I'm in Thailand right now. It means that even from a crappy little Internet cafe I have access to information I can't always get in China. So, at the risk of being accused of taking a short cut I post for your benefit an article lifted from the BBC site... His funeral is set for Saturday, but I don't think we're going to miss much.
Obituary: Zhao Ziyang
Zhao Ziyang: Chinese reformist leader
A former secretary-general of the Chinese Communist Party, Zhao Ziyang was a leading reformer. But he was toppled in 1989, after trying to find common ground with the student demonstrators in Tiananmen Square.
Born in the central Chinese province of Henan in 1919, the son of a wealthy landlord, Zhao joined the Communist Youth League in 1932.
After working as a party official during the liberation war of 1937-49, he rose to prominence in the party in Guangdong province from 1951.
He set about introducing agricultural reforms and became one of few government officials to be appointed to a top provincial post without first serving on the Communist Party's central committee.
But he fell foul of Mao Zedong in the 1960s. The Maoists felt he had betrayed his ideological principles for the sake of capitalist reforms.
During Mao's so-called Cultural Revolution, Zhao was paraded through the streets of Guangzhou in a dunce's cap and denounced as "a stinking remnant of the landlord class".
Zhao was rehabilitated by Zhou Enlai in 1973 and was sent to govern China's largest province, Sichuan.
The province was on the brink of collapse thanks to political upheavals and Mao's disastrous economic plan, the so-called Great Leap Forward.
Making his mark
Shortages were so severe that some peasants were reported to be exchanging their daughters for food ration cards.
Zhao turned the province's economy around, increasing industrial production by 81%, and agricultural output by 25% within three years.
His achievements caught the eye of Deng Xiaoping who had emerged as the dominant figure in Chinese politics after Mao's demise.
Deng saw in Zhao's policies in Sichuan a blueprint for China as a whole. He had Zhao inducted into the Politburo as an alternate member in 1977 and as a full member in 1979.
After six months as vice premier, Zhao was appointed prime minister in 1980 and later assumed the post of Communist Party general secretary.
Under the mantle of Deng's "two Chinas" policy, Zhao's goal was to transform China into a modern, democratic socialist state by the year 2000.
Moderniser
He introduced market reforms to improve output. Heavy industry proved difficult, but he achieved greater success with light industry and agriculture.
He also introduced measures to streamline the country's bloated bureaucracy and to reduce the endemic corruption.
Zhao also expanded trading links with the west, particularly the United States. Under Zhao, trade with the US increased tenfold. American companies were encouraged to invest in the new China.
But the overheating Chinese economy of the late 1980s caused inflation, and Zhao shouldered much of the blame.
When he visited the protesting students in Tiananmen Square and showed sympathy for their cause, he sealed his political downfall. Within three weeks of the crackdown, he was ousted from all his government posts.
Despite his disgrace, Zhao was allowed to remain a party member and no charges against him were ever pressed.
He was often seen playing golf in Beijing and remained a popular figure in China as a whole.
So from now on I'm glued to the TV. I'm going to offer some rare praise to CCTV9 which despite making its lead story the relatively irrelevant meeting between Wen Jiabao and the president of Ethiopa spent a good ten minutes on US election coverage.
Of course the angle was a Chinese one, and that's fair enough (it'll make good discussion material for tomorrow's journalism class). But the Chinese angle is an important one, with Taiwan and trade tariffs at the top of the agenda.
The station even did a vox pop round up of views around Beijing and incredibly found a Bush supporter though perhaps he might have just been being facetious. Of 100 polled, however, about 77% descibed America as the most unpopular nation in Chinese eyes (Russia was most popular).
In a couple of hours the US will gear up for its election.
I would like to remind any Americans who happen to chance upon this of a couple of things:
In countries such as China, where I live, there is no such thing as an election. Therefore the leaders of the country are not accountable to anyone but themselves. Corruption and human rights abuses are rampant.
