is echoed by the fact that, at present, the chief American counter to Iranian nuclear weapons development is the threat of a trade embargo, which China need not observe, through the Security Council, over which China has a veto. A clue to how the world may yet divide is China's willingness, like America's in the Cold War, to take less-than-perfect states under its wing without a care for their moral improvement. In fact, China must be delighted (what rival would not be?) that America's war aims in the Middle East are conditioned upon reordering the Islamic world, the most inconvertible of all divisions of mankind. Although U.S. intervention is obviously required, the nature and scope of the enterprise as stated is a gift to China worth many years of effort.

This and a persistent blindness in regard to China's probable trajectory are wounds gratuitously self-inflicted, for no country, ever, has had both the mass and income at the margin that the United States has now, but rather than anticipate, meet, and discourage China's military development, as it easily could, the U.S. has chosen to ignore it. America's m�tiers are the sea, the air, and space, and with one exception our major allies in Asia are island nations. These factors could be combined to keep China on the straight and narrow for generations longer than otherwise, but America's vision has been knocked out of focus by its ideals, and when China does develop the powerful expeditionary forces that it will need to protect its far- flung interests, the U.S. will probably have successfully completed transforming its military into a force designed mainly to fight terrorism and insurgencies.

*
Though the dangers of epidemics and terrorist nuclear attacks are now obviously pre-eminent, rising behind them is a newer world yet. This century will be not just the century of terrorism: terrorism will fade. It will be a naval century, with the Pacific its center, and challenges in the remotest places of the world offered not by dervishes and crazy-men but by a great power that is at last and at least America's equal. Unfortunately, it is in our nature neither to foresee nor prepare for what lies beyond the rim.

Mr. Helprin, a Journal contributing editor and senior fellow of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy, is the author, most recently, of "The Pacific and Other Stories," just out from Penguin.

Corrections & Amplifications:

China's crude oil imports are one-quarter the volume of U.S. crude imports and its balance of payments reserves is $400 billion. Due to a transmission error, both of these figures were misstated in an earlier version of this commentary.

www.3gnewsroom.com...

Huawei selected by Dutch Telfort B.V for UMTS roll-out
December 9, 2004

Huawei Technologies has been selected by Dutch mobile operator Telfort to deliver and install a nationwide UMTS network in the Netherlands including R4 based core network and UTRAN solution. Huawei will deliver a turnkey solution, giving Telfort full UMTS capabilities, interworking with its existing GSM and EDGE platforms and readiness for HSDPA. The UMTS contract was signed on December 8th in The Hague in the presence of the Prime Minister of the Netherlands and the Premier of China and is the first success for Huawei with its UMTS offering in Western Europe.

Telfort's choice for Huawei was based on technical assessment of its products and capability and on contacts with other mobile operators that use Huawei's UMTS products in Hong Kong and the UAE. Huawei has also agreed to support Telfort's efforts to develop mobile data in the Netherlands market by setting up an R&D centre in Amsterdam which will focus on end user services.

"We are glad to have Huawei as a strategic partner for our developments in mobile data and UMTS," said Ton aan de Stegge, CEO of Telfort, during the signing ceremony. "Telfort's strategy is to challenge the established norms of the mobile industry and this contract, which is the first of its kind in Europe, is exactly in line with that. We are confident that Huawei will help us to develop innovative and cost effective data solutions for our customers and look forward to a prosperous relationship with them."

"Europe market is listed as the most significant market in the internationalization strategy of Huawei company. We are planning to spend more on construction of Europe service and supporting system which will be treated as an investment to secure our long-term supporting and service for customers at selecting Huawei as their partners. Constantly we adhere to the principle of localization in Europe, making the most of our partners, experience, and talents to serve our Europe customers," said Deng Tao, President from Huawei branch in Europe. "We strongly believe in the potential of Telfort to show that our UMTS product can be very successful in the competitive Dutch market and are committed to building a successful future with Telfort as a partner."

This is reported to be the fifth commercial UMTS network constructed by Huawei in the world. The previous 4 networks are respectively Etisalat in United Arab Emirates, SUNDAY in Hong Kong, Emtel in Mauritius and TM in Malaysia. Whereas the 5 operators in cooperation with Huawei didn't apply any part of Huawei equipments in their own 2G network, this is quite a proof that 3G network is not necessarily dependent on of previous 2G network. Thus operators have more choices of better equipment suppliers. Starting up as a fast-growing vendor in wireless market, Huawei has become one of the leading 3G vendors in the world, says Deng Tao.

