Terror Defense No Al Qaida Terror

China Rise

Not Happening

No China rise – statistics about economic growth are inaccurate and overblown.

HONG KONG (MarketWatch) — Chinese leaders have been quick to put on a brave face after the ignominy of missing their economic-growth targets for first time since 1998. But while Premier Li Keqiang was telling global leaders in Davos not to worry about the economy, back at home the head of the country’s statistics bureau was rejecting claims China was already the world’s biggest economy.

But if the IMF got China’s gross domestic product wrong due to understated prices, what else might be in error?

It is well known that the ruling Communist Party lays great store in its track record of achieving GDP growth rates that the rest of the world can only dream of. This economic success helps underpin the legitimacy of China’s one-party state, now in its 65th year.

These comments by Ma will fuel suspicions that a sizeable part of China’s growth miracle — particularly since 2008 and the nation’s massive stimulus — is simply counting inflation. Put another way, we are not measuring growth but rather the fact that things people were doing before now cost a lot more.

Purchasing power parity (PPP) appears to be an elegant concept that measures GDP adjusted for the power money has in terms of a country’s local prices. The IMF calculates the Chinese economy is now worth $17.6 trillion, slightly higher than the $17.4 trillion it estimates for the U.S. Because money goes further in China, the IMF revised upwards the GDP figure from $10.3 trillion.

But the idea that money still goes further in China looks highly questionable. In fact, not only are prices understated, as Ma suggests, but in many cases Chinese prices appear higher than those in the rest of the world. This conclusion comes not just from anecdotal experience, but from the sheer numbers of Chinese consumers who now choose to shop overseas.

China’s recent consumer price index numbers hardly suggest an inflation problem: The index’s growth has lately been hovering around 2%-3% after coming down from 5.4% in 2011.

Yet anyone who travels to China will notice substantial price increases in recent years. Given the rapid increase in property prices and years of double-digit wage growth and rapid credit expansion, it would be surprising if prices remained so subdued. For example, China’s 12th Five-Year Plan — which runs through the end of this year — mandated that the minimum wage should increase by an annual average exceeding 13%.

In Hong Kong, the days of traveling to the Chinese mainland to take advantage of lower prices are long gone. Instead, there is an ever-rising flood of mainland tourists coming from the other direction. Last year, there were 47.2 million visitors from China buying up not just tax-free luxury goods, but even daily essentials. Japan is also experiencing an influx of shoppers from China, with tourist arrivals rising 83% in 2014.

Chinese tourists are now the biggest spenders in the world, and were forecast to have spent $155 billion last year, according to the Chinese Tourism Academy. So perhaps we have another explanation for China’s low domestic-consumption figures, given that so much expenditure is taking place abroad.

One conclusion is that if China’s GDP numbers have been flattered by understating prices on the upside, they will be more exposed on the downside as the property and investment bubble unwinds.

Overall, China needs to lose its GDP obsession and target higher-quality growth. We may have seen a start, as Shanghai’s government has announced it will drop GDP-growth targets from its annual report.

Chinese military has serious weaknesses – corruption, limited resources, and poor-quality commanders.

WASHINGTON: “We have found that the PLA suffers from potentially serious weaknesses.”

That is the simple and powerful declaration of a new study of China’s military by the RAND Corp., done at the behest of the congressionally-mandated U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

What are those Chinese weaknesses? The report, again, is admirably clear.

“The first is institutional. The PLA faces shortcomings stemming from outdated command structures, quality of personnel, professionalism, and corruption. The second set of weaknesses centers on combat capabilities. These shortcomings include logistical weaknesses, insufficient strategic airlift capabilities, limited numbers of special-mission aircraft, and deficiencies in fleet air defense and antisubmarine warfare.”

Those weaknesses may mean that the PLA wouldn’t be able to execute key missions the Chinese leadership has set for it, such as “various Taiwan contingencies, maritime claim missions, sea line of communication protection, and some military operations other than war scenarios.” You can translate much of that into an inability of the PLA to lay claim to and to patrol the Senkaku Islands, the Spratlys and other contested lands and waters.

Among the Peoples Liberation Army’s most prominent weaknesses are those that most analysts believe are America’s greatest strengths: its command structure and the quality, education and training of its people, the RAND report says. The Chinese continue to struggle mightily, as did the United States, with its ability to wage joint warfare, with a clear line of command and relatively effective integration of weapons and troops.

The PLA, RAND assesses, “also faces potential weaknesses in its ability to protect Chinese interests in space and the electromagnetic spectrum,” which is ironic given the enormous attention paid to the Chinese anti-satellite test and its lasing of American spy satellites.

There’s more good news for those who measure and counter China’s growing military and diplomatic heft. And it comes in a key area: acquisition.

