China...

[marcelo l.]

...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... hands.html

The chubby-cheeked young Chinese man sitting in a darkened room lined with computer screens does not look like a warrior on the front line of a global conflict that will shape our futures.
But the self-styled “king” of the Red Hacker Alliance – a network of nationalist Chinese “hacktivists” – believes that is precisely his role. Asked if there is already a cyber-war between China and the West, he declares: “I think there is an all-out war.”
In China: Triumph and Turmoil, a new Channel 4 series that begins tomorrow, the historian Niall Ferguson examines the dramatic economic ascendancy of the world’s most populous nation and what that means for the rest of the world.
Among his discoveries are the burgeoning ranks of zealous young Chinese patriots who are marrying technological savvy and economic power with nationalist fervour. As well as the hackers, he also tracks down the young Chinese patriotic activists who set up the popular and slick “anti-CNN” website, putting together a montage of clips from Western media to denounce what they call anti-Chinese “lies”, particularly in the coverage of the brutal suppression of the 2008 Tibet uprising.
“We wanted to give our voice to the world,” says one mild-mannered young man. “We should be more assertive. Our government is sometimes too weak.”

As Ferguson notes, this is the same government that ordered the bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square.
“It is one of our comforting and enduring myths that as China becomes more modern and sophisticated, more like us, it will come to adopt our values,” he observes. “I’m not sure it’s going to be like that.”
At his Harvard base last week, he discussed a resurgent Chinese nationalism that “is almost intimidating in its intensity” as the world undergoes a shift of financial and political power from West to East.
It was a strain that he first identified from the reaction of his own Chinese students to US coverage of the Tibet protests. “They were very hostile to the criticism of the Chinese government.
“The key insight for me is that rather than pro-democracy feelings increasing as China grows economically, it is a radical, shrill nationalism that is emerging.”
But it isn’t just the young. For the new three-part series, he also found among older Chinese a growing “Maostalgia”, a nostalgia for the era of Mao Tse-tung. In Western eyes, Chairman Mao is strongly associated with the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, but for many Chinese, he is the father of a modern, booming nation.
“There is an enthusiastic embrace of the economic benefits of the market but resentment of Western cultural hegemony,” says Ferguson, professor of history at Harvard’s Center for European Studies. “The attitude is: if we make it economically, we don’t have to kowtow to you culturally.”
Ferguson expects the Chinese leadership to channel this nationalism to shore itself up and deal with the tensions that are erupting as the output of its super-charged economy surpasses the US – a milestone that may be reached as early as 2016.
The challenges are formidable and echo some that the West has also experienced – a spectacular property boom that is already showing signs of turning into a bubble; factories with miserable wages and shocking working conditions; an ageing population; and pollution (16 of the world’s 20 dirtiest cities are in China).
The big contradiction seems to be that a fifth of humanity is living under a communist one-party state within a free-wheeling capitalist economy – a conflict that, on the basis of history, should tear the country apart.

