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China may have no intentions of using its growing military might, but that is of little comfort for Western countries. From the World Trade Organization to the United Nations, Beijing is happy to use its soft power to get what it wants — and it is wrong-footing the West at every turn. Beijing – World Trade Organization – United Nations – China – Asia
By abcnews.go.com

article[s] found via yahoo.com”s news search
China may have no intentions of using its growing military might, but that is of little comfort for Western countries. From the World Trade Organization to the United Nations, Beijing is happy to use its soft power to get what it wants – and it is wrong-footing the West at every turn.
By freeinternetpress.com

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China is likely to go ahead with its decision to finance the construction of two nuclear power plants in Pak.
By indianexpress.com

Click here for original article

Apr.13 (China MIlitary News cited from Reuters) – Chinese President Hu Jintao is among the prominent leaders attending a two-day nuclear security summit opening on Monday in Washington D.C.

The meeting hosted by US President Barack Obama will focus on making atomic facilities and materials safer from theft and terrorist attack, not broader questions about arms controls and cuts.

Here are some facts about China’s civilian and military nuclear activities:

The construction of Haiyang-I Nuclear Reactor in Shandong Province, China

China has 11 working nuclear reactors producing 9.1 gigawatts of power, but wants to raise capacity to 60 GW by 2020, over 5 per cent of the total installed power generating capacity.

To reach that goal, China has 17 reactors under construction, and 124 more on the drawing boards, according to the World Nuclear Association (WNA) industry group.

The expansion will cause Chinese demand for uranium to rise ten fold by 2030, making it the world’s second biggest consumer after the United States, according the WNA forecasts.

China staged its first nuclear test explosion in October 1964. It joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1992, and is one of the five powers under that treaty with the right to have nuclear weapons.

Like all the nuclear weapons states, China is secretive about its arsenal. Foreign intelligence and expert estimates of its total stockpile of nuclear warheads vary from about 200 to 240 warheads.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute has estimated that by 2009 China had 186 deployed strategic nuclear warheads, compared to 2,202 for the United States and 2,787 for Russia.

“There are no indications that China is designing, testing, or producing new nuclear weapons designs,” according to Jeffrey Lewis of the New America Foundation, a think tank in Washington D.C., in an overview of Chinese nuclear arms policy.

The launch silo of China’s ICBM

But China is modernising the means to deliver its nuclear warheads. It is gradually replacing its older, liquid-fueled ballistic nuclear-capable missiles with solid-fuel missiles, which will make launching them faster and less cumbersome.

China is also building new “Jin-class” ballistic missile submarines, capable of launching nuclear warheads while at sea.

These will replace China’s one “Xia-class” ballistic missile submarine, which experts say is in mothballs.

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By admin

Click here for original article

March.05 (China Military Power Mashup Reporting by Johnathan Weng) — China has successfully put into orbit another remote-sensing satellite, “Yaogan IX” at 12:55 p.m.(Beijing Time) from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern Gansu Province, according to a statement from the center Friday.

The satellite was sent into space aboard a Long March 4C carrier rocket and would be used to conduct scientific experiment, carry out surveys on land resources, forecast grain output and help with natural disaster-reduction and prevention endeavor, it said.

Its predecessor, “Yaogan VIII,” was launched from Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in northern Shanxi Province last December. 

The paylaod differences between Yaogan-IX and Yaogan-I

“Yaogan IX” is believed to be the first generation of Naval Ocean Surveillance satellite, whose purpose and performance are similar to U.S. White Cloud system. “Yaogan IX” is perhaps to be used for geolocation of U.S. Carrier Fleet and part of ASBM (anti-ship ballistic missile) system.

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By admin

originally published at china-defense-mashup.com

December.27 (China Military News cited from Global Times) — China’s military strength ranks second in the world in terms of expenditure, the number of troops and weaponry, according to a report released Thursday by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).