“The main problems the defense industry faces include widespread corruption, lack of competition, entrenched monopolies, delays and cost overruns, quality control problems, bureaucratic fragmentation, an outdated acquisition system, and restricted access to external sources of technology and expertise,” the report says.

China won’t become a global superpower – lacks resources, expertise, and motivation.

Axe 6/24 (David Axe, American military correspondent with a B.A. in History from Furman University, “China's military is a paper tiger,” Business Insider, 24 June 2015, http://www.businessinsider.com/chinas-military-is-a-paper-tiger-2015-6, *fc)

Both of these statements are true:

1) China possesses a rapidly improving military that, in certain local or regional engagements, could match — and even defeat — U.S. forces in battle.

2) In military terms, China is a paper dragon that, despite its apparent strength, is powerless to intervene in world events far from its shores.

Seeing the distinction between these two ideas is the key to understanding China’s strategic aims, its military means and the threat, if any, that the country poses to its neighbors, the United States and the existing world order.

A J-31 stealth fighter of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Air Force lands on a runway after a flying performance at the 10th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition in Zhuhai

A J-31 stealth fighter of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force lands on a runway at the 10th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition in Zhuhai, Guangdong province, November 11, 2014.REUTERS/Alex Lee

Beijing’s goals include “securing China’s status as a great power and, ultimately, reacquiring regional preeminence,” according to the 2015 edition of the U.S. Defense Department’s annual report on Chinese military power.

China is not a global military power. In fact, right now it doesn’t even want to be one.

But that doesn’t mean the world’s most populous country doesn’t pose a threat to the planet’s wealthiest and most powerful one. Yes, the United States and China are at odds, mostly as a result of China’s expanding definition of what comprises its territory in the western Pacific, and how that expansion threatens U.S. allies and the postwar economic order Washington was instrumental in creating.

China, however, still could not meet and match the U.S. military on a global battlefront. Beijing lacks the expertise, military doctrine and equipment to do so. The Chinese military has no recent combat experience and, as a consequence, its training regimens are unrealistic.

Pilots climb out of J-10 fighter jets from August 1st Aerobatics Team of the People's Liberation Army Air Force after their arrivals for the upcoming China International Aviation & Aerospace Exhibition, in Zhuhai

Pilots climb out of J-10 fighter jets from the August 1st Aerobatics Team of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force before the China International Aviation & Aerospace Exhibition, in Zhuhai, Guangdong province, November 5, 2014. REUTERS/Stringer

Beijing’s army, navy and air force may be flush with new equipment, but much of it is based on designs that Chinese government hackers and agents stole from the United States and other countries. Most of it has never been exposed to the rigors of actual combat, so it’s unclear how well it would actually work.

But that might not matter. China has no interest in deploying and fighting across the globe, as the United States does. Beijing is preparing to fight along its own borders and especially in the China seas, a far easier task for its inexperienced troops.

China doesn’t have the resources or allies to become a global superpower. Current military funding is only for defense.

Mizokami 14 (Kyle Mizokami, Writer on defense and security issues in Asia, “Why the Chinese military is only a paper dragon,” The Week, 24 September 2014, http://theweek.com/articles/445300/why-chinese-military-only-paper-dragon, *fc)

China's military buildup, along with an aggressive foreign policy, has inspired a fair amount of alarm in the West. Some American policymakers consider Beijing to be Washington's only "near-peer competitor" — in other words, the only country with the military might to actually beat the U.S. military in certain circumstances.

But they're wrong. Even after decades of expensive rearmament, China is a paper dragon — a version of what Mao Zedong wrongly claimed the United States was … in 1956.

China's military budget has grown by double-digits year after year, but inflation has eaten away at the increases. China's army, navy, air force, and missile command are wracked by corruption — and their weapons are, by and large, still greatly inferior to Western equivalents.

Yes, the People's Liberation Army is slowly becoming more technologically advanced. But that doesn't mean Beijing can mobilize its armed forces for global missions. Unlike the world's main expeditionary powers — the United States and the U.K., to name two — China is surrounded by potential enemies.

Russia, Japan, and India are all neighbors … and historic adversaries. China's aggressive foreign policy targeting smaller states isn't encouraging submission but resistance, as countries such as The Philippines and Vietnam ally with the United States, Japan, and India.

China's other neighbors are weak or failed states, such as Pakistan and North Korea. Their instability — or their outright collapse — could have serious security repercussions for China, and help explain why Beijing lavishes funds on its armed forces.

No Impact

China won’t end U.S. dominance – internal issues and lack of immigration prevent its rise.

Walsh 3/12 (Bryan Walsh, Foreign Editor at Time Magazine with a B.A. in English from Princeton, “The American Century Isn’t Over,” TIME, 12 March 2015, http://time.com/3741856/the-american-century-isnt-over/, *fc)

China won't end U.S. dominance—but political gridlock and isolationism could

As Harvard political scientist Joseph Nye takes a seat, he glances at the portrait that looms over the conference room. “There he is,” says Nye.

