| Submit your comments on this article |
| China-Japan-Koreas |
| How Russia keeps China armed |
| 2004-11-18 |
| China may have lost the latest skirmish with the European Union to get the latter to lift its arms ban, but Beijing is still able to buy what it needs - solid, serviceable hardware and technology - from Russia, former Soviet-bloc nations and Israel. And the embargo gives China greater incentive to develop its own weapons systems. On Wednesday, the European parliament in Brussels voted, as expected, to maintain the EU embargo on arms trade with the People's Republic of China until the PRC improves its human rights record. It voted not to weaken national restrictions on such arms sales and said the ban should continue in force until the EU itself had adopted an improved code of conduct, providing legal restraints on arms experts. The current ban is largely voluntary, and strongly opposed by France and Germany. No matter, China is still a big arms buyer, though economic constraints if maintained at the current level probably will keep Beijing from doing anything extraordinary, military-wise, for the next decade, experts say. There is a famous incident recounted by the late Colonel Harry Summers, author of the classic 1982 book On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War. In it he notes that at the very end of the war he was in Hanoi trying to make an agreement on the former Republic of Vietnam. In the course of the conversation he said, "Well, at least we never lost a battle to you." One North Vietnamese general then replied, "That's true, but it doesn't matter." |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #4 Thanks for clearing that up. I'm aware of Toshiba's betrayal of the West and won't buy one of their products to this day (unless it's well hidden inside someone elses computer). |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2004-11-18 4:22:52 PM |
| #3 rjschwarz: The thing is the Russians make weapons a peasant can use. They are not great but they are sturdy as hell. This applies to Kalishnikovs and tanks. The Chinese have been making their own tanks and automatic rifles for decades. All you need to do this is heavy industry (steel, and various other metals) and blueprints, things that China has had for decades. The things that the Chinese are importing from Russia are items that will improve China's force projection capabilities. From example, Russia makes some pretty high performance airframes. China has been buying the aviation electronics (avionics) from Israel to replace the crappy Russian flight controls. In selected instances, the Russians and the Israelis aren't just selling the kits - they are selling the knowhow for manufacturing the items. Given the increasingly sophisticated manufacturing capabilities being transferred to China via the move of entire physical plants from the West, Chinese armament makers are not to be underestimated. Note that Toshiba transferred the milling machines that made Russian Kilo subs all but undetectable during the 1980's (the milling machines gave the submarine propeller blades a finely-honed finish that made them much quieter than the Russians were able to achieve using Russian machine tools). Today, this kind of machinery is routinely moved to China to take advantage of its low labor costs, for manufacturing tools for re-export to the developed world. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2004-11-18 1:01:05 PM |
| #2 The thing is the Russians make weapons a peasant can use. They are not great but they are sturdy as hell. This applies to Kalishnikovs and tanks. Western gear is a lot more demanding to keep servicable and thus is unpopular in much of the third world. The interesting thing I read is that western gear is far superior if you are planning a war with another nation. Russian gear is great if you just want to keep your own people in their place. That sounds about right. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2004-11-18 11:09:46 AM |
| #1 Atimes: While China does not have the most modern weaponry or military technologies, the reality is that it has most of what it needs and is not having great difficulties in procuring from other countries, outside the European Union and the United States, what it does need. So the European parliament vote is not that significant to China. This is wrong. Completely wrong. If the EU breaks its embargo, China will get its advanced weapons for far less. If the Soviets were able to buy their advanced weaponry from the West, they wouldn't have had to spend huge chunks of their economy researching and developing new weaponry. And their economy wouldn't have collapsed. China is spending all it can afford. Any more and it risks the fate of the Soviet Union (the collapse of the Communist party and perhaps the dissolution of the Chinese empire). |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2004-11-18 10:17:54 AM |