“The spectre of turmoil terrifies the leadership,” says Ferguson. “They face the challenge of managing a dynamic society and that is a real problem with real tensions. But I don’t buy the idea that China is about to implode or disintegrate.”
Harnessing the resurgent nationalism is part of the strategy to contain this threat. So is a policy of economic expansion overseas.
Why does this matter for the rest of the world? For one thing, Ferguson sees unnerving echoes in that mixture of shrill nationalism and overseas ambition of Germany a century ago.
China is already devouring two-fifths of the world’s coal, zinc, aluminium and copper. Now it is turning its attention to foreign territory for those basic natural resources. In Zambia, after Ferguson descends a Chinese-run copper mine, he muses: “Maybe this is the beginning of a world empire.”
Ferguson has always been fascinated by the role of empire. The new series flows out of his most recent book, Civilisation, published last year, which described how the West rose over 500 years, only to trace its decline and China’s emergence.
“Will China be our geopolitical nemesis or economic saviour?” asks Ferguson. With $2 trillion in international reserves, China is the West’s biggest creditor and owns huge chunks of US debt – something of an obsession on the presidential campaign trail this year.
Beijing has also helped bail out the euro during its recent travails. If President Sarkozy loses his re-election bid in France, robbing German Chancellor Angela Merkel of her chief ally in efforts to prop up the shared currency, the eurozone will doubtless come under renewed stress. And China may have to step in again, however reluctantly.
"The Chinese certainly don’t want the euro to fail,” says Ferguson. “The eurozone is a very important market for them. They have a shopping list of investments in the West – utilities and hi-tech – and the euro’s gyrations have played havoc with their planning.”
Western policy on handling the rise of China is all over the place, he believes. “For the US, the options range from conflict to containment to co-evolution to capitulation. The trouble with the current administration is that it pursues a different policy each day.”
The co-evolution strategy, based on the acceptance of shared interests, is his preferred choice. It also happens to be the theory outlined for relations between China and the West by Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state and master practitioner of diplomatic realpolitik, whose authorised biography is Ferguson’s current project.
The television series on China is the latest grand sweep of history from the Glasgow-born, Oxford-educated academic, who was last week back at Harvard, after returning from an Asian economic conference in South Korea, and before heading off to engagements in New York, California and Georgia.
If Ferguson’s professional life is high profile, so, too, of late has been his personal life – to his frustration. Last September, at a ceremony where guests included Dr Kissinger, he married his second wife, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born campaigner against radical Islam who lives under protection after a fatwa was issued against her for scripting the film Submission about the treatment of women in Muslim society. Its producer, Theo van Gogh, was murdered.
Ferguson had separated in 2010 from his first wife, Sue Douglas, a former newspaper editor with whom he has three children. Hirsi Ali and Ferguson had a baby boy, Thomas, in December. The divorce and remarriage fed a regular stream of media coverage in London, and last month he said it had contributed to him leaving Britain for good.
“The fact is, I left Britain years ago. I was fed up with certain aspects of British life. Now I live a very transatlantic life. I have three kids in Britain and I am there at least once a month. In America, thankfully, there is not much interest in Ayaan and me. We’re not Brad and Angelina. Only in England would ‘professor gets divorced and remarried’ be a story.”
Of the fatwa issued against his new wife, he said: “Of course, the first rule is that you don’t talk about your security arrangements. But it’s a sad reality that if you express views that threaten extremist groups enough, they will come after you. But it’s more important to speak the truth than to live the quiet life.”
Ferguson supported the Iraq war, although he criticised the subsequent handling of affairs post-invasion. And he predicts that the Middle East will witness war again this year as he believes that it is “probable” that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, will launch air strikes against Iran’s nuclear programme.
“Netanyahu is correct that Iran is a major threat, and you can’t assume that that threat can be solved by sanctions and tough talk,” he said. “I expect that this year Obama is going to get a 3am phone call, telling him that Israeli planes are in the air, and asking what is he going to do. How Obama reacts will probably determine the fate of his presidency as well.

“Israel has never had a better chance of getting Obama’s support if they act. A re-elected Obama is going to have considerable leeway to push Israel in a direction they don’t want to go.”

By contrast, he said he errs away from the “apocalyptic view” on China. “There is the German scenario, with China becoming increasingly aggressive. But I think there is a low probability that will play out, not least as we have learnt from history. Both sides have a hell of a lot to lose. My money is on continued growth, market reform and, while not democracy, more constraints on party power and greater rule of law.”

It is a mildly optimistic conclusion to the chilling question with which he ends the series. “Can we somehow manage the transition from West to East in a way that is peaceful, not violent? On the answer to that question depends not just the prosperity of the world, but also its future peace.”

* ‘China: Triumph and Turmoil’ begins tomorrow on Channel 4, 8pm

[akivrx78]

12.03.2012 05:21
Lusa
China: Quase metade dos chineses não se opõem à "democracia estilo ocidental", mas consideram-na "irrealista" -- sondagem

Pequim, 12 mar (Lusa) - Quase metade dos chineses (47,9 por cento) dizem não se opôr à implantação de "uma democracia estilo ocidental" na China, mas consideram a ideia "irrealista", segundo os resultados de uma sondagem divulgada hoje num jornal de Pequim.

