Note: Interesting that the Chinese military is making moves toward Africa. I was under the impression that they were only involved economically. If they're actually doing "partnership" exercises then I need to re-assess. Additionally they seem to take "partnership" to another level. It seems that the Chinese allow "host nation forces" to actually operate their vehicles during these exercises. Is this a sales trip or something more?
This is just normal step in planes of Dragon, they declare that they will create up to 18 navy bases in near future outside China. For now we know about Hambantota Port in Sri Lanka and Walvis Bay in Namibia, rest in Burma, Pakistan, Oman, Yemen, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Madagascar, Seychelles, Djibouti. Officially to create a stable chain that will protect commerce trading in region.
ReplyDeleteUnofficially... what do you think? ;)
The Chinese want their own version of hegemony like everyone else.
ReplyDelete1. China does not seek hegemony, nor does everyone else.
Delete2. China probably wants to protect its economic investments and its shipping lanes.
Point 2 negate Point 1.
DeleteThe PRC does want Hegemony particularly in the South and East China sea as well as a strong hold over the indian ocean. there actions have proved that.
DeleteThere investment in Africa gives them a strong hold along the Indian Ocean.
I actually think the big loser long term from this will be the Russians. Historically countries that couldn't afford or couldn't buy Western military gear went to the Russians. The Chinese will beat the Russians by offering lower prices and higher quality. No one can compete with the combination of the Chinese economies of scale, state support, and cheap labor.
ReplyDeleteYou would find very few cases of that . Countries buy from allies and friends. As for state support outside Nato any US weapon sold came with some sort of aid packge.
DeleteChinese are not competitive in terms of qualit, they do not interfere on the political level .That is what makes them attractive unless the weapons come as an freebee 'aid packagea' there are no strings attached to any purchase unlike with the west or even the Russians.
Russian weapons in many fields offer unique capability unmatched in the west and are bought even by very rich customers(gulf states) including Nato and EU members(Greece,Cyprus) and traditional US allies(Korea)
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DeleteThe phrase "Made in China" and the word "quality" is like oil & water: You can't mix them.
DeleteChina's strength is the copying a system, particularly codes. When it comes to BUILDING them it's another thing.
China doesn't build quality because they want to be "scrupulous": Every supplier want to hit "rich". All, if not all, the test results are "doctored" to a certain degree. Quality Control of finished material doesn't exist.
A lot of countries are buying Chinese because not only are they cheap but they are very much "disposable". The countries don't have the budget to maintain them and it's a lot cheaper, for example MBT, to be a garage "queen". Scares the neighbors on paper to see you've got 800 MBTs when only about 120 of them are operational. This is on the proviso the buying countries have the know how's to actually use the equipment(s) they've purchased from PRoC.
Another thing, have you ever seen a single country (other than China) who's equipment is exclusively from China? Not really. How about a group of equipment, like all fleet of MBT or all IFV or SAM, SP- or towed artillery, as exclusively from China? You won't. And this says a lot.
So the US strategy should just be to always believe that China will always produce crappy stuff, for ever and ever?
DeleteHope isn't a strategy....
http://www.qualitydigest.com/inside/quality-insider-column/five-reasons-why-hope-isn-t-valid-strategy.html
Have you ever been to China? How's the quality of your made in China iphone? Just because the Chinese once had a reputation for poor quality does not mean that this is still the case. Never underestimate an adversary.
DeleteA century ago, we were China, Our economy, our way of mass-production of low-quality merchandise was called "Americanism" and we were the low-wages, cheap factory production.
DeleteIt stimulated the economy and provided the foundation for a high-tech economy. China makes a lot of shit, probably most of their stuff is cheap shit that we buy in Target, Walmart, Cabelas, etc., but to say that they are incapable of producing high quality items is absurd.
I have been to China 5 times, so I know that they are working at improving all the time. Also, wasn't it Japan then South Korea that were also known at one time just for making crappy products?!?!? Not anymore....
DeleteLast night, was at gala with previous CEO of INTEL! Yeah, the big boys of chip making! You could hear a pin drop from the audience when he started talking about how fast the USA is falling behind China and other countries, truth is, this country isn't even in the race anymore! Most Americans are living in a dream world where we will always be on top, those days are gone! Among other things, he said they estimate between 5 to 10 MILLION! kids write code/program, he said by his estimate, about 100K kids in the US write code/program.....anyone think that won't create some serious problems down the road? How about engineers? Scientist? Technicians? Yeah, how are we supposed to maintain our technological edge when US universities are QUIETLY, with LITTLE fanfare, creating sub par standards so US students can still be accepted compared to their foreign counterparts?