Since the 9/11 attacks, there have been serious bombings in Bali and Madrid and numerous smaller attacks. Largely unreported Iraqi civilians and soldiers are killed on a routine basis. Military casualties of just the US and UK are as follows:
Iraq:
861 US military KIA
45 UK military KIA
Afghanistan and other theatres:
58 US military KIA
Several more Spanish, Italian, Polish, Ukrainian and soldiers of other nationalities have been killed by hostile fire bringing the Iraq total to 969, not to mention some 50-odd reporters, countless contractors and aid workers.
Today's vote affects everyone. It's not just about tax cuts, education and healthcare any more. Since you have it, please use it wisely.
So this is a China blog. But events in the world affect China like everywhere else. So in the next couple of days I'm going to take a look at the election in the US, something which will affect us all. There's many nationalities working in Iraq, including Chinese in various guises, so it's relevant if a bit tenuous.
According to the Iraq Coalition Casualties site, which allows you to look at the cold raw statistics as provided by various government agencies, the casualties in the war on terror are as follows:
Iraq - 966
Afghanistan etc. - 58
Total - 1024
And that is only including killed in action - I don't include deaths by accident. These are higher in a warzone than they would be in civilian life for various reasons, but let's cut them out for now.
But it does include as far as possible all the British, Spanish, Italian and other European and non-European coalition military deaths.
It can't include Iraqi military and civilian deaths - there's no stats available. And it doesn't include hostages and various 'civilian contractors' (either mercenaries or just plain civilians).
If you don't want China to take the global ascendancy over the US in the coming years, it might be as well to think carefully. War has changed in the 30 years since Vietnam, but compare these figures to 1964 and you see my drift.
And that's a non-offensive paraphrase. So it's not China, but an absolute propaganda classic. Most amusing if you're British - 'cos we can take it and indeed laugh at it to an extent. I doubt that it would be the same the other way around.
The story is (and I'm not entirely sure it's real and not a spoof) that liberal UK broadsheet The Guardian invited its readers to write to undecided voters in Clark county, Ohio. Their responses are here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1329858,00.html
Now, it was a deeply arrogant move for The Guardian to orchestrate this. After all, no-one has any right to tell people how to vote. But the fact is that there are 5,750 million disenfranchised people on the planet. Most of us cannot vote in an election governing the leadership of the world.
As the last superpower, US foreign policy affects us all, far more than does British, French, Russian or even Chinese. And Americans do try to tell us how to run our lives, in the shapes of trade tariffs, unbalanced arms and pharmaceuticals bargains and floods of films and music that give what many people don't realise is a uniquely American perspective of the world. Who is always the bad guy in an American film? - a Brit. 'Cos Americans can't be the bad guy, oh no.
And finally, though of course we do have our own elections, Britain is tied to America in the way no other country is. Whatever America says, it has to follow. That's the special relationship, and it doesn't matter which party is in power in Britain.
But read the admittedly selective offering at The Guardian and you'd be forgiven for thinking that the UK is the enemy, just for pulling a cheeky stunt like this. And that tells you more than anything what's wrong in America at the moment. If ordinary people have these frankly bigoted, offensive and irrelevant opinions about America's greatest and indeed only friends maybe it is time to withdraw our support.
Of course the whole thing is a bit of a joke, a silly season story a few months too late. But nearly 70 of our service people have been killed in Iraq. Hundreds more non-American civilians have died in Madrid and Bali, and in other less publicised attacks around the world: Turkey, Egypt, Kenya. If you have a foreign face in China, you're American, regardless of whether you have even been there.
We don't have the right to vote in America, but it damn well affects us.
For the perspectives of Britain's (arguably) most prominent novelist, historian and scientist, read on here too.
Update - there's even more feedback here, and it's increasing at an incredible rate.
'Taiwan Threat to Attack Shanghai Angers China' says Reuters. Oh really? I thought they might send them a thankyou note and box of mooncakes...
China Daily also reports - watch out for all the super-emphasised phrases in quotation marks eg. Taiwan's "Parliament". Could say the same for "People's" "Republic" of China, but that's by the by.
