Welll
But since years now China already establish navy and Air base all over Spratleys islands !!! you can spot them with google. Evens now the installation have airconditioning, army girl, the palm three grows to 8 meters high, fix jettay made and road asphalted !
And you come today with your discover ???
- Well sir, please agree with me that you other, French, you fight for monnay, whenn us, british, fight for the honnor !
- Of course sir, but you know, everybody fight for what he's leack !
Robert Surcouf, French Corsair, 1773-1827
Building infrastructure does not sovereignty grant. Once the Chinese start attempting to exploit the resources, Taiwan, Vietnam, Brunei , Malaysia and the Philippines will respond.
Beijing plans to build a new generation of large destroyers as part of its effort to develop a blue-water navy, a report from an official ship-building institute shows.
The new generation of destroyers is important to China's long-term goal of building and operating aircraft carriers.
The destroyers will displace more than 10,000 tonnes, according to the report by the China Shipbuilding Information Centre--an institute under the China Shipbulding Industry Corporation, the largest state-owned shipbuilder in China. In addition to commercial ships, China’s stateowned shipbuilders also build warships.
“As China pursues the goal of building a high-seas naval force with far-reaching capabilities, it needs large-tonnage destroyers,” Andrei Chang, editor-in-chief of the Kanwa Defence Review based in Canada, said. “Only heavy destroyers with more than 10,000 tonnes of displacement are capable of carrying new, supersonic anti-warship missiles with a striking range of 500 kilometres.”
The report said the new destroyers would be another “trump card” for the PLA Navy. They would exceed the largest mainland-made destroyers in service by almost 4,000 tonnes, indicating an overall improvement in combat potential. The planned ship is even larger than the four 8,000tonne Sovremenny class destroyers that Russia has sold to China.
While the Sovremenny destroyer was a typical cold war-era Soviet design, with a large profile that made it easily detectable by radar, the new destroyer would feature “fully developed stealth technology”, the report said. Most of its weapons systems and sensors would not be exposed externally, making the ships harder to detect on radar.
The warship would also carry a large number of weapons systems and sensors, as well as sophisticated electronic warfare and defence equipment, the report said.
The most important of these was a new, supersonic anti-warship missile with a striking range of 500 kilometres. The report said the PLA hoped the new destroyers could close the gap in combat capability between the Chinese and Western navies.
On December 23 last year, defence ministry spokesman Huang Xueping said Beijing was “seriously considering” building a carrier to protect its national interests, ending a decade of speculation by overseas observers.
Building infrastructure does not sovereignty grant. Once the Chinese start attempting to exploit the resources, Taiwan, Vietnam, Brunei , Malaysia and the Philippines will respond.
I don't believe Taiwan will respond any others thing than heavy investissment for exploit the shore. As them do today for sales stuff in China. For example, I know many cement company (easy to remove isn't) own by taiwanese !
And hope I'm right, because if not..... it will be a real shit
When I talk about a China base in spratley islands, is just on the front of Brunei and Malaysia, not near Hainan
- Well sir, please agree with me that you other, French, you fight for monnay, whenn us, british, fight for the honnor !
- Of course sir, but you know, everybody fight for what he's leack !
Robert Surcouf, French Corsair, 1773-1827
U.S. Hopes To Strengthen Ties With China's Expanding Military
By John Pomfret, Washington Post Staff Writer
During his first visit to China next month, President Obama hopes to strengthen ties with Beijing on efforts to combat climate change, address the global financial crisis and contain nuclear proliferation in North Korea and Iran. Perhaps most important, he also aims to improve the U.S. relationship with China's military.
The once-insular nation is broadening its international interests and investing around the globe, and its military is rapidly modernizing. So there is concern that U.S. and Chinese forces may find themselves bumping into each other without formal mechanisms in place for the two militaries to iron out disagreements.
Even as those worries grow, a longtime issue for China remains: It does not want the United States to sell weapons to Taiwan, which it still claims as part of its territory, and views that as the baseline of any talks. "The military relationship is a red-meat issue in China," said a senior Chinese diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. "It is the one issue that could jeopardize our relations with the United States."
White House officials hope to diffuse that concern, arguing that the bigger matters between the two countries are more pressing than ever. Even at the height of the Cold War, senior administration officials have noted, the Pentagon had a more substantive relationship with the Soviet Union's military than it does with the People's Liberation Army today.
"China is reemerging as a great power," said Michael Schiffer, deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia. "Our militaries are coming into increasing proximity and increasing interactions. But we don't have any good mechanism to help us clarify misunderstandings."
The Obama administration got a taste of such a "misunderstanding" just two months into office. In early March, the U.S. Navy reconnaissance ship Impeccable was in the South China Sea hunting for Chinese submarines when it was swarmed by Chinese vessels that tried to block it and destroy its sonar equipment. A similar incident occurred in May in the Yellow Sea.
Both confrontations ended peacefully when the U.S. ships made it clear that they would leave; but the incidents highlighted "the risk," a senior Pentagon official said recently, "of having the entire bilateral relationship unravel based on the decision-making of 18-year-old seamen."
In the past, some U.S. officials said forging ties with the Chinese military wasn't that important. Even though its defense spending had risen dramatically, outpaced only by the United States', China's intentions were limited to defending its sovereignty.