“He” is Henry Luce, the founder of TIME and LIFE magazines. (Hence the portrait–we’re at TIME’s offices.) In a 1941 editorial in LIFE, Luce urged the U.S. to enter World War II to defend democratic values and “create the first great American century.”

That term became shorthand for the period of U.S. geopolitical dominance that began around the end of the war. But from the moment the American century was born, Americans have fretted over threats to the country’s pre-eminence. In the 1950s the Soviet Union seemed poised to bury the U.S.; in the 1980s the Japanese were going to outwork lazy Americans.

Today a rising China is the great rival. A 2013 Pew poll of 39 countries found that most people believed China already was or would eventually become the world’s leading superpower–and that included nearly half of Americans.

To which Nye says: Not so fast. A pioneer in the theory of soft power and the dean of American political scientists, Nye knows geopolitics. In his new book, Is the American Century Over?, Nye makes a strong case that American geopolitical superiority, far from being eclipsed, is still firmly in place and set to endure. And the biggest threat isn’t China or India or Russia–it’s America itself.

It’s easy to forget what a global behemoth the U.S. remains today. Take military power: the U.S. not only spends four times more on defense than the No. 2 country, China, but it also spends more than the next eight countries combined. The U.S. Navy controls the seas, and the country’s military has troops on every inhabited continent. America’s armed forces have become more dominant since the dawn of Luce’s American century–not less. For nearly 50 years after World War II, U.S. power was checked by the Soviet Union. No longer.

The relative decline of American economic clout might seem obvious. By one measurement, China has already passed the U.S. to become the world’s largest economy. But that’s in part a trick of perspective. In 1945, thanks largely to the devastation of World War II, the U.S. produced nearly half the world’s GDP. By 1970 that share had fallen to about one-quarter, but as Nye points out, that was less a matter of American decline than a global return to normality. Nearly half of the top 500 international companies are owned by U.S. citizens, and 19 of the top 25 global brands are American.

But the most important reason the U.S. will continue to dominate is the lack of a viable rival. Nye dismisses each in turn: the European Union is too fractured, Japan is too old, Russia is too corrupt, India is too poor, Brazil is too unproductive.

As for China, Nye expects that as the country keeps growing, it will take up more space on the international stage. But Beijing faces major internal challenges that could derail its rise: a polluted environment, an aging population and inefficient state-owned industries. More important, China conspicuously lacks the ingredient that has made the U.S. unique–an openness toward immigrants. “As Lee Kuan Yew once told me,” Nye says, referring to the founding father of modern Singapore, “‘China can draw on a talent pool of 1.3 billion people, but the U.S. can draw on the world’s 7 billion.'”

It’s the potential loss of that openness that worries Nye. Should the U.S. decide to shut its borders or turn its back on international affairs–two recurring impulses in U.S. history–all bets are off. If political gridlock becomes permanent or income inequality keeps rising, that too could threaten American supremacy. “The question is whether we’ll keep living up to our potential,” says Nye.

No regional conflict – China doesn’t have the interests and other countries’ military capabilities check escalation.

Babones 3/12 (Salvatore Babones, Associate professor of sociology and social policy at the University of Sydney and associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, “Is China a Threat? The Devil’s in the Details,” Foreign Policy In Focus, 12 March 2015, http://fpif.org/is-china-a-threat-the-devils-in-the-details/, *fc)

Trouble in the Neighborhood?

What about regional conflict? China’s growing military certainly sounds like a regional menace. But a menace to whom? Here again the details get in the way of the China threat story.

To the east, Japan’s government is responding to Chinese expansion by boosting its own defense spending to record levels, proposing to change its pacifist constitution to allow greater military flexibility, and making a renewed push to resolve the long-standing Kuril Islands dispute with Russia. If Prime Minister Shinzo Abe finally succeeds in making peace with Russia, that would leave China and its ally North Korea as the sole focus for Japan’s entire military capacity. Japan is a rich, technologically advanced country of 127 million people. It can look after itself.

For very different reasons, China poses little threat to South Korea. China increasingly views North Korea more as a burden than as an advance column for an attack on the South. And China has recently been courting South Korean technology investment in order to reduce its dependence on Japan.

Political relations across the Taiwan Strait are inevitably dominated by questions over the status of Taiwan. Every election in Taiwan sparks talk about and fears of Chinese invasion. But no country in the world has staged a large-scale amphibious assault since the U.S. landings at Incheon, South Korea in 1950. For more than half a century, even American adventures abroad have been small-scale (Grenada) or launched from land bases (Iraq).

The Chinese military will never have the capacity to invade Taiwan against armed resistance — not now, not later, not ever. It just can’t be done in the contemporary military context in which a single cruise missile can sink a transport ship carrying thousands of troops. It makes no sense to worry about something that is not technically possible.