Difference of reporting is worth noting - see how China Daily suggests that Taiwan would strike Shanghai pre-emptively, while Reuters says it would be as a response to an attack on Taipei. Strangely, I don't believe either of them.
Missiles is another thing I omitted from my very flawed analysis of the military situation. After all, Taiwan appears to have already built a missile base close to the mainland. In effect, if they have enough missiles with sufficient range, they could do a lot of damage to each other.
The main kind of damage the missiles would do, however, would be economic and political. I severely doubt that either the PRC or Taiwan have much in the way of pinpoint accuracy - even the US, despite all its boasts to the contrary of 'surgical strikes' etc. doesn't have a perfect capability.
So what would be the purpose of striking Taipei or Shanghai? I don't see an awful lot. Hit either and you're likely to more or less bring down the economy of either Taiwan or the PRC overnight. Foreign companies, investors and shareholders are going to flee like little girls. This foreign teacher certainly will.
So in a way, the missile threat is an effort to advance a sense of detente. Whatever the conventional military capabilities of either side, and the possibility of a successful invasion, there is little either can do with an economy in ruins and a population in severe unrest.
The PRC here may have the advantage since it will have a tighter grip on its citizens and army should it wish to effect an invasion. But I still don't see the point in invading Taiwan if it and the PRC are in economic freefall.
It's an arms race - the US is building Taiwan's military strength with $18.2 billion worth of kit - presumably to include PAC-3 Patriot anti-missile batteries. The new chairman of the CMC, Hu Jintao, has also pledged to build the PLA's technological capability.
Capability, capability, capability. Cost, cost, cost. Eventually, one side will run out of money, just as in the Cold War.
Let detente prevail.
So pithy, concise and to the point it's worth quoting in full:
International Herald Tribune (via AFP)BEIJING A 14-year-old boy picked by China to become the second-highest spiritual figure in Tibet used his first public interview to lavish praise on the Communist Party, the Xinhua press agency reported on Sunday. He was chosen by as the 11th Panchen Lama at a Beijing conference in 1995 after the exiled Dalai Lama designated a different boy as the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama.
The boy said in an interview with Xinhua that he was pleased with the levels of social stability and economic development in Tibet. "We wouldn't have made all these achievements without the good leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, the support from all the Chinese people and the painstaking efforts of the Tibetans," he said.
Speaking to Xinhua during a visit to Tibet, he said that he would promote social and economic development in the Himalayan region.
The boy, who is widely seen as a Beijing puppet, rarely appears in public. He has received almost all his Buddhist education in Beijing, where he has also undergone political education. He was staying at the Tashilunpo monastery, in Tibet's second-largest city, Shigatse, Xinhua said. The press agency said that crowds of Buddhists were lingering outside his residence, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. The Dalai Lama's choice, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, disappeared from public view in 1995 and is believed to have been under house arrest ever since.
Not that you'd expect a 14-year-old boy to come up with any incisive political commentary anyway, whether or not he is the mystical chosen one of the CCP. Perhaps they think he's a reincarnation of Mao Zedong.
The original Xinhua article is right here. Worth a quick look for his inanities about war and peace.
Reported at Bloomberg.com, China is going to guest at the G7 meeting next week.
Interesting, the Washington meeting of the US, UK, Canadian, French, German, Italian and Japanese ministers is going to take place on China's national day.
A few years back, eyebrows were similarly raised when Russia was invited for the first time and the former Soviet has since taken its place as a near-permanent member.
It does have to be said, however, that China can neither claim to be a democracy nor a true market economy. The WTO has criticized the PRC recently for its lax copyright law enforcement etc. But the invitiation is surely another sign that China can no longer be ignored.
"With China also invited to join part of the meeting, next week's G-7 statement could be more influential than usual,'' Goldman economists Binit C. Patel in London and Dominic Wilson in New York wrote in a note to clients.
What then of China's propensity to ignore everyone else? Despite being a permanent member of the UN Security Council since 1971 (when it replaced the 'ROC' Taiwan) China has regularly abstained from decisions, for example on Sudan/Darfur.
