The Great Game Changer: Belt and Road Intiative (BRI; OBOR)

[Oldman1]

1. F-22 is the first and only finished 5th gen fighter. None can deny that.
But US have to buy Russian rockets to go to space.

2. I am not sure F-35 can be finish faster than J-20.

No we don't. Its cheaper to use Russian rockets. But thats not saying the U.S. doesn't have any rockets.

 

[BoQ77]

No we don't. Its cheaper to use Russian rockets. But thats not saying the U.S. doesn't have any rockets.

It's similar to buying a cheap Made in China shirt doesn't mean we would be topless without it.

 

[Raphael]

Russia plans army training exercises with China, India| Reuters

SOCHI, Russia (Reuters) - Russian land forces will join troops from China, India, Mongolia and Belarus in a series of joint military training exercises during the second half of this year, President Vladimir Putin's office said on Wednesday.

The announcement, issued as Putin met top Russian military brass in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, will stir unease in Western capitals, whose relations with Moscow have deteriorated sharply during the year-long Ukraine crisis.

Moscow has become especially keen to build closer economic and other ties with the Asian giants China and India since the United States and European Union imposed sanctions on Russia last year over its annexation of Ukraine's Crimean region.

The joint military training exercises will have a focus on peace-keeping and anti-terrorist activities, the statement said.

Training exercises are also planned with troops from member countries of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (ODKB), which includes Russia and several former Soviet republics such as Kazakhstan, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan.

Russia also plans a number of other training exercises for its armed forces this year, Wednesday's statement said, part of efforts to counter what Moscow portrays as an aggressive, anti-Russian stance by NATO.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and India's President Pranab Mukherjee joined Putin in Moscow last Saturday for a military parade marking the 70th anniversary of the allied victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two in Europe.

Western leaders skipped the event in protest over Russian policy in Ukraine.

Last week, Xi and Putin signed a $25 billion deal to boost Chinese lending to Russian firms and a host of other economic accords. China has also invited Russian troops to march in a parade in Beijing in September.

At Wednesday's meeting with military chiefs, Putin called for the swift completion of trials of new technology intended for Russia's land forces to allow for its deployment.

Putin also said work was continuing on planned rocket systems "with heightened capabilities" that would be able to circumvent anti-missile systems.

Putin held talks in Sochi on Tuesday with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, on his first trip to Russia since the start of the Ukraine crisis. But they made no concrete progress on ending it.

Russia denies Western and Ukrainian accusations that it is arming pro-Russian separatists battling the Kiev government's forces in eastern Ukraine, in a conflict that has killed more than 6,100 people.

 

[LordTyrannus]

this alliance is still fragile, but it is more reliable than the joke called nato hoax, which collects all the insignificant insects in the world as canon fodder.

 

[70U63]

Watching at the moment.

 

[Azizam]

Something that as recently as a decade ago was almost never discussed in polite company—the prospect for a prolonged geopolitical struggle between the United States and China (Cold War 2.0)—is now Topic A in the foreign policy salons of both Washington and Beijing. In the United States, the centrist Council on Foreign Relations issued a lengthy report calling for the U.S. to “revise” its “grand strategy” toward China. In Beijing, Liu Mingfu, a colonel in the People’s Liberation Army and one of its most influential strategists, wrote in his recent book, The China Dream, “In the 21st century China and the United States will square off and fight to become the champion among nations.’’

War games, prospective weapons sales, a war of words over contested real estate in some far-flung part of the world. That’s all pretty much standard Cold War fare, familiar to anyone in Moscow or Washington who fought the last one. But a Washington vs. Beijing Cold War 2.0—should it prove to be unavoidable—would be very different from its predecessor.

