What it means to the world…
As a keen watcher of geopolitics, albeit an amateurish one, I am fully convinced that by 2030 China’s pre-eminence in the world will be acknowledged beyond doubt. The US will retreat to its cocoon. Russia will stand tall in Europe, which has to reconcile itself to being largely a “no body” in global scene. The Global South countries will join BRICS en masse to stay afloat.
China successfully tested its first atomic bomb on October 16, 1964, launched its first nuclear missile on October 27, 1966, and detonated its first hydrogen bomb on June 17, 1967.
In terms of nuclear warheads, the US and Russia may have more in numbers, but this is not an undisputed advantage, for no country would dare to do a first strike, except North Korea maybe. The world will be largely destroyed if nuclear bombs are used by the US, Russia or China. And in terms of delivery and interception systems, China’s is now the most formidable.
The latest variant, the DF-21D, has a maximum range exceeding 1,450 kilometres. It is the world's first anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM), capable of targeting a moving carrier strike group from long-range, land-based mobile launchers.
In addition to the development of a sea-based nuclear force, China has also developed tactical nuclear weapons. Its Air Force are certainly capable of delivering nuclear bombs.
It was during the 1999 when the US bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade that China saw the need to develop precision missiles and accelerate plans to expand its conventional missile forces.
The DF-26C is an IRBM with a range of at least 5,000 km, far enough to reach U.S. naval bases in Guam. Few details are known, but it is believed to be solid-fuelled and road-mobile, allowing it to be stored in underground bunkers and fired at short notice, hence difficult to counter. Possible warheads include conventional, nuclear or even manoeuvrable anti-ship and hypersonic glide warheads.
The DF-27 is a deadly intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) equipped with a hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) warhead developed in 2021. It has a range of 5,000 km to 8,000 km.
The DF-31 is China's newest road-mobile, solid-fuel ICBM which has a range of 8,000+ km, and can carry a single 1,000 KT warhead, or up to three 20-150 KT MIRV warheads. An improved version, the DF-31A, has range of 11,000+ km, far enough to reach Los Angeles from Beijing. It made its first official public appearance in the 2017 PLA Day Parade.
On 9 January 2014, China’s DF-ZF hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) made its first flight test. It is believed to have a top speed of Mach 10, or 12,360 km/h. In July 2021, China is believed to have tested globe-circling hypersonic missile including the unprecedented launch of a separate 2nd missile from the ultra-high-speed vehicle. Neither the United States nor Russia has demonstrated the same ability, which requires launching a missile from a parent vehicle traveling five times the speed of sound.
On 25 September 2024, China performed its first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test over the Pacific Ocean. The specific ICBM that was launched was not stated.
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| Conventional Strike Ranges as of 2022 |
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| Nuclear Ballistic
Missile Strike Ranges as of 2022 |
J[歼]-5, China’s first fighter jet made its debut in 1956. It was modelled along the Soviet MiG-17. It flew J-20 in 2019 and unveiled J-35 last year, both stealth fighters. (However, its J-10 and J-16 are still in service.) The US is the only country that has two types of stealth fighters – F-22 and F-35. Now that two new types of aircraft – believed to be the forerunners of the 6th generation fighters – have been spotted in the skies of Chengdu and Shenyang, the US is feverishly talking about developing their F-47 – to humour Donald Trump (him being the 47th president of the US. He says it is a beautiful number!) (Last month, SCMP also reported that Chinese scientists had successfully simulated conditions for the development of the world's first jet fuel-powered engine for Mach 16 (20,000 k,/h) flight, marking a potential game-changer in hypersonic propulsion that could redefine the limits of air and space travel.)
By 2030, China’s 6th generation aircraft will terrify the US.
China's shipbuilding capacity is now 230 times larger than the United States. (Some sources say it is more than 300 times!) Its shipyards accounting for more than 50% of global merchant tonnage production. Several of their shipyards can also produce naval vessels at will. Trump is now trying to address this shipbuilding gap, but it is going to be a lost cause.
The U.S. Navy's newest battleship is its USS Zumwalt – a 15,000-tonne destroyer launched in 2013. Its newest aircraft carrier is USS Gerald R. Ford-class commissioned in 2017. A second ship of the class, to be called John F Kennedy, is scheduled to enter service in 2025. But do you see it doing sea trials?
