China: Flexing All Kinds of Muscle

We’ve all known about China’s modern status in the world for a number of years.  There’s the China as a global banker, supplying the ready cash to underwrite the increasing debt of the United States and a few other countries. Their labor market now plays host to an increasing number of western countries that have shifted manufacturing bases to the Chinese mainland. And of course there is the large and well-funded People’s Liberation Army that ensures both internal tranquility and external projection of Chinese global intentions.

It is naïve to believe that sovereign nations, even friendly ones, don’t have a vested interest in the internal workings of other nations, especially when those nations have an economic relationship with one another.  Moreover, it would be imprudent not to recognize some of these nations for who they are, not for who we would like them to be.

China falls into this category. We never accepted that the Jihadists had declared war on us until the attack on 9/11.  Never mind the open threats, the embassy bombings in Africa or the attack on the USS Cole. We appear to be just as blind with China. Some of our biggest technology manufactures now assemble and manufacture their parts in China. While it may not be reported, the workforce in China is unionized and the government authorizes the union and then tells companies like Dell, Inc. that the plant must accept the union labor. We have just put the Chinese government overseeing some of our biggest manufactures.

Bill Gertz documents in his book, The China Threat, that China sought to influence our political elections in 1996 and continues to be an intelligence threat for our technology. The more that we allow our economic future to depend upon Chinese bankrolling our spendthrift ways the more susceptible to more aggressive Chinese activities we become.

And China understands the economic hold they have and they are now backing it up with muscle.  This last month the Chinese announced that they had launched their first fighter jet from their first aircraft carrier. The aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, is a rebuilt Russian carrier that the Chinese purchased. (here) From this point on, the intentions of the Chinese will bear watching. Aircraft carriers are power projectors. Currently, the Liaoning, and other ships like her are called STOBAR carriers or ships that launch airplanes off of a ski-ramp like deck. While these carriers can protect fleets and attack land targets, they don’t carry the ordinance of the CATOBAR-type ships, or the steam-launched catapult assisted take-offs. These planes carry much heavier ordinance and can project power over large landmasses. (here). If China, which states it is considering more Chinese built carriers, moves from the ski-ramp to the heavier steam-launched ships, then China is preparing to influence countries in a more threatening manner.