Today's most obvious blooging topic comes via the typically one-sided reported of China Daily in an interview with Wang Zaixi, vice-minister of the Taiwan Affairs Office. Predictably it's also being taken up by the news agencies (via Yahoo - AFP, AP and Reuters). The upshot is that Taiwan's constitutional redraft, set for 2006 with ratification in 2008, is going to be seen as the biggest provocation yet.
Seems to me, though, that with all the anticipation around the Beijing 2008 Olympics, it might be better to schedule a war until after the tournament. And besides, whoever heard of scheduling a war anyway?
So much sabre-rattling lately, it's probably time they got a new one.
Haven't had so much fun in ages. Discovered this site by a pony-tailed geek at a British university - http://www.preparingforemergencies.co.uk/.
It's actually a parody of this official government site - http://www.preparingforemergencies.gov.uk/ - and earned the nerd a reprimand from the civil service.
From what I've read, every household in the UK is being issued with a booklet on what to do to prepare for terrorist attacks. But I and (I think) many of my compatriots honestly don't think that terrorism is the greatest danger facing us.
After all, the IRA spent 30 years bombing us (variously sponsored by sympathisers in Libya, not to mention certain 'Irish Americans' in Boston and elsewhere) and no such leaflet was printed.
We already have one of the most effective counter-terrorist strategies in the world. Yes, people should be vigilant but during my lifetime terrorism has been a threat that we're aware of and accustomed to. The Northern Ireland question is being addressed, however ineffectively, only after the gunmen have laid down their arms after decades of no success.
Frankly I think that the most serious problems in the world are caused by environmental pollution, poverty and motor car accidents. No-one's ever suggested that cars are banned because they kill hundreds of people every day, much less that companies stop pumping out pollutants that are going to cause much more long-term lethal effects on the global populace. And poverty and the discontent it raises is and always has been the undisputed champion when it comes to killing people (and breeding terrorists).
The place where terrorism really is a threat right now is Iraq. Only yesterday 128 people were killed - 128. I bet they haven't been issued with any booklets.
Having seen this entry at The Longbow Papers, I contacted the kind chaps at my former employer who sent me the original text of this article from Jane's Defence Weekly (JDW):
Revealed: Taiwan Missile ComplexWENDELL MINNICK JDW Correspondent, Taipei
The Republic of China (Taiwan) has a major missile and radar complex on Tungyin Island, part of the Matsu Island group and situated just 16km from the Chinese coast, JDW has learned.
The complex includes two large radomes containing separate radars for the navy and army. There are also 100km-range Hsiung Feng 2 (Brave Wind) anti-ship missiles and Tien Kung 2 (Sky Bow) medium- to high-altitude surface-to-air missiles. These place several vital Chinese air bases, missile launch sites and naval facilities under Taiwan's missile umbrella.
The Tungyin facility appears aimed at restricting Chinese naval and air mobility at the northern end of the Taiwan Strait. A second facility on Penghu Island, also with Tien Kung and Hsiung Feng missiles, guards southern approaches to the strait.
One US defence source said that the radars provide Taiwan with an early warning capability, casting some doubt on a costly long-range radar programme encouraged by Washington. "A forward radar so close to the one major [Chinese] base complex [Fuzhou Air Base] in Fujian province means almost an AWACS [Airborne Warning And Control System] or AEW [airborne early warning] effect - people in Taiwan get a lot better picture than any long-range radar could give from Taiwan itself. It means the chances of surprise are low. It gives the air force a heads-up (warning) long enough to matter," the source told JDW.
The army radar, which has a range of 300km, can expedite cueing for the Tien Kungs on Tungyin together with Tien Kung and Patriot missile defence systems on the Taiwan mainland.
Tungyin is defended by the 195th Infantry Brigade and elements of the 101st Amphibious Reconnaissance Battalion. There are also numerous defensive tunnel systems throughout the island's granite core.
Aside from Tungyin and Penghu, Taiwan has Tien Kung bases at Sanchih in Taipei county, Tatushan in Taichung county, and Linyuan and Takangshan in Kaohsiung county.
Taipei has long held off from positioning missiles on Tungyin over concerns that this could violate a tacit agreement with Beijing over deploying missiles past the halfway point in the Taiwan Strait. This interpretation appears to have changed following the 1995-1996 Taiwan Strait crisis, which saw China seek to influence Taiwanese elections through a series of missile launches.
