China - military buildup, bomb shelters and a ray of hope

The following report would be alarming for anyone who had no knowledge of the Chinese military buildup and foreign adventures over the past decade. Of course only those who receive their news exclusively from the MSM/DNC would be so ill-informed.

As Bill Gertz reports this week in the Washington Times:

China is building its military forces faster than U.S. intelligence and military analysts expected, prompting fears that Beijing will attack Taiwan in the next two years, according to Pentagon officials.
U.S. defense and intelligence officials say all the signs point in one troubling direction: Beijing then will be forced to go to war with the United States, which has vowed to defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack.

prior to the ongoing buildup

One part of the report is not a surprise:

"There's a growing consensus that at some point in the mid-to-late '90s, there was a fundamental shift in the sophistication, breadth and re-sorting of Chinese defense planning," said Richard Lawless, a senior China-policy maker in the Pentagon. "And what we're seeing now is a manifestation of that change in the number of new systems that are being deployed, the sophistication of those systems and the interoperability of the systems."

emphasis added

Is it a mere coincidence that the "shift in the sophistication. . . " of the buildup occurred simultaneously with the Clinton's most egregious scandal, the trading of military and high technology secrets in exchange for campaign contributions?
The report continues:

Asked about a possible Chinese attack on Taiwan, the official put it bluntly: "In the '07-'08 time frame, a capability will be there that a year ago we would have said was very, very unlikely. We now assess that as being very likely to be there."
Air Force Gen. Paul V. Hester, head of the Pacific Air Forces, said the U.S. military has been watching China's military buildup but has found it difficult to penetrate Beijing's "veil" of secrecy over it.
While military modernization itself is not a major worry, "what does provide you a pause for interest and concern is the amount of modernization, the kind of modernization and the size of the modernization," he said during a recent breakfast meeting with reporters.
China is building capabilities such as aerial refueling and airborne warning and control aircraft that can be used for regional defense and long-range power projection, Gen. Hester said.
It also is developing a maneuverable re-entry vehicle, or MARV, for its nuclear warheads. The weapon is designed to counter U.S. strategic-missile defenses, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The warhead would be used on China's new DF-31 long-range missiles and its new submarine missile, the JL-2.

The Washington Times article is a must read.
The news of China's military buildup comes at the same time that Joseph Farah noticed something odd in a Chinese official news item. Apparently the Chinese built two dozen bomb shelters in the 1960's and 1970's in one city alone:

The bomb shelters, the report said, covered an area of more than 70,000 square meters - or some 17.3 acres - and could accommodate tens of thousands of people.

We don't know how many other shelters exist outside of that city around China, but the Chinese apparently take civil defense very seriously in order to have maintained those shelters for the past three decades.

Are the Chinese signaling that they are more prepared for an ultimate showdown with the United States some day? Are they familiarizing their citizens with the shelters because they expect they will be needed for another purpose some time?

The Chinese remain prepared while there remains virtually no civil defense preparedness in the United States.

At the same time, the Chinese remain as brutal as ever. H/T NY Girl.

The glimmer of hope comes from recent riots near Beijing and elsewhere:

Thousands of Chinese rioted in a dispute sparked by a lopsided roadside brawl, set fire to cars and wounded six police officers in an outburst likely to worry communist leaders in Beijing desperate to cling on to power.

The "desperate to cling on to power" part sounds like optimistic spin from a naive MSM/DNC reporter. While that assessment of the riot situation sounds overly optimistic, there is hope that we can outlast this threat. But if the Clintons return to power in 2008, all bets are off as a far as hope for a peaceful future is concerned.