China’s 3rd aircraft carrier Fujian is currently undergoing intensive and extensive sea trials. The 4th aircraft carrier, believed to be nuclear-powered, is also being constructed.
It has already launched its 40,000 tonne 076 amphibious assault ship Sichuan which can also double as a small aircraft carrier containing unmanned aerial vehicles, as it is equipped with a launching system featuring an electromagnetic catapult like that of the newest aircraft carrier, the Fujian.
However, it is its Type 055 destroyer that most other navies fear most. Type 055 is a class of stealth guided-missile destroyer that is capable of multi-missions – the combination of sensors and weapons that can provide a main role in area air defence and anti-submarine capabilities.
The first batch of 8 vessels was designed between 2014 to 2018, and all were in service by the end of 2022. A second batch of 8 is being constructed at Dalian and Jiangnan. It is principally powered by four 28 MW (38,000 hp) turbines. The ship contains navigation radars, various communication and intelligence systems, electronic warfare support measures, electronic countermeasures, electro-optical sensors, laser-warning systems, optronic jammers, and datalink systems. A deployment port exists for variable depths and towed array sonar. The large bulbous bow likely also contains a bow sonar.
It has 112 vertical launching system cells – 64 cells forward and 48 cells aft – to fire surface-to-air missiles, anti-ship ballistic and cruise missiles, land-attack cruise missiles and anti-submarine torpedoes, besides the guns and close-in weapon systems. There is hangar space for two helicopters.
China has a battle force of approximately 370 surface ships and submarines versus the US’s 300 or so. However, in terms of tonnage, China still lags behind the US (2 million versus 4.5 million tonnes). China will surely overtake the US in terms of naval tonnage by 2030.
China has a fleet of more than 60 nuclear and conventionally powered boats. Its most powerful nuclear submarine is the Type 094 (Jin [晉]-class) ballistic missile submarine, capable of carrying 12 JL-2 missiles with a range of 7,200 km. It is China's latest and largest strategic submarine and is nuclear-powered.
These submarines are powered by nuclear reactors, allowing for extended periods at sea and silent operation. The Type 094A is an improved variant of the Type 094, with upgrades in stealth, hydrodynamics, and overall performance.
China is also developing the Type 096 Tang [唐]-classsubmarine, claimed to be able to carry up to 24 JL-3 ballistic missiles each. It should be operational in this decade.
Just days ago, it has also unveiled a powerful deep-sea cable cutter capable of severing the world’s most fortified underwater communication or power lines. The tool can cut cables at depths of up to 4,000 metres – twice the maximum operational range of existing subsea communication infrastructure – and has been designed specifically for integration with China’s advanced crewed and uncrewed submersibles.
Chinese researchers have also made significant breakthrough in electronic warfare technology, asserting that adversaries will find themselves exposed on the battlefield with no place to conceal. A team based in Beijing has successfully devised a method for continuous, broad bandwidth, real-time monitoring and analysis of the electromagnetic spectrum, which effectively unveils enemy forces during conflicts.
Last July, the South China Morning Post shed light on a December 2023 incident between a US EA-18 Growler carrier-based EW (electronic warfare) aircraft and China’s Type 055 cruiser Nanchang in the contested South China Sea. Apparently, the US aircraft was “jammed” by the Nanchang cruiser.
It is believed that the US and its allies have also faced similar situations in the South China Sea in recent months.
China has reportedly developed a new radar technology that can detect and track stealth aircraft, including the F-22 Raptor, by utilizing signals from its BeiDou navigation satellite system, offering a cost-effective and stealthy alternative to traditional radar systems. China has also reportedly deployed a new Large Phased Array Radar (LPAR) in Yunnan Province, enhancing its ballistic missile early warning capabilities and suggest China is building a counter-stealth radar system on Triton Island in the South China Sea.
In January, a PLA video showed a “strategic, active phased-array radar” that could detect missile threats within “a few thousand kilometres” – something at the forefront of the country’s anti-missile defence system. It is likely to be a system that will be used to detect hypersonic missiles.
All the above will not have been possible without a good own system. China’s BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS; 北斗卫星导航系统 Běidǒu wèi-xīng dǎo-háng xì-tǒng)) is in its 3rd generation now. It provides full global coverage for timing and navigation, along with the US’s GPS, Russia's GLONASS and the Europe’s Galileo. As of December 2023, 44 satellites are operational: 7 in geostationary orbits (GEO), 10 in 55° inclined geosynchronous orbits (IGSO) and 27 in Medium Earth orbits (MEO). It has reached millimetre-level accuracy.