I heard from an professor where only one kid from the US is in his advanced math class, all the other students are from China.....
@William: I am a Filipino-born Chinese. (My username should've been a dead "giveaway".) I see Chinese-made goods daily in my life. Good quality and bad ones. Unfortunately, I see more of the bad quality ones more than good quality ones. I am not saying that you MUST or ALWAYS underestimate an opponent. On the contrary, I always give an opponent the "benefit of the doubt". The ones I don't see are the quality of their military equipment, however, I do know for a fact that the Chinese's metallurgy knowledge base is about 12 to 15 years behind (anyone). One of the things I've read is they are unable to regulate the temperature in their ovens to produce consistent high-grade/high-quality materials. The "armour" to some of their vehicles are no more than simple rolled metals. The metals are sourced from raw materials and recycled metals sourced from junk yards. The percentage of raw vs recycled depends on "who's watching". I used to run with a group of Filipino soldiers. Back in the 90's, AFP purchased a few Chinese-made "jeeps" from BMC. Let me tell you this ... They have a life span of 2 years (tops) ... before you have to drive it off the cliff. Their diesel engines would, as one would say, loose compression so often no one wanted to drive the darn thing on a moderate incline. It was noisy and it smokes like a chimney.
Delete@Paralus: I am not saying PRoC is incapable of making high-grade/high-quality materials. They can. They can now if they have proper QC in place. Building consumer-grade products and military-grade products is different. China can afford to put proper QC in military-grade products because they could've afford to incorporate the costs but, in some cases, choose not to.
I'm still trying to chase down a document I've seen a few years ago about the existence of a stock system called "Category A" and "Category B". Cat A war stocks are for demo and FCS (First Customer Shipment). Cat A stocks pass QC. Cat B are those which didn't pass QC. Cat A are also believed to be used stock PLA/PLAAF/PLAN forces' inventory.
NICO
Delete> Also, wasn't it Japan then South Korea that were also known at one time just for making crappy products?!?!? Not anymore..
Chinese culture is very different from Japanese or Korean culture, and this is why you don't see world class companies from China.
1968 : Tokyo Olympics
1974 : Toyota, Datsun(Nissan), Sony and Panasonic hit the US market in full force.
1988 : Seoul Olympics
1994 : Hyundai, Kia, Samsung, and LG hit the US market in full force.
2008 : Beijing Olympics
2015 : Where are China's Toyota, Nissan, Sony, and Panasonic? They don't exist.
The problem is rampant corruption in China.
So what happens if a new fighter jet is delivered with defects? In Japan, they would be returned to the manufacturer and rejected until all the requirements are met.
In China, a suitcase full of cash is handed over to the acquisition officer and he signs acceptance document. Thus the only thing that Chinese arms vendors have to do to sell weapons is to deliver suitcases to appropriate people, not improving product. Bribery is understood to be a part of a government official's traditional job benefits going back by thousands of years and there is no shame in one taking in bribes in Chinese culture. Everyone does it, from Chinese prime ministers to traffic cops and school teachers.
China has failed to produce world class product and weapons to date due to cultural reasons, and one can only hope that China stays that way to ensure that China would never rise up to be a competitive power to the US.
@Slowman. "....and one can only hope that China stays that way to ensure that China would never rise up to be a competitive power to the US."
DeleteHope isn't a strategy......http://www.qualitydigest.com/inside/quality-insider-column/five-reasons-why-hope-isn-t-valid-strategy.html
So the best strategy for the US is for it to "hope" China always produces crap and never develops proper fighter jet engines?!?!? US Strategy: let's hope our enemies SUCK more than us....considering that US universities are chock full of Chinese students, that strategy won't work for very long.
Mark Kram
DeleteThis is why Singapore is such an amazing story; Lee Kuan Yu took a bunch of ethnic Chinese population and created a corruption-free society, through his personal examples and harsh punishment for corrupting elements of his society. Lee Kuan Yu did what no Chinese ruler was ever able to do over thousands of years.
Too bad modern day China is no Singapore, it's more corrupt than the pre-modern day China and the days of KMT.