(The island in question is just east of Fuzhou)
Now, this may have no significance at all. I daresay that Chinese intelligence has known about it for ages. But on the other hand, now it's public knowledge it may increase tensions a little Cuban Missile Crisis-style.
It all depends on how new the facility is and whether or not it is operational. So much sabre rattling recently, it's not really good news.
If you can forgive the flippant style of this article - and I really don't like the dumbed-down boxing analogy, it's quite an interesting read and sheds some light on the role of unknown people's hero Jiang Yanyong. (I'm really not sure that is the correct spelling of his name, any takers let me know.)
Guardian article: China's Concealed Conflict by Jonathan Watts
Basically, the journalist is implying that Jiang Yanyong is effectively some kind of puppet champion in an underhand political battle against Jiang Zemin.
The pertinent part of the feature is as follows:
According to friends, the surgeon [Jiang Yanyong] is determined to continue his campaign. His next target is said to be the growing Aids crisis in China, which has only recently been recognised by the government.As with Sars, the topic allows the doctor to target the old president as well as the health-related shortcomings of market-first economic growth. Some of Jiang Zemin's closest supporters are implicated in the decade-long attempt to cover-up the scale of the HIV problem in the worst-affected area, Henan province.
However, while it is tempting to see the conflict in black and white terms, the reality is far more confused. Dr Jiang appears to be a squeaky-clean hero, but it is unclear whether he is acting alone or on behalf of senior communist officials who would stand to benefit from the demise of the former president.
With a long history of proxy wars within the party, there is speculation that the current president, Hu Jintao, and the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, are using the surgeon to weaken the power base of their main rival.
And Jiang Zemin, the apparent villain of the piece, has not always been so harshly criticised by the outside world...
So basically, rather than tackling problems such as AIDS, SARS and the 6/4 legacy (notice how all of these things have their own catchy jargonese) themselves, Hu and Wen are using Jiang Yanyong.
While I understand that Jiang Zemin is still a muscle behind the scenes, I would have thought it a paradigm of effective government for these things to be tackled by the politicians themselves. The way it looks at the moment, it appears that AIDS is a 'dissident' issue.
It's not. It's something that has to be dealt with by the mainstream, otherwise people just won't notice. No amount of cheesy posters in railway stations is going to defeat AIDS, but clear policy can
China was 50 years behind the rest of the world in putting a man into space, and is still catching up on some of its military technology. However, after a very quick Google search I turned up the photographs below.
I had commented on a reference in Vodkapundit that China's expeditionary warfare capability, the kind of capability it would need to secure Taiwan, wasn't up to much. While working at Jane's, I had heard about a former Soviet carrier, the Varyag, that had been laid up in the Bosphorus for years awaiting a transit permit. I thought it was going to be converted into a novelty casino off Macao, but, lo and behold, here it appears to be.
I picked up these pictures via varyagworld.com, a site dedicated to following the enigma of the ancient carrier. Amazing what you can find on the Internet these days, though of course it's impossible to authenticate anything here.
The photo at the top right of the page appears to show a shipyard in Dalian, northeast China. On the right of the picture there is definately a carrier (close up to the left), which by the stripped-down state of it could well be the Varyag.
Interestingly, on the left there appears to be another under construction perhaps, though it could just as easily be an oil tanker.
I'd read the rumours that there were carriers under construction somewhere near Shanghai too, but this appears a bit more concrete. However, assuming these are recent and authentic pictures, and indeed whether it is actually a carrier and not a cargo ship, it would still be years before the carriers were commissionable.
Furthermore, the engineering challenge is not in building the hull - before WWII the first carriers were simply old ships with wooden boards on the top to make a flat deck - the tough part is developing, installing and integrated the various combat systems. With a multi-purpose vessel like a CV it's pretty tough to blend together all the different radars you need for tracking your own aircraft, missiles, ships etc etc..
All of the systems would have been stripped out of the Varyag before it was decommissoned. Furthermore, if the PLAN did have a working carrier, does it have any aircraft with robust enough undercarriages to land on one?
Nevertheless, interesting pics. Click on the thumbnails to enlarge: another close up to the right.