The data provokes many questions from scholars and the public, though the government think tank emphasized the ranking was just based on selected factors and is not a comparison of real military power of the concerned countries.

The fleet of Chinese Navy’s 4 Project 956 Sovremenny class destroyers

The US, Japan and Germany rank as the top three in terms of comprehensive national strength and China is in seventh place, according to the Report on Comprehensive National Power Assessment, which evaluated the militaries of 11 countries, including seven Western countries and Brazil, Russia, India and China, the so-called BRICs.

The evaluation index includes five direct constituent elements – territory and natural resources, population, economy, military and science and technology – and four influencing factors – social development, sustainability, security and domestic politics and international contributions, it said.

KJ-2000 and KJ-200 AWACS aircrafts displayed in one Airport

To the surprise of many, China’s military power ranks second, with a total score of 33.3, behind the US, which scores 90.08, and just ahead of Russia, with 31.08.
“The high rank of China is mainly because it gets a higher score in terms of troop numbers and equipment,” the report said.

The Human Development Report 2007-2008, released by the UN, showed that the size of China’s military is the largest in the world, with 2.25 million troops, far more than the US’ 1.5 million.

The report cites Wikipedia as saying, China’s weaponry ranks third worldwide in terms of amount of equipment, with 240 nuclear weapons, 7,580 tanks, 1,700 fighter planes, 144 naval ships, and eight nuclear submarines, far less than that of Russia, which tops the list with 13,000 nuclear weapons and 22,800 tanks.

There was much speculation about China’s military expenditure, with foreign institutes giving much higher estimates. The report, citing data from the National Bureau of Statistics, said China’s spending last year was $60.9 billion, below that of the US, France and the UK.

Ground Staffs’ Maintenance of PLA Air Force J-8D Fighter

Li Shaojun, a researcher with the CASS, told the Global Times that the US’ $607 billion expenditure last year was 132 percent higher than that of the other 10 countries studied.

Military expert Song Xiaojun said the military ranking, based on three indexes, is not persuasive as China’s military power is far from being in second place.

“China’s defense construction still falls behind the development of the national economy.” Song said. “If we are the second power, does it mean there is no need for us to develop our economy?”

Xu Guangyu, a member of the government-backed China Arms Control and Disarmament Association, expressed reservations toward the ranking as he thinks it should be evaluated historically and dynamically, instead of only using static data such as current military expenditure.

The missile reload of “RIF” air defense system of Type 051C Destroyer

“It’s more reasonable to put China after Russia,” General Xu said.

The report gives 60 percent weight to military expenditure and 20 percent to the number of troops and weaponry.

The idea is echoed by Ni Lexiong, a professor in the Politics Department of Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, who pointed to the problem of the abuse of military spending.

“If the expenditure was all used to boost China’s military strength, it could be taken as a reliable factor to evaluate China’s military status,” Ni said, adding that the indexes such as the number of troops and weapons should only be used for ancient times, as they are unreliable and inefficient for the evaluation of modern military strength.

According to the report, the quality of weaponry owned by the 11 nations is not accounted for, as it is impossible to evaluate, though the report admits that there is a big difference in terms of performance.

“The more rational ranking should include indexes such as air assault capacity, military soft power and military theory,” Ni said.

A poll Thursday on huanqiu.com showed that 85.2 percent of nearly 1,800 participants believed the report overestimated China’s military strength, while only 12 percent agreed with the ranking. 43.1 percent supported the seventh-place ranking of China’s comprehensive national strength, with 35.6 percent and 21.3 percent saying it is higher or lower, respectively.

Li Shaojun, also a co-author of the military part of the report, conceded that he is aware that the result will be met with many challenges from the public, but that an explanation has been given as to how the evaluation was carried out.

“It is just the result of a study which has some strategic value. But it can’t be used to fit the reality,” Li said.

Gao Hua, a deputy researcher with the CASS who also participated in the study, stressed that the report does not intend to draw a conclusion on how China’s military power should be ranked globally. Instead, it attempts to explore the relevance between increasing military expenditure and the global financial downturn.