The footnote to the article is also of interest:
Last September in Dubai, the G-7 began calling for all nations to introduce market-based exchange rates. Taylor said today the Chinese government had taken steps to introduce a looser currency regime, yet refrained from setting a timeframe."There is movement toward a flexible exchange rate,'' he said. "The Chinese are aware of the importance of moving.''
The International Monetary Fund has also called on China to drop the yuan's peg, saying a flexible exchange rate would help the government to cool an economy that expanded 9.7 percent in the first half. Still, voluntary moves to more flexible currencies by 20 nations in the 1990s had little impact on growth and inflation, the IMF said today in its semi-annual World Economic Outlook.
China should raise interest rates for the first time in nine years to cool the economy because inflation at 5.3 percent is too high, the ADB said today. The government so far has relied on lending and investment curbs to curtail growth.
With economic and military power also comes geopolitical responsibility. In fact, China's responsibility to the world is dovetailing with its responsibility to itself - if China goes down, we all do. I wonder whether what the Chinese finance minister will be chatting about at dinner that night - the RMB exchange rate is going to be a big topic, I reckon.
The PRC's participation in the world economy must be two-way - let's hope the G-7 meet-up gets the ball rolling.
The Guardian's all-singing all-dancing new blog reports a story from Taiwan (via Reuters). The government wants to save up for US$10 billion worth of military hardware and is saying that this is merely what its people spend on tea.
Just imagine how much the PRC would make if it asked everyone to donate what they spend on smoking each year to the PLA's coffers. My guess is with around US$100 per smoker that could tot up to at least $US60 billion which is significantly more than the entire defence budget of Holland...
Alternatively, it could just ship the ciggies over to Taiwan where they'd have just the same effect. Smoke 'em out!
Today is International Peace Day, apparently. Sorry but it kind of passed me by.
Let's take a very quick look at the stories that are in the news, let alone the countless conflicts that aren't.
Iraq: A British hostage awaits his inevitable beheading in terror. Bodycount so far - US soldiers 1034, British 66, other coalition fatalities 69. And who knows how many Iraqi combatants and civilians of whatever persuasion? 10,000? Ah, who really cares, it is International Peace Day after all.
Sudan: Well, this a place that's never really known peace during my lifetime. Current controversy about sanctions isn't going to achieve very much about from harming the people it's designed to help. As sanctions always do. I can't see anyone striding bravely into Sudan like the Man With No Name. It's far too messy for that.
Chechnya: Any conflict that involves terrorists walking into schools and shooting kiddies in the back is one too many for me.
Afghanistan: Still ain't over. About 135 Americans and Allah knows how many locals.
Nepal: Maoist insurgency continues.
Kashmir: Bound to flare up again sooner or later.
Columbia: Drugs means death.
Anything I've forgotten? Surely have. Well, it is International Peace Day.
Russian oil giant Yukos has just cut off some of its supply to China, reports the IHT, pushing up worldwide prices to $46 a barrel again.
The reasons, it would appear, are more related to Russian internal politics than international relations, but it highlights the dependency of China on oil. Power shortages are becoming a major issue over here with all kinds of dicatets flowing from the authorities in attempts to reduce over consumption.
Like anywhere else (until someone actually bothers to come up with an alternative) China's economy is entirely dependent on oil. Anyone who believes that US intervention in Iraq is completely unrelated is fooling themselves. Oil matters.
So it begs the question - if China's demand outstrips supply as it surely will, what will they do? Correct me if I'm wrong but China isn't big on its own indigenous resources. So what then? The Spratleys? Movements west into Uzbekistan etc.?
Hopefully someone somewhere is weighing up a better option than this, but sonner or later oil is going to be as big an issue in China as it is in the US.
Either no-one else has spotted this yet or I'm again a victim of my own overenthusiastic misinterpretation again. But it looks like the old guard leader Jiang Zemin has finally handed the reins of power over to the newer guard, Hu Jintao.
