China’s military thinking is outmoded and should learn from others, especially the US when it comes to modernizing its vast armed forces, a leading armed forces newspaper said yesterday.
A commentary in the People’s Liberation Army Daily said modernizing China’s military was central to reforms which have seen heavy investment in high-tech weapons like advanced fighter jets.
China has slimmed down its military, the world’s largest by number, over the past few years, trying to build a more effective force to face US-supplied Taiwan and Japan, as well as the US itself, but this needs creativity and more open thinking, the newspaper said, which could be a problem.
TRADITIONAL CULTURE
“Because conservative thinking has a rather large influence in traditional Chinese culture, the task of renewing its culture and rethinking the military will be extremely difficult,” it said.
China had to “audaciously learn from the experience of the information cultures of foreign militaries,” it said.
“History and reality have shown again and again that a country which does not have a world view is a backward one. A military which lacks global vision is one without hope,” it said.
The US was a good example to follow in two regards, the article added.
The US military buys technology already available on the open market when it can, such as global positioning systems used in the Gulf War, a cheaper and more practical method than trying to develop such equipment itself, the commentary said.
In addition, the US pays a lot of attention to training, “enlisting large numbers of able-bodied men and boldly using them,” it said.
LESSONS LEARNED
The Chinese military looked on with horror during the first Gulf War in 1990 and 1991, when US guided missiles and precision bombs easily took out Iraqi equipment such as tanks, much of it similar to what China was using at the time.
Since then the People’s Liberation Army has come on in leaps and bounds, though analysts say poor training and coordination among different branches of the military remain serious challenges.
During last year’s national day parade, China showed off its DongFeng 21C missile, which could force US aircraft carriers to keep a greater distance if it is successfully developed into an anti-ship ballistic missile.
That would make it harder for the US to come to Taiwan’s aid in the event of a conflict.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS