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Posted by admin in China, CHINA -PAKISTAN FRIENDSHIP, Defense, Joint Defense Developments, Pakistan Security and Defence: Enemy & Threats (Internal & External), Pakistan's Fights Terrorism on January 28th, 2013
While the sense of self-importance these degenerates shower upon themselves may seem comical, with titles like “senior fellow” and “resident scholar,” the fact that their “policy research” usually becomes corporate subsidized “policy reality” and subsequently the American people’s unending nightmare, is enough reason to keep tabs on them. For instance Fredrick Kagan was supposedly the architect behind the US troop surge in Iraq. And while we may kid ourselves that with Obama taking office the agenda of these supposed Neo-Conservatives is sidelined, Paul Wolfowitz’ plan to overthrow the nations of the Middle East, now being fully executed with US-funded revolutions, probably couldn’t have been done without the veil of “left-cover.”
Kagan’s report regarding Pakistan’s partial occupation and the seizure of its nuclear arsenal is founded on what may first appear to be a reasonable concern; the fear of Pakistan collapsing and its nuclear arsenal falling into the wrong hands. According to Kagan’s narrative, Islamic extremists seizing Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal pose as much a threat today as “Soviet tanks” once did.
It’s not terrorists, it’s China
What Kagan leaves out is the very source of this destabilization and America’s overall grand strategy in the region. America’s continued presence in Afghanistan as well as its increasingly aggressive “creep” over the Afghan-Pakistani border has been justified under the ambiguous and omnipresent threat of “terrorism.” In reality, the true goal is to contain the rise of China and other emerging economies using the pretense of “terrorism.” Destabilization via foreign-funded ethnic insurgencies, regime change via foreign-funded sedition, and a regional strategy of tension between power brokers in Beijing, New Delhi, and Islamabad have for years attempted to keep in check not just China and Pakistan’s rise, but India’s as well.
This is not merely speculative conjecture. China itself has recently accused the United States of directly attempting to destabilize their nation as well as using the pretense of “terrorism” as a means to hobble China’s growing influence. In an April 2011 Reuters report, it was stated that “a senior domestic security official, Chen Jiping, warned that “hostile Western forces” — alarmed by the country’s rise — were marshalling human rights issues to attack Party control.” Compounding China’s accusations are open admissions by the US State Department itself declaring that tens of millions will be spent to help activists circumvent China’s security networks in an effort to undermine Beijing. This comes after it has been revealed that the entire “Arab Spring” was US-funded.
The issue of Pakistan in regards to China is not merely a figment of a paranoid Beijing’s imagination, it is stated policy circulating throughout America’s corporate-funded think-tanks. Selig Harrison of the Soros funded Center for International Policy has published two pieces specifically calling for carving off of Pakistan’s Baluchistan province, not as part of a strategy to win the “War on Terror,” but as a means to thwart growing relations between Islamabad and Beijing.
In “Free Baluchistan,” he explicitly calls to “aid the 6 million Baluch insurgents fighting for independence from Pakistan in the face of growing ISI repression.” He continues by explaining the various merits of such meddling by stating, “Pakistan has given China a base at Gwadar in the heart of Baluch territory. So an independent Baluchistan would serve U.S. strategic interests in addition to the immediate goal of countering Islamist forces.”
In a follow up article titled, “The Chinese Cozy Up to the Pakistanis,” Harrison begins by stating, “China’s expanding reach is a natural and acceptable accompaniment of its growing power—but only up to a point. ” He then repeats his call for meddling in Pakistan by saying, “to counter what China is doing in Pakistan, the United States should play hardball by supporting the movement for an independent Baluchistan along the Arabian Sea and working with Baluch insurgents to oust the Chinese from their budding naval base at Gwadar. Beijing wants its inroads into Gilgit and Baltistan to be the first step on its way to an Arabian Sea outlet at Gwadar.”
Gwadar in the southwest serves as a Chinese port, the starting
The very suggestion of fomenting armed violence simply to derail sovereign relations between two foreign nations is scandalous and reveals the absolute depths of depravity from which the global elite operate from. It is quite clear that the “War on Terror” is but a pretense to pursue a policy of regional hegemony with the expressed goal of containing China. This in turn, is part of a greater strategy covered in the 2006 Strategic Studies Institute report “String of Pearls: Meeting the Challenge of China’s Rising Power across the Asian Littoral.” Throughout the report China’s growing influence and various means to co-opt and contain it are discussed. SSI makes special note to mention engaging with all of China’s neighbors in an effort to play them off against Beijing in order to maintain American preeminence throughout Asia.
Destabilizing Pakistan
In addition to the Gwadar port in Pakistan’s Baluchistan region, China has also built dams, roads, and even nuclear power plants in the country. China has also supplied Pakistan with a tremendous amount of military technology. The only cards America seems to have left in its hand to counter this growing relationship are threats of destabilization, the subsequent stripping of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, and Pakistan’s Balkanization into smaller, ineffectual states.
In a 2009 article by Seymour Hersh titled, “Defending the Arsenal,” much attention was given to the immense amount of suspicion and distrust Pakistan views America with. In particular, distrust is garnered over America’s obsession with “defending” Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Under the pretense of “helping” Pakistan if ever it fell into chaos, America has been trying to ascertain the location of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons as well as the trigger assembles kept separate as a security measure.
While America supposedly “fears” destabilization, concurrently, the effects of their war with the Taliban on the Afghan-Pakistan border has overtly stirred up instability inside Pakistan. At one point, Hersh describes Islamabad’s request for predator drones to conduct the attacks themselves, which was denied. They then asked for America to at least pretend to have given the drones to Pakistan and give them Pakistani markings – this was also denied. In fact, it seems almost as if the war against the Taliban, especially the drone campaign, is being used specifically to stir up the Pashtun minority and aim them at Islamabad, just as Harrison had suggested the Baluchistan insurgents be used to carve off Pakistan’s southwest coastal region.