The original idea of a Chinese satellite navigation system was conceived in the 1980s when GPS gave the US complete advantage on the battlefield and how satellite navigation systems can be used to conduct "space warfare". In 1993, China realised the risk of denied access to GPS during the Yinhe incident [银河号事件].
The first satellite, BeiDou-1A, was launched on 30 October 2000. In 2008 BeiDou began to offer an open service with an accuracy of 10 metres.
(China actually joined Europe’s Galileo project in 2004 but pulled out in 2007.)
It is now acknowledged that GPS’s capabilities are now substantially inferior to those of China’s BeiDou. BeiDou will surely set new standards in 2030!
So far, I have not touched much on China’s Ground Force, which is its principal fighting force. It is formidable by any standard. The need for maintaining such a huge ground force is borne out of the historical lessons that China has learned over the millennia, not out of fear of the new Xiongnu’s naval and air attacks because of Taiwan or the Philippines.
PLA’s 1,000,000-strong ground force is a heavily mechanized force, consisting of infantry and mechanized infantry divisions, tank divisions or brigades, and a number of artillery, antichemical, air defence, engineer, signal, reconnaissance, electronic countermeasure, and logistics troops. Much robotics and AI is now infused into its operational capabilities.
China’s military command structure
On top of the chain of command is the Central
Military Commission (CMC), the chairman for which is none other than Xi Jinping.
The PLA is organized into five theatre commands (Eastern, Southern,
Western, Northern and Central), four services (Ground Force, Navy, Air Force,
and Rocket Force) and four arms (Aerospace Force, Cyberspace Force, Information
Support Force, and Joint Logistics Support Force), with a dual command
structure that includes political organs at each level.
Xi’s relentless anti-corruption drive must have cleaned up much of China’s military ecosystem. Its professionalism and patriotism are now believed to be second to none.
All these would not have been conceivable ten years ago. Thanks to Ukraine sad state of affairs in the mid-2010s, China was able to acquire much of the country’s already very sophisticated military technology, particularly Moto Sich’s fighter engines and naval turbines. With China’s engineering resources, leap-frogging the West is just a matter of course.
China has already achieved a level of military preparedness that the US can never hope to win if a non-nuclear war were to break out in the western Pacific. Its “web kill” technology will ensure that much of America’s military assets will get sunk or shot down soon after they leave the 2nd island chain.
Wang Yi used to say this to his Western counterparts – Let’s meet each other half-way. This form of courtesy is rooted in oriental “win-win” politeness, which the West do not buy. Theirs has always been “zero-sum” in expectations. This courtesy is useless, for leaders like Trump understand only this: Might is everything. And China has all that now.
When US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said over Fox News on March 5 that the US is “prepared” to go to war with China, Wang Yi simply responded with Bring it on, man!
The leaders of Japan, South Korea and the Philippines need to study history and follow real news.
An easy answer: Devoid of the American hegemony, the world will certainly feel safer and more equal!
As Jeffrey Sachs has repeated advised the Western world, one, you cannot trust the American leaders and two, China is NOT (and will never be) a threat to them.
Sit back and relax!
End
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ReplyDeleteIn hindsight, China read the global geopolitical landscape with precision and accuracy since two decades back, a remarkable achievement in analytical prediction.
Her government hit all the right notes and policy spearheads for development, and phase-arrayed her chess pieces strategically for tactical thrusts and parries on the international arena.
Internally, she is reviving her economy, rightsizing the property market, prioritizing scitech and applicative research, cleaning up with governance and greentech, and strengthening her institutional and investment machineries while competitively scaling to first rank in many technology, manufacturing, food and health segments.
Externally, she has secured raw materials for her industrial engines, achieved goodwill with other countries which look up to her as a global and principled leader, and within the BRI-BRIC framework, her digital RMB will initially internationalize at least 38% of global trade to outrun the US SWIFT system and its intermediate banks, furthermore with massive efficiencies (7-seconds vs 4 days; 75%-98% reduction in fees).
At the same time, she has become the biggest shipper which is also the reason why the US wants to crowbar off her management of ports like Panama besides threatening to increase port charges on Chinese ships only, a proposal which will make inflame trade costs and relations besides being ranklingly racist.
Meanwhile and to the surprise and chagrin of US tech majors, her open-coded DeepSeek, other AI apps and animation productions are already taking the world by storm.