The fundamental, obvious difference is that Beijing would bring far more economic power to the contest than the Soviet Union ever did. Indeed, for Soviet citizens, the enduring image from the last days of Communism is empty shelves at the food store. And pretty much everywhere the Soviets exerted their influence—from Eastern Europe to Africa to Latin America—economic calamity ensued. The command and control, state-dominated form of economic management didn’t work, and that—more than how many nuclear weapons Moscow possessed—was what mattered in the end. - something I once said on the forum

Contrast that with China. Already the second-largest economy in the world, it may well surpass the United States as the biggest in a decade or so. While the state controls the commanding heights of the economy—banking, telecommunications, energy—it tries to do so in a market-friendly way, and it allows unfettered private enterprise in a range of industries (including, critically, high technology) that have helped drive China’s extraordinary three-decade-long ascent from poverty. Alibaba is but one recent example of a private Chinese company with an increasingly global footprint. Remember all those great Soviet companies with initial public offerings of billions of dollars on the Nasdaq or the New York Stock Exchange? Right. You don’t. Because there weren’t any.

China is in the business of deploying its economic power abroad in a big way. It invests heavily in infrastructure projects in Africa. It uses its massive foreign exchange reserves to buy up resources—oil, gas and minerals—throughout Africa and Latin America. This is often—inaccurately—described as “soft” power. Economic power is not the same as soft power. Soft power has to do with lots of things—the form of government, the transparency of government, the accountability of elites to the broad citizenry, what a country stands for and stands against. The projection of economic power means the ability to put money in local pockets. Beijing is doing that aggressively, and, given its enormous accumulation of foreign exchange reserves, it is in a position to continue to do so for quite some time, even as its frantic economic growth now slows.

The United States, in the view of many analysts, is in a different and arguably more difficult place. Its hard power—its military assets—still dwarfs China’s, even though Beijing has rapidly increased its defense spending in recent years. But the prospect of a Cold War between the two countries was—and to a certain extent still is—dismissed by many China hands in the U.S. because, as former National Security Council staffer Aaron Friedberg wrote last year in his book A Contest for Supremacy, “the enormous advantages the United States now enjoys are the product of its long-standing lead in the development and deployment of new technologies, and the unmatched ability of its huge and dynamic economy to carry the costs of military primacy.”

Is the United States still more technologically advanced than China? Absolutely. Is it still more innovative. Yes. But those leads are narrowing, and the U.S. plainly faces a host of domestic economic issues—from debt to demographics to an economy seemingly stuck at stall speed—that are daunting. As Friedberg wrote, “Whether [the United States] will continue to enjoy [its economic advantages] in a long-term strategic rivalry with China is by no means obvious.”

The other critical difference between Cold War 1.0 and the Cold War 2.0 that now looms is the simple fact that China is the most important market in the world for the Fortune 500. By contrast, the Soviet Union, for 99.5 percent of America’s biggest companies, simply didn’t exist. Beijing can use access to its market as leverage in geopolitical disputes, and in so doing will be playing to a core establishment constituency in the United States: big business. As long as China avoids an economic crisis that upends the current economic reality, that reality is going to be difficult for Washington to finesse as geopolitical competition intensifies.

There is, of course, tremendous irony in that. For decades, U.S. policy was to help China succeed economically. We had convinced ourselves that through trade and prosperity, political change would come in Beijing (just as it had in South Korea and Taiwan, former authoritarian economic success stories turned vibrant democracies). That notion is now long gone. The Chinese Communist Party, and its one-party rule, doesn’t appear to be going anywhere. It’s also playing a long game; its military is just a regional player now, but by 2049, when the party expects to celebrate its 100th anniversary in power, it may well be able to project force globally. That, anyway, is the intention of the more hawkish elements of the party and its military.

Washington had earnestly hoped that the days of a global struggle against a powerful adversary were gone, the stuff of history books. That it’s now waking up and acknowledging a different reality is step one in what Liu Mingfu calls the central “fight” for the 21st century.

http://www.newsweek.com/2015/05/29/us-china-cold-war-333948.html

 

[ArsalanKhan21]

US is still at least 25 years ahead of China militarily and Americans need an adversary in order to justify defense budget which is more than the total of next ten countries in the list combined.

 

[sword1947]

Russia has been on line since 1950, please do not ignore her.