It's reported in China Daily (so it must be true) but Hu Jintao is now head of the CCP Military Commission. Isn't this the chairmanship that finally gives him ultimate authority, without Jay Zee's sticky fingers holding him back any longer?
Let me know if I'm barking up the wrong tree.
So, it would appear that pro-democracy candidates have done less well than they hoped in the Hong Kong ballot. Beijing's favoured party, on the other hand, seems to be doing better.
And there's also reports that the ballot was not properly managed, with ballot boxes overfilled, thus necessitating a recount.
All of this reminds me of something. All we need now are rumours of hanging chads and disenfranchised minority voters. Know what I mean?
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.
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'.'
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.
Amritsar, India (April 13, 1919). British troops under the command of General Reginald Dyer fire on unarmed Indians in the thickly crowded plaza at Jallianwala Bagh, leaving (by some estimates) 379 dead and 1200 wounded. A peaceful crowd had assembled in the walled plaza to protest the enactment of the Rowlett Act, which the British administration had issued to secure 'emergency' powers for itself.
My Lai, Vietnam (March 16, 1968). Angry and frustrated men of Charlie Company, 11th Brigade, Americal Division entered the village of My Lai. The agitated troops, under the command of Lt. William Calley, were poised for engagement with the Vietcong. As the "search and destroy" mission unfolded it soon degenerated into the massacre of over 300 apparently unarmed civilians including women, children, and the elderly.
Kent State University, Ohio (May 4, 1970) Over the course of four days, Kent State students protested against an American invasion of Cambodia which President Richard Nixon launched on May 1. A group of seventy National Guard troops advanced on the protesters with fixed bayonets in an attempt to disperse the crowd. When they reached the top of a hill, twenty-eight of the Guardsmen suddenly turned on the protestors and fired a 13-second fusillade of between 61 and 67 shots, killing four students and wounding nine.
Derry, Ireland (January 30, 1972) Soldiers from the British Army's 1st Parachute Regiment opened fire on civilian demonstrators in the Bogside, near the Rossville flats, killing 13 and wounding a number of others. The march, which was called to protest internment, was "illegal" according to British government authorities.
Beijing, PRC (June 4, 1989)... Soldiers gun down hundreds of democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square, killing hundreds under the gaze of the international media.
It doesn't matter who does it, where it happens or why, it doesn't make it right.
BBC Article on Commemorations.
Every important question should be tackled from two sides. I have two perspectives on internationalisation: one as a foreigner teaching abroad; the other as a former student of an internationalising university.
And, as always, there are two sides to the answer, both positive and negative.
To cut a long story short, while I was a student at Oxford, my college ran into financial problems. The college (Pembroke) had spent GBP 3,000,000 on a new hall of residence (dormitory building) but had unwisely chosen to construct it on contaminated ground.
The building was worthless; the accounts no longer balanced. So the college turned to America.
When I first started at the college in 1993, there were a handful of carefully selected foreign students, perhaps three out of 100 freshmen. All were highly successful students; for example, one of them, Michelle Peluso, is now CEO of Travelocity, a major international dot com company.
However, bringing in 30 US students, as the college did in 1995, was not a great success. It certainly brought in a large cash injection, but the students failed to integrate with the college. They did not perform as well at their studies and were unable or unwilling to socialise with the other students.
Finally, their frustrations boiled over and they made their point by badly damaging a dormitory common room.
While this may be an isolated case, I make the example to illustrate the idea that too much internationalisation is not necessarily a good thing. Having 3% foreign students worked well academically; 30% did not.
In the UK, internationalisation is on the increase. It's estimated that there are over 125,000 foreign students in the UK now – and of these 32,000 are Chinese.
That's twice as many as students as from the US (a rich, English speaking nation with close ties to the UK) and three times more than the Indians (the only country with a population comparable to China, but with far more tangible historical links to Britain and widespread English language).
British universities are certainly benefiting to the tune of GBP 875 million per year; GBP 250 million from the Chinese. Foreign students altogether provide 26.2% of UK universities' income.