There's an interesting USN magazine article on China's carrier capability or lack thereof here too. It's blocked in China but can be seen via an anonymiser (URL: http://www.nwc.navy.mil/press/Review/2004/Winter/art6-w04.htm)
GlobalSecurity.org's take on it is here.
Singapore newspaper The Straits Times also published an article back in March, reproduced below:
The Great Chinese Aircraft Carrier MysteryBy Anthony Paul
FIRST there was the weird shooting of President Chen Shui-bian and his vice-president. This was followed by what Newsweek's cover, in a bizarre reach for an American angle on Mr Chen's narrow win, called 'Asia's Florida election'. Now, for devoted Internet scourers at least, the China-Taiwan story is becoming even stranger.
Military-minded netizens are abuzz with talk about the allegedly imminent appearance of a Chinese aircraft carrier. Actually, not just one, but three. One California-based news commentator, FreeRepublic.com ('pro-God, pro-life, pro-Bill of Rights, pro-gun... and pro-America'), warns that China, with the idea of seizing Taiwan in mind, is about to spring a 'technical surprise' on the world.
Several websites refer to 'eyewitness reports' of three graving docks at Shanghai, each with carrier construction under way. First mention appears to have come in a lengthy report on the 'Strong Nation Forum' (Qiangguo Luntan), an Internet bulletin board run by the People's Daily Online. It quoted from an article in 'a Russian newspaper, The Independent', headlined 'China's future route to maritime dominance'.
The latest carrier rumours have caught the attention of America's full, frenetic political spectrum: A detailed account also appeared on a website far to the left of any pro-gun posse - the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), an arms-control advocacy group.
The FAS report quotes an 'article published in China' that claimed that one of the shipyards was expected to complete the first 48,000-ton carrier, currently named 'Project 9935', this year. All three ships, claimed the FAS item, 'could be operational with battle groups by 2008-2010'.
The modern People's Liberation Army Navy (Plan) is largely the creation from the 1960s of one of modern China's most powerful generals, Liu Huaqing. He laid down a much-quoted 'blue-and-green water' strategic doctrine.
At first, China should develop a 'green-water active defence': It would protect relatively shallow, thus 'green', territorial waters and enforce China's sovereignty claims in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea.
In the second phase, General Liu argued, the Plan should develop a 'blue-water navy' - capable of projecting power into the far blue yonder of the Pacific and Indian oceans.
Just before his retirement in 1997, Gen Liu published an article insisting that for this second stage, it was 'extremely necessary' for China, as it became a major trading power, to have carriers to protect its commercial sea lanes.
Reports that the Chinese have been listening to Gen Liu are by no means new or uncommon. Retired US Navy Captain Bernard D. Cole told me that he had repeatedly encountered references to China's interest in carriers during research into his book, The Great Wall At Sea: China's Navy Enters The 21st Century.
Said Capt Cole: 'I found reports of the navy's acquiring carriers as far back as the 1960s. None of them turned out to be true.'
Nevertheless, China's carrier enthusiasts, over the years, did spend time and money on what one observer has described as 'tyre-kicking' - spasmodic studies of Western and Russian carrier technology.
In 1985, China bought the 15,000-ton British-built, former Royal Australian Navy carrier, HMAS Melbourne. Ostensibly the purchase was for scrap, but the Chinese reportedly used its steam-catapult-equipped flight deck for flight training at a North China airfield.
In 1992, the Plan showed interest in buying the Varyag, a partly completed 65,000-tonne carrier that the Ukraine had inherited in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse. Though that early deal fell through (reportedly as a consequence of pressure on Kiev from Washington and Tokyo), Varyag eventually ended up in a naval yard in Dalian, North China, in 2002.
China has also been the final berth for the 43,000-tonne carrier Minsk.
This former proud flagship of the Soviet Pacific Fleet is now the centrepiece of Minsk World, an amusement park at Shenzhen, near Hong Kong.
A sister ship, Kiev, has gone through a similar transformation into a floating museum and convention centre in Tianjin.
Clearly, despite the Soviet carriers' obsolescence, the Chinese military must have felt that they had something to learn from these carcasses: The US$20 million (S$34 million) paid for Varyag was three times its value as scrap.
So are any lessons that the Plan learnt currently guiding Shanghai's naval architects? Is a Chinese 'technical surprise' just around the corner?