This brings us back to Fredrick Kagan’s “blueprint,” which is summed up in a New York Times piece co-authored with Brookings Institution’s Michael O’Hanlon. Their article titled, “Pakistan’s Collapse, Our Problem,” describes the complete collapse of the Pakistani government, overrun by “extremists.” It goes on to describe “Pro-American moderates” within the Pakistani army in need of US forces to help them secure Islamabad and their nuclear arsenal. Several options are given for where the nuclear weapons could be stored safely, all of them involve US oversight. This would give the US an ideal geopolitical scenario that would permanently Balkanize the country along Pashtun, Baluchi, and other ethnic minority lines, and result in a permanent Western presence inside the country.
The article then goes on to say larger military operations to take back Balkanized sections of the country could be undertaken, “If a holding operation in the nation’s center was successful, we would probably then seek to establish order in the parts of Pakistan where extremists operate. Beyond propping up the state, this would benefit American efforts in Afghanistan by depriving terrorists of the sanctuaries they have long enjoyed in Pakistan’s tribal and frontier regions.”
It should be noted that co-author Michael O’Hanlon also contributed to the “Which Path to Persia?” report which described how using foreign-funded armed insurgency, foreign-funded popular revolutions, co-opting members of the military, and covert military operations could be used to topple Iran’s government. In Iran’s case, this plan has already gone operational. In Pakistan’s case it seems all but a foregone conclusion that it is at least being attempted.
If Kagan’s plan were executed after sufficient instability and justification had been created, China’s holdings in Pakistan would be entirely eliminated, with Pakistan itself becoming a permanent extension of the unending US occupation of Afghanistan. This explains China’s initial reaction to the “Bin Laden” hoax. Immediately recognizing the unfolding implications, China rushed to Islamabad’s defense calling for support from the international community for Islamabad. China also criticized America’s intrusion into Pakistan’s sovereign territory.
The US raid incensed the Pakistani people, attempted to drive a wedge between the military and the government, as well as gave rhetorical leverage to the US over Islamabad and the Pakistani military. The suggestion by the US that “Bin Laden” had a support network inside Pakistan’s military appears to be an initial attempt to usher in some form of Kagan’s “nuke-napping” invasion plan. With Beijing openly accusing the US of interfering in its internal affairs and with the “Arab Spring” quickly turning into regional warfare, there is no turning back for the globalists.
The corporate-financier oligarchs and their many helping hands are a degenerate elite who have spent their entire lives sheltered from the consequences of their actions. It has always been the soldiers and the taxpayers who bore the brunt for their delusions of grandeur. To them, war is a cost-benefit analysis, and like their financial pyramid schemes that only get bigger and bigger, so too their gambles with our lives and treasure. It appears that they are quite willing to destabilize Pakistan, a nation with 170 million people, and risk war, a nuclear exchange, and a possible confrontation with China and Russia in the process.
Posted by admin in China, CHINA -PAKISTAN FRIENDSHIP, CHINA SHINING, Defense, Pakistan Air Force on January 28th, 2013
Why is JF-17 Thunder a Real Threat by dm_50d9ab0679d41
Thunder in Sino-Pakistani RelationsSince the establishment of diplomatic ties in 1951, Sino-Pakistani relations have steadily deepened, and the two countries have never had a public disagreement over any bilateral, regional, or global issue. If there was any wrinkle in their mutual relations, it was amicably resolved in private, outside the view of the world’s eye. The key to this closeness has been the frequency of highest-level contacts between the two countries, which yielded unprecedented results. A case in point is the Chinese premier Wen Jiabao’s visit to Pakistan in April last year, which led to the signing of the “Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Good Neighborly Relations” (Dawn, April 6, 2005). The treaty binds both signatories to desist from joining “any alliance or bloc which infringes upon the sovereignty, security, and territorial integrity of the other side” (Ibid.).
Similarly, General Musharraf’s third state visit to Beijing on February 19-23, which was a week apart from President Bush’s planned visit to South Asia in March, further strengthened the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Good Neighborly Relations. On February 20, China and Pakistan signed 13 agreements in Beijing, while President Hu Jintao and General Musharraf remained present at the signing ceremony. Of these, agreements on defense production, particularly the manufacture of multi-role JF-17 Thunder fighter aircraft, nuclear power generation, and strategic infrastructure-building, including the widening of the Karakorum Highway, are critically important to the future direction of Islamabad’s relations with Beijing.
Nothing explains Pakistan’s Sino-centric relations better than its defense and strategic ties with Beijing. Since the 1970s, these relations have continued to deepen and widen with progressive expansion in defense cooperation. Joint defense production, however, peaked in the 2000s. Today, all three branches of the Pakistani military—land, air and navy (in that order)—are equipped with Chinese weapons systems. Taxila Heavy Industrial Complex, situated near Islamabad, was the first seed of mutual collaboration that sprouted to branch off into building components for air defense. As a result, a state-of-the-art Aeronautical Complex was built at Kamra, a small town in Attock district of the Punjab province. Most recently, Beijing has offered Islamabad a helping hand in building two frigates at its naval base in Karachi, which will be a landmark breakthrough in their joint naval defense production as well. General Musharraf, at the conclusion of his five-day visit to Beijing, declared that “defense relations have been the bedrock of Sino-Pakistan relations” (Dawn, February 25). The hallmark of their decades-long defense collaboration, however, is the joint production of JF-17 Thunder fighter aircraft, which General Musharraf described as a “great success.” He favorably compared JF-17s with the U.S. Air Force’s F-16 fighter jets “in platform engine, maneuverability, avionics and capability of carrying various modern weapon systems” (Ibid.).
JF-17s are being manufactured in Chengdu, capital of China’s Sichuan province. In 1999, Chengdu Aircraft Industry Company (CATIC) signed an agreement with the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) for joint production of JF-17s. Since then, CATIC, Chengdu Aircraft Designing Institute and the PAF have been working on this project. They rolled out the prototype of JF-17 on September 3, 2003, the test-flight of which satisfied both Chinese and Pakistani pilots. Almost two-and-a-half years later, General Musharraf watched the demonstration flight of the aircraft on February 22 when he visited Chengdu, Sichuan, which is China’s center of high-tech defense production. General Musharraf was so impressed by the manufacture of JF-17s that he had a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed between China and Pakistan to declare Sichuan and Punjab (Pakistan’s most populous province that predominantly contributes “manpower” to the country’s three services) as “sister provinces” (Dawn, February 22). Pakistan is now celebrating JF-17s as worthy substitutes for F-16s.