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By admin

originally published at rand.com
Ever since China test-fired ballistic missiles… in 1995 and 1996, many analysts have sounded the alarm about the threat of China’s military power. This has been a false alarm until now, but within a decade China could supplant America as the dominant military power in East Asia, writes Roger Cliff.
By rand.org

China Military Power Mashup

via China’s CJ-20 Air Launched Cruise Missile to be operational with H-6 Bomber.

December.07 (China Military News reporting by Johnathan Weng) — CJ-20 ALCM, an air-launched version of CJ-10 Cruise missile, has been exposed in Chinese Internet. CJ-10 is the famous “ShaShoujian” weapon system and becomes the new rising star in the just ended grand parade of New China’s 60th National Day.

In the unleashed image, CJ-20 missile is being carried by one H-6H or H-6M bomber, which is the upgraded version of Russian Tu-16 bomber and constructs the main force of PLA air striking power. H-6H or H-6M bomber at least can carry 4 CJ=20 missiles and the latest and advanced H=6K bomber can carry 6 missiles to realize one possibility of China’s strategic attacking ability on U.S.’ Guam Base from inner land airspace.

It is believed that the specifications and performance of CJ-20 is very close to CJ-10. It cannot be sure whether Chinese people modify the missile for getting better stealth performance. PLA Air Force used to have KD-63, KD-88 and Russian KH-59 missiles to accomplish battle-level precisely striking. The upcoming operational of CJ-20 means PLA Air Force is going to be strategic bombing air power.

East Asia Forum

via Thinking about the Asia Pacific Community.

Authors: Hadi Soesastro (CSIS, Jakarta) and Peter Drysdale (ANU, Canberra)

The idea that regional architecture in Asia and the Pacific is not up to the tasks it now needs to serve has been around for some time. It has been inspired in part by worries about the untidiness in the competing structures — across the Pacific, of APEC, and within East Asia, of ASEAN +3 and the East Asia Summit (EAS). There has also been a hankering after ‘robust’ regional institutions modelled on the arrangements in Europe or North America, however unsuited they are to Asia Pacific circumstances.

,

What is different about the thinking that led to Prime Minister Rudd’s Asia Pacific Community proposal is that these worries are incidental to its main strategic motivation. The Rudd idea is grounded in the reality of the big shifts taking place in the structure of regional and world power. These shifts in the structure of power have two main implications.

First, Asia’s growth is changing the structure of the world economy and shifting global economic power, and ultimately, strategic weight towards Asia, in particular China and India. Economic and political changes in Asia and the Pacific challenge the primacy of some dimensions of American power. These developments underline the gap in the framework for regional political and security dialogue in Asia and the role that such dialogue could play in helping to manage the long-term change in the structure of Asian economic and political power and political security relations between Asia and America.

Second, the scale of Asia’s impact on the global economy means that there is urgency in energising regional efforts to deliver on Asia’s global responsibilities – in the financial and macro-economy, in trade policy and on climate change – and how that might be assisted through regional structures.

Until the collapse of world financial markets and world trade in the global financial crisis, the East Asian region, including Australia, was preoccupied with managing all aspects of the China boom – the pressure on energy, resource and food markets, the macroeconomic pressures, the looming foreign direct investment and commercial presence – and beginning to think about its long-term political consequences. India too was more and more caught up in the wave. All was premised on the continuing strength of North American and European markets.

East Asian economies should have been more conscious of their role on the world stage and the need to reposition quickly to manage the global system consequences of their own economic success and the dangers presented to its sustainability that the huge imbalances had created on the way. East Asia bore no responsibility for America’s squandering the beneficence of East Asia’s success – the apparently never-ending supply of cheap credit negligently guarded by the private and public custodians of the developed world’s financial system. But in this and in many other global system-making or system-destroying economic and political affairs, East Asia had significant prudential responsibility and it failed collectively at every stage to exercise it.