Retired US Navy Rear-Admiral Eric McVadon, a former naval attache in Beijing, told me that the most suspicious thing about the latest report of a 'green-water carrier' is that it contains 'too much detail' - the type of turbines, boilers, radar and so on.
'We've had good reporting about China's work on destroyers, subs, frigates, but nothing official on a carrier near Shanghai,' said Admiral McVadon. 'So if there's a carrier - in fact, not one but three - that we've missed, well that's big news. But there's too much detail here for me to believe it.
'If China's immediate goal is Taiwan, everything the Chinese Navy has been doing about their destroyers, subs and frigates makes sense. This carrier does not make sense. If you put a carrier like this to sea, you're just going to give the US Navy an attractive target.'
So the region can relax about the prospect of Chinese carrier battle groups sharing the Pacific with the US Navy's?
For the moment, probably yes. But one last word from Admiral McVadon on his first reaction to this latest report: 'I told myself, 'I don't really believe this is credible, but one of these days we'll have a report that will be'.'
You can't buy deodorant here anymore.
Supermarkets like Carrefour used to sell just one brand of men's toiletries - Adidas - and just the roll-on deo and shower gel. A few weeks ago the products mysteriously disappeared from the shelves.
Now I've found the same is true at foreign goods store Parkson's. In fact the entire display cabinet that used to hold the Adidas stuff is missing and there's an ominous blank spot on the wall. I resorted to purchasing local brand Fa, which at the end of the day is a woman's product and smells decidedly effeminate.
Has Adidas withdrawn from China? That's my guess. Well it's going to mean a lot of smelly foreigners from now on. And there's no way to put this nicely at all, so I won't, they've got a lot of company.
Many if not most of of the local chaps I've sat next to on trains and buses have certainly had an aroma about them. What's more, a tour around the classrooms at my university uncovers more (and not just the guys). During a survey exercise I set my journalism class once, one student decided to ask people about how often they washed, and the result was an average of about three times a week.
What's with this lackadaisical attitude to personal hygiene, such that I'm assuming that a foreign supplier has withdrawn its business here due to lack of custom? Do people simply consider bathing too much of an effort, are they trying to conserve water or is it ignorance of other people's sensitivities again?
It hit 38 Celsius in Shanghai the other day and my feeling is that soon this place is going to start honking even worse than ever.
At first sight this is going to look like a bit of a geek's post, but in China it's got more significant.
It's well known that the CCP blocks a large number of sites. This is of particular frustration to me when I want to research something either for teaching or journalism and blogging. Half the time, the information you need is concealed on a 'banned' site like... my own national broadcaster.
Someone kindly left the following advice on my post 'The Small Firewall of Shanghai':
The easiest way around it would be to use a proxy server inside the country but outside the firewall. The best thing would be to get a tech-savvy friend with unblocked access to setup a proxy server and give you access.Alternatively you could find an open proxy inside China and use that. If you do, keep in mind that you will either be using it without the owner's permission, or it is a honeypot and is being monitored. Either way it would be best not to use it to access anything too controversial.
Up until recently I had been using proxies such as Anonymouse and Unipeak. Sadly, these seem to be no more, or at least are not working Could it be that the CCP censors have cottoned on to the value of proxies in circumventing their controls?
In the last few days I found another, Anonymization. It seemed to be the answer to my prayers - fast, easy and even with a useful toolbar. But quickly enough this went down too.
I'm now a bit concerned that this could have been one of the 'honeypots' mentioned. Have I let myself in for something nasty?
While I was referred to this list, I'm not really technically minded enough to get them working in the way that the sites mentioned above functioned.
Frustrating.
Whoever's going to win the war, the war has to happen first, God forbid. The issue is certainly gaining ground in the international media - for example there's this article in the Christian Science Monitor that argues that:
...the consequences of aggression are far too unpredictable: that an attack could irrevocably harm China's rise as an economic superpower, destroy the fragile unity of the party leadership should it go badly, and set the rest of Asia against Beijing.
I wonder who would join China and who would join the US in a 'coalition of the unwilling'. I can't honestly see any nation expect for the perennial sidekicks, Britain. Possibly Japan, but it's still not permitted to maintain an effective military other than the Self Defence Force. Imagine the furore in China if they were pitted against the Auld Enemy again: 1.3 billion people would go ballistic. South Korea's not going to join in and leave itself exposed to its northern neighbour.
