Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon
aims to alert you to the threats and opportunities that China and India present. China and India require serious attention; case of ‘hidden dragon and crouching tiger’.
Without this attention, governments, businesses and, indeed, individuals may find themselves at a great disadvantage sooner rather than later.
The POSTs (front webpages) are mainly 'cuttings' from reliable sources, updated continuously.
The PAGEs (see Tabs, above) attempt to make the information more meaningful by putting some structure to the information we have researched and assembled since 2006.
American destroyer’s mission comes a week before Taiwanese president officially starts second term in office
Increased military activity in the region could have unintended consequences but unlikely to lead to direct conflict, observer says
The guided-missile destroyer USS McCampbell made a transit through the Taiwan Strait on Thursday. Photo: US Navy
The United States sent a warship through the Taiwan Strait on Thursday as the Chinese military embarked on more than two months of live-fire naval drills off the mainland’s northern coast.
According to Taiwan’s defence ministry, the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer transited the narrow body of water separating Taiwan from mainland China from north to south “in a routine mission”.
“It is continuing its southward voyage and the military is monitoring its movement through the intelligence it has gathered,” the ministry said.
In a statement on its Facebook page, the US Pacific Fleet said the McCampbell transited the Taiwan Strait as part of ongoing operations in the Indo-Pacific.
Analysts said the passage was a response to the People’s Liberation Army’s increasing military activity near Taiwan and in the wider region.
“This will become a new routine as a kind of US security commitment to maintain stability in the Indo-Pacific region,” said Soong Hseik-wen, professor of strategic studies and international relations at National Chung Cheng University in Taiwan.
Beijing urges France to cancel contract to sell arms to Taiwan
13 May 2020
The PLA has staged a series of war games, including fly-bys and warship transits through the strait, in recent months in response to what Beijing sees as growing pro-independence moves by the Tsai government and her party. China has also warned the US against supplying weapons to the island, which Beijing considers to be a wayward province that must return to the mainland fold, by force if necessary.
Mainland China has suspended official exchanges with Taiwan since Tsai was first elected president in 2016 and refused to accept the one-China policy, which Beijing says must be the foundation for any talks.
The PLA has embarked on 11 weeks of naval exercises off the coast of Tangshan in northern China, barring all other vessels from a 25km (15 mile) radius of the drill area, according to the China Maritime Safety Administration.
Taiwanese support closer ties with US over China, few identify as solely Chinese, Pew Research survey finds
13 May 2020
Both Beijing and Washington have ramped up military activities near Taiwan in recent months during the coronavirus pandemic, moves that some observers say run the risk of miscommunication.
Alexander Huang Chieh-cheng, professor of strategic studies and international relations at Tamkang University in Taipei, said no one could exclude the possibility of unintended incidents when both the US and the mainland were stepping up their presence in the region.
“Rational analysts would however argue that the two nuclear powers are not likely to engage in or escalate to direct military conflict,” he said.
Huang said he believed cross-strait relations would worsen during Tsai’s second term in office, which begins on May 20.
“The already damaged relationship between Taiwan and mainland China has worsened since the pandemic mainly due to travel bans and Taiwan’s increased international visibility,” he said.
On Tuesday, Japan’s Kyodo News reported that the PLA was planning a large-scale beach landing exercise near Hainan province in August, simulating a takeover of the Pratas Islands, which are controlled by Taiwan and also known as the Dongsha Islands.
In Taipei, Major General Lin Wen-huang said Taiwan was monitoring the PLA movements and “has contingency plans in place for the South China Sea to strengthen combat readiness and defence preparedness on both the Spratly and Pratas islands”.
Taiwan’s coastguard also announced on Wednesday that its Pratas Islands Garrison was scheduled to conduct an annual live-fire exercise in June to ensure the “effectiveness of various mortar and machine-gun positions”.
Taiwan shows off its military power after presidential election
Shanghai-based military commentator Ni Lexiong said that both the US Navy and PLA were increasing activities during the pandemic because neither side could afford to show weaknesses that the other might take advantage of.
The destroyer’s passage and the PLA’s drills were all part of such efforts, Li said.
But he agreed that both countries were unwilling, unable, and unlikely to have a real conflict.
“They are both bluffing. It’s a fake crisis,” he said. “A pandemic always ends or prevents a war if you look at history.
“I also don’t believe the PLA would want to take over the Dongsha or Taiping islands [in the South China Sea], because these islets alone are not worth a military campaign and all the consequences of that. The only target valuable enough for the PLA is Taiwan.”