The reason for this failure is simple.

Despite the emergence of East Asia as a major economic force in the world – China, Japan and the rest of East Asia through to Australia and New Zealand reaching out to India – the East Asian economies collectively could not step up to the mark because regional structures were still not up to the task of effective global participation. The stage was still set for the wrong play – reactive responses to regionalism in other parts of the world, the trivia of regional FTAs and ‘mickey mouse’ financial cooperation – and there was no platform on which to perform globally.

In East Asia, like elsewhere in the world, the risks that we now face in recovery from the global financial crisis, not only economically but also politically, are a consequence of failure in the architecture of governance, including regional architecture, that frustrated a coherent East Asian and international response to the big problems of the day in their global context.

The global financial crisis and the emergence of the G20 has changed all this dramatically and propelled the G20’s Asian members to assume a new role and their proper responsibilities in managing the world economic order. ASEAN is the fulcrum of Asian cooperation arrangements, including APEC, ARF, ASEAN+3 and the East Asian Summit (EAS) but, with the rise of the bigger powers in Asia, and the G20, this is changing.

How can regional architecture be restructured to relate effectively to the new global arrangements?

The starting point is to understand that, while they may have failed to connect Asia’s regional with its growing global interests and responsibilities and they have other weaknesses, the regional arrangements we have in place are huge assets in going forward. APEC is entrenched as the primary trans-Pacific arrangement. ASEAN+3 and the East Asian Summit have assumed an important role in developing the Asian regional agenda. APEC, in its first twenty years, has provided a workable strategy in trade and economic diplomacy in East Asia and the Pacific supporting policies of liberalisation and structural reform, organised around the principle of open regionalism (a strategy well suited to the development, objectives and diversity of the Asia Pacific region). But after the Asian financial crisis and the global financial crisis, these regional arrangements (APEC, ASEAN +3, ASEAN+6) must now relate more strategically to the global arrangements (the G20 group). And there is a whole new political and security agenda to navigate within the Asia Pacific region.

Clearly, the Asia Pacific Community idea needs to relate to these established regional structures – APEC and East Asian arrangements – if it is to be both accepted and serve its underlying political-security purpose. It will only be worthwhile and practical if it limits dialogue to the major players. Hence, although it cannot encompass all APEC’s membership, or all the membership of EAS, a dialogue on political and security affairs needs to represent both as they are presently constituted. It needs to link to, be coordinated with, and draw on the base of all of the established trans-Pacific and East Asian arrangements.

While none of the existing regional institutions addresses all of the key dimensions of regional cooperation that they now need to – providing a collective forum for regional leaders to address the full range of regional and global issues; dealing effectively with the consequences of economic integration, particularly its trade and investment but also its financial and macro-economic dimensions; addressing issues of political change and security; and educating the public and opinion leaders about the region – nor should any one organisation need to perform all these roles. Each of these forums has evolved to serve some or other of these roles and they can all make an input across the range of issues that are now important.

This points to the need for a new heads of government meeting that transcends APEC and EAS (encompassing the Rudd and Hatoyama proposals) that can address the full range of regional and global issues, including issues that might arise in APEC, EAS, ARF or other regional forums and feed into the G20 and other global processes. This summit could eventually constitute an Asia Pacific Council, underpinning the continued development of the regional community. It would not need its own secretariat but draw on APEC and the ASEAN-based groups to develop issues for consideration.

There may be sensitivities in creating a new summit involving a limited number of countries, the ‘larger’ players in Asia and the Pacific. But so long as it is structured so that it is representative of all the regional arrangements, these sensitivities need not be important. The most practical proposal and most logical starting point is that this summit should begin by including the Asia Pacific members of the G20, and meet adjunct to the APEC summit. A dialogue among these countries does not entail creating an additional institution as G20 leaders will continue to meet beyond the current financial crisis, encompass the core players in APEC and EAS and meet in conjunction with the annual APEC summit . These are all  important considerations in taking the next steps towards realising vision of an Asia Pacific and East Asian Community.