It's not really in anyone's economic interests for Taiwan to return to China: the benefits of regaining the federal reserve that the Kuomintang stuffed in their pockets when they fled in 1949 would be cancelled out by the consequences of panicking investors and possible sanctions. In fact, the main interest is in nationalistic sentiment from China.
But there's a serious intent behind the current exercises, as the International Herald Tribune explains:
Two French-made Mirage 2000-5 fighters from the northern air base of Hsinchu landed on a highway in Tainan, southern Taiwan, where they were refueled and loaded with short-range air-to-air missiles before taking to the skies again.The air force said the exercise, part of Taiwan's biggest annual military drill, is to "review the air force's capability in using freeways for emergency landings and logistic support in case of war."
The Taiwanese maneuvers came after China kicked off the largest war games of the year, simulating a fight for the control of air space over Taiwan.
Nuclear-powered submarines, warships, the latest model missile destroyers and a guided missile brigade are reportedly involved, along with Sukhoi Su-27 fighter jets bought from Russia.
China had said it would use the joint sea, land and air drills to demonstrate its ability to dominate air space over Taiwan, an essential element in any invasion.
The key words here are 'demonstrate its ability'. Short of actual war, it's one way to show an adversary that you're not joking. It's what the British did in Sierra Leone a few years ago, staging a mock amphibious invasion in order to show demonstrate their capability and intent. The Sierra Leone rebels backed down.
In a way the exercises are a positive thing. If they make both sides nervous in the right way - Taiwan nervous that China might attack it if it declares independence, China that Taiwan would fight back - then the exercises could actually help reduce rather than increase tension.
If there's one thing that could inflame things though it's this. For God's sake don't cook up the Taiwan issue with the Japanese, that really is a recipe for opening a can of noodles.
There's been so much talk about it recently, but there's one question remaining: who would win? As a former naval reporter at Jane's, publishers of renowned journals Jane's Defence Weekly and Jane's Fighting Ships, I think I'm qualified to come up with a sketch analysis of this issue.
I will emphasise that having left Jane's two years ago my knowledge is rusty. Moreover, accurate intelligence on current Chinese naval capabilities is rare. But blowing my trumpet I'd still say that my educated assumptions should bear some credibility among China bloggers (though not necessarily on an international political level).
Question 1: Would America Intervene?
There's no doubt about it – if the US doesn't intervene then China will take back Taiwan in a period of days if not hours. The Taiwanese military would be nothing more than a speedbump, and we’ve all seen Chinese drivers flying over speedbumps.
Assurances from the US to the Taiwanese have been ambivalent of late, but ultimately it would be in US interests to at least intervene diplomatically to prevent a war. The economic consequences of any conflict would inevitably be dire. Investors would flee from both Chinas (PRC and Taiwan), Hong Kong would probably also panic and the event would possibly trigger an Asian if not a world crash and recession.
Furthermore, a Taiwan war would also politically destabilise the entire region, especially if China were seen to 'get away with aggression'. Given the momentum received after a Taiwan war it might be tempted to set its sights on the Spratly Islands and other contested territories. Maoist insurgents in various countries would probably be boosted and it could lead to a larger low-level regional conflict.
On the other hand, if there's one thing that will dissuade the US from military intervention it's bodybags. Dead American boys do not win elections, something both George W Bush and John Kerry are both aware of. Hopefully.
Question 2: Naval Power
Taiwan is an island: the war would be an amphibious invasion. According to reputable analysts GlobalSecurity.org, the projected 2005 combat strengths of the oddly-titled People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) are as follows:
67 submarines
0 aircraft carriers
1 'aviation ship' (helicopter carrier)
644 other surface combatants, including mine warfare and amphibious vessels
I could only find 2001 figures for the US Navy (USN) but they are:
72 submarines
12 aircraft carriers
207 other surface combatants
Update: It's been pointed out that the figures I originally gave for 'nuclear submarines' were erroneous - I should have remembered that the USN has no non-nuclear powered boats. The figures I gave probably did confuse nuclear-powered with ballistic nuclear missile capable - since I'm unable to access certain websites from China at the moment I can't get an accurate confirmation so think it's best to leave it out.
So it would seem that the PLAN has the numerical advantage. It's also true that the US would only be able to deploy a fraction of its full strength, perhaps a couple of carrier battle groups (CVGs) and amphibious ready groups (ARGs) while the PLAN would have the advantage of being able to call on reinforcements from its own region.