Apenas 15,7 por cento defendem que aquela ideia é "realizável", quase um quinto (19,1 pc) consideram-na "ingénua" e para 9,9 pc isso é tudo "propaganda ocidental", indica a sondagem, encomendada pelo Global Times e realizada junto de 1.010 pessoas de sete cidades chinesas ao longo da última semana.

"Maioria do público apela a reformas mais profundas", realça o jornal, uma publicação em inglês do grupo Diário do Povo, orgão central do Partido Comunista Chinês (PCC).

http://sicnoticias.sapo.pt/Lusa/2012/03 ... --sondagem

[marcelo l.]

http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mundo/1062 ... hina.shtml

A crise política mais grave na China desde o massacre da Praça da Paz Celestial em 1989 foi confirmada nesta quinta-feira com a destituição de Bo Xilai, carismático e controverso secretário do Partido Comunista de Chongqing, que planejava se tornar um dos líderes do país na próxima década.

Sua ambição de chegar ao núcleo de direção do Partido Comunista Chinês (PCCh) e talvez um dia a "número um" foi barrada pela sua cessação fulminante como chefe comunista de uma Prefeitura de quase 40 milhões de habitantes, apenas 20 horas depois de o primeiro-ministro, Wen Jiabao, ter pedido reformas políticas para evitar uma nova Revolução Cultural.

Bo Xilai passou cinco anos preso por pertencer a uma família considerada intelectual e crítica ao sistema durante a Revolução Cultural.

Seu pai era Bo Yibo, um importante líder do PCCh e companheiro de Mao Tsé-tung que foi perseguido nessa época; já sua mãe acabou cometendo suicídio.

Após ser reabilitado pelo regime, Bo tentou marcar sua ascensão política com a recuperação de tradições maoístas que o levaram a ser apelidado de "vermelho", enquanto fazia reformas e lutava contra as poderosas máfias da região.

Mas Wang Lijun, ex-chefe de Polícia que combatia implacavelmente a corrupção, revelou, primeiro ao consulado dos EUA em Chengdu (Sichuan) e depois em Pequim, onde está em liberdade vigiada, o lado obscuro do "modelo Bo" e de Chongqing como laboratório político.

RISCO IMINENTE

Segundo disseram hoje à Agência Efe fontes ligadas ao PCCh, Pequim viu um risco iminente de enfrentamento entre o Exército e o partido se os militares do sudoeste do país oferecessem proteção a Bo por serem amigos de seu famoso pai.

Wang, que também foi destituído hoje, pode ser acusado de traição por revelar "ao inimigo" --os Estados Unidos-- segredos do PCCh, e pode ser até condenado à morte, segundo analistas consultados pela Efe.

Segundo o diário "South China Morning Post", o presidente da nação asiática, Hu Jintao, disse a membros da Conferência Consultiva Política do Povo da China (CCPC), principal órgão assessor, que Wang praticou uma traição.

Uma fonte de Chongqing citada pelo diário revelou que "os funcionários foram informados que Wang traiu o país com crimes, corrupção e degeneração moral".

MAIOR CRISE POLÍTICA DESDE 89

A destituição de Bo, um "peso pesado" e "príncipe" da quinta geração, filho de um líder revolucionário assim como o futuro presidente chinês, Xi Jinping, confirma a maior crise política no PCCh desde 1989.

"Seu protagonismo se perdeu. Não queria ser 'irmão', mas 'chefe', e isso não é bem visto", disseram hoje à Efe as mesmas fontes.

Agressivo negociador como ex-ministro do Comércio, seu estilo assustou de início.

"Quis colocar a medalha da luta contra a corrupção, mas no regime chinês essa função corresponde ao secretário-geral do PCCh e presidente, atualmente Hu Jintao", explicaram as fontes, para quem "Bo queria mostrar-se o salvador do mundo e causou vários problemas ao partido".