But two developments have changed American thinking, analysts say. The first was the realization that every crisis between the United States and China -- including the Chinese army crackdown on Tiananmen Square demonstrators in 1989 and the accidental bombing of China's embassy in Yugoslavia in 1999 by U.S. planes -- has involved the nations' militaries.
The second was the conclusion that the People's Liberation Army wants to expand its activities around the world as China expands its international investments. Last year, China dispatched three navy ships outside of Asia for the first time in its modern history, sending them to fight piracy off Somalia alongside an international task force.
The Obama administration has held a series of high-level contacts with the Chinese army that will culminate with a visit to the United States this month by Xu Caihou, a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission and the highest-ranking Chinese military official to come here in years.
But beyond that, China's military seems intent on keeping the Pentagon at arm's length, and U.S. officials point to number of concerns.
The Chinese have built up their conventional missile forces to such an extent that a Rand Corp. report concluded in August that an attack could "cut every runway at Taiwan's half-dozen main fighter bases and destroy essentially all of the aircraft parked on ramps," allowing China total domination of the skies above Taiwan. But this strategic shift has not been accompanied by significant talks between China and the United States, which is legally bound to provide for Taiwan's defense.
The Pentagon estimates that by next year, China will deploy as many as five Jin-class submarines, each with a capacity of 12 nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles. But there is no protocol for how the American and Chinese navies should deal with incidents at sea.
China also has shown little interest in a dialogue about nuclear strategy. It now deploys mobile, solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missiles and has more than doubled, to about 80, its supply of nuclear-armed medium-range ballistic missiles. Except for one round of talks with the Bush administration, it has shared no information on its nuclear plans.
Three years ago Washington invited the head of China's nuclear weapons command to the United States, but he has yet to come.
China knocked an old satellite out of the sky in 2007 when it tested an anti-satellite weapon, and a recent space launch came within 100 miles of the international space station. But Beijing has not talked to the United States about how to deal with the debris or how its space program, run by the army, should interact with those of other nations.
China also is believed to be working on a new fighter jet. But it has not hashed out a protocol for what to do when its airmen encounter the American military in the skies. In 2001, a Chinese fighter bumped into a U.S. Navy reconnaissance plane over Hainan Island. The fighter pilot was never found, and the Americans crash-landed on Chinese territory, sparking an 11-day standoff before the Chinese released the crew.
And while U.S. and Chinese diplomats have coordinated their strategies to confront North Korea's nuclear program, the Chinese military has rejected the Pentagon's request to discuss contingencies if the North Korean government collapses.
When Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy visited China in June, officials there gave her a list of what they called seven "obstacles" that needed to be removed if ties were going to improve, according to several American and Chinese officials and analysts. The Chinese said they wanted U.S. reconnaissance vessels out of their 200-mile exclusive economic zone, bristled at the fingerprinting of senior Chinese military officers when they entered the United States and objected to being a target of U.S. nuclear weapons.
But at the top of the list was a demand that the United States stop selling weapons to Taiwan.
Three times over the past three years, Taiwan has asked to buy dozens of new F-16 fighter jets from the United States, and each time Washington put the request off, fearful of alienating China. After his trip, Obama has to decide whether to sell Black Hawk helicopters and Patriot anti-missile batteries to Taiwan, and soon after that, he must decide whether to sell 66 F-16s. The United States last sold F-16s to Taiwan in 1992.
"Selling the F-16s to Taiwan would be a big, big problem for us," said the senior Chinese diplomat. "Cooperation on other things would naturally be affected."
WASHINGTON -- A top Chinese general will visit the United States this month and tour major U.S. bases as Washington seeks to improve relations and reduce the risk of conflict, officials said on Wednesday.
Xu Caihou, vice chairman of the People's Liberation Army Central Military Commission, is China's second-highest ranking military officer and will visit the United States between October 24-31, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said.
In addition to meeting Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Oct 26, Xu will visit U.S. Strategic Command, Pacific Command and other major bases.
The visit follows a trip by Gates to China two years ago and was part of an effort to improve "trust and transparency" between the two militaries, Morrell said.
"There is huge value in fostering better military-to-military relations between our two countries," he said. "The more transparency there is, the more dialogue that goes on, the less chance there is for a misunderstanding between two very formidable powers on the world's stage."
China's build-up of sea power has raised concerns in the United States.
Chinese vessels have confronted U.S. surveillance ships in Asian waters repeatedly this year and Beijing has called on the United States to reduce and eventually halt air and sea military surveillance close to its shores.
Last month, U.S. intelligence agencies in a report singled out China as a challenge to the United States because of its "increasing natural resource-focused diplomacy and military modernization."
President Barack Obama, who plans to visit China next month, has highlighted the importance of improving military-to-military cooperation between the countries.
The outgoing U.S. Pacific Command head, Admiral Timothy Keating, has reached out to Chinese leaders, offering the prospect of holding joint military exercises, but the response from Beijing was cool, officials said.
Chinese vessels have confronted U.S. surveillance ships in Asian waters repeatedly this year and Beijing has called on the United States to reduce and eventually halt air and sea military surveillance close to its shores.
This comes back to the point I made about the Pueblo in another thread.
''Give me a Ping and one Ping only'' - Sean Connery.