Although Pakistan did receive 40 F-16s from the U.S. in the 1980s and is expected to receive an additional 80 F-16s this year, it still faces problems in their maintenance and service as its access to spare parts and manufacture technology is highly regulated (Dawn, February 25). This is what, Pakistan thinks, makes the U.S. an “unreliable” arms supplier, pushing Islamabad into the instinctive embrace of Beijing, which it considers an “all-weather friend” (Daily Times, February 24). Since 9/11, the U.S., however, has taken important measures to rebuild Pakistan-U.S. relations into longer-lasting cooperation. A case in point is Pakistan’s upgraded status as a major non-NATO ally of the U.S. to the perceptible unease of India, its arch rival. Yet Pakistan views such steps as symbolic as compared to the emerging strategic partnership between India and the U.S.
Pakistan is especially wary of the Indo-U.S. agreement on the transfer of nuclear power technology to Delhi, which is expected to be finalized during President Bush’s visit to India later this week. Since the signing of the Indo-U.S. nuclear agreement on July 18, 2005, when Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made a state visit to the U.S., Pakistan has been lobbying the U.S. to allow it the same access to nuclear power technology, but to no avail. It is not just the ruling Republican Party in the U.S. that is averse to providing Islamabad with nuclear reactors; leaders of the Democratic Party are even more adamant on this issue. Senator John Kerry, who visited Pakistan this year on January 14-15, told a news conference in Islamabad: “India is a democracy and it has adhered to the non-proliferation agreement in all the years of its involvement with nuclear facilities. This is not yet true of Pakistan, though Pakistan is moving in that direction” (The Hindu, January 16). Pakistan is, nevertheless, pursuing a plan to generate 8,000 MW of electrical power from nuclear fuel by 2020, an ambitious plan that makes it look to Beijing for support.
Beijing has already provided Islamabad a 300-MW nuclear reactor (Chashma-I), which is sited in a small town—Chashma—of the Punjab province. Beijing has now agreed to provide another nuclear power plant—Chashma-II—which will be sited next to Chashma-I. It will take five years before Chashma-II becomes operational. In addition, Pakistan is in talks with Beijing to buy six to eight nuclear power reactors of 600 MW each over the next decade (Press Trust of India, January 3). If the talks are successful, Pakistan will buy a number of nuclear reactors at the cost $10 billion to produce 4,800 MW of electricity. Pakistan’s current production of nuclear power is just 425 MW (Ibid.). Although Pakistan denies any such talks, it did sign an agreement with Beijing on February 20 to further “deepen cooperation in peaceful application of nuclear power.” In addition, Pakistan and China signed an “energy cooperation framework agreement,” which will explore the possibility of a gas pipeline between Iran and China through Pakistan (Dawn, February 22).
Besides, China and Pakistan are engaged in building key strategic infrastructures to further strengthen their defense ties. The construction of the Karakorum Highway (KKH)—which connects western China and its largest autonomous region of Xinjiang with Pakistan’s Northern Areas (NAs) all the way through Islamabad—was the first such major project. Since its completion in the 1970s, the Karakorum Highway has been used for limited trade and travel, however. In harsh winters, the stretch running through the Northern Areas and Xinjiang becomes unusable for motorized traffic due to heavy snowfall. Chinese and Pakistani engineers have since been trying to render it into an all-weather passageway. Yet limited trade and travel remained a poor incentive for such an expensive undertaking, until its renewed strategic significance became all too apparent in recent days. In a strict strategic sense, KKH is considered priceless. It gives Beijing unhindered access to Jammu and Kashmir in India, in addition to enabling it to the India’s movement along Aksai Chin, which China seized from India in 1962, severing India’s land-link to China’s turbulent autonomous regions of Tibet and Xinjiang. For Pakistan, the KKH is an added security for its turbulent Northern Areas, all the way up to Siachin where Indian and Pakistani troops have been in a stand-off since the mid-1980s.
On February 20, China and Pakistan agreed to widen KKH for larger vehicles with heavier freight. The rebuilding of KKH will enable China to ship its energy supplies from the Middle East from Gwader Port in Baluchistan through the land route of KKH to western China, which is its development hub. This alternative energy supply route will reduce Beijing’s dependence on the Malacca Straits. General Musharraf also wants to set up a “crude transit route” through Gwader Port for Beijing’s energy shipments from Iran and Africa. For this reason, Pakistan is building oil refineries, natural gas terminals, oil and gas equipment, and transit facilities in Baluchistan. China has agreed to help Pakistan with its plans for the development of its oil and gas industry. With this planned elaborate energy infrastructure, KKH has assumed an added significance as an alternative land link between China and its energy sources, of which Iran sits atop.
Beijing and Tehran are now all set to sign a $100 billion agreement on developing Iran’s Yadavaran oil field in southern Iran as early as March this year (Reuters, February 17). Under this agreement, China will buy 10 million tons of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) from Iran each year over the next 25 years. KKH would be the shortest and safest land route to ship Iranian LNG to western China. In return for LNG, China will develop the Yadavaran oil field, which is estimated to have three billion barrels of oil and is expected to produce about 300,000 barrels of oil per day, which is equivalent to China’s current imports from Iran (Ibid.). General Musharraf wants to turn Pakistan into China’s “energy corridor” for Chinese energy imports from the Middle East, Persian Gulf and Africa (Daily Times, February 18). He also wants Pakistan to be China’s “trade corridor” for its exports to Central Asia. For the latter reason, Pakistan has recently built the Torkham-Jalalabad road in northwestern Pakistan (i.e., Pakhtunkhaw province) and Chaman-Kandahar railroad link in Baluchistan to carry Chinese manufactured goods to Central Asia through Afghanistan.
China generously recognizes General Musharraf’s contribution to forging even closer relations between Beijing and Islamabad. It also wants Pakistan to play a bigger role in the region, for which General Musharraf has asked Beijing to upgrade Pakistan’s observer status at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to full membership. China will notify all SCO member states of Pakistan’s request to consider it at the SCO’s scheduled summit meeting this year (Dawn, February 20). To honor his contribution and his visit to Beijing, China put General Musharraf’s face on its postage stamps, which is a rare gesture even by Chinese standards.
