China

[Michaelangelica]

Sunday 01 July 2007

Listen Now - 01072007 | Download Audio - 01072007
Will Hutton on The Chinese Bubble

China's titanic rise is the biggest news since the Industrial Revolution. Developed nations are in awe.
Some, like the United States, are in fear. However, according to writer and long time China-observer Will Hutton Western anxieties are misplaced.

Hutton sees China sitting on the edge of a very deep precipice. He cites endemic corruption, environmental depredation, widening inequality, and insufficent job creation as just some of the challenges threatening to bring China undone.

Join us for a spirited naysaying of the Chinese revolution, with Will Hutton at a business breakfast in Sydney.
Sunday 01 July 2007

Big Ideas
Sunday 5pm, repeated Saturday 7pm
Big Ideas brings you lectures, conversations, features and special series from Australia and around the world.
Big Ideas

[Michaelangelica]

PAUL KEATING, FORMER AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER: Well, I was at a dinner with him one night and I was Treasurer then and he was Finance Minister of Japan. He later became Prime Minister.

And, you know, I've been friendly with him a long time and he said to me, "Mr Keating, let me ask you this, do you think the Chinese will attack us?"

And I said, "No, Mr Miyazawa, I don't". He said quizingly, "But why not?" And you could feel the hair on the back of your neck go up, a thing like that.

Another event I had was on the Chinese side one of the three people who managed China in the '90s said to me quite candidly, "If the Japanese ever go to nuclear weapons, we would take them out before they started", meaning they would attack them first.

No good ever happens in that relationship between China and Japan. It's just simmered along in resentment and mistrust since the war.
. . .
KERRY O'BRIEN: Do you believe, really, that the tensions between China and Japan are as potentially explosive today as they were back when you had those conversations with Miyazawa and the Chinese?

PAUL KEATING: They're kind of worse. Worse than then, because China, I mean, in those days China was on the ropes trying to come out of Tiananmen Square, you know. And Japan was still top of the pops in economic growth, it hadn't gone through the big '90s recession.

Now, it's reversed. China is now the second or third largest economy in the world. It's the same size as Japan. Japan grows at 1 per cent, China grows at 11 per cent. China's ageing demographic means the country's shrinking. China has got a much younger demographic.

And the Japanese very much resent the rising power of China, and the Chinese resent the fact that the Japanese are still trying to call the war history like some kind of self defence thing. So, the game remains nasty, and anyone in the Australian polity who doesn't know that, knows nothing

The 7.30 Report - ABC
An thanks to Bush Japan is now re-arming Is it 60 or 80 billion in US arms this year?

I tried to find a photo of one of the four high tech. Japanese "Navy" ships (One Billion $s each) but couldn't. Can anyone else?

[DougF]

I found this but most of the ships seem to be older.

Japanese Warship Names

The Japanese language is highly poetical in nature, and it is not surprising that even Japanese warships carried names which were very lyrical. The partial list below was transcribed by Brooks Rowlett. It is arranged in order of date of launching of the vessel in question, class by class. Comments or corrections are welcome. And if anybody out there has a hankering for Japanese calligraphy and wants to conjure up a few of these for me, I'd love to have them.

Japanese Warship Names

[Michaelangelica]

It is hard to find anything on the Japanese Navy.
I am told they have four billion dollar warships bristling with technology

JS Myoko. JS Myoko is the third of four Japanese destroyers scheduled for outfitting with the Aegis BMD Weapon System.

JS Kongo, which successfully intercepted a ballistic missile with its Aegis BMD Weapon System in a December test, was the first Japanese ship equipped with Aegis BMD. Installation of Aegis BMD aboard the second destroyer, JS Chokai, is under way in Nagasaki, Japan.

Lockheed Martin To Provide Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense To Third Japanese Destroyer

Lockheed Martin To Provide Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense To Third Japanese Destroyer
Moorestown NJ (SPX) Jan 15, 2008
Lockheed Martin received a $40.4 million contract modification to provide Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) capability to the Aegis-equipped Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force destroyer JS Myoko. JS Myoko is the third of four Japanese destroyers scheduled for outfitting with the Aegis BMD Weapon System. JS Kongo, which successfully intercepted a ballistic missile with its Aegis BMD .

News About Ships and Submarines

Japan is now a key ally of the United States, and is receiving billions in declared, and undeclared, military funding. Japan plays a key role, along with Australia, in the American encirclement of China, and has all but declared it will eventually host American missiles, radar stations and more US bases as part of the Missile Defence Shield project that has seen Russia verbally threaten European states.

In June, Japan joined the United States Air Force for war games in the western Pacific. Japanese pilots dropped 500 pound live bombs on a tiny island, a first for its current generation of pilots. It's hard for Westerners to imagine how dramatic so simple a military rehearsal as this is for the Japanese.

From the International Herald Tribune

:
MISSILE DEFENSE

Japan working on central Tokyo missile shield: official
Tokyo (AFP) Jan 15, 2008
Japan on Tuesday carried out studies to deploy a missile defence shield in central Tokyo, officials said Tuesday, amid concern that the capital is at risk from North Korea. The defence ministry conducted investigations on Monday and Tuesday into two locations for US-developed Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) surface-to-air interceptors, a defence spokesman said. Two PAC-3 units were

Right now, Japan is buying up its products to the tune of billions of dollars, generating wealth, jobs and taxes for the US government. Naturally, this makes the Bush administration, and the military industry elite of America very, very happy indeed.
Japan Now Plans To Build Its Own Stealth Fighter

So is this Bush playing on Chinese/Japanese Paranoia?

What's the deal with circling Russia with missiles?

It must be a great time to have shares in defence industries in USA?