But be wary — it’s the Reverend Moon’s Washington Times doing the reporting.
A highly classified intelligence report produced for the new director of national intelligence concludes that U.S. spy agencies failed to recognize several key military developments in China in the past decade, The Washington Times has learned.
The report was created by several current and former intelligence officials and concludes that U.S. agencies missed more than a dozen Chinese military developments, according to officials familiar with the report.
The report blames excessive secrecy on China’s part for the failures, but critics say intelligence specialists are to blame for playing down or dismissing evidence of growing Chinese military capabilities.
The report comes as the Bush administration appears to have become more critical of China’s military buildup.
Is the decibel level on the China Threat really rising or am I imagining it?
Update: Assrocket over at Powerline calls our intelligence people in China “panda-huggers” and urges swift militarization.
Here, it appears that a group of “panda-huggers” have dominated intelligence analysis on China for some years. Now we know they were wrong. There is no doubt that China has embarked on an aggressive arms buildup suited to projection of its power throughout the Far East. Which raises the question: Is Japan building warships? If not, why not?
Time to get serious! Batten down the hatches and get those missles ready.
Links via Instapuppy (yes, I admit I vist his site now and then).
1
By pete
Richard, what are the “new” developments of the Chinese military talked about by the Wash. Times? It is pretty well known by now that China is building a blue water fleet with nuke subs, it is modernizing its military to match US military capabilities. Do you have any word on the specifics of claims?
June 10, 2005 @ 6:07 pm | Comment
2
By richard
If you go to the article there is a bulleted list of all the shocking new weapons and capabilities China now has that our intelligence missed. But rwemember the source; I wonder how “new” these things really are.
June 10, 2005 @ 6:16 pm | Comment
3
By Tom - Daai Tou Laam
And when the Moonies and PowerSwine say “threat”, what they mean is that someone has a military that can present enough of a challenge to the US military that Bolton-style bullying threats of military action become valueless.
No big deal here, unless the next step for PowerSwine and the InstaParrot is to resuscitate those Golden Oldies “Hegemonic Global Communism” and “The Domino Theory”.
1-2-3 What are we fighting for?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn. The next stop is Islamistan.
5-6-7 Open up the pearly gates.
It ain’t no time to wonder why. Yippee! We’re all going to die.
June 10, 2005 @ 7:07 pm | Comment
4
By Martyn
If anyone’s interested, I remeber that angrychineseblogger recently wrote a particlualrly good piece about Japan’s military capabilities and respnse i.e. the adoption of Son of Star Wars and the permanent deployment of 15 Aegis (anti-missile) vessels in the Sea of Japan.
I remember the article so well as everything in it was totally new to me.
He does get some good scoops ACB.
June 10, 2005 @ 10:16 pm | Comment
5
By pete
Now I am with you. Reading the Wash.Times article makes me think it is a piece designed to create more fear in America. Other than the specifics on some of those bulleted items, Chinese nuke subs, building a modern army, buying modern arms from Russia is no secret here.
The Moonie rag is 3 to 4 years behind the times on this I think. The criticism is most without merit.
June 11, 2005 @ 12:55 am | Comment
6
By dylan
Seems strange that all of you would ignore that Gertz is quoting from a classified internal report. i.e. its not the Washington Times dreaming up this stuff, its the US intelligence apparatus critiquing itself. So Pete you’re quite right in a funny way – the US intelligence apparatus missed stuff that regular internet browsers knew about in the PLA. Could it be they did so because of a predisposition to gloss over any progress in PLA modernisation. That is what the real question must be. Your last comment pete is way off base, the criticism is spot on, as you have just demonstrated.
June 11, 2005 @ 3:34 am | Comment
7
By Paul
I reckon that defector Chen might possibly, just possibly have signaled the end of the current War on Torror era and re-focused the US and the rest of the world’s attention on China.
Maybe an overstatement but it appears that the spy story is being both backed up and picked up, especially the Chinese tactic of recruiting ethnic Chinese as informal spies.
Horse’s Mouth did a piece on this last week.
By the way, I love the way PRC supporters all howl: “TRAITOR! TRAITOR” which pretty much gives you an idication of their patriotic mindset.
June 11, 2005 @ 7:56 am | Comment
8
By richard
Dylan, you’re rioght – I’m just always cautious when I read militaristic articles that can be found only in the Washington Times.
Paul, I am really enjoying your comments. Who are you?? 🙂
June 11, 2005 @ 9:14 am | Comment
9
By Paul
Who am I? I’ve been reading for a few months now. I first posted on the 300 thread. I live in China. I’m a friend of Martyn. He first told me about Peking Duck.
June 11, 2005 @ 11:04 am | Comment
10
By richard
Thanks Paul, good to know you. Keep ’em coming.
June 11, 2005 @ 11:10 am | Comment
11
By Paul
You can count on it!
June 11, 2005 @ 11:14 am | Comment
12
By pete
Dylan
If you believe the Wash.Times and the report I think you are headed in the wrong direction, my man. It is not credible or believable that Wash.DC doesn’t know about this stuff. If memory serves I pick up this info mostly from SCMP or the internet.
Or are you saying BushCo did not learn anything from 9/11?
June 12, 2005 @ 7:46 am | Comment
13
By ACB
I can’t help but feel that the US administration still using outside threats to galvanize internal unity.
What worries me far more than the US seeing China as being a military threat is the pressure that they are currently putting on Japan to scrap article 9 by branding China as a threat and by calling on Japan to militarize (of course, if it does, it will do so buy BUYING Us weapons).
At this time the world should be looking at disarming and not arming, if you arm then your neighbors will arm, and if you paint somebody as a threat they will see you as a threat and start preparing accordingly, which is something that you can then use to justify your own military endevors.
This is the eternal waltz that leads to wars.
June 12, 2005 @ 10:20 pm | Comment