Defense and strategic ties are the bedrock of Sino-Pakistan relations, which are too solid for any hint of weakness. Their ambitious future agenda for high-tech defense production (such as JF-17s and Frigates), nuclear power generation, and strategic infrastructure building (such as KKH and deep-sea Gwader Port) will further energize their ties. Although Sino-Pakistan relations have flourished under all military governments in Islamabad, General Musharraf has taken them to even greater heights by signing a territorial defense treaty in April last year, and literally and metaphorically putting (JF-17) “thunder” in Sino-Pakistan relations.
Posted by admin in CHINA -PAKISTAN FRIENDSHIP, CHINA SHINING on January 13th, 2013
China offers investment, aid and expressions of brotherly love to its neighbor and Cold War-era ally.
Shahan MuftiFebruary 18, 2009 20:35Updated May 30, 2010 11:43
ISLAMABAD — While American strategic planners debate when, where, if and how to put “boots on the ground” in Pakistan, the Chinese are leaving their footprints throughout the length of this country — from the northern Himalayan highlands to the southern Arabian Sea coast.
In Pakistan the Chinese touch is everywhere: in palms clutching cell phones, between the treads of trucks trading on new highways, and on the assembly lines of Pakistani military hardware factories.
“From a development point of view, China’s always been Pakistan’s most loyal friend,” said Khurram Jamali, who left his financial consulting job in Washington, D.C. in 2006, learned Mandarin and moved to Beijing to work for Pakistan’s largest bank, Habib Bank, which set up shop in China in 2005.
“I’ve put my eggs in the China basket — I see the future for Pakistan from here,” he said from Beijing.
Jamali might have left Washington behind, but the choice is not as simple for Pakistan. Since its creation in 1947, Pakistan has been a vital strategic partner of the United States. But there is also a deep and decades-old relationship between Pakistan and China, two Asian “all-weather friends.”
The strong ties between Pakistan and China have their roots in the Cold War, and it’s often been a synergetic relationship. During the Cold War, while China was a rising Asian power, it supported Pakistan to counter India, the other large Asian powerhouse with whom the Chinese fought a war in Kashmir in 1962.
Today, Pakistan continues to benefit from this latent rivalry. Last year when the U.S. and India signed a nuclear deal, Pakistan and China responded within weeks by signing their own agreement, in which the Chinese agreed to build two more nuclear power plants for Pakistan at a total cost of nearly $2 billion. This is in addition to the two reactors that the Chinese have already built in Pakistan.
But with the Cold War over, “we are now working on projects that look far beyond India,” said Fazlur Rahman, the head of the China Study Center at the Institute for Strategic Studies, a think tank funded by the Pakistani government. “If anything, the relationship has strengthened since the 1990s.”
Today, China not only has one of the largest diplomatic missions in Islamabad, it is also the fourth-largest investor in the country after the United States, the United Kingdom. and the United Arab Emirates, with total investment estimated at $6 billion. Pakistan carries out more than one-tenth of its total trade with China, and a free trade agreement signed between Beijing and Islamabad promised to triple bilateral trade by 2011.
But it’s the kind of money the Chinese bring in that sets them apart, says Muhammad Bilal Khokhar, who manages the China desk at the Pakistan Board of Investment in Islamabad. While aid money comes through — Pakistan said last month that China had agreed to provide $500 million to bail the country out of a looming economic crisis — the Chinese have always been most interested in large infrastructure projects, said Khokhar, projects “with concrete results.”
Last year China Mobile, a state-owned telecom company that is the largest in the world, made its first international foray into Pakistan. The company invested nearly $1 billion in the country in 2008 and “Zong” mobile has quickly become the fastest growing cellphone company in Pakistan.
Other Chinese companies, Khokhar said, were similarly working with Pakistan on longterm strategic projects: oil and gas, mining and ports.
Though such levels of trade suggest otherwise, the border between the two countries is a mere 300 miles. But it is also the path of the historic Silk Road, a fabled trading route. Through the mountainous passages on this border runs the highest road in the world, the Karakoram Highway, which connects Pakistan’s northern mountainous areas with China’s Xingjian autonomous region. Last year, Beijing announced $327 million in aid to Pakistan to rebuild the Karakoram Highway on the Pakistan side, to improve trade and traffic.
The road is especially important to the Chinese to gain land access to Gwadar. The port — which has a $1.5 billion price tag and is slated for the southwestern tip of Pakistan, a few dozen miles from the straits of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf — is being built with Chinese money and soft loans. While a Pentagon report warns that the port could become a Chinese naval outpost on the Arabian Sea, Chinese and Pakistani leaders emphasize its importance as a vital future trading route for the energy reserves in Central Asia.
Even military hardware, for which Pakistan has always looked the the West, is now being provided by the Chinese. And Pakistan isn’t just a buyer: Islamabad began working with Beijing in 2003 to develop the JF-17 fighter jet. The first jets rolled off assembly lines in Pakistan in 2008.
But more than military hardware, or even billions of dollars in investment and aid, it’s the expressions of “brotherhood” that offer a stark contrast to Pakistan’s mixed emotions towards America. In 2006, Chinese President Hu Jintao described Beijing’s relations with Pakistan as being “higher than the Himalayas, deeper than the Indian Ocean and sweeter than honey,” in a speech televised nationally in Pakistan.
In Beijing during last year’s Olympics, I saw hints of this special relationship first-hand. “Pakistan, China — good friends,” people from the host country stopped to tell me at the games. The “Chinese roar for Pakistan” during the opening ceremony, Anthony Lane wrote in a dispatch for “The New Yorker” magazine, “harks back to the Cold War.”
Theorists see a New Great Game afoot in Asia. Pakistan is strategic ground for major world powers looking to get a foothold in South and Central Asia. But Khokhar at the investment board says there is no reason to choose — Pakistan has always been comfortable between the spheres of China and the U.S. It was Pakistan, after all, that helped broker diplomatic relations between Washington and Beijing in 1971 by smuggling Henry Kissinger over the Silk Road.
“As long as China and the U.S. don’t have problems,” says Khokhar, “we won’t either.”