Huawei is the first supplier to release R4 Softswitch commercial version; it takes the lead in adopting R4 version in its 5 commercial offers under construction when R99 version being widely applied in most UMTS commercial networks, which endows Huawei with evident leading advantage in technology. On November, 27th, Softswitch equipments of Huawei company are equally applied in successful cutover and network-accessing of the largest Softswitch tandem network over IP whose construction is contracted out to the largest global operator-China Mobile. Technically, Softswitch has been brought to a mature and stable stage considering its superiority beyond equal in comparison with circuit core network.

The Telfort UMTS project in Netherlands is the first UMTS 3G contract Huawei Company has ever won from Europe.

I've just gotten wind of secret plans to develop nano-machines that would be spread by cruise ships and innocent looking freighters off the Chinese coast . They would be minuscule at first till a signal is given , then an army of trillions of destructive machines would form from seawater, march ashore dissolving and destroying the Chinese and their war machines till the land is swept clean devoid of life...........

..........more on this later.

it is also very funny I saw a post from taiwan forum, a bunch of igorants like bodebliss yell about their disppointment of deal between IBM and Lenovo (Legend).

You know what they are talking???:

they are saying: if all taiwanese stopping buying IBM PCs or thinkpad, the Levono or IBM will be out of business in few days. they have no clue China is the No.2 market for PCs and will be No.1 market in just few years. Even taiwan supporting business semiconductor industry face strong competition from China. When 7 major chip-making center all finished in China in 2006 (Shanghai center alone can compete 50% of taiwan semiconductor industry), I dont know whatelse bodeliss and his type people can yell about.

Bodebliss, you watch too much "funny" news in taiwan and only knows things about taiwan, and consider taiwan is the center of world-------- you look exactly like the "frog in the well" in proverb-like Chinese story.

bodebliss, close your door, keep LP-ing yourself, you can get much more excited.

and...
you can keep talking about punishing America if American won't protect the center of democrazy-taiwan, or, you can keep talking about invading French or Russia to give them a lesson if they donot recoginze the center of the world-taiwan.

ProteinX,

Would you mind telling me what LP stands for? I'm not familiar with pop terminology abbreviations.

Thank you ahead of time.

also, I want to share a real email from my friend in Taiwan (I got yesterday),
/********************************/
Hey, xxxx, Long time no see. I am so so happy these two days, because that damn Chen Shui-bian will not sleep well at night for a while. HaHa, I even don't care who the hell won the election. Please do share my happiness here. BTW, howz your day there?
I plan to find a new job next year, but you know that it is not easy finding a good one in taiwan for now. Let's wait and see. Say hi to your beautiful wife for me, ok?
/*******************************/

I just let you guys see that we shall be happy that bodebliess are only those mutated 'Chinese', and he does not represent all real Chinese in taiwan. That mutation certainly damaged his reasoning part in his brain.



[edit on 13-12-2004 by proteinx]

oh,

"LP"------------
that is the word only bodebliss-look-like people REALLY knows ( i accidently heard from their TV), why not let him give us a better explanation? and where this word from? why it become to popular?





[edit on 13-12-2004 by proteinx]

Originally posted by FredT
Communism will simply never work as you cannot overcome human nature. Homer Simpson summs it up best:

In Therory Lisa, But Communism works, In Theroy

North Europe, in most sense, pretty much like communism system.

Hawkssss,

Of course you know Helprin's views are Helprin's views.

I too have views formed over TIME and it is my opinion that democracy and democratic action is king and will win out over time, no matter what. I have the ability to see China will be democratic someday. It has no choice. It will accede to the higher norm or slip into anarchy.

[edit on 12/13/2004 by bodebliss]

We certainly are working towards democrazy, but not overnight, in the fassion of the Soviet Union. Read the article from WSJ; it has a nice piece on why china didn't adopt democrazy right away; the reason is that we can not afford to tread the soviet model and totally collapse our country. This outcome will certainly make many in the west to be very happy. Overnight change and total collapse is what wer are avoiding at all costs.

I agree, we have to and will move towards democracy (see not democrazy that many countries practice) .lol

Hawkssss,

I'm glad to see someone who actually shares nearly the exact same views as I on the matter.

China should move towards a Democratic Republic style gov't (from its Socialist Republic), but not overnight. It should do it slowly and carefully. Being a large country only makes the situation even more fragile.

It's easy to say, "Why not NOW?!" if you're not actually living in China or running the country.

Then the three of us are in general agreement.

I call this meeting adjourned

The reason I've said these things is once you've started on a path that is higher than all others, any other path or going backwards ends in chaos.

I don't want to see that for China . China deserves better.