This is set to increase even more dramatically in the next few years. (However, wiith tight visa restrictions after 11 September, US universities are actually decreasing the number of foreign students they take.)
So the financial gains are obvious, but what of the students themselves? The Guardian and The Independent newspapers have recently filed reports on foreign students in the UK and they make interesting reading.
(see The Guardian for general articles, some on Chinese students, and also The Independent)
It’s certainly beneficial for students to live and learn from different cultures; it's also beneficial for the 'home' students to meet and likewise learn from them. It certainly improves language skills. But styles of education are vastly different, and some might say incompatible.
It's well known among Chinese students that in other countries 'critical thinking' is more highly valued. There's less emphasis on learning knowledge and more on analysis and thinking skills.
I hope the JUP students will forgive me for saying this, but there is not one of them who would be able to cope linguistically or academically with the one-on-one tutorial system used at Oxford and Cambridge.
However, not all UK universities are Oxford or Cambridge. Whereas some of them do offer world-class teaching and research support, others do not.
At worst British universities are regarded as playgrounds; there can be minimal academic pressure. I know people who have obtained UK degrees with almost no effort at all, and who have subsequently turned out to have no knowledge either. Is this really value for money for a foreign student?
On the other hand, Western perceptions of Asian education are not favourable either. Westerners see Asian schools as places for 'rote-learning' and memorising vast quantities of information with little obvious benefit.
It's believed that just repeating back information without critical thinking is not really learning at all. The Western perception is that learning means understanding and that is something that few foreign teachers are confident occurs in Asian education.
When students have to learn so much to get that all-important grade, are they really learning or will they forget it the next day?
Thus, for universities like SHUFE to attract foreign students, it might have to undergo a vigorous marketing and public relations effort to assuage these fears.
Asian teaching methods are simply not attractive to foreign students. Few foreign students are going to want to sit in Chinese classes and learn the contents of textbooks and lectures. They expect to have input into their education. And the PR campaign may need to be done side-by-side with some fundamental reforms of the education system as a whole.
In my view, a true education lies somewhere in between the Western and the Asian systems; a combination of critical thinking and understanding with the teaching of real knowledge. It’s also important for universities not to regard foreign students as 'easy money' but to ensure that they are provided with a valuable and appropriate education and 'cultural experience'.
To conclude, for further internationalisation to take place, there has to be compromise. I would point to my former journalism college in Cardiff where courses specifically designed for foreign students (eg MA International Journalism) have proved very effective.
Academic life must also be balanced with cultural life, and it is the responsibility of universities to ensure that foreign students are able to integrate with home students so as to gain in their cultural experience too.
Universities everywhere should avoid the temptation to take huge numbers of foreign students just to make money. They must also adjust their academic programmes to be international too, so as to provide the best they can offer in a format that foreign students can actually benefit from.
Philip Sen
Pembroke College, Oxford University 1993-1996
Centre for Journalism Studies, Cardiff University 1999-2000
Foreign Expert, SHUFE, 2003-2004
Written on request of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics for paper on 'Internationalisation'
In October 2002, nine days after the publication of the UK government's notorious dossier on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction, I travelled to leafy Oxfordshire and spent the afternoon at the home of David Kelly.
Ten months later, Iraq had been invaded, no WMD had been found and David Kelly was dead. His suicide sparked one of the most far reaching inquiries into the UK government and media for decades.
Every film has actors and actresses in the lead roles, directors, producers and technicians behind the scene and innumerable extras, many of whom appear for a few brief and insignificant moments before fading back into the celluloid. With a line seemingly drawn below the whole sordid business, it's time for me to reflect on my own tiny part in the affair. This is what happened.
August 2002: less than a year after the 9/11 attacks, debate in the US and UK was turning to Saddam Hussein and his alleged weapons programmes. It was clearly going to be one of the biggest stories of the year, and - another cliche coming up - every two-bit journo worth his salt wanted a piece of it.