 

[Indus Pakistan]

Great article. There is litlle to be gained by giving off the stats that apply in 2015. More productive is to look at the trend. The gap between USA in 1980 and China was huge. It has shrunk now and will continue to shrink probably with fits and starts along the way.

However the fact is China will catch and go well past USA in time. This is fact unless people think the Chinese are intrinsically inferior to Americans. The reality is when China reaches number 1 slot or as I like to call it hyperpower there will be nothing significant about it.

In history China always was the dominant power. The loss of this status by China in the last 300 years was a aberration then the rule. So china will be just returning to her position of yesteryear.

I am too old and probably will not see that happen but the younger members here will witness this event ...

 

[terranMarine]

Great article. There is litlle to be gained by giving off the stats that apply in 2015. More productive is to look at the trend. The gap between USA in 1980 and China was huge. It has shrunk now and will continue to shrink probably with fits and starts along the way.

However the fact is China will catch and go well past USA in time. This is fact unless people think the Chinese are intrinsically inferior to Americans. The reality is when China reaches number 1 slot or as I like to call it hyperpower there will be nothing significant about it.

In history China always was the dominant power. The loss of this status by China in the last 300 years was a aberration then the rule. So china will be just returning to her position of yesteryear.

I am too old and probably will not see that happen but the younger members here will witness this event ...

While many members have often said we are living in interesting times, which is certainly not a false statement. I firmly believe those who are born in recent years or will be born some couple of years from now will absolutely live in interesting times as they shall withness the results of the changes China has been undergoing for the past 3 decades combined with the next 5-6 decades from now. By then most of us here won't be around to see it. We do have > 1.3 bln of people right now and the size will only increase by each passing year. It's gonna take a long long time before we can match Western standards in terms of GDP per capita. So the terminology of "developing country" is gonna stick to China for a long long time as we continue to become the #1 biggest economy.

 

[Indus Pakistan]

While many members have often said we are living in interesting times, which is certainly not a false statement. I firmly believe those who are born in recent years or will be born some couple of years from now will absolutely live in interesting times as they shall withness the results of the changes China has been undergoing for the past 3 decades combined with the next 5-6 decades from now. By then most of us here won't be around to see it. We do have > 1.3 bln of people right now and the size will only increase by each passing year. It's gonna take a long long time before we can match Western standards in terms of GDP per capita. So the terminology of "developing country" is gonna stick to China for a long long time as we continue to become the #1 biggest economy.

Very well said. No country can do it in 30 years. USA's journey to greatness was probably full 100 years. In China's case I give it 50 years from now. Although the aggregate is already making waves ..

 

[Beast]

This article by the white of Cos will praise the US. US Military is of cos more powerful than China. But The US economic has hardly any money left. It is not way to compete with China in exerting economic influence. The stupid article trying to say US surplass China in all area which is nonsense. If so, why do he even talks about cold war when no competition even exist with China weak in all area.

Economic is where China exceed US many times. We have 4 trillion foreign reserves which we able to carry out silk road plan. Support russia despite western embargo with USD400billion cooperation. We even setup AIIB which rout the US hands down.

The US hardly even have money to upgrade any of its infrastruture and even need to ask China to come and invest in them. Economic Super power? What a joke

The author is just a sour loser fabricating lies to make whiteman feel good.

 

[TaiShang]

First of of all, there is no likelihood of a cold war with China without Russia in it. The blocs are being formed and the US is not without allies, either.

Second, I thought that China was about to collapse. What happened?

 

[Beast]

First of of all, there is no likelihood of a cold war with China without Russia in it. The blocs are being formed and the US is not without allies, either.

Second, I thought that China was about to collapse. What happened?

It's good that the American can always live in delusion that everything of China is behind them. I just hope that their awaken will not give them a rude shock

 

[terranMarine]

It's good that the American can always live in delusion that everything of China is behind them. I just hope that their awaken will not give them a rude shock

Sun Tzu, always leave the Americans think they are the strongest and we still have 200 nukes