A China flexiona seus musculos, navais... e terrestres - Foreign Policy Security Report

Situation Report: China flexes muscles while cutting troops; sends ships north
By Paul McLeary with Adam Rawnsley
National Security Daily Brief, Foreign Policy Situation Report, September 3, 2015

Shipping news. The U.S. Navy is tracking five Chinese warships sailing in the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska, marking the first time the Chinese Navy has ventured that far north, according to defense officials. While the ships are perfectly within their rights plying international waters, the deployment -- which includes three surface warships, a replenishment ship, and an amphibious assault ship -- was spotted at the same time that Beijing hosted a massive military parade to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. The ships had just completed a joint exercise with the Russian navy which ended last week, before moving north.

Show and tell. The military parade in Beijing Thursday morning marked a significant coming out party for the People’s Liberation Army, as the military had the chance to flex its muscles on the world stage in a big way, just days before President Xi Jinping visits Washington to meet with President Barack Obama.

While the event included 12,000 troops, about 200 planes and helicopters, and around 500 troop carriers, tanks, rocket launchers and missiles, Xi took the world by surprise by announcing he’s cutting the 2 million-strong force by about 300,000 personnel. Echoing the U.S. Defense Department, China is focusing more on high-tech naval and air assets as opposed to ground troops, requiring fewer but better trained troops in the coming years.

Analysis firm IHS estimated on Wednesday that China’s defense budget would grow to approximately $260 billion in 2020, about doubling what Beijing spent in 2010. Five years ago, China spent an estimated $134 billion on defense, but “across this decade, China is expected to spend almost $2 trillion on defence,” the group’s analysts conclude.

Alone, together. Even with increasing budgets and a decreasing number of troops, however, Beijing is running into some of the same budgetary problems as the Pentagon, China analyst Dean Cheng of The Heritage Foundation tells SitRep. With its increasing military capabilities, China “needs to pay for a lot of things, like training, new equipment,” and the salaries that come along with maintaining a skilled, professional military, as opposed to merely relying on draftees as it has traditionally done. That doesn’t come cheap, and the political leadership in Beijing appears to be making the calculation that less, in some respects, is more.

The guns of September. Of particular interest to China-watchers is a weapon that made its first public appearance on Thursday, the massive Dongfeng 21-D “carrier killer” missile, which has been the object of much speculation in the Pentagon since the Chinese announced it in 2011. Defense experts generally estimate that the missile has a range of up to 1,500 km and may be able to travel at up to 10 times the speed of sound, making it almost impossible to intercept once launched. Terrifying video of columns of trucks carrying the missile on parade can be found here.