I was no exception. At that time I was working as a reporter for The Engineer, a British trade news magazine dedicated of course to engineering and technology. It was in the throes of a remodelling as a popularised journal devoted to exploring cutting edge research and technology in the industry.
Life at The Engineer was not making me happy. I felt that the news editor, George Coupe, was generally disinterested in my ideas and stories. I was not getting the opportunities to get out and about, meet interesting people and see interesting things, which were the very reasons I had walked out of a safe and relatively well-paid job in finance to seek an unstable and underpaid career in journalism.
Of particular disenchantment was my inability to pursue the field in which I had the most expertise and which I found most captivating, defence and aerospace. Worse yet, I felt that a high proportion of the articles that I did write were being edited so as to introduce bias and error, gremlins that I had painstakingly been attempting to eliminate. Thus, I saw a chance with the WMD issue to regain some of my confidence and self-respect.
My central hypothesis was this: if the inspectors had been absent from Iraq for four years, surely the technology available to them would have improved in this period. How would this influence inspections should they occur? And wouldn't Iraq have spent the same period developing countermeasures to the inspections? How would this affect the outcome of the inspections, which, as was already clear, were the only speedbump on the road to war?
I put the idea to the features editor, David Fowler, and it was accepted. I then turned to seeking out experts who would be able to offer me information, opinion and analysis on my idea.
A reputable former inspector now engaged as a director at the International Institute of Strategic Studies, Terence Taylor, was an obvious choice. To my surprise, not only did he respond to my e-mails but proved extremely helpful despite the pressures he must have been under.
It was he who referred me to David Kelly, whom I contacted by e-mail in August 2002.
From the start, Kelly made it clear that he was enthused by my subject and keen to assist. Arranging a meeting was another matter. Although technically employed by the Ministry of Defence, he was reluctant to meet me at HQ. I didn't then sense that he may have already been uncomfortable in his position.
We arranged instead to meet at his home. Thus it was that, despite objections from Coupe, I escaped the city for a day and took a train into Oxfordshire.
Kelly met me at Didcot station. First impressions were that he was a typical scientist. Grey bearded, soft-spoken and in no way physically imposing, he reminded me of my school physics teacher.
In his car, I asked a little about his background and he of mine. In brief, Kelly was a highly educated man and outside academia had spent time with one of the UK government's vaguely sinister defence research centres at (I believe) Porton Down. After the 1991 Gulf War, his knowledge of biological warfare techniques led to his appointment as a key inspector until the UN's withdrawal in 1998.
Kelly's house was picturesque and cosy in a way that only English country houses can be. He invited me into his sitting room and his wife flitted in to serve tea. For some reason it has stuck in my mind that she also offered a plate of those two-finger Kit Kat biscuits. Strange how I can remember trivia such as this yet recall little that could be of major significance.
After the niceties, I pulled out my notebook, set up my tape recorder and we began. I also remember that my recorder was malfunctioning, and that I had to change batteries. This must have made me look incredibly amateur, but Kelly bore the fumbling with patience. As it turned out, the two tapes were almost indiscernably faint, but as always I backed them up with copious notes in longhand.
We spoke on and off the record about my subject, the technology of inspections, and talked in general about the issues surrounding them. And this, I am afraid, is where my mind goes blank. I know that the discussion was wide ranging, and that Kelly told me some things that he did not wish to be quoted on.
But whether or not he mentioned anything that could shed light on subsequent events, I simply cannot say. Despite probably being the first journalist to see him face to face after the publication of the dossier, I was simply concentrating on the job in hand, namely the technology article. If this makes me a bad journalist then I accept the criticism. I wish it were otherwise.
One thing that did stick in my mind was his conviction as a veteran inspector that the job had not been completed in the 1990s. He had discovered many examples of WMD programmes, but such was the capriciousness of the Ba'athist authorities he was adamant that many more had been concealed from him.
And it was a simple matter, said Kelly, to hide the weapons. Simply bury them in the desert. They might never be found. An inspector's most useful tool was not state-of-the-art technological gadgets but a bulldozer. And the infinite patience required to sift through hundreds of documents and see through the deception and intrigue he met with every day.
