China: Let The War Games Begin
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=294621907182546
China: Let The War Games Begin
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, May 02, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Military Superiority: While the focus is on Iranian and Syrian nuclear activities, China quietly builds an underground submarine base on Hainan Island. Its purpose is to challenge U.S. naval supremacy and to fight and win a nuclear war.
On April 1, 2001, a Chinese J-8 fighter collided with and forced down an American EP-3 spy plane that was flying over the South China Sea near the Chinese island of Hainan. Its 24-member crew was held for 11 days. It was no April Fool's joke.
The EP-3 was possibly monitoring sea trials of China's new Type 094 ballistic missile submarine capable of striking U.S. cities from Chinese waters. China's military was not amused.
The London Daily Telegraph has just published photographs obtained from the commercial satellite company DigitalGlobe of what the EP-3 may have been looking for — a massive new Chinese naval base including underground caverns capable of hiding a major part of China's growing ballistic missile and attack submarine fleet.
Analysts for Jane's Intelligence Review report massive tunnel entrances at the Yulin naval base near the town of Sanya on the southern tip of Hainan Island. The entrances built into hillsides around the base are 60 feet high. They are believed to lead to caverns capable of hiding up to 20 nuclear submarines from spy satellites.
Jane's reports that as part of a naval exercise last December, the first of China's new Type 094 submarines was moved to the base near Sanya. The Pentagon estimates that China will have five of the new Jin-class ballistic missile submarines, each outfitted with a dozen 5,000-mile-range JL-2 missiles, operational by 2010.
Some of the photos showed numerous warships moored to two long and three shorter jetties at the base. They are capable of accommodating at least two carrier battle groups. The Chinese are known to be refitting the former Soviet carrier Varyag and are expecting to build six new carriers within the next decade.
China is deploying an impressive surface fleet as well, one that with aircraft carriers could form impressive battle groups. It includes Sovremenny-class guided missile destroyers purchased from Russia. They come equipped with supersonic sea-skimming SS-N-22 Sunburn cruise missiles designed for one purpose — to attack American carrier battle groups.
China is rapidly developing a blue-water navy. It has 57 submarines, five of them nuclear, many equipped with quiet German diesel engines and Yingji-8 anti-ship cruise missiles that they can launch while submerged.
On Oct. 26, 2006, a S20 Song-class attack submarine surfaced undetected within weapons distance of the USS Kitty Hawk in the East China Sea off Okinawa.
John J. Tkacik, a senior research fellow in Asian Studies at the Heritage Foundation, told Cybercast News Service that China has "roughly 35 super-quiet submarines that the U.S. Navy can't seem to track. This means China's navy is already able to deter U.S. battle groups from entering waters around Taiwan in the event of a confrontation."
One of the advantages of the Chinese base is that submarines based there are close to deep water, making their deployment quicker and harder to detect. Jane's analysts suggest the base could be used for "expeditionary as well as defensive operations" and would allow the submarines to "break out to launch locations closer to the U.S."
According to the 2007 edition of the Pentagon's annual report on Chinese military power, China is developing a capability beyond regional war at a pace that both surprises and concerns U.S. officials, a capability that includes a new generation of ballistic missile submarines and the capability of a first-strike attack on our military satellites.
Appropriately, the Pentagon report captures the essence of Chinese military and geopolitical strategy by quoting former supreme leader Deng Xiaoping's advice to "hide our capacities and bide our time, be good at maintaining a low profile."
Lyle Goldstein, director of the China Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College, recently said: "What was gray before is now becoming clear. China can now effectively fight a nuclear war."
Time may soon be up.