NICO
Delete> So the best strategy for the US is for it to "hope" China always produces crap and never develops proper fighter jet engines?!?!?
Knowing China and Chinese culture, this is not such an outlandish strategy. It is very much possible that China will never be able to product competitive quality jet engines.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/11/21/corrupt_chinese_general_it_took_12_trucks_to_haul_away_all_the_cash_he_hid.html
DeleteIt Took 12 Trucks to Haul Away All the Cash This Corrupt Chinese General Hid in His Home
When investigators searched the Beijing home of Xu Caihou, one of China’s highest-ranking army generals, they found so much cash and precious gems they needed a week to count it all and 12 trucks to haul it away.
The cash was neatly stacked in boxes, each with the name of the soldier who had paid the bribe in exchange for promotion up the chain of command. Many of the boxes, each containing millions of renminbi, had never been opened, said people familiar with the case.
In total, the cash weighed over a ton, which according to the FT suggests it was worth at least $16 million. What's more, this is apparently not the largest cash hoard investigators have come across.
In May, investigators detained Wei Pengyuan, the deputy head of the National Energy Administration’s coal department. It took 16 machines to count the more than Rmb200m he had stashed in his home, according to Xinhua, the official news agency. Four of the machines reportedly burnt out due to the workload.
Are you serious?!?!?!? Let's such hope they will always suck? Weren't we told by US DoD that J20 was supposed to start flying 2018-2020? How did that work out? It might be in early operation by 2020!
DeleteYeah, let's hope they will never figure how to produce proper turbine blades and advanced composites, they are just too stupid to figure it out.....
I'm not sure how "related" this story is but I the first time I've heard of it (told by an American businessman fresh from a factory inspection in China) I laughed so hard.
DeleteThis big American-based company set up this huge factory in China. So in order to set up a factory, the Americans had to find a partner. Basically this partner owns the land and the Americans pays for everything, including the construction and materials of the factory.
A few years later of operation, a group of the executives went out to do an inspection. When they were at the assembly floor, they noticed that it was quiet more than usual. If this factory was in the US, you could hear the humming of the extraction fan to remove the aluminium cloud hanging over the factory floor. Instead it was quiet. And a dense aluminium cloud appears to be hanging above the factory floor. When they finally found their composure, one of the executives asked the foreman why the extraction fan was not running. The respond was, "We turned it off to save money". Quietly, all of the executives slowly walked back to the exit and careful not to do anything that might cause a static. Once they were past the doors of the factory floor the QC officer ran up to the control room and found the switches for the extraction fan and he turned it. Silence. He tried a few more times and only to be greeted with silence. He opened up the panel and the circuits were missing.
He asked around and finally the factory manager "fessed" up: The extraction motor was "returned" to the supplier. Apparently, a lot of the equipment were borrowed by the Chinese partner so the American inspectors can give the "tick of approval" and pay the partner. Once he gets the money, the borrowed equipment were returned.
i've been monitoring the conversation and let me ask you all this. consider. the US and the rest of the west rushed to China for two reasons. the first and the one that's overlooked is that many thought if they could "westernize" China then that would open markets for US and western goods into that country. next the immediate and short term benefit would be that costs for manufacturing would be almost zero. profits would be made and everyone would be happy.
Deleteso all the talk about quality control, about poor wages in their country and poor environment can squarely be laid at the feet of corporations looking to escape western regulation and their inherent greed.
i'm not making excuses for the Chinese. i'm edging toward actually hating that country, but you can't overlook the fact that the monster that is China is one that we created. we made the beast and we can kill it. it will require some heatburn and we will have to sacrifice useless bobbles that we get at big box stores but it can be done.
on the battlefield i'm not sure. they're doing the same thing militarily that they're doing economically. did you know that you can buy exact copies of whatever good is sold here in the US on the internet without the brand name? same exact quality but lower price because its a bastardized naming of the "popular" product. the same probably applies to military tech. reworked outside appearance but the same int he guts. will it be as good? i don't know. should we underestimate it? definitely not.
NICO
Delete> Are you serious?!?!?!?
Yes I am dead serious.
Producing a quality jet would require "corruption-free" at all levels, at the titanium suppliers, machine parts suppliers, engine builders, fighter jet vendors using the engines, and the PLA weapons acquisition officials signing off acceptance document.