After our conversation, Kelly showed me to his study, where he kept several albums and CDs stuffed with photographs of the Iraqi's WMD factories. Here was a vat in which they had been brewing anthrax. There was a germ research centre masquerading as a chemists. I asked to borrow some as illustrations for the article but he steadfastly refused.
As he gave me a lift back to the station, we discussed the possibilities for a free Iraq. As the Babylonian cradle of civilisation, the nation was replete with historic sites, a few of which he had visited. Perhaps one day, I mused, I could visit as a tourist, Lonely Planet in hand.
This was the last I heard from him. Upon writing the article, which named many different sources, the information Kelly had imparted featured but they were barely any direct quotes from him. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
August 2003: Having left The Engineer in January 2003, I departed on my travels returning briefly to England in July. The war was already over, at least in its first phase. Idly watching the news one day, I saw a face I recognised. It was David Kelly, being interrogated by the Commons committee regarding the report on the BBC's 'Today' programme. A week later he was found dead in the woods outside his home.
It's also worth mentioning that I have also met the originator of the report, BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan, while at a pre-Farnborough Airshow junket in Killarney, Ireland. Gilligan struck me as a genial, knowledgable and opinionated man, if a little rumbunctious. Someone who believed in himself and in his skills as a journalist at the top of his profession. We chatted, but didn't have a deep conversation of any kind.
When the Hutton Inquiry began, I wondered whether I would be required to give evidence. The call never came, but I was contacted by The Guardian/Observer's Home Affairs editor, Martin Bright.
My name (misspelt as 'Phillip Sen') had appeared in a letter that was presented as evidence early in the inquiry. (PDF files of the letter can be seen here - page one TVP/2/0012 - page two TVP/2/0013 - page three TVP/2/0014). Was there anything I could offer?
[Note - to this day I have no idea what the handwritten lines and notes next to my name on document TVP/2/0013 mean - presumably just to say 'this guy probably isn't too important'.]
If only I had a photographic memory, I wouldn't need to make tapes and take notes myself. But upon leaving The Engineer, I remembered that as an employee all my journalistic material was property of the employer. The WMD article scrawlings and tapes were tucked in a manila folder and I gave instructions to the editorial assistant to see that they were stored. She said that they would be put in a box and kept with the other records. In retrospect this may have been too vague.
Martin Bright and I discussed my meeting with the figure at the centre of the inquiry, and agreed that it would be worth recovering the tapes and notes with a view to developing anything found with the consent and co-operation of The Engineer. This would have been both a legal and moral requirement had anything come to light.
I had e-mailed the editor of the magazine, Sean Brierley, immediately after hearing about Kelly's death. However, unknown to me, he had been succeeded by George Coupe earlier in the year and the e-mail was never read.
Both Bright and I e-mailed and telephoned Coupe to be told that he he didn't know where the files were. As far as he was concerned they were 'lost' during a move from one side of the office to another. During my tenure, Coupe himself had told me to be persistent in my work but after a few conversations like this he lost patience. He reminded me that I was no longer an employee of his, that the file was 'lost' and that as far as he was concerned the matter was closed.
There the story ends. We'll never know if anything was said during my interview with Kelly that may have influenced the outcome of the Hutton Inquiry. Most probably nothing at all. But it would have been worth a look.
Both Bright and I were deeply dismayed at the unavailability of the tapes, whether they had indeed been 'lost' or merely withheld. It was surprising that Coupe did not seem curious as to what the tapes might have contained and did not see this as an opportunity for his magazine. So we shall never know.
In conclusion, it has to be said that for all the furore surrounding the affair, David Kelly himself was just a man, a human being involuntarily caught up in events far greater than he. He was not a politician or a general. He was not even a soldier. He was a scientist, trying to do his job which in effect was the same as Gilligan's and Hutton's: finding the truth.
Though I only met him once, his death saddened me. It seemed unnecessary.