In part LATimes: President Xi Jinping announced Thursday that China will cut its military by 300,000 troops, a significant reduction in one of the largest militaries in the world and a move that the Chinese leader called a gesture of peace. China’s ruling Communist Party staged a massive military parade in central Beijing, sending a stream of goose-stepping troops, tanks, and ballistic missiles down a major east-west thoroughfare as fighter jets zoomed overhead trailing multicolored smoke.
Xi’s speech kicked off the parade — officially called the “Commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Victory of Chinese People’s Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and World Anti-Fascist War.”
An estimated 12,000 troops – about 1,000 of whom hailed from Belarus, Cuba, Tajikistan, and other countries – marched along the 10-lane Changan Avenue from the commercial center Wangfujing to Tiananmen Square, about 1.5 miles away. They were joined by 200 fighter jets and 500 pieces of military hardware, including tanks and ballistic missiles.
Representatives from 49 countries were in attendance, including Russian leader Vladimir Putin, South Korean President Park Geun-hye and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
Rory Medcalf, head of the national security college at Australian National University, said that Beijing may have decided to cut 300,000 troops “in the name of efficiency and cost saving so that the defense budget can be reallocated to 21st century capabilities.” More here.
The friendship between Russia’s Putin and China’s Xi is becoming strained
BEIJING: They have met more than a dozen times and stood shoulder to shoulder during Thursday’s military parade here. But the once-vaunted relationship between the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, and Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, has come under strain as the economies of their countries have faltered.
Two landmark energy deals signed last year for Russian natural gas to flow to China have made little progress and were barely mentioned when the two men met for talks after watching the show of weapons Thursday on Tiananmen Square. The bilateral trade that was predicted to amount to more than $100 billion this year instead reached only about $30 billion in the first six months, largely because of a reduced Chinese demand for Russian oil.
Putin has enjoyed basking in the stature of Xi, who leads one of the world’s largest economies. But with the recent stock market turmoil in China and the slowest economic growth in a quarter-century, Beijing will be unable to provide the ballast Putin has sought against economic sanctions imposed on Russia by Europe and the United States after its annexation of Crimea, not to mention plummeting oil prices worldwide.
“Russia was dependent on China growing and driving the demand for its commodities: oil, gas and minerals,” said Fiona Hill, a Russia specialist at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “China was an alternative to Europe.”
The linchpin of the relationship between Xi and Putin was a May 2014 accord on a 30-year deal for China to buy natural gas from fields in Eastern Siberia, for a reported $400 billion with first delivery between 2019 and 2021. During the signing in Shanghai, Putin bragged that the deal was an “epochal event,” and expressed relief that Russia, under pressure from European sanctions, would be able to diversify its gas sales. More details here.
Analysts: Beijing Parade a ‘Bazaar’ of Stolen Technology
Saibal Dasgupta, Voice of America
The massive military parade in Beijing this week showcased China’s latest weapons, unveiling many to the public for the first time. But weapons experts say the systems on display showed hallmarks of China’s reputation for stealing technology and adapting it to its requirements.
The show involved long, medium and short range missiles, a range of tanks and 200 fighter aircraft. The Chinese government said that all the equipment had been made indigenously, attesting to the success of the country’s military industrial capability and the estimated $145 billion spent on the military in 2015.
“The parade was a bazaar of stolen intellectual property,” said Michael Raska, senior fellow at the Singapore-based Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies.
The researcher said it is possible to identify components and designs in different equipment, which have been sourced from other countries in a dubious manner.
Cloned Technology
Citing a specific example, Raska said, “The HQ-6A launchers that we saw at the parade are based conceptually on the cloned Italian Alenia Aspide missile, itself which is based on the US RIM-7E/F Sparrow.”
Raska said the Chinese J-15 naval fighter is based on adaptation of Russia’s Sukhoi Su-33.
The United States has repeatedly accused China in recent years of cybertheft of U.S. technology and weapons systems on a grand scale. U.S. defense contractors have alleged that China’s J-31 stealth fighter is largely based on stolen technology of the U.S. F-35.
The United States last year said that Chinese army hackers had stolen trade secrets from six U.S. nuclear, steel and clean-energy companies, directly resulting in “substantial” loss of jobs, competitive edge and markets.
“This is a case alleging economic espionage by members of the Chinese military… to advantage state-owned companies and other interests in China,” then-U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said.
But Raska said China has passed the stage where they were “emulators and copiers” and reached what experts describe as the point of “IDAR,” which means identify, digest, absorb and reinvest technologies.
Mix-and-Match
Analysts said it is not easy for countries and companies that produced an original technology to prove that it was stolen by China. Component designs are mixed and matched across different categories of weapons before they are remodeled and manufactured in China.
China may also be using its diplomatic relationships with countries that have acquired Western weapons and do not mind passing on acquired technologies to Chinese scientists.
But even with such technology sharing from countries friendly with China, Jagganath Panda, a research fellow at the Institute of Defense Studies and Analysis, said the country’s investments in its military have paid off.
“We need to accept that China has been hugely successful in developing a strong military industrial production capability,” he said.
In recent years China has sold drones, warships, submarines and air defense systems to developing countries, becoming the world’s third largest arms exporter behind the United States and Russia.
Indeed, one major point of Thursday’s military parade may have been to display the country’s newest advanced systems to interested buyers, and bolster China’s reputation as an emerging military power.
