Daily Socotra

09 March 2007

Great Wave

The man on the radio says the skunk cabbage is beginning to blossom on the banks of the Bull Run out on the old battlefield at Manassas. Maybe Spring will come after all. The cold makes me long for travel, and for distant shores.

I'm a China fan, and always have been. I believe in Dr. Sun Yat Sen, and the expansion of democracy. I believe in the historic Open Door policy, and given the chance, I would have volunteered for duty wit the American Volunteer Group who flew for China against the Japanese.

I enjoy Chinese cuisine, and the Chinas I have visited- the three of them- were all fine.

I often wish I had taken the trouble to go to the Portuguese China, which existed for centuries, but I didn't and that is that. I loved the British China, and Chaing's island China, and was stunned by the new Chinese China that has erupted across the river from the Bund in old Shanghai when I first saw it.

I stood one night with one of the Chinese Spooks from the consulate in LA during a cocktail party the Fleet Commander put on a few years ago n San Diego. We stood on the lawn of the official mansion, watching the helicopters dance against the backdrop of Point Loma, jets in the bounce pattern on the runway and gray destroyers coming and going in the approaches to Sand Diego harbor.

The Spook and I talked about the One Child policy, ignoring the products of all the jet fuel being burned. He was looking ahead to something else, I thought, and I reflected on the sadness with which he described the necessity of the inevitable.

The party was designed to impress the officers of a visiting Chinese flotilla, which was a small though assertive presence, considering we have been putting mighty warships in Chinese harbors for a long, long time.

Secretary of Defense Bob Gates said this week that he “does not see China as a strategic adversary of the United States despite its rapid military modernization.”

I think he was talking around the eighteen percent increase in the defense budget allocated to the People's Liberation Army and its Navy. The Chinese coyly advertise their budget at around $45 billion dollars, which is around ten percent of that spent by the United States, and thus is not threatening.

In fact, it is peaceful.

Of course that is nonsense. It is about boys-and-their-toys, and those of us that followed the Soviet Union all those years know there are budgets, and there are budgets.

Mr. Gates said that China is a partner, in some respects, which is gratifying, because I thought that all that technology that is being put onto trucks on the loading dock out back and shipped overseas was being stolen.

This is a startlingly muted reaction, considering the florid language of the Vice President on his Asian trip last week. He said that the Chinese build-up was “inconsistent with a peaceful rise” of Chinese capabilities. Interestingly, the newest Nimitz-class aircraft carrier in the American inventory is in the harbor at Hong Kong this morning, 97,000 tons of diplomacy, as they say.

The carrier is much more consistent with the Vice President's view, though Mr. Gates might just be a little more subtle. I like aircraft carriers, by the way, and they are a lot more fun than you would think, though I may be remembering the visits to places like Hong Kong.

Which is all part of why I am unsettled by the events of the last decades. I remember when Britain agreed to throw in the towel on Hong Kong, placing the date of reversion far enough in the future that it did not sting so much.

It was long enough that I was able to dispatch my older boy across the sea to be present, if only for a few days, in the Crown Colony before it became the Special Economic Zone of the People's Republic.

But things have a way of coming to pass, even if they are in the out-years. I drive past a building on Bolling Air Force Base these days where the Director of National Intelligence has set up shop. The structure was just an idea on my desk at one time, a budget proposal my Boss supported, inserted into the distant parts of Future Years Defense Program. We fought for years with Congress to justify it, and now, against all odds, it is concrete and cipher-locks, a real thing.

I think back to the very same year the building was an idea in a folder on my desk, and the Chinese had a dream, too. Preparations for the construction of their newest class of Ballistic Missile Submarine were detected in 1999, through the usual National Technical Means.

They called it the Type 094, and it was estimated at the time that the sleek black submarine would carry a smaller, underwater-launched version of the DF-31 missile. The introduction of that system caused quite a wave when it was flight tested with great drama. The Chinese lofted them into the heavens around Taiwan, and set Asia all agog.

Things have not settled down yet, or perhaps it is better said that we have not fully understood what happened. The submarine varient of the DF-31 has been designated the JL-2. It is the first strategic weapon to fully incorporate stolen U.S. warhead and missile technology. The American W-88 is a wonderfully efficient nuclear warhead, the very flower of decades of tough engineering and testing.

The Chinese version of the W-88 is what is sitting on top of the dozen or so JL-2's carried in the belly of the Type 094 submarine.

The Chinese also call their missile the “Julang,” which translates as Great Wave. It has a range of over seven thousand miles, which would easily encompass the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles, should they ever decide to do some remote remodeling.

Like I say, I am not a believer in any particular menace or peril, red yellow or fuchsia. I am pretty much in line with Mr. Gates on that score.

Still, the fullness of the program years has brought results. Word on the street is that as many as five Type 094's are just about ready for deployment this year makes me think about the Great Wave to come.