The clear message is that ‘no one wants more meetings’ and that there is ‘no appetite for additional institutions.’ But there is strong support for developing more effective alignment of regional strategic purpose, a sentiment that is at the core of the idea of an Asia Pacific Community.

If this is an idea that seeks to anticipate and shape our regional political and economic future, it is an idea that cannot be put on hold, take a decade to implement or wait until the United States signs on to EAS, an ASEAN-based, primarily Asian-oriented and still nascent grouping.

The next APEC meeting in Japan, provides an excellent opportunity to convene a side-dialogue of this group, including India, on these issues, likely just prior to the G20 meetings in Seoul, to lay the foundations for a representative Asia Pacific Council that can give leadership to taking the Asia Pacific Community idea forward.

Dr Hadi Soesastro is a senior economist with CSIS in Jakarta and Peter Drysdale is Emeritus Professor in the Crawford School of Economics and Government at the Australian National University. The original version of this essay was submitted as background to the Asia Pacific Community Conference held in Sydney at the instigation of Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, 3-5 December 2009.

China Military Power Mashup

via China taking on growing role in U.N. peacekeeping missions.

December.02 (China Military News cited from Washington Post and written by Andrew Higgins) — After bulking up its armed forces with new missiles and other advanced weaponry, China recently invited U.S. and other foreign military officials to inspect a less bellicose side of the People’s Liberation Army: a fleet of bulldozers.

Through clouds of smoke generated to simulate the look of a war zone, a PLA engineering brigade showed off its earthmovers, mine-clearing gear and other nonlethal hardware at a base north of Beijing.

The display, put on shortly after President Obama left Beijing last month, represented what China sees as an important part of its answer to a question that shadowed Obama’s eight-day Asia tour: How will China use the formidable power generated by its relentless economic growth?

The engineering unit that staged the show is spearheading China’s growing involvement in international peacekeeping, a cause that Beijing for decades denounced as a violation of its stated commitment to noninterference in the affairs of other nations but that it now embraces.

Today, about 2,150 Chinese military and police personnel are deployed in support of U.N. missions. They serve around the world, from Haiti to Sudan.

A ‘peaceful rise’

Though the peacekeepers represent only a fraction of the PLA’s more than 2 million soldiers — and account for a minuscule part of the Chinese military budget — China’s enthusiasm for peacekeeping signals a clear desire to project an image as a responsible and peaceable great power. And even if, as some experts say, China’s total military spending is perhaps double the stated amount, it is still less than a third of the United States’ basic military budget, which excludes spending toward the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We promise that we will fulfill our duties to safeguard peace,” Senior Col. Yi Changhe, an engineering brigade commander, told the visiting foreign defense officials.

When Germany and later Japan emerged as military powers on the back of surging economies more than a century ago, a calamitous reordering of the world order followed. China, pursuing what it calls a “peaceful rise,” points to the PLA’s peacekeeping activities as evidence of its benign intentions.

But while increasingly willing to let its soldiers don the blue helmets worn by U.N. peacekeepers, China has shown little enthusiasm for the U.N.-sanctioned mission that currently matters most to Washington — the war in Afghanistan.

Wariness toward NATO

When the United States wanted to fly a group of Mongolian trainers to Afghanistan in October, China objected to letting the aircraft go over its territory. Beijing eventually gave the flight a green light — but only after ammunition was taken off the plane, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter.

Though authorized by the United Nations, the Afghanistan mission is led by NATO, an organization China views with deep wariness. Beijing blames NATO for the 1999 bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo war.

China’s shock at NATO’s military campaign in the former Yugoslavia helped prod Beijing into playing a bigger role in U.N. peacekeeping, said Bates Gill, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and co-author of a recent report on China’s peacekeeping activities. China, he said, is “highly unlikely” to send soldiers to Afghanistan to help “what is essentially a NATO operation, albeit with a United Nations blessing.”