KOLKATA (Reuters) – Indian and Chinese troops on border patrol duties had a brief skirmish in Sikkim, a northeastern Indian state bordering China, the Indian Defence Ministry said on Sunday, blaming both sides for the incident.
“Aggressive behaviour by the two sides resulted in minor injuries to troops. The two sides disengaged after dialogue and interaction at the local level,” the ministry said in a statement.
The Indian daily Hindustan Times, citing a military source, said four Indian soldiers and seven Chinese troops were injured when some of the soldiers exchanged blows during the confrontation, which it said took place on Saturday and involved some 150 soldiers.
The Defence Ministry said the incident took place in the Nakula area but did not give details of how it started, or what caused the injuries.
China’s Ministry of Defense could not be immediately reached for comment on Sunday.
India and China have often accused each other of intrusions into each other’s territories, but clashes are rare.
There is still deep mistrust between the two countries over their festering border dispute, which triggered a brief war in 1962.
Hundreds of troops from both sides were deployed in 2017 on the Doklam plateau, near the borders of India, Bhutan, and China after India objected to Chinese construction of a road in the Himalayan area, in the most serious standoff in years.
People’s Liberation Army has officially recorded no infections but disease fears have delayed recruitment, training and operations
Analysts say Sars experience guided military’s prompt response, but combat effectiveness has been affected
Chinese military medical personnel arriving in Wuhan in February to assist with the coronavirus outbreak response to the February. Photo: Reuters
China’s military may have been spared any coronavirus infections, but the global health crisis has slowed the progress of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s plan to transform the People’s Liberation Army into a modern fighting force capable of long-range power-projecting operations, experts say.
According to China’s defence ministry, the world’s largest armed force – with about 2.3 million personnel – has had zero confirmed cases of Covid-19. In contrast, the US and Russian militaries, ranked second- and third-largest in the world, have reported more than 4,000 and 1,000 respectively.
But the PLA has been affected in other ways by the disease, which was first reported in Wuhan in December before going on to infect 3.9 million people around the world to date.
Safety concerns delayed its annual spring recruitment programme – it has been rescheduled for August – while the PLA Navy was forced to change its training arrangements, switching to classroom study of military theory and tactics, according to Xinhua.
“The PLA is still a conscription army and, given its large turnover of soldiers every year and the late recruitment and training plan this year, the coronavirus pandemic has already affected combat effectiveness,” said Adam Ni, director of the China Policy Centre, an independent, non-profit research organisation based in Canberra, Australia.
China’s military budget will still rise despite coronavirus, experts predict
3 May 2020
The navy’s operations, in particular, would have been affected, according to Charlie Lyons Jones, a researcher from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s defence and strategy programme.
“The Chinese navy, short of highly effective disease control measures, is unlikely to avoid similar outbreaks of the novel coronavirus on board its warships,” he said.
“Therefore, even if the PLA Navy currently has zero personnel infected by the novel coronavirus, its position as a navy that can operate effectively in a period of higher-than-normal tension remains precarious at best,” Jones said. He also questioned Beijing’s claims that the military was virus-free.
“The PLA played an important role in China’s response to the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan … The idea that none of these personnel working on the front lines in Wuhan became infected by the novel coronavirus would be inconsistent with the experiences of countries from around the world,” he said.
More than 4,000 military medical workers were sent to Wuhan as part of China’s effort to contain the outbreak at ground zero – which included the rapid-built emergency field facility, the Huoshenshan hospital – and their efforts were highlighted in a documentary screened recently by state broadcaster CCTV.
China opens coronavirus hospital built in 10 days
At the time, rumours were rampant that the Chinese military had been affected by the coronavirus, fuelled by a report on February 17 by the official PLA Daily that some soldiers had been placed in quarantine and Yu Qiusong, captain of the Changzhou type 054A frigate, was isolating in a guest house. The news report did not mention why the personnel were in quarantine.
But analysts said that whether the official numbers were accurate, the PLA’s closed management, fast response and past experience with severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) gave China’s military an advantage in keeping the coronavirus at bay.
Zhou Chenming, a Beijing-based military observer, said a key reason for the less serious hit to the PLA compared to other forces was its speed in recognising the severity of the situation.
“What’s more, the PLA has its own logistic support system that can help minimise its contact with the outside world, thus reducing the possibility of contracting the virus,” he said.
China’s long-range stealth bomber could make its debut this year
4 May 2020
According to Xinhua, the PLA’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention drew up an emergency response plan and mobilisation arrangements on January 20, the same day Xi issued an instruction to the public that the virus must be “resolutely contained”.
Timothy Heath, a senior international defence research analyst with the Rand Corporation, a US think tank, said China’s military had benefited from its less international role, compared to US forces.