O primeiro-ministro chinês reconheceu ontem que o assunto era "muito sério", e a notícia da destituição de Bo Xilai foi muito comentada pelos internautas chineses no Weibo --o Twitter chinês-- com diversidade de opiniões.

[akivrx78]

Hoje às 15h08 - Atualizada hoje às 15h24
Queda de líder na China assusta o ocidente
Jornal do Brasil

O medo de uma desaceleração da economia chinesa, depois que novos dados mostraram queda na atividade industrial, aliado as recentes conturbações políticas do país derrubou as bolsas ao redor do mundo na última quarta-feira (22).

Ainda este mês, o Partido Comunista Chinês (PCC) destituiu Bo Xilai, um popular líder e governador de Chongqing, capital do aglomerado urbano que mais cresce no mundo - com cerca de 30 milhões de habitantes - a sudoeste do país.

Xilai era contra as políticas de modernização e as contínuas aberturas do regime comunista, que tem caracterizado o governo do presidente Wen Jiabao. Popular na ala conservadora do partido, o governador pretendia ocupar uma das nove cadeiras que exercem a liderança do país.

A saída de Xilai enfraquece ainda mais esta “oposição” conservadora, segundo o professor de História Econômica Pedro Paulo Bastos, da Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp).

“A expulsão dele significa um enfraquecimento ainda maior e a derrota de uma corrente, que não deve produzir arranjos mais sérios. A ala majoritária e modernizante continuará dominando e governando o país”, analisa.

Na China, os governantes das províncias têm muito mais autonomia e poder do que nos estados brasileiros, afirma o especialista. Assim, através de medidas alinhadas às políticas de Mao Tsé-tung, Xilai conseguiu se popularizar na classe mais conservadora do país. Bastos afirma ainda que a sua fama de “caçador de mafiosos” também lhe rendeu apoio.

“Mas aparentemente estas políticas de combate a máfia eram feitas para desmoralizar o antecessor dele. Ainda existem denúncias de que Xilai se utilizou de artifícios extremamente arbitrários, como torturar empresários para conseguir as concessões que ajudaram a província a prosperar”, analisa.

Bastos relembra que o chefe de polícia acabou se refugiando na Embaixada dos Estados Unidos há algumas semanas, com medo de ser executado pelo líder.

“Existem rumores de que Xilai pretendia mesmo ‘eliminar’ o chefe de polícia para acabar com as evidências de que ele ordenava tortura e maus tratos aos seus inimigos”, acredita.

Crise Política?

Os especialistas concordam que ainda é muito cedo para avaliar se a China está sofrendo uma crise política. O sociólogo Williams Gonçalves, da Universidade Estadual do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), afirma que dissidências dentro do partido são normais e que o PCC não funciona na “unanimidade”.

“As oposições no país são dentro do partido. De qualquer jeito, eu não acredito que nós tenhamos uma crise política, e sim uma divergência. A China já passou por momentos ainda mais decisivos, no começo da década de 90, quando a própria população se manifestou publicamente”, exemplificou.

A grande projeção deste caso no ocidente se deve a popularidade de Xilai e sua pretensão de liderar a China e comandar o PCC, afirma o especialista.

“Como as províncias tem um grau de autonomia muito grande, uma liderança regional tem enorme projeção, pois sua capacidade de tomar decisões é grande. A popularidade de Xilai realmente poderia o elevar a um líder ainda mais forte em âmbito nacional”, analisa.

Bastos concorda e afirma que o mercado acionário reagiu negativamente muito mais por temor à uma desaceleração chinesa do que os transtornos políticos divulgados, que ainda não representam ameaça ao país.