Agreement includes high level exchanges, training programmes and intelligence sharing. PHOTO: EXPRESS ISLAMABAD: Islamabad and Beijing signed a document on Tuesday for bilateral military cooperation after talks between senior Chinese and Pakistani officials. A high-powered Chinese delegation, led by Deputy Chief of General Staff General Ma Xiaotian, held discussions at Joint Staff Headquarters, Rawalpindi, to kickstart the 9th round of Pak-China Defence and Security talks, according to a statement issued by the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR). Details of the document were not made public. One military official merely said that it reflected the increasing ongoing cooperation between the two countries. This cooperation, the official added, included high level exchanges, training programmes and intelligence sharing. During talks with Joint Chief of Staff Chairman General Khalid Shameem Wynne, the Chinese general appreciated the “role played by the people and armed forces of Pakistan, especially the efforts in fighting terrorism.” He said the cooperation in different fields between the two Armed Forces will continue with a renewed resolve and commitment towards each other. The six-member Chinese delegation also called on Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf and held in depth discussions on matters of bilateral interest, an official statement said. The prime minister said, “We are proud of our excellent relations with the People’s Republic of China, with whom we have a strategic partnership”. Our cooperation with China on regional and international fora is exemplary, he added. Ashraf said Pakistan attaches great importance to its relationship with China which is time tested and beneficial to both countries. “We are grateful to our Chinese friends for their assistance in undertaking development projects in Pakistan,” he added. He told the visiting Chinese delegation that the political situation in Pakistan had stabilised as the country approaches elections. “Parliamentary democracy is taking roots in the country,” he said. Congratulating Prime Minister Ashraf on his successful visit to China, General Ma said, “Friendship between China and Pakistan is of strategic significance.” He expressed confidence that with the passage of time these relations would deepen further. Published in The Express Tribune, September 26th, 2012. China’s military rise The dragon’s new teeth A rare look inside the world’s biggest military expansion Apr 7th 2012 | BEIJING | from the print edition AT A meeting of South-East Asian nations in 2010, China’s foreign minister Yang Jiechi, facing a barrage of complaints about his country’s behaviour in the region, blurted out the sort of thing polite leaders usually prefer to leave unsaid. “China is a big country,” he pointed out, “and other countries are small countries and that is just a fact.” Indeed it is, and China is big not merely in terms of territory and population, but also military might. Its Communist Party is presiding over the world’s largest military build-up. And that is just a fact, too—one which the rest of the world is having to come to terms with. Related topics War and conflict Military weapons Government spending Public finance Taiwanese politics That China is rapidly modernising its armed forces is not in doubt, though there is disagreement about what the true spending figure is. China’s defence budget has almost certainly experienced double digit growth for two decades. According to SIPRI, a research institute, annual defence spending rose from over $30 billion in 2000 to almost $120 billion in 2010. SIPRI usually adds about 50% to the official figure that China gives for its defence spending, because even basic military items such as research and development are kept off budget. Including those items would imply total military spending in 2012, based on the latest announcement from Beijing, will be around $160 billion. America still spends four-and-a-half times as much on defence, but on present trends China’s defence spending could overtake America’s after 2035 (see chart). All that money is changing what the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) can do. Twenty years ago, China’s military might lay primarily in the enormous numbers of people under arms; their main task was to fight an enemy face-to-face or occupy territory. The PLA is still the largest army in the world, with an active force of 2.3m. But China’s real military strength increasingly lies elsewhere. The Pentagon’s planners think China is intent on acquiring what is called in the jargon A2/AD, or “anti-access/area denial” capabilities. The idea is to use pinpoint ground attack and anti-ship missiles, a growing fleet of modern submarines and cyber and anti-satellite weapons to destroy or disable another nation’s military assets from afar. In the western Pacific, that would mean targeting or putting in jeopardy America’s aircraft-carrier groups and its air-force bases in Okinawa, South Korea and even Guam. The aim would be to render American power projection in Asia riskier and more costly, so that America’s allies would no longer be able to rely on it to deter aggression or to combat subtler forms of coercion. It would also enable China to carry out its repeated threat to take over Taiwan if the island were ever to declare formal independence. China’s military build-up is ringing alarm bells in Asia and has already caused a pivot in America’s defence policy. The new “strategic guidance” issued in January by Barack Obama and his defence secretary, Leon Panetta, confirmed what everyone in Washington already knew: that a switch in priorities towards Asia was overdue and under way. The document says that “While the US military will continue to contribute to security globally, we will of necessity rebalance towards the Asia-Pacific region.” America is planning roughly $500 billion of cuts in planned defence spending over the next ten years. But, says the document, “to credibly deter potential adversaries and to prevent them from achieving their objectives, the United States must maintain its ability to project power in areas in which our access and freedom to operate are challenged.” It is pretty obvious what that means. Distracted by campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, America has neglected the most economically dynamic region of the world. In particular, it has responded inadequately to China’s growing military power and political assertiveness. According to senior American diplomats, China has the ambition—and increasingly the power—to become a regional hegemon; it is engaged in a determined effort to lock America out of a region that has been declared a vital security interest by every administration since Teddy Roosevelt’s; and it is pulling countries in South-East Asia into its orbit of influence “by default”. America has to respond. As an early sign of that response, Mr Obama announced in November 2011 that 2,500 US Marines would soon be stationed in Australia. Talks about an increased American military presence in the Philippines began in February this year. The uncertainty principle China worries the rest of the world not only because of the scale of its military build-up, but also because of the lack of information about how it might use its new forces and even who is really in charge of them. The American strategic-guidance document spells out the concern. “The growth of China’s military power”, it says, “must be accompanied by greater clarity of its strategic intentions in order to avoid causing friction in the region.” Officially, China is committed to what it called, in the words of an old slogan, a “peaceful rise”. Its foreign-policy experts stress their commitment to a rules-based multipolar world. They shake their heads in disbelief at suggestions that China sees itself as a “near peer” military competitor with America. In the South and East China Seas, though, things look different. In the past 18 months, there have been clashes between Chinese vessels and ships from