But one of the buzzwords these days is 'force multipliers' and the US has loads of them. A force multiplier is basically advanced technology that makes one of your ships, aircraft or tank worth three, four, five of theirs. And with the kit the USN has you can bet that each of theirs is worth 10 of the PLAN’s.
This isn't a biased patriotic statement (I'm British, so have no reason to favour the US): it’s a statement of cold logic. The Chinese are not known for their technology and it’s another good bet that a high proportion of the 600 odd vessels listed above are obsolete or even unserviceable.
That isn't to say that the PLAN hasn't got some good kit. For example, it's been ordering Sovremenny-class destroyers from Russia armed with Moskit/Sunburn anti-ship missiles. Along with the PLAN's submarines these are what the Taiwanese are most afraid of, and they would put up a good fight.
However, naval warfare is all about seeing and not being seen and this is where US systems are still understood to be head and shoulders above others. American radar, especially the SPY-1 variants in the Aegis systems, have far more range and capability than Russian or Chinese. If you don't believe it, look at the amount of nations clamouring to buy Aegis compared to those trying to offload Russian kit.
With these force multipliers in place, the USN can probably blow the PLAN out of the water with ease. The biggest danger is that it'll run out of missiles: even assuming only a 10% hit rate, it probably won't.
Taiwan has four subs and 113 combat ships, hardly worth mentioning.
Question 3: Airpower
Modern war is aerial war. I'm not going to go into another count-up of numerical superiority – suffice it to say that the PLA Air Force has plenty more aircraft than the US.
However, there's one thing the PLA hasn't got and that's an aircraft carrier. Yes, it can launch planes from mainland bases, but it's not going to be able to station them close in to the littoral zone like the USN can. It's either going to have to have aircraft return to base after sorties – which will involve a time delay – or it's going to have to refuel its aircraft in the air. That's a risky business with enemy ships and aircraft around. Moreover, it's not yet possible to re-arm aircraft in flight.
Add to this the USAF's force-multiplying technology and you have a recipe for badly losing air superiority and thus badly losing the war.
Question 4: Would the US get there in time?
All of the above assumes that there’s already combat-ready USN battle groups in the area, probably steaming in from bases in Korea and Japan. It would take longer for them to arrive from Pearl Harbour and other Pacific locations.
If the USN wasn’t quick enough, then it’s possible that the PLA would be able to establish a beachhead on Taiwan. After that, it would be game over. The Taiwanese would put their hands up straight away. America is never going to go in to a ground war against a dug-in and determined Chinese enemy, which would mean enormous casualties on both sides.
It’s also possible that despite all my talk about force multipliers, due to sheer numbers some PLA naval, amphibious and aerial forces may be able to slip past the USN even if it got there in time. In that case they may be able to do some damage in Taiwan, though they might end up cut off from their own forces and supplies.
It all depends on how much warning the US would have and how quick they would be to act.
In terms of intelligence, I think it highly unlikely that the US has much in the way of decent intel on the PRC though it certainly has plenty sources in Taiwan. The most obvious warning of course is going to be a Taiwanese declaration of independence, and it's safe to assume the White House would know about that in advance. Then there could be the problems of congressional and public opposition to sending the navy in, not to mention political dithering.
Conclusions:
My conclusions are simple. If the US decides to intervene and it does it fast enough, the PRC will probably not be able to take Taiwan. But no plan ever survives contact with the enemy: the only predictable thing about war is its unpredictability. There could be some unforeseen factor that would throw this all out of balance.
If the PRC were to pre-emptively attack Taiwan it might beat the USN in the race to the island but it would probably mean the end of the economic boom. Investors would lose their nerve and the UN could possibly impose sanctions.
If Taiwan declared independence, the PRC would have its provocation but the US would have its early warning.
If the US intervened, it would be no Iraq. Though it would most likely win, the numerical advantage of the Chinese is such that at least some US vessels and aircraft are going to get hit. US casualties would probably top a thousand. This may not be politically expedient.
Chinese casualties would be in the tens of thousands.
There's no point entering a war unless you know you can win. It then becomes a question of which will cause less face-loss to the CCP: standing by when Taiwan declares independence or losing to the US. If it does turn into a turkey-shoot then the CCP's grip on power is going to weaken considerably as the people lose patience and respect.