Beijing recently enrolled a small group of soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq in a mine-clearing course at the PLA’s University of Science and Technology in Nanjing and has expressed interest in helping to train Afghan police. But it has balked at providing direct support for NATO’s campaign against the Taliban. China has focused its resources on supporting operations run directly by the United Nations. It has more troops and police deployed on U.N. missions than the United States, Russia and Britain combined. Of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, only France makes anywhere near as big a contribution to U.N. peacekeeping.

Washington has generally welcomed China’s increasing readiness to join U.N. operations, though a Pentagon report this year noted that the capabilities that allow China to participate in distant peacekeeping and humanitarian missions could also “allow China to project power to ensure access to resources or enforce claims to disputed territories.”

Obama, during his visit to Beijing, described greater international engagement by China as a necessary and welcome by-product of its economic strength. “A growing economy is joined by growing responsibilities,” he said after talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Presence in Sudan

China has moved far from what, under Mao Zedong, was a policy of steadfast opposition to military interventions by foreign powers. In the 1950s, China actively resisted U.N.-backed military missions, most notably during the Korean War, when its soldiers battled U.S. and other foreign troops fighting under the U.N. flag in support of South Korea.

Chinese troops serve in 10 countries, from the Caribbean to Southeast Asia, but they are most active in Africa, where China has ramped up its diplomatic and economic presence as it seeks oil and other resources to fuel its economy. They focus on providing engineering, medical and logistical help. A top U.N. official who visited the Chinese capital recently said Beijing is considering sending combats troops overseas for the first time.

Chinese personnel have a reputation for tight discipline and have not been tarnished by the sex and corruption scandals that have afflicted peacekeepers from some other nations. Critics, however, note that the largest number of Chinese peacekeepers — nearly 800 military and police personnel– are stationed in Sudan, which provides substantial amounts of oil to China and whose government Beijing has strongly supported despite widespread outrage over the killings in the western region of Darfur.

Speaking after a conference on peacekeeping last month in Beijing, Alain Le Roy, the U.N. undersecretary for peacekeeping operations, called Chinese troops “very professional” and said the United Nations has “no concerns” about their role in Sudan. Beijing’s close diplomatic ties to countries such as Sudan, he said, give it leverage that “we will try to make the best use of.”

Is China Ready to Be a Global Power? Or Headed Toward Collapse?: ”

For Global Times, David Shambaugh writes a piece asking, “Is China ready to be a global power?”:

President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg, and US Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman have all made speeches this year calling on China to be a greater global partner of the US. More could be done by China in some of the aforementioned areas. With respect to the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs, Beijing could use more of its influence and leverage behind the scenes to halt these programs.

Of course, Beijing is chronically adverse to using sanctions and other coercive measures, but it could still more clearly make the case to the governments in Pyongyang and Tehran that they will face ever-increasing international isolation unless they opt to trade their nuclear ambitions for normalizing their positions in regional and international affairs.

Then there is Afghanistan and Pakistan – two countries where China’s national security interests are directly affected and where the international community has a common mission to destroy Al Qaeda and the Taliban and bring stability and security to Afghanistan and the Pakistani border region. Yet where is China?

[...] The issue of China’s role in the global climate change negotiations is also an important opportunity for Beijing to show it is part of the solution and not just part to the problem.

Specific numbers on emissions caps need to be added to Hu Jintao’s positive speech to the UN in September, prior to the UN Climate Change Conference Copenhagen in December.

This is likely to be an issue high on the agenda in Obama’s discussions with Hu.

While Politico ponders, “Is China headed toward collapse?”:

But there’s a growing group of market professionals who see a different picture altogether. These self-styled China bears take the less popular view: that the much-vaunted Chinese economic miracle is nothing but a paper dragon. In fact, they argue that the Chinese have dangerously overheated their economy, building malls, luxury stores and infrastructure for which there is almost no demand, and that the entire system is teetering toward collapse.