Japan, Vietnam, South Korea and the Philippines over territorial rights in the resource-rich waters. A pugnacious editorial in the state-run Global Times last October gave warning: “If these countries don’t want to change their ways with China, they will need to prepare for the sounds of cannons. We need to be ready for that, as it may be the only way for the disputes in the sea to be resolved.” This was not a government pronouncement, but it seems the censors permit plenty of press freedom when it comes to blowing off nationalistic steam. Smooth-talking foreign-ministry officials may cringe with embarrassment at Global Times—China’s equivalent of Fox News—but its views are not so far removed from the gung-ho leadership of the rapidly expanding navy. Moreover, in a statement of doctrine published in 2005, the PLA’s Science of Military Strategy did not mince its words. Although “active defence is the essential feature of China’s military strategy,” it said, if “an enemy offends our national interests it means that the enemy has already fired the first shot,” in which case the PLA’s mission is “to do all we can to dominate the enemy by striking first”. Making things more alarming is a lack of transparency over who really controls the guns and ships. China is unique among great powers in that the PLA is not formally part of the state. It is responsible to the Communist Party, and is run by the party’s Central Military Commission, not the ministry of defence. Although party and government are obviously very close in China, the party is even more opaque, which complicates outsiders’ understanding of where the PLA’s loyalties and priorities lie. A better military-to-military relationship between America and China would cast some light into this dark corner. But the PLA often suspends “mil-mil” relations as a “punishment” whenever tension rises with America over Taiwan. The PLA is also paranoid about what America might gain if the relationship between the two countries’ armed forces went deeper. The upshot of these various uncertainties is that even if outsiders believe that China’s intentions are largely benign—and it is clear that some of them do not—they can hardly make plans based on that assumption alone. As the influential American think-tank, the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) points out, the intentions of an authoritarian regime can change very quickly. The nature and size of the capabilities that China has built up also count. History boys The build-up has gone in fits and starts. It began in the early 1950s when the Soviet Union was China’s most important ally and arms supplier, but abruptly ceased when Mao Zedong launched his decade-long Cultural Revolution in the mid-1960s. The two countries came close to war over their disputed border and China carried out its first nuclear test. The second phase of modernisation began in the 1980s, under Deng Xiaoping. Deng was seeking to reform the whole country and the army was no exception. But he told the PLA that his priority was the economy; the generals must be patient and live within a budget of less than 1.5% of GDP. A third phase began in the early 1990s. Shaken by the destructive impact of the West’s high-tech weaponry on the Iraqi army, the PLA realised that its huge ground forces were militarily obsolete. PLA scholars at the Academy of Military Science in Beijing began learning all they could from American think-tanks about the so-called “revolution in military affairs” (RMA), a change in strategy and weaponry made possible by exponentially greater computer-processing power. In a meeting with The Economist at the Academy, General Chen Zhou, the main author of the four most recent defence white papers, said: “We studied RMA exhaustively. Our great hero was Andy Marshall in the Pentagon [the powerful head of the Office of Net Assessment who was known as the Pentagon’s futurist-in-chief]. We translated every word he wrote.” China’s soldiers come in from the cold In 1993 the general-secretary of the Communist Party, Jiang Zemin, put RMA at the heart of China’s military strategy. Now, the PLA had to turn itself into a force capable of winning what the strategy called “local wars under high-tech conditions”. Campaigns would be short, decisive and limited in geographic scope and political goals. The big investments would henceforth go to the air force, the navy and the Second Artillery Force, which operates China’s nuclear and conventionally armed missiles. Further shifts came in 2002 and 2004. High-tech weapons on their own were not enough; what mattered was the ability to knit everything together on the battlefield through what the Chinese called “informatisation” and what is known in the West as “unified C4ISR”. (The four Cs are command, control, communications, and computers; ISR stands for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; the Pentagon loves its abbreviations). Just another corner of the network General Chen describes the period up to 2010 as “laying the foundations of modernised forces”. The next decade should see the roll-out of what is called mechanisation (the deployment of advanced military platforms) and informatisation (bringing them together as a network). The two processes should be completed in terms of equipment, integration and training by 2020. But General Chen reckons China will not achieve full informatisation until well after that. “A major difficulty”, he says, “is that we are still only partially mechanised. We do not always know how to make our investments when technology is both overlapping and leapfrogging.” Whereas the West was able to accomplish its military transformation by taking the two processes in sequence, China is trying to do both together. Still, that has not slowed down big investments which are designed to defeat even technologically advanced foes by making “the best use of our strong points to attack the enemy’s weak points”. In 2010 the CSBA identified the essential military components that China, on current trends, will be able to deploy within ten years. Among them: satellites and reconnaissance drones; thousands of surface-to-surface and anti-ship missiles; more than 60 stealthy conventional submarines and at least six nuclear attack submarines; stealthy manned and unmanned combat aircraft; and space and cyber warfare capabilities. In addition, the navy has to decide whether to make the (extremely expensive) transition to a force dominated by aircraft-carriers, like America. Aircraft-carriers would be an unmistakable declaration of an ambition eventually to project power far from home. Deploying them would also match the expected actions of Japan and India in the near future. China may well have three small carriers within five to ten years, though military analysts think it would take much longer for the Chinese to learn how to use them well. A new gunboat diplomacy This promises to be a formidable array of assets. They are, for the most part, “asymmetric”, that is, designed not to match American military power in the western Pacific directly but rather to exploit its vulnerabilities. So, how might they be used? Taiwan is the main spur for China’s military modernisation. In 1996 America reacted to Chinese ballistic-missile tests carried out near Taiwanese ports by sending two aircraft-carrier groups into the Taiwan Strait. Since 2002 China’s strategy has been largely built around the possibility of a cross-Strait armed conflict in which China’s forces would not only have to overcome opposition from Taiwan but also to deter, delay or defeat an American attempt to intervene. According to recent reports by CSBA and RAND, another American think-tank, China is well on its way to having the means, by 2020, to deter American aircraft-carriers and aircraft from operating within what is known as the “first island chain”—a perimeter running from the Aleutians in the north to Taiwan, the Philippines and Borneo (see map). In 2005 China passed the Taiwan Anti-Secession Law, which commits it to a military response should Taiwan ever declare