The Philippines? Why would China want to invade the Philippines? Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar? Ditto, ditto, ditto. China is involved in a plethora of minor border disputes with its neighbors, but none of these involve core territorial interests or serious legal claims that China (or most of its neighbors, for that matter) have historically been interested in pushing. They’re all frozen conflicts that are unlikely ever to thaw.

Some pundits worry about the increasing Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean. India may not rival China as a great power, but even India should be able to contain China’s ability to project power as far away as the Indian Ocean — and India has every reason to do so.

In short, it’s difficult to imagine concrete scenarios for major regional conflict sparked by China.

Resource Conflicts

It’s true that there are many flashpoints for minor conflict: the Senkaku Islands, various shoals and reefs in the South China Sea, China’s expanded air defence identification zone, and most notoriously China’s building of a whole new island in the middle of the ocean, presumably intended to form the basis for reinforcing its maritime claims.

The outcome of these disputes may determine who gets to drill for deep offshore oil decades in the future. But they don’t involve major national interests for any of the countries concerned, least of all the United States.

So while it’s possible that China will become involved in a minor air or sea incident with one or more of its maritime neighbors, it’s entirely unlikely that China will become involved in a major regional conflict with any of them. No one is going to go to war because two warplanes collide in mid-air. Historically countries have not even gone to war over the intentional shooting down of civilian airliners, never mind military accidents.

A Phantom Menace

So why play up the challenge from China?

Let China modernize its military. China’s neighbors will bulk up in response to any perceived threat, many of them by purchasing expensive U.S. weapons. China’s leadership (much closer to the action than America’s leadership) presumably understands this. If China’s military budget is growing, it is likely because China is growing, not because China has any specific invasion plans.

There are as yet no signs that China’s military expansion threatens the United States. Quite the contrary: It might support greater Chinese involvement in international peace-keeping, and it could spark more appropriate burden-sharing among America’s Asian allies.

When the China challenge is broken down into its constituent parts, the China threat tends to evaporate. Far from identifying any real rationale for action, Carafano’s article seems designed to drum up interest in the Heritage Foundation’s 2015 defense review, which makes a 313-page case for higher military spending.

Carafano himself freely admits that “there is no evidence that Beijing has any interest in engaging in armed conflict with Washington.” If that’s the case, why arm to forestall that threat? Peaceful coexistence is a much cheaper and much less provocative strategy.

No impact to Chinese conflict – lack of allies means it’s at a huge strategic disadvantage.

Mizokami 14 (Kyle Mizokami, Writer on defense and security issues in Asia, “Why the Chinese military is only a paper dragon,” The Week, 24 September 2014, http://theweek.com/articles/445300/why-chinese-military-only-paper-dragon, *fc)

At the same time, China is remarkably lacking in real, dependable allies. In the Pacific alone, the United States can count Japan, Taiwan, Australia, South Korea, New Zealand, and The Philippines as close allies — and maintains cordial relations with others including Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia.

China's list of allies in the Pacific, on the other hand, is a short one. Russia. Globally, China's allies include Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, and the countries of the

Shanghai Cooperation Organization

— Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. All are despotic or near-despotic states, many are unstable and many have long records of human rights abuses.

Beijing embraces its worst neighbors in part to keep them in check. This worked with Pakistan, but failed with North Korea. In Myanmar, China cozied up with the oppressive military regime only for it to suddenly open up and seek ties with the West and Japan. China's net gain was years of condemnation for supporting the junta — which is to say, a net loss.

Where China has really failed, however, is in simply getting along with nearby countries. Before the recent confrontation with The Philippines over the

Ayungin Shoal, relations between Manila and Beijing had never been better. The same went for much of Southeast Asia before China declared sovereignty over 90 percent of the South China Sea.

Even relations with Japan, China's historical enemy, were cordial if staid.

Sometime around 2010, Beijing decided to stop playing nice. China began pushing long-dormant territorial claims — and tried its hardest to split the alliance between Japan and the U.S. China's relations with pretty much every country in East and Southeast Asia have chilled.

It's hard to say what China really hoped to gain. Some argue that China is attempting to "Finlandize" smaller Asian states — that is, intimidate them into expressing neutrality in order to deny them to the Americans. Others argue that China wanted those disputed territories but also fundamentally has a problem with treating other countries as equals.

Whatever the case, China's recent actions have left it largely friendless. Today its most important relationships with other countries are strictly economic in nature.

This has obvious implications for China's military posture. While the U.S. Navy can sail across the Pacific and call on practically dozens of ports, China's warships can sail just outside its territorial waters and, other than the Russian port of Vladivostok, have nowhere to go.

This places China at an enormous strategic disadvantage. Beijing has no allies to provide bases, share burdens, pool intelligence, or lend moral support.

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