Originally posted by proteinx

Originally posted by bodebliss
I wouldn't quite call Taiwan a dictatorship , as they just had there 5th fully democratic election.

bodebliss,

Greek learned demorazy from Taiwan 5000 years ago
and Jesus was born in Taiwan too.
Washtington was in fact taiwanese.

you will soon be arguring like that.

the more you talk, the more you make peple know how funny you are. I am sorry for Nox too, wasting too much time with bodebliss

What are you talking about... the other day I went out to VOTE and I rather enjoyed doing it. Let me REPEAT in case you don't understand. I walked out of my home to go to the VOTING BOOTH. Hmm.. Sounds like a pratice of Democracy eh? The last time I checked you couldn't vote in a dictatorship (China)... hmmm.... In fact, when was the last time YOU WENT TO VOTE? Your line of arguing will become like this:

Jesus was born in China
Chinese can vote
Chinese can expose the sars outbreak without being arrested
Chinese can protest without being run over by tanks in Tianemen square

Umm.... Yeah.... Welcome back to reality.

Will someone please tell me where proteinx stays, what is his age,occupation...etc...He seems to be a little shy in disclosing that data

It must be a cave, possibly where the proteinx is cheap.

Originally posted by bodebliss
It must be a cave, possibly where the proteinx is cheap.

I live in a cave, then you must be living in the self-service "LP-ing" house, that is reason you can keep yourself high.

For the indian friend here:
please still make sure you indian fellow can clean your a*s*s after you s*h*i*t , and please stop using your hand to do that clean job even you really want to clean it. ONLY after that, then please come back to discuss politics, otherwise, we all can smell what you left in your pants and your hands.


and I insist Jesus was born in Taiwan.

[edit on 14-12-2004 by proteinx]

How sad...im really disappointed...if you address your 'friends' with such profanity then im sure they wouldn't think to highly of you..even your chicom buddies on this forum disown you...and all I want to know is more about what you do for a living, where do you reside..etc etc..and you get all hyperactive again...


You know what I just had a thought!! Maybe since its nearing Christmas, proteinx wants to 'light up' that avataar region of his with "bright red" warnings!!
Yeah that must be it..

btw how many ppl have put proteinx on their ignore list?? ....Not me!!
Not until I find out some more about him

Whoa hold on there!! Do I see negative ATS points for proteinx?!!

That must be a first!!Please don't ban him mods..he's just to much fun!!

[edit on 14-12-2004 by Daedalus3]

you talk too much, Daedalus,

just dont forget do clean job after you go to bathroom.........oh, do you have bathroom in india?

Originally posted by proteinx
you talk too much, Daedalus,

just dont forget do clean job after you go to bathroom.........oh, do you have bathroom in india?

Yeah insult someone if you know less then them.

Out,
Russian

ProteinX,

Actually, I suspect that almost no country in the world has 100% toilet paper usage.

The preconception that Indians don't wipe using toilet paper is incorrect. Toilet paper IS used in urban areas. I'll admit, it is not as commonly used in rural areas... but what country doesn't have rural areas that are less fortunate than their urban counterparts? India's larger cities are modernized no less than most cities in the world. It's rural areas are no farther behind than most rural areas in the world.

Euromonitor - Disposable Paper Products in India

Sales of disposable paper products come mainly from the urban areas. In 2003, 95% of the total market value sales was accounted for by urban areas and only 5% from rural areas. With the rural population being much larger than the urban population, the implications are indeed clear.

Disposable paper products are still perceived as luxury items by the majority, especially the rural population. Sales come mainly from the urban consumers because they have greater awareness, higher disposable income and hence are more able to afford this extra expenditure. Consumers in the rural areas have low product awareness and lower disposable incomes hence they generally do not purchase disposable paper products and retain the traditional usage of washable cloths.

China is no different. Its rural areas are definitely more poor than its urban area.

Euromonitor - Disposable Paper Products in China

Sales of most disposable paper products remained small or negligible in rural areas over the review period. These products include nappies/diapers, incontinence products, wipes, cotton wool/buds, tissues, kitchen towels and paper tableware. The reasons could be explained in several aspects.

Firstly, some disposable paper products are not regarded as daily necessities, such as cotton wool/buds, wipes and paper tableware. Product awareness is low in rural areas and rural residents do not find it necessary to use these products. Secondly, cheaper substitutes are often available. For the bed-ridden elderly, rural residents would rather rely on used bed sheets and blankets, instead of the expensive incontinence products. Cheaper substitutes can also be easily found for nappies/diapers, tissues and kitchen towels. As the average disposable income is still very low in rural areas, disposable products are unpopular.

So it really does no good to insult countries based on toilet paper usage.

[edit on 14-12-2004 by Nox]