independence or even if the government in Beijing thinks all possibility of peaceful unification has been lost. Jia Xiudong of the China Institute of International Studies (the foreign ministry’s main think-tank) says: “The first priority is Taiwan. The mainland is patient, but independence is not the future for Taiwan. China’s military forces should be ready to repel any force of intervention. The US likes to maintain what it calls ‘strategic ambiguity’ over what it would do in the event of a conflict arising from secession. We don’t have any ambiguity. We will use whatever means we have to prevent it happening.” If Taiwan policy has been the immediate focus of China’s military planning, the sheer breadth of capabilities the country is acquiring gives it other options—and temptations. In 2004 Hu Jintao, China’s president, said the PLA should be able to undertake “new historic missions”. Some of these involve UN peacekeeping. In recent years China has been the biggest contributor of peacekeeping troops among the permanent five members of the Security Council. But the responsibility for most of these new missions has fallen on the navy. In addition to its primary job of denying China’s enemies access to sea lanes, it is increasingly being asked to project power in the neighbourhood and farther afield. The navy appears to see itself as the guardian of China’s ever-expanding economic interests. These range from supporting the country’s sovereignty claims (for example, its insistence on seeing most of the South China Sea as an exclusive economic zone) to protecting the huge weight of Chinese shipping, preserving the country’s access to energy and raw materials supplies, and safeguarding the soaring numbers of Chinese citizens who work abroad (about 5m today, but expected to rise to 100m by 2020). The navy’s growing fleet of powerful destroyers, stealthy frigates and guided-missile-carrying catamarans enables it to carry out extended “green water” operations (ie, regional, not just coastal tasks). It is also developing longer-range “blue water” capabilities. In early 2009 the navy began anti-piracy patrols off the Gulf of Aden with three ships. Last year, one of those vessels was sent to the Mediterranean to assist in evacuating 35,000 Chinese workers from Libya—an impressive logistical exercise carried out with the Chinese air force. Just practising Power grows out of the barrel of a gun It is hardly surprising that China’s neighbours and the West in general should worry about these developments. The range of forces marshalled against Taiwan plus China’s “A2/AD” potential to push the forces of other countries over the horizon have already eroded the confidence of America’s Asian allies that the guarantor of their security will always be there for them. Mr Obama’s rebalancing towards Asia may go some way towards easing those doubts. America’s allies are also going to have to do more for themselves, including developing their own A2/AD capabilities. But the longer-term trends in defence spending are in China’s favour. China can focus entirely on Asia, whereas America will continue to have global responsibilities. Asian concerns about the dragon will not disappear. That said, the threat from China should not be exaggerated. There are three limiting factors. First, unlike the former Soviet Union, China has a vital national interest in the stability of the global economic system. Its military leaders constantly stress that the development of what is still only a middle-income country with a lot of very poor people takes precedence over military ambition. The increase in military spending reflects the growth of the economy, rather than an expanding share of national income. For many years China has spent the same proportion of GDP on defence (a bit over 2%, whereas America spends about 4.7%). The real test of China’s willingness to keep military spending constant will come when China’s headlong economic growth starts to slow further. But on past form, China’s leaders will continue to worry more about internal threats to their control than external ones. Last year spending on internal security outstripped military spending for the first time. With a rapidly ageing population, it is also a good bet that meeting the demand for better health care will become a higher priority than maintaining military spending. Like all the other great powers, China faces a choice of guns or walking sticks. Second, as some pragmatic American policymakers concede, it is not a matter for surprise or shock that a country of China’s importance and history should have a sense of its place in the world and want armed forces which reflect that. Indeed, the West is occasionally contradictory about Chinese power, both fretting about it and asking China to accept greater responsibility for global order. As General Yao Yunzhu of the Academy of Military Science says: “We are criticised if we do more and criticised if we do less. The West should decide what it wants. The international military order is US-led—NATO and Asian bilateral alliances—there is nothing like the WTO for China to get into.” Third, the PLA may not be quite as formidable as it seems on paper. China’s military technology has suffered from the Western arms embargo imposed after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. It struggles to produce high-performance jet engines, for example. Western defence firms believe that is why they are often on the receiving end of cyber-attacks that appear to come from China. China’s defence industry may be improving but it remains scattered, inefficient and over-dependent on high-tech imports from Russia, which is happy to sell the same stuff to China’s local rivals, India and Vietnam. The PLA also has little recent combat experience. The last time it fought a real enemy was in the war against Vietnam in 1979, when it got a bloody nose. In contrast, a decade of conflict has honed American forces to a new pitch of professionalism. There must be some doubt that the PLA could put into practice the complex joint operations it is being increasingly called upon to perform. General Yao says the gap between American and Chinese forces is “at least 30, maybe 50, years”. “China”, she says, “has no need to be a military peer of the US. But perhaps by the time we do become a peer competitor the leadership of both countries will have the wisdom to deal with the problem.” The global security of the next few decades will depend on her hope being realised. Correction: The following definitions have been changed in the main table of this article: “Main battle tanks” to “Modern main battle tanks”; “Armoured infantry vehicles” to “Armoured infantry fighting vehicles”; “Intercontinental ballistic missiles” to “Intercontinental ballistic missile launchers”; “Transport helicopters” to “Heavy/medium transport helicopters”; “Transport aircraft” to “Heavy/medium transport aircraft”; “Tanker and multi-role aircraft” to “Tanker aircraft”. Additionally, the data are from 2011 not 2010 as originally reported. These changes were made on 6th April 2012. https://twitter.com/pakistanchina
KARACHI — Chinese and Turkish companies have been fiercely vying for business at Pakistan’s bi-annual International Defence Exhibition and Seminar (IDEAS) arms fair in Karachi.
Cancelled due to the devastating floods in 2010, IDEAS2012, which started on Wednesday and runs through Sunday, has taken place amid tight security and an uncertain financial climate. Despite the financial climate however, there was still a reasonably strong showing of international defense companies hoping to secure orders from a country facing a constant threat of insecurity.
These ranged from German marine systems firm Atlas Elektronik, a supplier of torpedoes and sonar equipment to the Pakistan navy, to Ukrainian state-owned military import and export company UKRSPECEXPORT, which hopes to secure more Pakistan orders — especially for armored fighting vehicles. Ukraine has been instrumental in the development of Pakistan’s main battle tank, the Al-Khalid.
