posted on August 21, 2005 06:16:33 AM new
BEIJING - China and Russia began the second stage of their historic joint military drills early Saturday, shifting to China’s northeast coast after two days of exercises near the Russian port of Vladivostok, the Chinese government said.
The government didn’t immediately release any details of what the troops were doing near Qingdao, a major Chinese naval base on the Shandong peninsula, which juts into the Yellow Sea southeast of Beijing.
But officials said earlier that the exercise in China would include having a combined unit stage a landing to practice stabilizing a fictional country.
Some 10,000 troops, mostly Chinese and about 1,800 Russians, are taking part in the first-ever military exercises between the countries, dubbed “Peace Mission 2005.”
The exercise Saturday was to include 14 ships and about 50 Russian and Chinese warplanes, according to Russia’s ITAR-Tass news agency.
The war games are the result of strengthening ties between Russia and China over shared concerns about U.S. dominance of world affairs.
The joint practice is meant to improve the abilities of the two sides to work together in “dealing with crises and organizing coordinated actions in the backdrop of the fight against terrorism, separatism and extremism,” China’s official Xinhua News Agency said.
The exercise will include the midair refueling of Russian-made Chinese Sukhoi-30 interceptors by a Russian flying tanker, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency.
China’s secretive military has barred most foreign reporters from watching the exercises.
ITAR-Tass said even Russian correspondents were refused access to Chinese forces.
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
---------------------------------- The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say 'No.'
posted on August 21, 2005 06:57:06 AM new
Russia And China Play Army
Alex Storozynski, 08.18.05, 12:00 PM ET
NEW YORK - While some world leaders are concerned that China and Russia are conducting their first-ever joint military exercises this week; the real story is what happened last week. The trade ministers of Russia and China met in Beijing to discuss joint economic strategies between these former Communist giants.
In addition to chest thumping over U.S. troops in Asia, defense analysts say that for Russia the real point of the military maneuvers is to market weaponry to China. But for Beijing, that's a sideshow.
What's the real reason 8,000 Chinese troops have joined 2,000 Russian troops to conduct drills on land, air and sea? It's about oil. Russia has it. China wants it. The war games are dubbed "Peace Mission 2005." It should have been called the "Piece Mission"--as in China wants as big a piece of Russia's energy output as it can get.
China is rattling its saber at Taiwan. Beijing even wanted to play battleship off the coast of Taiwan. Instead, Moscow pushed for the war games to take place near the Shandong Peninsula, close to Korea and Japan. But make no mistake: China is taking part in these exercises to cozy up to the Kremlin for oil.
Both of these countries now practice "state capitalism." They're not communists anymore, but they're not really free-market economies, either. Good business is whatever the Kremlin and Beijing say it is. On the animal farms run by the Bear and the Dragon, all businesses are equal, but some businesses are more equal than others. And centralized planning is not exactly dead yet.
Trade between these two countries totals about $20 billion per year, but the leaders of these two nations say they want to grow that to $80 billion by 2010.
China's economy is already a fire-breathing dragon. Its GDP growth reached an incredible 9.5% in 2003, 2004 and in the first half of this year. But to keep that boom going, China must aggressively look for new sources of energy. Russia, with the world's largest natural gas reserves and one of the world's largest oil reserves, is the perfect partner. That's why China has offered to invest billions in trans-Asian pipelines that could transport Russia's oil to fuel the dragon's fire. China has even offered the manpower to build those pipelines.
Analysts say that the military dress rehearsal gives Moscow a chance to show off its Tu-95 strategic bombers and Tu22M long-range bombers. China, which has already spent billions on Russian military equipment, is sitting on more than $700 billion in foreign exchange reserves, so it could easily afford the warplanes and still have enough left to build pipelines and buy all of Russia's exportable oil.
While a unified Europe was supposed to hurt America's economy, the GDPs of France, Germany and most other EU countries are stagnant. However, the economies of China and Russia are still growing. If these two countries work together--Russia with its commodities, and China with its cheap labor and manufacturing machine--the synergistic effect could turn them into the straw that stirs the drink. But, so far, that idea has been a tough sell for Russia, which wants to be more than simply a source of raw materials.
After the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the eastward expansion of NATO, Russia turned eastward and began mending fences in Asia. So, in June 2001, Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan formed the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. For Moscow, the SCO is more about military might. But for China and the other Asian states, the goal is to increase economic ties. The Asian "stans," or states, broke away from the Soviet Union more than a decade ago, so it's unlikely that they're looking to take orders from Moscow again--unless those are orders that can be marked on the profits side of a business ledger.
Whether the SCO evolves into a counterweight for NATO--or the EU--has yet to be determined. Still, China and Russia, who have declared a "new world order," are clearly trying to make a go of it.
It's ironic, but in reality, these two former Communist giants are playing war games for business reasons, using the military as cover.
Washington must sit up and take notice. During the Cold War, Soviet spies chased American military and economic secrets. These days, Chinese military and business espionage experts are trying to uncover America's secrets. While it's up to our government to get a handle on the spying, the business community has to figure out how to compete with the Chinese dragon that is trying to swallow as much of Russia's oil and gas as it can.
Sure, Russia is pining for the glory of its superpower days. But let's not forget that this is the same military whose submarine was paralyzed earlier this month when it got caught in a fishing net. How do you spell S.O.S. in Russian?
As for China, Sun Tzu said in The Art of War that the best option was not to fight. His advice was that "supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting." China doesn't want to invade America, and It doesn't have to when it can sell Americans big-screen TVs and just about anything else Wal-Mart Stores (nyse: WMT - news - people ) will put on its shelves.
Ron
posted on August 21, 2005 11:34:54 AM new
Well then, let China get favored trade status from Russia and not US! I'm certain with the enormous expendable income the average Russian has, they'll all be rich in no time. Without damaging our economy. Let them climb all over each other for the almighty dollar that is so unimportant to Communist nations.
The only reason China is doing so well is because "favored trade status" is breaking our backs. You'd see alot less companies moving outside US borders if they couldn't get their product back in for free (or damn near).