“The US is a globally distributed force while the Chinese military largely operates on the mainland. The US thus faces challenges in containing the disease that the Chinese military does not have to face … and the US military has a large range of missions and tasks it carries out to counter threats to its allies and partners, as well as to US security. This complicates efforts by the US military to carry out disease control measures,” he said.
TAIPEI (Reuters) – China accused the United States on Thursday of playing a dangerous game with its support for Taiwan, after a U.S. warship passed through the sensitive Taiwan Strait following heightened military tension between China and Taiwan.
China has been angered by the Trump administration’s stepped-up support for the island it considers its own, such as more arms sales, U.S. patrols near Taiwan and last month’s visit to Washington by Taiwan Vice President-elect William Lai.
Anthony Junco, a spokesman for the U.S. Seventh Fleet, said the guided-missile destroyer USS McCampbell conducted “a routine Taiwan Strait transit” on March 25, in line with international law.
“The ship’s transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the U.S. commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” he added. “The U.S. Navy will continue to fly, sail and operate anywhere international law allows.”
Taiwan’s defence ministry said the ship sailed north through the waterway and was monitored by Taiwan’s armed forces, on what it called an “ordinary mission”, adding there was no cause for alarm.
In Beijing, Chinese defence ministry spokesman Ren Guoqiang denounced “continued negative actions” by the United States on Taiwan, including sailings through and flights over the Taiwan Strait.
“U.S. moves have seriously interfered in China’s internal affairs, severely harmed peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and poisoned Sino-U.S. military ties,” Ren told a monthly news conference.
The actions were “extremely dangerous”, he added.
Taiwan is China’s most sensitive territorial and diplomatic issue and Beijing has never ruled out the use of force to bring the island under its control. The narrow Taiwan Strait that separates the island from China is a frequent source of tension.
In recent weeks China’s air force has conducted several exercises close to Taiwan, prompting its mostly U.S.-equipped military to scramble fighters to intercept and warn away the Chinese aircraft.
Taiwan has called the drills provocative, and urged China to pay more attention to fighting a coronavirus pandemic, rather than menace it.
The United States, like most countries, has no official relations with Taiwan, but is the island’s most important international supporter and main source of arms.
In January another U.S. warship sailed through the Taiwan Strait less than a week after President Tsai Ing-wen won re-election by a landslide on a platform of standing up to China.
on Thursday, just a week after President Tsai Ing-wen angered Beijing by saying the island was an independent country.
According to Taiwan’s defence ministry, the formation, which included a KJ-500 early warning and control aircraft and an H-6 bomber, passed through the Bashi Channel near Taiwan’s Orchid Island en route to the western Pacific Ocean.
It did not say how many aircraft were involved but said they had taken off from different airbases in southern China.
“They returned to their airbases from their morning flight path after a long-haul exercise,” the ministry said in a statement.
The ministry urged the public not to be alarmed by the aircraft’s presence, saying it constantly monitored the activities of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), both in the air and at sea.
Taiwan’s armed forces would also remain on high alert over the Lunar New Year
holiday, which starts on Friday, it said.
“There is no holiday for national security,” it said.
The PLA exercise came just a week after Tsai said on January 15 that Beijing needed to face the reality of Taiwan’s independence.
“We don’t have a need to declare ourselves an independent state,” she said in an interview with the BBC. “We are an independent country already and we call ourselves the Republic of China, Taiwan.”
Tsai urges mainland China to review strained ties
21 Jan 2020
Tsai’s comments came just days after she secured a second term as president with a record 8.2 million votes.
In her victory speech, she promised to continue to stand up to Beijing’s intimidation, while also strengthening Taiwan’s defences, partly by developing more home-grown military equipment, including submarines.
US-made F-16V fighters took part in a show of Taiwan’s military might last week. Photo: AFP
In response to Tsai’s “independent country” comments, Ma Xiaoguang, a spokesman for the mainland’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said: “We firmly attack and counter various forms of Taiwan independence and separatist activities to maintain overall peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.”
Beijing regards Taiwan as part of its territory awaiting reunification, by force if necessary. Official ties between the two sides have been suspended since Tsai took office in 2016 and refused to accept the one-China principle – the political understanding that there is only one China with ambiguity over whether it is governed by Taipei or Beijing.
Over the past four years Beijing has ramped up the pressure on the island, by poaching its diplomatic allies and staging military drills.
Taiwanese Minister of National Defence Yen Te-fa said earlier that the mainland staged about 2,000 bomber patrols a year near the Taiwan Strait.
For their part, Taiwan’s army and air force last week gave two demonstrations of their readiness to defend the island against attack.