She is also deploying 6G for manufacturing and quantum communication for Beidou satellite connectivity; one day, both will enter the services of BRI/BRIC/Global South nations, thus giving them more than a leg up on the old western colonialistic compact that is seeing its last days - unless the west upends her momentum.
That they hesitate could be because their five-eyes know her, for instance, cyberwarfare, skills are so acute their defenses can be breached but no malware is deposited thus delivering the message 'know can but won't unless'.
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ReplyDeleteGiven her past history at the hands of invaders, her military modernization is naturally necessary to provide beef, balance and ballast against the crudities of foreign geopolitics.
In the case of the US, that has descended to extortion-by-tariff. Although it also buys 220,000 barrels/day of oil from Venezuela, it now threatens countries especially China with 25% tariffs (on top of 20%++ on her) if they do so, and on the whimsical excuse that Latin American country sends its emigrants into the US when it is the US' sanctions which have partially caused the oil-rich country to suffer massive unemployment.
Yet Trump's on-off tariff threats are disrupting his own economy, shaving trillions off his stock markets, weakening his bargaining hand since no one trusts his word anymore, and destroying the reputation of his US, not just because of his delusional trumponomics but also as a result of his narcissistic vindictiveness and hubris.
Unlike China which asks what-else can be done for win-win cooperation, the US only says or-else to demand servitude to its ways.
Such psychoses have manifested as seeing shadows, injustices and threats when none was intended; thus a reminder of the old saying, namely what the gods want to destroy, they first make mad.
How else could the world's biggest military spender with the most basing outreach spook itself until it destroys the very moral fiber it had been insisting the world accepts as standard?
And that destruction we can see today in Signalgate, the stunning lapse in national security perpetrated by the very leaders of national security of the only country that uses national security as the excuse to sanction and stymie other countries but based on innuendos, lies, fabrications, accusations and bloated gaslighting.
Those very leaders including Vance, Hegseth, Waltz, Rubio, Radcliffe, Gabbard had used their nonsecure Signal chat app to share the plan, target, package and sequenced steps to bomb and destroy the Houthis in Yemen.
As defense chief, Hegseth said even if the US only uses 3% of the strait there, the decision to bomb Yemen would be for (a) freedom of navigation and (b) deterrence, something China should take note with regards the other Strait.
And Vance as his Mr T sidekick-wannabe said he was unhappy the Europeans are paying nothing for the bombings and killings save for the UK and Australia providing aerial fueling.
That so much is known is because Waltz as Trump's national security chief had added Goldberg, The Atlantic's editor, who duly published redacted version of the online chat.
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ReplyDeleteAs president of a country that was to bomb another, Trump came out to say he knew nothing about it but Waltz was a good man and Goldberg was a sleazebag.
And Hegseth tiraded against Goldberg, denying security had lapsed, only to have the Republican House speaker Johnson, a smooth talker no less, saying it was an inadvertent mistake , thus blowing up in his face.
At point of going to YBL press, the Democrats are inquisitioning those leaders; presumably some may be burned at the stake for amateurism.
What is coming about is disturbingly clear. Supremo US remains parochial although bestriding the world. Licking its imagined wounds for thinking it has been stiffed, it wants to withdraw but its constituents still value its blighting reputation as sufficient reason to fight. Trigger happy enough to see every threat as a terrorist, a word of its invention, it exercises right by might, shifts goalposts and lies its way through, from baking powder to weather balloons. Amateurs coming into power, it shows poor organizational skills, what more zero understanding of human-set complications. It has no culture, no style, no humanity. But 850 military bases and 5000 nukes besides other implements of death. It has just closed off its climate change, federal education, library funding and weather forecasting offices. And its leaders rally around each other to pep-talk confidence and protect one another.
So as not to be infected, China best stay at arm's length. That should be easy because it looks like the US intends to decouple completely and that should be the first message to Washington District of ColOmbia.
(And he intends to grab Greenland? Why not Great Britain?)
There is one small parting shot. Hegseth also said better the US take initiative than lose control over Israel doing so. Means, the US considers Istael a potentially looser cannon and less controllable than itself.
And the IDF just decided to push the entire population of what remains of the Palestinians into one thin slivver of land, Al-Mawasi - so that it can control the amount of food aid to the Palestinians and turn them into pavlovians.
Great Britain &: Australia are integral to their master, the USA
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