A Chinese collapse, of course, would have profound effects on the United States, limiting China’s ability to buy U.S. debt and provoking unknown political changes inside the Chinese regime.

The China bears could be dismissed as a bunch of cranks and grumps except for one member of the group: hedge fund investor Jim Chanos.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009.

Tower of Power: “

Time Magazine looks at what role foreign companies might play in China’s quest to become the renewable energy superpower:

China, the world’s leading producer of greenhouse gases, is taking an aggressive path to develop alternative sources of energy. Already the world’s leading generator of hydropower — a renewable but sometimes controversial power source because of the impact on river ecosystems — China now aims to be the front runner in wind- and solar-power generation. In 2007 the government directed that by next year at least 3% of large power companies’ generating capacity should come from renewable sources (excluding hydropower); this target jumps to 8% in 2020. That may not sound like much, but according to a recent study by the China Greentech Initiative, a coalition of Chinese and foreign businesses, NGOs and government organizations, environmental technologies including renewable energy could become a $1 trillion market in China by 2013. In a recent commentary, Pulitzer Prize – winning journalist and author Thomas Friedman wrote that China’s decision to go green “is the 21st-century equivalent of the Soviet Union’s 1957 launch of Sputnik.” The fast-growing country’s huge appetite for electricity is behind the push. While China’s total power capacity will nearly double by 2020, the amount that could come from wind and solar is expected to jump more than fivefold, aided by significant government assistance. Beijing announced in March it will subsidize 50% of costs for certain solar-panel projects, and 70% in remote regions. (See pictures of the new ways to boost energy efficiency.) But as often happens in China, this potential bonanza could prove to be a mirage for foreign companies. The country’s policymakers are nurturing a domestic alternative-energy industry on a massive scale. China is home to more than 100 wind-turbine manufacturers and some 400 solar-panel companies. The country has quickly grown into the world’s largest maker of photovoltaic cells. Yet more than 95% of PV cells produced by China in 2008 were exported, indicating the country’s output far exceeds domestic demand. Not surprisingly, foreign companies think they are being blocked from the mainland market. Meanwhile, China Daily reports on overcapacity in the solar power industry in China.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009.

Letter from China: Watching Beijing’s Air Power Grow: “China, the world’s fastest-growing major economy, is preparing to send a carrier to sea within a few years, military analysts say.

China Moves to Project Air Power With Soviet Carrier Overhaul (Bloomberg): “Oct. 20 (Bloomberg) — Welding torches flare at dusk in the coastal Chinese city of Dalian as workers mill about on the flight deck of an unfinished aircraft carrier once intended for the Soviet navy.”

Bad Debts: Assessing China’s Financial Influence in Great Power Politics: “

Commentators and policymakers have articulated growing concerns about U.S. dependence on China and other authoritarian capitalist states as a source of credit to fund the United States’ trade and budget deficits. What are the security implications of China’s creditor status? If Beijing or another sovereign creditor were to flex its financial muscles, would Washington buckle?

10. China – from containment to engagement (The Star): “SIXTY years ago when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) swept into power in China, the Western world was more concerned about containing China, especially when communism was sweeping through South-East Asia.”

The Air Power of the People’s Republic of China: “Here are two diagrams illustrating the changes of the Chinese air-power occurred during the last 14 national day parades. Click on the photo to enlarge it.”

PLA sees ‘relative contraction’ of U.S. power: “China’s state-run media last week offered an analysis of U.S. power that appears designed to support the Communist Party’s theory that America is a declining superpower that must be contained.”

China’s Ring of Power | Foreign Policy

US Seeks Military Exercises with China: “Australia and the United States will invite China to take part in joint military exercises to help ease fears about China’s growing military power and improve ties, the top U.S. military officer in the Pacific was quoted as saying in a report Thursday.”