The buck basically stops with Taiwan.
I personally think that for Taiwan to spark conflict over the question of its independence would be an act of monumental stupidity. The economies of both Taiwan and the PRC would probably collapse, thousands could die and no-one would benefit. It would be better to maintain the status quo.
But national leaders do sometimes behave with monumental stupidity, as we've already seen in the recent past. Let's hope reason prevails.
Appendix:
Well worth looking at Global Security's Taiwan links pages.
You can read some of the bloggers' rhetoric and debate here:
http://www.josephbosco.com/2004/07/china-will-go-to-war-if-taiwan.html
http://www.brainysmurf.org/archives/001165.html
http://www.the-eleven.com/~tjlegg/index.php?wl_mode=more&wl_eid=197
http://vodkapundit.com/archives/006167.php
http://pekingduck.org/archives/001500.php
http://angrychineseblogger.blog-city.com/read/735286.htm
http://gweilodiaries.com/archives2/000607.html
http://www.zonaeuropa.com/01738.htm
http://windsofchange.net/archives/005210.php
As expected it's pretty easy to get hold of the controversial new documentary film on bootleg DVD over here now.
While a lot of Michael Moore's journalistic method is a bit suspect - he does tend to start with a point he wants to make and finds evidence to support it rather than the other way round - it's pretty convincing. If you don't want to shell out you RMB 8 here's the plot:
"The reactions to 9/11, particularly the Iraq invasion, were staged to make money for Bush and his cronies."
I'm so surprised. No, that's sarcasm. Critical as I am of some of the things the CCP gets up to, this is worse still.
Available in hooky backstreet stores and cycle baskets now.
Just as China erected a gigantic buffer - perhaps the greatest engineering achievement in history - to repel the Mongol hordes, cities such as Xi'an and Pingyao put up their own city walls to encircle themselves in a perceived comfort zone.
Is there an analogy to the so-called great firewall of China, which protects the Chinese from the deleterious influences of free speech, diverse opinions and sometimes even actual fact? Does the celestial nanny have a microcosmic element in smaller institutions?
I know little about the technology, but any readers out there who see the following may wish to comment.
I currently live and work on a university campus, and one of the benefits is an LAN connection. The semester officially ended on 16 July, last Friday and at 7pm on the dot what seems like a firewall went up.
For over 36 hours I was unable to access any website at all hosted outside the mainland. This meant that while I was still able to view the drivelous journalism of China Daily and the infinitely better English-language blogs by Chinese people such as Leylop and Isaac Mao, for the most point I was cut off.
Yes, I know, most people don't use the Internet, it's only been around for a few years, get used to living without it etc.. But I couldn't even get on to Hotmail to send and receive important e-mails. I had to resort to sneaking around a sweletring Internet cafe downloading files onto a newly-purchased USB Flash Drive (one of those memory thingies you plug into a computer instead of a disk).
And I'm pretty sure that in order for this to have happened, whoever looks after the university network had to turn on some kind of device to filter out the non-Chinese sites. Can't see it merely being 'technical problems'.
Why exactly would something like this occur? Were they testing a system for future usage, an anti-outsiders contingency measure in the event of some kind of turmoil to which students might react?
Can't see these students reacting motivated to oppose anything at all short of nuclear armaggeddon myself, but you never know.
Today it's exactly one year since this site went online - so here's my anniversary review. This is me on the right, by the way: I'm not actually keen on putting photos of myself up here since I'd rather emphasise my thoughts, ideas and pictures.
Philip-sen.com is an idea I had been toying with for a while, and once I returned to the UK afer four months travelling last year I decided to go ahead. Initially it was meant to be an online photo album with a little bit of a self-marketing section, but since then it's blossomed more than I had imagined. There must be close to 500 pictures on the site by now.
After becoming nervous whether Google was ever going to trace it, finally it did and the hits started coming in.
In response to a suggestion by a former editor, my old e-mail dispatches from around the Asia Pacific region were re-invented as a blog some time in October, adding a whole new dimension to the site.
The blog is hard to define, but ultimately it's a personal magnifying class on my life and thoughts during my stay in Shanghai. I came here with an unwritten mission to try and understand China and the Chinese, something that's much easier said than done. For what it's worth, this is mostly what you'll see on these pages.
