Today I am going to discuss what I have found out about the Chinese military. We keep complaining that they are putting more and more money into their military and yet we are still outspending them by huge amounts. Unfortunately, we are not very good at keeping military secrets and it is more cost effective for countries like this, to simply steal our secrets, than try and develop the technology on their own. Someone once said that there was nothing more temporary than a military secret and this is proven every day. China's military is about double the size of the US military. The latest figures I could find for their military budget was 80 billion dollars for China and 623 Billion dollars for the US military. We have 12 aircraft carriers, China has none. We have 22 Cruisers, China has none. The US has 52 Destroyers, China has 28. China has 43 Frigates, we have 30. The US has 72 nuclear submarines, China has 10, although they also have 46 conventional subs, while we have 5. We are just about even on tanks. That leaves planes and missiles. The People's Republic of China has about 2,300 combat aircraft, the US has several air forces. We have the Air Force, Navy Air Force, Marine Air Force and even the Army Air Force, although they are not called that. Combining the US Air Force, US Navy and US Marines we get a total of about 2071 military planes in active service and about 1,000 in reserve. Most of these are far newer than the Chinese planes. I am not counting helicopters, we have 4 models that had over 7,000 built. In 2004 it was estimated that China had about 20 ICBM,. Intercontinental ballistic missiles, they probably have a lot more today. I have seen an estimate that states that China might have between 32 - 72 submarine launched ICBMs and that the US has somewhere around 350. We have to remember that China is building up their forces, but it doesn't seem to be happening as fast as we were led to believe.

Google Earth just happened to catch a glimpse of a new Chinese ballistic missile submarine moored to a dock. "The new class, known as the Jin-class or Type 094, is expected to replace the unsuccessful Xia-class (Type 092) of a single boat built in the early 1980s. The new submarine was photographed by the commercial Quickbird satellite in late 2006 and the image is freely available on the Google Earth Web site." It has been estimated that this new class of submarine is capable of carrying 12 ICBMs. It is believed that 5 of these submarines will be built. Where is this technology coming from? Let me put it this way, A Korean businessman was caught trying to send the engine from a F-16 fighter to Communist China, he was going to make a profit of $1,00,000 for this one deal. The thing that he really wanted, because the Chinese were really hot for it at the time, was an AGM-129A. This was the US Air Force's air launched, nuclear capable, cruise missile. One has to realize that there are many different laws against doing just this, but the profits were blinding this businessman so much, that he didn't even take the laws into consideration and he believed that he might even be able to export entire planes and missiles. There is an entire network of people like this that are trying to pick up technology. It is far cheaper to get technology this way, by stealing it, than trying to develop it yourself. About the only thing that these spies shared was the shopping list, otherwise they were all independent of each other.

China has a secret nuclear aircraft carrier program and they expect the first carrier to be built around 2020. If this is correct and there is no reason to suspect that it is not, this will have quite an impact on Chinese sea power all over the world. The carrier is said to be a 93,000 ton atomic powered job that is being studied under the project name 085. The US is proposing a new class of aircraft carrier called the Gerald Ford Class. It will displace 100,000 tons. China also has another carrier project. This carrier would be non nuclear and displace 48,000 tons. This is known as the 089 project. The US has similar plans. The US is very worried about the new Chinese carriers because we have a base in Guam, where the Chinese are expected to project their new carrier strength. It is said that the Chinese purchased the design for their new carrier from Russia. It was the same design used on an unfinished Russian carrier. In a way I am glad to see this, because I feel that carriers can no longer be protected in this day and age where we have torpedoes that will ultimately reach speeds of 600 mph under water and where a vessel can launch a cloud of missiles at once at a carrier. Maybe it is even time that we get out of the carrier business. Carriers do serve a very important purpose and that is political. They project a nation's power to the places that they go, much as the battleships of old did.

A report came out called the Cox Report. This was a Congressional report on the security of US nuclear weapon's facilities and was directed at Chinese espionage during the Clinton Administration and it is as true today as it was then. Much of the report was redacted, that is, parts cut out for national security concerns, so the part that was left didn't have as much punch as the original that Congress saw. "As a result of these deletions, a number of significant events, facts, and analyses have been omitted from this declassified Report. " The previous statement is from the Congress itself. Jonathan D. Pollick, writing for the Arms Control Association wrote, " To the uninitiated reader, the Cox Report presents an ominous picture of pervasive, sustained Chinese espionage and illicit technology acquisition breathtaking in its scope, scale and effectiveness. The document alleges extreme laxity in U.S. security procedures and a seriously flawed export control process, both of which were purportedly exploited by China's intelligence organizations and weapons manufacturers. In the committee's view, these actions were knowingly abetted by American scientists prepared to disclose U.S. nuclear weapons secrets and by American aerospace firms intent on securing commercial advantage with China, irrespective of the national security consequences." I think that this says it all, as far as spying by China goes and for that matter for many other countries. We are looked at like a nation of idiots that can't even protect our own national secrets.

As you can see, there is not much that I have learned about Chinese secret projects, but there is tons of info out there that I have come across on spying. The Chinese have been accused of placing students in American universities so that they could learn about secret materials and US technology. The scale of this type of espionage is said to be huge. It is possible that no other country has ever conducted spying against the US on a scale that China has and is. A report stated that the bulk of technical data is being gathered by, "various nonprofessionals, including PRC students, scientists, researchers and other visitors to the West." You wouldn't think that anything useful could come from a university, I am talking about national secrets here, but apparently there is much discussion about exotic materials and technology that is there for the taking and that is what the Chinese are doing.

When the Chinese conducted there recent missile test last year (2007) a scare came over the western nations of the world. All at once they had demonstrated that they were not only capable of shooting down a satellite, but they didn't care what anyone would think about them doing this. Well there was a lot of talk about that, stating that we were thinking of doing the same thing before the Chinese did and that they really just beat us to it. I have no way to know if this is true or not, but what could have been gained by this? I think that this would have been a warning to some of our enemies that nothing was safe, but that message was sent to us first. I think the Chinese were saying that they know that we are building arms in space, or at least vehicles that are capable of going into orbit and their statement was that they could destroy them from earth. It was a sort of crude diplomatic statement. Senior Republican Senator Jon Kyl has called the test a "wake-up call". China doesn't seem to be pouring a lot of money all at once into their defensive and offensive systems, they are conducting a gradual buildup and saving tons of money on research by just stealing our secrets. The problem for us is that we are in the lead right now, so it wouldn't do us any good to try and buy secrets about their technology, until they are at least equal with us, so they have a distinct advantage. Another advantage for them is the fact that China is not a free country, so it is much harder for us to spy on them than it is for them to spy on us.

So is China really spending what it says on it's military? Some claim that they are really spending 2 to 3 times more than they admit to, which is still far less than we do. After all is said and done however, it doesn't seem that China is trying to build a force to start a war. Their air force is out moded, their navy is too weak and their missile force too small. Could all this change in the future? Sure, but it just might turn out that Russia will have the biggest force after the United States and the cold war will start all over. Now is the time for us to try and mend all these fences. A great start would be to not put anti-missile missiles in Poland. I mean, after all, is this the only place that they can go, right up against the Russian border? It is almost like rubbing dirt in someone's face. These things will work just as well, or won't work at all, if put in a different area. As far as China goes, Taiwan is the thorn in both our sides. If only some agreement could be worked out there, similar to the one in Hong Kong, that would make the area so much more peaceful.