“Nós temos acesso à poucas informações dos movimentos políticos na China e não se conhece os meandros dos conflitos internos. Então, quando uma notícia destas sai causa um certo frenesi. Porém, não se pode afirmar qualquer crise”, conclui.

http://www.jb.com.br/internacional/noti ... -ocidente/

[Enlil]

Crise abre caminho para investimento chinês recorde na Europa

Daniela Fernandes
De Paris para a BBC Brasil

Atualizado em 28 de março, 2012 - 05:43 (Brasília) 08:43 GMT

Os investimentos chineses na Europa foram multiplicados por sete desde o início da crise financeira mundial, em 2008, e vêm se acelerando nos últimos meses, após o agravamento da crise na zona do euro, segundo dados de organizações internacionais.

Os chineses vêm acelerando seus investimentos no Velho Mundo nos últimos anos em setores variados. Já adquiriram ou compraram participação, por exemplo, em vinhedos na França, companhia de energia em Portugal, fábrica de máquinas na Alemanha e montadoras de veículos na Suécia e Grã-Bretanha. O perfil variado, incluindo indústrias de alta tecnologia, contrasta com a forte concentração de investimentos chineses no Brasil, bem como na América Latina, em setores como mineração, petróleo e gás.

De acordo com a Unctad (Conferência das Nações Unidas para o Comércio e o Desenvolvimento), o volume de recursos chineses investidos na Europa, em fusões ou aquisições de empresas, além da compra de participações acionárias, foi de US$ 876 milhões em 2008. Em 2010, últimos dados disponíveis na Unctad, o montante foi de US$ 6,76 bilhões.

Apesar de expressivos, os números da Unctad são apenas um dos indicadores da tendência de avanço dos investimentos chineses na Europa.

"Esses números estão subestimados, porque se referem somente à China continental, e não incluem Hong Kong", disse à BBC Brasil Guoyong Liang, do escritório de assuntos econômicos da Unctad.

Hong Kong é uma importante plataforma para investimentos chineses no exterior, mas o governo chinês não divulga o destino, por país, dos investimentos provenientes da região administrativa especial da China.

A entidade americana Heritage Foundation tenta superar esse obstáculo na obtenção dos dados acompanhando os investimentos no momento em que são anunciados e confirmados. Segundo a entidade, em 2011, os investimentos em 13 países europeus teriam atingido cerca de US$ 15 bilhões.

Aceleração

Inúmeros anúncios de aquisições de empresas (ou também de participação no capital de companhias europeias) por investidores chineses têm sido feitos nos últimos meses.

Um dos negócios mais comentados, em razão do montante, ocorreu no final de dezembro: a China Três Gargantas comprou, por US$ 2,7 bilhões, a fatia de 21,35% que o governo português detinha na Energia de Portugal (EDP), afastando da disputa o grupo alemão e.ON e as brasileiras Eletrobras e Cemig.

A recente compra em Portugal é exemplo de uma tendência observada pela Heritage Foundation de aceleração de investimentos em países fortemente afetados pela crise na zona do euro.

A China, segundo a Heritage Foundation, não havia investido nada na Espanha entre 2005 e 2008, por exemplo. De 2009 até 2011, o fluxo de capitais chineses para o país atingiu US$ 1,5 bilhão.

A situação em Portugal é mais emblemática. Ainda de acordo com a Heritage Foundation, a China não teria investido nada no país entre 2005 e 2010.

Apenas em 2011, quando Portugal entrou no olho do furacão da crise das dívidas soberanas, o fluxo de investimentos chineses para o país atingiu US$ 3,5 bilhões.

"Após o início da crise, em 2008, houve um grande aumento dos investimentos chineses na Europa. Mais recentemente, a crise na zona do euro passou a representar uma oportunidade para comprar ativos mais baratos", afirma Liang, da Unctad.

Ele diz que a maior parte dos negócios na Europa começou a ocorrer desde meados do ano passado.

Na Alemanha, um dos países que mais receberam investimentos chineses em 2009 e 2010, o interesse é pela indústria mecânica, que produz maquinário de alta tecnologia com reputação mundial, diz o economista da Unctad.