Discovering blogging opened up new windows for me: I was appointed editor of a newly germinating site called Living in China, which is beginning to assume some significance in the Chinese underground media. Recently I started up another site, PostCampus.com, a webzine written by students from my Journalism English course. Ultimately the amount of hours I've put in with the above have been to the detriment of my own personal blog, but no matter.
So much for my little empire. Without access to Dreamweaver, the whole lot has been hard coded (HTML programmed by hand) by myself, which has done wonders for my computer skills though I wouldn't yet rank myself as a web designer.
So that's my site. Precisely one year to the minute after its first hit, www.philip-sen.com has garnered 23,115 visits and 62,422 page impressions. Viewings currently average about 100 per day. This may not sound like much, but it gives me some personal satisfaction.
It's not a big gun, but it's fun shooting it..
Right, OK. I've got to find some stores like this one somewhere in Shanghai and photograph them for a guy in Japan who is compiling the company brochure. Never say that a website isn't an effective self-marketing tool.
Last time I did this, however, I spent two days tramping around Shangers searching for the right stores which was most tiresome. Anyone, any ideas where to find these places? They're all going to be re-named 'FamilyMart' by Friday, hence the need for pictures.
Click on the pic to enlarge.
Firstly, after weeks of painstaking effort and struggling with the code, I've cracked the layout for Postcampus.com, the student website I've been building up. Read about it here.
I've also managed to scan in my Huang Shan pictures for what they're worth.
Enjoy!
Packed off girlfriend and two friends at Shanghai's airports this week, and said goodbye to another. Suddenly feel very alone.
Instead of ruminating on the partings, I'll stick in a couple of observations on the airports.
Shanghai Pudong (PVG)
An incredibly modern architecturally exotic exterior belies a remarkably poor interior. By this I mean the airport shops and restaurants. It amazes me that after spending so much on the building, there's so little here to entertain the visitor, just a grotty selection of grotty and overpriced mini-marts and a pathetic little restaurant corner. You may as well be in the bus station.
I suppose that the philosophy is that if you're on your way out of Shanghai, there's no point trying to please you. However, I was surprised to find a copy of Newsweek (priced at RMB 45 or about US$5) with a front page article on 'Hong Kong Gets Political'. Right after the 1 July demos. Interesting.
Shanghai Hongqiao (SHA)
On the other side of town, though a bit easier to get to, there's the decrepit old domestic airport - though the 10 foot sign that labels it as an 'International' travel hub is yet to come down. That's all I've got to say - there's basically nothing here at all. It's also a very confusing place - try finding your flight check-in counter and departure gate behind all the false walls.
Referring to the entry below, sure enough a slip came through the post saying I had to report back to the med centre since there was something wrong with my liver.
I can come to only four conclusions:
1 - Myself and the three others are all very unhealthy (especially our livers)
2 - There is some kind of persistent database or clerical error
3 - The centre needs to fill a quota of patients coming back for a second check
4 - Someone is creaming off a kickback every time a foreigner drags himself all the way to Hongqiao and coughs up RMB 65 for another blood test.
Whichever way, I'm not impressed.
Now I know what it feels like to be on a production line. Despite my criticisms, I've finally found something in Shanghai that is frighteningly efficient. And also clean and hygienic with people who (try to) speak English.
It's the Foreigner's Exit/Entry Health Centre. In order to gain or renew a work visa, you need to go through a thorough check up. Walk into the centre in Hongqiao, cough up your RMB 702 fee and you're off.
After handing in your form, you are bustled into a changing room where you don a surgical kimono and place your belongings in a locker. The attendent checks you weight and height then barks a number at you.
At first this is confusing, until you realise it's the room number for the blood test. In, out, shake it all about. Done. 108! X-ray. Flash! Done. 109! Ultrasound. Fortunately did not turn out to be pregnant. Done. 118! ECG. Electrodes popped on and off. Done. 116! Eye test. Do you wear contact lenses? Yes. Done! 115... and then queue for a while for the final check up and data entry.
An incredibly impersonal process that doesn't exactly make you feel valued as a human being, but there again I'm a foreigner, not a human being, so should be grateful for the remarkable speed and convenience of the process.
Will let you know if there's anything wrong with me; so far three extremely fit and healthy people I know aged 23, 21 and 19 who have been through the centre have all been turned up with severe complaints of various internal organs. Funny that.