Clear and Future Danger?

tankee1981 SG

17 January 2007

China waits patiently for rearmament in 2050

Jon Grevatt Jane's Asia-Pacific Industry Reporter

China will wait until the middle of this century before embarking on a period of "energetic rearmament", a leading East Asian defence expert has claimed.

Ron Huisken, a senior fellow at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University, added that China's short-to-medium term priority would be to focus on economic growth.

"While this is in progress military rearmament will not be a top priority," Huisken added. "They will not let rearmament slip but economic power is their top priority."

Huisken's comments followed the recent publication of China's National Defence White Paper.

He said that the Chinese government is becoming very aware of its military image: "In order to rebuild the Chinese military they have had to make a hugely uncharacteristic decision to play ball with the rest of the world. It is like a race to achieve military status as soon as possible using the old Chinese way, against the need to change internally to be internationally recognised."

Huisken believes that this change in image is part of Beijing's plan to energise rearmament by the middle of this century.

"They are focusing on what they call 'Peace and Development' and this means that they are still waiting before carrying out a programme of energetic rearmament

http://www.janes.com/defence/land_forces/news/jdi/jdi070117_1_n.shtml

Lance_han SG

not to pour cold water on them, but well, the Americans were the one who said back during the days of WW2 that the Japanese wouldn’t strike American targets till later in 1942, but look what happened .

Daniel-Lim SG

Why is China always considered a potential military threat to Singapore?

Just becuase China is America's potential enemy, I don't see why we also need to feel likewise.

storm_freaky13 SG

I agree with Daniel Lim.

I dont see how China is a threat to us.

ditzy SG

Economically, they're a rising threat already. Laughing

Beyond Religion SG

I agree with Daniel and Storm. China will never be a threat to us. The US needs a boogeyman for the hawks... and China is the only power in the world that can threaten the US' "Big Brother" position, so US needs to demonize China.

That lousy excuse of a Taiwanese president is not making things any easier too.... and he is playing directly into the hands of the US to marginalize and contain China.

sgdiehard SG

Confused Laughing china a threat to singapore economically, how?

Daniel-Lim SG

It is a surprising that some of us actually thinks that we are on par with China and that they are a competitive economy to us or a competitive military power to us.

Let's get one thing clear: We ARE a tiny red dot when compared to BIG RED CHINA.

If you had paid careful attention to the summit meeting where all the ASEAN leaders - LHL included - queued up like schoolchildren to shake the Chinese Premier's hand, you get an idea of the pecking order.

You should also check out the beaming grins that all of them had when greeting the Chinese leader to know that we are not their equal.

Nor do we consider them a threat.

We consider them a fat piece of meat, and we hope to get a cut somehow.

All the countries around us are economic midgets and we cannot rely on them to grow Singapore. But China can.