Segundo ele, os investimentos chineses também são significativos na Grã-Bretanha porque o país reúne sedes de várias empresas importantes do setor de energia e também bancário.

As empresas chinesas também têm investido em infra-estrutura na Europa, com concessões para operar nos portos dos Pireus, em Atenas, e de Nápoles, na Itália.

Montadoras europeias, como a britânica Rover (que estava em concordata em 2005) ou ainda a sueca Volvo, em 2010, também foram compradas por grupos chineses, que tentaram ainda adquirir no ano passado a sueca Saab. Mas a operação foi vetada pela General Motors, proprietária da marca sueca de automóveis, que acabou pedindo concordata em dezembro.

Na França, além de setores como o da energia, as companhias chinesas têm investido em segmentos ligados à imagem da França no exterior: marcas de moda de luxo e vinhos.

A grife Cerruti foi adquirida por chineses em 2010 e, em fevereiro passado, foi a vez do fundo Fung Brands, de Hong Kong, comprar 80% do capital da marca de prêt-à-porter de luxo Sonia Rykiel.

Investidores chineses também estão multiplicando as aquisições de vinhedos em Bordeaux com o objetivo de exportar para a China, que se tornou o primeiro importador mundial de vinhos dessa região francesa.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/portuguese/noticia ... f_ac.shtml



[]'s.

[Boss]

Asia's balance of power
China’s military rise
There are ways to reduce the threat to stability that an emerging superpower poses
Apr 7th 2012 | from the print edition



NO MATTER how often China has emphasised the idea of a peaceful rise, the pace and nature of its military modernisation inevitably cause alarm. As America and the big European powers reduce their defence spending, China looks likely to maintain the past decade’s increases of about 12% a year. Even though its defence budget is less than a quarter the size of America’s today, China’s generals are ambitious. The country is on course to become the world’s largest military spender in just 20 years or so.

Much of its effort is aimed at deterring America from intervening in a future crisis over Taiwan. China is investing heavily in “asymmetric capabilities” designed to blunt America’s once-overwhelming capacity to project power in the region. This “anti-access/area denial” approach includes thousands of accurate land-based ballistic and cruise missiles, modern jets with anti-ship missiles, a fleet of submarines (both conventionally and nuclear-powered), long-range radars and surveillance satellites, and cyber and space weapons intended to “blind” American forces. Most talked about is a new ballistic missile said to be able to put a manoeuvrable warhead onto the deck of an aircraft-carrier 2,700km (1,700 miles) out at sea.

China says all this is defensive, but its tactical doctrines emphasise striking first if it must. Accordingly, China aims to be able to launch disabling attacks on American bases in the western Pacific and push America’s carrier groups beyond what it calls the “first island chain”, sealing off the Yellow Sea, South China Sea and East China Sea inside an arc running from the Aleutians in the north to Borneo in the south. Were Taiwan to attempt formal secession from the mainland, China could launch a series of pre-emptive strikes to delay American intervention and raise its cost prohibitively.

This has already had an effect on China’s neighbours, who fear that it will draw them into its sphere of influence. Japan, South Korea, India and even Australia are quietly spending more on defence, especially on their navies. Barack Obama’s new “pivot” towards Asia includes a clear signal that America will still guarantee its allies’ security. This week a contingent of 200 US marines arrived in Darwin, while India took formal charge of a nuclear submarine, leased from Russia.

En garde

The prospect of an Asian arms race is genuinely frightening, but prudent concern about China’s build-up must not lapse into hysteria. For the moment at least, China is far less formidable than hawks on both sides claim. Its armed forces have had no real combat experience for more than 30 years, whereas America’s have been fighting, and learning, constantly. The capacity of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for complex joint operations in a hostile environment is untested. China’s formidable missile and submarine forces would pose a threat to American carrier groups near its coast, but not farther out to sea for some time at least. Blue-water operations for China’s navy are limited to anti-piracy patrolling in the Indian Ocean and the rescue of Chinese workers from war-torn Libya. Two or three small aircraft-carriers may soon be deployed, but learning to use them will take many years. Nobody knows if the “carrier-killer” missile can be made to work.



As for China’s longer-term intentions, the West should acknowledge that it is hardly unnatural for a rising power to aspire to have armed forces that reflect its growing economic clout. China consistently devotes a bit over 2% of GDP to defence—about the same as Britain and France and half of what America spends. That share may fall if Chinese growth slows or the government faces demands for more social spending. China might well use force to stop Taiwan from formally seceding. Yet, apart from claims over the virtually uninhabited Spratly and Paracel Islands, China is not expansionist: it already has its empire. Its policy of non-interference in the affairs of other states constrains what it can do itself.

The trouble is that China’s intentions are so unpredictable. On the one hand China is increasingly willing to engage with global institutions. Unlike the old Soviet Union, it has a stake in the liberal world economic order, and no interest in exporting a competing ideology. The Communist Party’s legitimacy depends on being able to honour its promise of prosperity. A cold war with the West would undermine that. On the other hand, China engages with the rest of the world on its own terms, suspicious of institutions it believes are run to serve Western interests. And its assertiveness, particularly in maritime territorial disputes, has grown with its might. The dangers of military miscalculation are too high for comfort.

How to avoid accidents

It is in China’s interests to build confidence with its neighbours, reduce mutual strategic distrust with America and demonstrate its willingness to abide by global norms. A good start would be to submit territorial disputes over islands in the East and South China Seas to international arbitration. Another step would be to strengthen promising regional bodies such as the East Asian Summit and ASEAN Plus Three. Above all, Chinese generals should talk far more with American ones. At present, despite much Pentagon prompting, contacts between the two armed forces are limited, tightly controlled by the PLA and ritually frozen by politicians whenever they want to “punish” America—usually because of a tiff over Taiwan.

America’s response should mix military strength with diplomatic subtlety. It must retain the ability to project force in Asia: to do otherwise would feed Chinese hawks’ belief that America is a declining power which can be shouldered aside. But it can do more to counter China’s paranoia. To his credit, Mr Obama has sought to lower tensions over Taiwan and made it clear that he does not want to contain China (far less encircle it as Chinese nationalists fear). America must resist the temptation to make every security issue a test of China’s good faith. There are bound to be disagreements between the superpowers; and if China cannot pursue its own interests within the liberal world order, it will become more awkward and potentially belligerent. That is when things could get nasty.

from the print edition | Leaders

[Boss]

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.



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.”



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).



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.



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.

[Enlil]

China oferece US$8 bi para desenvolvimento do Sudão do Sul
Sábado, 28 de abril de 2012

JUBA, 28 Abr (Reuters) - A China ofereceu 8 bilhões de dólares em recursos para o desenvolvimento do Sudão do Sul em projetos de infraestrutura e agricultura, disse à Reuters no sábado o ministro da Informação do país africano.

"A China ofereceu recursos para financiamentos no valor de 8 bilhões de dólares para grandes projetos de desenvolvimento", disse Benjamin Barnaba.

Segundo ele, os projetos serão conduzidos por companhias chinesas.

(Reportagem de Yara Bayoumy)

http://br.reuters.com/article/businessN ... 2M20120428



[]'s.

[suntsé]

China oferece US$8 bi para desenvolvimento do Sudão do Sul
Sábado, 28 de abril de 2012

JUBA, 28 Abr (Reuters) - A China ofereceu 8 bilhões de dólares em recursos para o desenvolvimento do Sudão do Sul em projetos de infraestrutura e agricultura, disse à Reuters no sábado o ministro da Informação do país africano.

"A China ofereceu recursos para financiamentos no valor de 8 bilhões de dólares para grandes projetos de desenvolvimento", disse Benjamin Barnaba.

Segundo ele, os projetos serão conduzidos por companhias chinesas.

(Reportagem de Yara Bayoumy)

http://br.reuters.com/article/businessN ... 2M20120428



[]'s.