Absent were previous strong participants such as France’s state-owned shipbuilder DCNS and Germany’s HDW. Both had been vying for orders for submarines for Pakistan’s navy with their Scorpene/Marlin and Type-214 designs, respectively. The Pakistan Navy selected the Type-214 and in 2008 a deal for three of the submarines was close to being signed. However, Pakistan’s financial downturn squashed the deal and the absence of both companies at IDEAS2012 may indicate neither has realistic expectations of a deal despite the program not being formally cancelled.
A Pakistani industry official, who did not want to be named, told Defense News the Type-214 deal might be cut down the road — but not in the near future.A showcase for UAVs
Despite the financial situation, domestic defense firms have showcased their products and highlighted their progress.
Domestic UAV firm Integrated Dynamics told Defense News that a prototype of one of its small UAVs was undergoing operational evaluation with the Pakistani military in the Waziristan region as part of operations against the Taliban.
Due to the prevailing hostility to the CIA’s armed UAV operations in the tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan, the company stressed that its products are unarmed. This may perhaps be in part an effort to dispel any speculation it was part of the reported indigenous ‘Baraq’ UCAV program.
However, as the UCAV has not transpired, analysts are no longer sure if the program is still being developed or has been abandoned. No official information is available.
Pakistan has a vibrant UAV development capability, however, as the Advance Engineering and Research Organisation (AERO), which is part of the state-owned Global Industrial & Defence Solutions (GIDS) conglomerate, showcased with its ‘Shahpar’ tactical canard pusher UAV.
The autonomous UAV has an endurance of seven hours and can relay data in real time out to a range of 250km.
Another company somewhat reluctant to discuss its full range of products was the Military Vehicle Defence Research Establishment (MVRDE). It showcased a variant of its Dynamic Integrated Training Simulator for Tanks.
However, a MVRDE spokesman was mum on the firm’s aircraft simulators, despite one being included in its brochure.
In 2008 MVRDE revealed it was being tasked with developing a simulator for the MFI-17 Mushak basic prop trainer aircraft, and it has been reported that this work would lead to a simulator for the JF-17 Thunder multi role combat aircraft.
A range of domestic and foreign companies are jockeying to help the Pakistani military make the switch from analogue to digital communications however, and these included the Chinese firm Hytera in partnership with long-established local firm Micro. Similarly, National Radio Telecommunication Corporation (NRTC) is also part of this effort as is U.S firm Harris through its Pakistan-based presence.
Each has already successfully sold equipment to the military, but the digital switch holds out the promise of lucrative future contracts.The big two
IDEAS2012 was notable, however, for the competition between Chinese and Turkish defense industries. After domestic defense firms, Chinese and Turkish businesses had far and away the largest presence, with each country booking a hall for their companies.
Turkish companies — such as Havelsan, a defense electronics, software and integration company; Yonca Onuk, a manufacturer of advanced composite patrol craft; and Turkish Aerospace Industries — were all hoping to secure further contracts for their equipment from the Pakistani military.
Havelsan and Yonca Onuk have both been instrumental in aspects of the Pakistani naval modernization program over the past decade. Yonca Onuk has supplied its MRTP-15 and MRTP-33 patrol/fast interception craft, and is now promoting larger more capable developments of these vessels.
According to the Havelsan representative in Pakistan, the company has secured an order for its Genesis combat management system for the Pakistan Navy’s Oliver Hazard Perry class frigate, PNS Alamgir — and Havelsan is pushing ahead with hopes of a very broad range of naval modernization proposals.
TAI, having previously supplied an air warfare test and training range, as well as upgrading Pakistan’s F-16A/B Block-15 fleet, is pushing its T-129 attack helicopter to fulfill Pakistan’s requirements for an AH-1F Cobra replacement.
According to a TAI spokesman, a deal was nearly signed with Pakistan for 15 T-129 helicopters, but it stalled because of financial issues. Due to the operational environments of the Pakistani and Turkish militaries being very similar in topographical and climatic terms, Bilgi is confident Pakistan will see its future attack helicopter in the T-129.
The T-129 program includes other Turkish defense firms, such as defense electronic system firm Aselsan and rocket munitions developer/manufacturer Roketsan. The Turkish defense ministry is very keen to promote the T-129 to potential foreign customers — and Pakistan and South Korea are key targets.
But it was the Chinese that appeared to have secured the bulk of Pakistani orders in the first stages of IDEAS2012.
China Shipbuilding Trading Corporation (CSTC) secured an order from the Pakistan navy for four warships. These are thought to be improved variants of the F-22P Zulfiquar class frigates, four of which have already been built for the navy, (three in China and one in Karachi).
According to a spokesman for Karachi Shipyard and Engineering Works, the Pakistan navy recommended a large number of modifications for the follow on batch of frigates, and these modifications have been accepted by the Chinese designers.
A spokesman for CSTC was unable to say if the eight FM-90 SAMs (Crotale copy) would be replaced by a larger number of more capable missiles housed in a VLS however. The SAM armament of the current F-22P class frigates is a noted shortcoming of the design.
Poly Group Corporation secured an order for an undisclosed number of its Type CS/VP3 MRAP vehicle. Specific details of the deal were not forthcoming, but Poly Group Corporation claim the Type CS/VP3 offers protection to STANAG 4569 3B for an 8kg TNT equivalent under hull explosion, and STANAG 4569 4A for a 16kg TNT under wheel explosion.
In contrast Pakistan’s state-owned manufacturer Heavy Industries Taxila’s (HIT) MRAP design did not manifest itself at IDEAS2012. A HIT spokeman told Defense News it was still under development.
However, HIT did sign a memorandum of understanding with the Chinese armor fighting vehicle giant NORINCO to jointly market the Pakistani Al-Khalid MBT, that is based on the NORINCO MBT-2000 tank design. The new deal will allow Pakistan to market the tank internationally as the Al-Khalid whereas the Chinese have hitherto marketed the MBT-2000 independently.
The value of the deal may perhaps be questioned as NORINCO has already further developed the MBT-2000 to the MBT-3000 with improved armor protection, engine performance, all electric turret drive and elevation, full digitization, and thermal imaging sensors.
The MBT-3000 was being promoted at IDEAS2012.
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