Unfortunately, several suitcase transactions are involved in each step and the end result is a junk product.
I will give you an example.
China absolutely dominates in relatively unpopular Olympic sports with little financial potentials because there is little corruption involved in player selection and tranining.
However, Chinese soccer is a laughing stock of Asia, where the Chinese national team can't even defeat the likes of Vietnam and Thailand, in spite of some 16 billion dollars a year spent on Chinese Super League. Why? Because there is massive corruption involved in Chinese soccer because of the amount of money involved in player selection, where only those youth players whose parents could afford to pay big bribes in each step could advance to colleges/professional leagues and be selected into the national squad. As the result, the national squad players who earned their positions through bribes/influence peddling and not their own merits as soccer players get their butt kicked and China could never advance to the World Cup.
This is what corruption does to a country.
Mark Kram
This is the reason why only foreign owned plants produce quality goods in China, while all Chinese owned plants produce junks.
And the weapons factories are all Chinese owned.
@Sol. Pretty much agree with what you said.
DeleteOne thing that seems to be forgotten is compared to West, even Russia, how much and for how long has China exported their military systems? It's easy to say there stuff is crap NOW, why? because USA, France, Russia,etc in the 50s, 60s,etc just exported marvelous pieces of military technology? PLEASE!
How many F104s did Germany crash?
I have heard horror stories about the French AMXs tanks.
How well did T72s fare during Gulf War I?
Didn't the Brits attach upside down one of their subs during production?
Yeah because the West and Russian have never made any mistakes.....
HOPE isn't a strategy......that's my big problem. I don't care about CHINA, I care about what US DoD is going to do about it! What's their strategy?!? F35 and LCS is the answer? REALLY?
I am just trying to figure out what kind of a ruckus the Chinese will create just before President Obama's visit to India in January. Will be a Naval exercise with the Pakistanis, another border infiltration bid over the Himalayas, granting a couple of billion dollars to the Pakistanis etc.
ReplyDeleteThough I think that when it comes to "Aid Money" for Pakistan, Beijing will be a tougher taskmaster than Washington.
Sol, I think the amtanks belong to the Tanzanian military. A while ago photos had appeared of Type 63As with that camo and people said they were for export, presumably to Venezuela, but it appears they were for Tanzania, after all.
ReplyDeletethose who constantly living in delusion about the quaility of chinese military products will wake up in a nightmare.. Many who hate china prefer to think of their military product as low quality toys , and those same people also prefer to think the current japanese navy can beat chinese navy , some people even think countries like philipines can beat chinese..
ReplyDeletei find it hilarious that the same hubris and delusion that infect many american now also infecting many asians who opposed china. Take for example the philipines , their military are known to be totally incompetent and their leaders corrupt, yet they still arrogant enough to boast about their military prowess .. same with the indians, whose intelligence got totally suprisd when Chinese Nuke Sub docked in Sri Lanka without india knowing anything about it before hand.
you setup so many strawmen in that statement that it took everything in my power to keep from deleting it. first i have never heard any Filipino state that they could take the Chinese. never. i have never heard a person from Japan state that they wanted to attack China. they're only doing things to keep from being attacked by that country. you state that you know history but its a jaded form of it. China has been smacked around in modern times. Vietnam did it. so did the Indians. additionally for all the talk about how vaunted a power they are they were never able to over run USMC units even though they outnumbered them at least 3 to 1.
Deletewhat everyone forgets is that China has a poor military history in the modern era. they have never had world class forces. never. additionally they've always relied on human wave attacks and the desire to sacrifice lives to gain ground. corruption is somethign that must be fought but they're not paragons of virtue in any way.
and lets be honest. china has more to fear from internal threats than it does from any country in the west...which ironically means that the western countries have alot to fear from china because they'll want attention away from how fucked up their country really is.
where are you from dude?
@ Sol. Agree about the internal threat, I think it's far more helpful to US than corruption, fact: that China and it's communist overlords DO worry about some elements of the population. Let's not forget that China has a Muslim community that could be turned against it.
DeletePlus when you consider the growing inequality, have/have not's and no one can say today for sure how China will cope with it's weird population dynamics, example: one baby strategy for years...China could just stay focused on internal politics or what I am personally afraid off: that China will do what just about every over country in history has done, tried to resolve internal problems by having an aggressive, military active posture and going to war.