No que diz repeito a politicas para conquistar maior infliência no continente africano, os chineses estão na frente.

[FoxHound]

O Brasil infelizmente não tem Budgment para competir com os chineses pela influência do Continente africano.

[Boss]

E quem tem ?

[FoxHound]

E quem tem ?

Na minha opinião só os EUA,UE(União Europeia) e India.

[suntsé]

E quem tem ?

Na minha opinião só os EUA,UE(União Europeia) e India.

Para mim, é questão de estratégia e não só de dinheiro.

O Erro dos EUA foi ter abandonado o continente africano por muito tempo....ficaram perdendo tempo no oriente médio e afrontando a china e a Russia.

Enquanto o continente africano estava aqui em baixo cheio de riquezes inexploradas e povos facilmente influenciaveis dominaveis....

A China aproveitou o momento favoravel e praticamente, se apoderou do continente.....quando os EUA e UE acordaram...Os Chineses ja estavam fazendo a festa...

O Brasil não esta pronto para competir com a china no mesmo nivel....mas isso não quer dizer que não podemos ter o nosso pedaço de bolo lá.

Eu acredito que em muito breve a o Brasil terá que temer a China como potencia global....ja que no futuro quando eles tiverem bases bem sólidas na Àfrica, ele tenderam a ter um forte presença no atlantico.

[FoxHound]

Para mim, é questão de estratégia e não só de dinheiro.

O Erro dos EUA foi ter abandonado o continente africano por muito tempo....ficaram perdendo tempo no oriente médio e afrontando a china e a Russia.

Enquanto o continente africano estava aqui em baixo cheio de riquezes inexploradas e povos facilmente influenciaveis dominaveis....

A China aproveitou o momento favoravel e praticamente, se apoderou do continente.....quando os EUA e UE acordaram...Os Chineses ja estavam fazendo a festa...

O Brasil não esta pronto para competir com a china no mesmo nivel....mas isso não quer dizer que não podemos ter o nosso pedaço de bolo lá.

Eu acredito que em muito breve a o Brasil terá que temer a China como potencia global....ja que no futuro quando eles tiverem bases bem sólidas na Àfrica, ele tenderam a ter um forte presença no atlantico.

x2

[gaia]

Na minha opinião só os EUA,UE(União Europeia) e India.

Para mim, é questão de estratégia e não só de dinheiro.

O Erro dos EUA foi ter abandonado o continente africano por muito tempo....ficaram perdendo tempo no oriente médio e afrontando a china e a Russia.

Enquanto o continente africano estava aqui em baixo cheio de riquezes inexploradas e povos facilmente influenciaveis dominaveis....

A China aproveitou o momento favoravel e praticamente, se apoderou do continente.....quando os EUA e UE acordaram...Os Chineses ja estavam fazendo a festa...

O Brasil não esta pronto para competir com a china no mesmo nivel....mas isso não quer dizer que não podemos ter o nosso pedaço de bolo lá.

Eu acredito que em muito breve a o Brasil terá que temer a China como potencia global....ja que no futuro quando eles tiverem bases bem sólidas na Àfrica, ele tenderam a ter um forte presença no atlantico.

Os EUA , minou as potencias coloniais europeias em África , e pensaram que iriam tomar de assalto , com protagonismo e influencia , na região ,com as suas multinacionais, foi um descalabro, para os africanos. Agora são os chineses , que estão em força .
Só nas antigas colónias portuguesas , foram um dos responsáveis , pelas guerras civis ,depois dos portugueses saírem , mais de dois milhões de mortos , e um número indeterminado de vitimas desse processo , mais de um milhão de retornados portugueses , e dos muitos milhões de africanos ( Angolanos, Moçambicanos, e Guineenses).

Ainda há dias foi celebrado o 25 Abril , mas poucos ainda não tem a coragem de dizer das suas terríveis consequências , nas vidas de milhões seres humanos . O cinismo é total , é a data mais hedionda da história portuguesa , só a derrota de Alcacer quibir ,a poderá suplantar.