NEW YORK (Reuters) – China and the Pacific island state of Kiribati restored diplomatic ties on Friday after the former diplomatic ally of Taiwan abandoned Taipei.
A poor but strategic country which is home to a mothballed Chinese space tracking station, Kiribati announced last week that it was cutting relations with self-ruled Taiwan in favour of China, which claims Taiwan as a wayward province with no right to state-to-state ties.
China and Kiribati had ties until 2003, when Tarawa established relations with Taipei, causing China to break off diplomatic relations.
Up until that time, China had operated a space tracking station in Kiribati, which played a role in tracking China’s first manned space flight.
The Chinese government’s top diplomat State Councillor Wang Yi and Kiribati’s President Taneti Maamau signed a communique on restoring diplomatic relations at the Chinese mission to the United Nations in New York.
“We highly prize this important and the correct decision,” Wang told a news conference. “Let’s hope for our friendship to last forever. We will work together to grow together towards a bright and prosperous future.”
Speaking alongside Wang, Maamau said there was much to learn from China.
“I do believe that there is much to learn and gain from the People’s Republic of China and the re-establishment of our diplomatic relations is just the beginning,” he said.
There was no mention of the space tracking station at the news conference, nor in the joint communique between the two countries released by China’s Foreign Ministry.
China’s space programme is overseen by the military.
China’s Defence Ministry this week declined comment on the Kiribati facility.
Last week was difficult for Taiwan, as the Solomon Islands also ditched it for Beijing. The Solomon Islands foreign minister signed a deal on diplomatic ties in China last Saturday.
Both the Solomon Islands and Kiribati are small developing nations but lie in strategic waters that have been dominated by the United States and its allies since World War Two. China’s moves to expand its influence in the Pacific have angered Washington.
A former Taiwanese ambassador to Kiribati, Abraham Chu, told Taiwan’s Central News Agency last weekend that China had never fully removed the tracking station in Kiribati and that it “could come back at any time”.
Taiwan now has formal relations with just 15 countries, mostly small and poor nations in Latin America and the Pacific, including Nauru, Tuvalu and Palau. China has signalled it is coming for the rest of Taiwan’s allies.
Relations between the Asian giants had been strained after a 73-day military stand-off at their disputed border last year
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army in Beijing. Photo: EPA
China and India aim to hold joint army drills in China before the end of this year, China’s Defence Ministry said on Thursday, as the two countries continue a rapid rapprochement.
Relations between the Asian giants were strained last year over a 73-day military face-off in a remote, high-altitude stretch of their disputed Himalayan border.
Chinese ‘tourists’ face 7 years in Indian jail over shahtoosh shawls made from endangered antelope
But the neighbours have over recent months been working on mending ties and Chinese Defence Minister Wei Fenghe met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi in August.
Speaking at a regular monthly news briefing, Chinese Defence Ministry spokesman Wu Qian said that the joint exercise was planned for before the end of this year.
China and India are aiming to hold joint army drills this year as part of an ongoing rapprochement. Photo: EPA
The two countries would meet in the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu next month to discuss the arrangements, he added, without giving other details.
India and China fought a war in 1962 and the unresolved dispute over stretches of their 3,500km (2,200 miles) border has clouded relations ever since.
But the two big Asian economies share similar positions on a host of issues including concern about US tariffs and Chinese President Xi Jinping and Modi agreed in April to improve relations.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 
Indian, Chinese border troops in brief skirmish on northeast Indian border, India says
KOLKATA (Reuters) – Indian and Chinese troops on border patrol duties had a brief skirmish in Sikkim, a northeastern Indian state bordering China, the Indian Defence Ministry said on Sunday, blaming both sides for the incident.
“Aggressive behaviour by the two sides resulted in minor injuries to troops. The two sides disengaged after dialogue and interaction at the local level,” the ministry said in a statement.
The Indian daily Hindustan Times, citing a military source, said four Indian soldiers and seven Chinese troops were injured when some of the soldiers exchanged blows during the confrontation, which it said took place on Saturday and involved some 150 soldiers.
The Defence Ministry said the incident took place in the Nakula area but did not give details of how it started, or what caused the injuries.
China’s Ministry of Defense could not be immediately reached for comment on Sunday.
India and China have often accused each other of intrusions into each other’s territories, but clashes are rare.
There is still deep mistrust between the two countries over their festering border dispute, which triggered a brief war in 1962.
Hundreds of troops from both sides were deployed in 2017 on the Doklam plateau, near the borders of India, Bhutan, and China after India objected to Chinese construction of a road in the Himalayan area, in the most serious standoff in years.
Source: Reuters
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