Browse by Program & Issue

China's Carrier of Chance
Jamestown Foundation China Brief (Volume 2, Issue 6)
by Richard Fisher, Jr.

Published on August 14th, 2002
China's new ex-Soviet, ex-Ukrainian aircraft carrier is now in a Dalian navy shipyard. Could the partially completed Kuznetsov-class carrier Varyag become the first aircraft carrier of the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN)? Or will it instead be a Macao gambling casino? The odds are at least even.

China's Space Agenda
Jamestown Foundation China Brief (Volume 2, Issue 8)
by Richard Fisher, Jr.

Published on April 11th, 2002
China's recent successful third uninhabited test of its Shenzhou manned space capsule serves to highlight the political, military and diplomatic agendas of its manned space program. But before the United States and Europe can craft a proper response to either the test or the agendas, they need to understand China's goals.

Military Sales to China: Going to Pieces
Jamestown Foundation China Brief (Volume 2, Issue 23)
by Richard Fisher, Jr.

Published on November 21st, 2002
In the 1990s, China had no choice in its quest to modernize its military but to import entire weapons systems. And the imports have continued. But total reliance on imports is not a solution, especially for a military that prides itself on self-reliance. As an intermediate step to reversing this dependence, to indigenous design and production, the People's Liberation Army is now building its own weapons with imported foreign-made components.

New Pentagon Report: A Change in U.S. Attitude
Jamestown Foundation China Brief (Volume 2, Issue 16)
by Richard Fisher, Jr.

Published on August 1st, 2002
A new Department of Defense report, issued on July 12, on the growing power of China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) signals a key shift in Washington's willingness to identify China as a future threat to the United States and its security interests. Russia's arms sales to China are specifically identified as such a threat. The paper also seeks to change the debate over the nature of China's threat to Taiwan.

China Improves its Air Force
Jamestown Foundation China Brief (Volume 1, Issue 11)
by Richard Fisher, Jr.

Published on December 10th, 2001
Newspaper reports from December 3 noted that in one of its few acts of intimidation before the December 1 Taiwan elections, the People's Liberation Army Airforce (PLAAF) sent its new Sukhoi Su-30MKK fighter jets out to the midline Taiwan Strait in early November. This move calls attention to the fact that China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) has been investing heavily in building a modern air force. Open reporting tends to confirm U.S. Department of Defense assessments that absent countervailing actions by Taiwan and the United States, by 2005 the PLA Air Force could begin to gain superiority on the Taiwan Strait.

Evolving Ground Force Threat to Taiwan
Jamestown Foundation China Brief (Volume 3, Issue 5)
by Richard Fisher, Jr.

Published on March 11th, 2003
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government of Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian has a number of sound strategic and political reasons for trying to shift its previous army-dominated defense priorities to a new emphasis on joint-forces approaches that stress missile, air and naval defenses. However, the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) is complicating this transition by developing new ground force threats to Taiwan that, in turn, require Taipei to give added attention to the modernization needs of its army.

SARS Crisis: Don't Rule Out Linkages to China's Biowarfare
Jamestown Foundation China Brief (Volume 3, Issue 8)
by Richard Fisher, Jr.

Published on April 22nd, 2003
The vast weight of reporting thus far on the origins of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) points to a mutation of the coronavirus, which causes the common cold. This view holds that the virus most likely jumped from animals to humans somewhere in China's Guangdong Province. But there are compelling reasons, however unsettling, to at least ask whether there might be any linkage between SARS and China's biological warfare efforts.

No Longer a Junkyard Army
Wall Street Journal, International Commentary
by Richard Fisher, Jr.

Published on June 26th, 2000
After a bit of hemming and hawing, the U.S. Department of Defense finally released its yearly appraisal of the Chinese military's modernization program and the threat it poses to U.S. security. If U.S. lawmakers had hoped for a Chinese version of the Reagan administration's definitive "Soviet Military Power" series when they first demanded the reports, they must be disappointed. The reports are largely unremarkable, running just 30 non-classified pages without evidentiary photographs.

Beijing's Naval Threat
Wall Street Journal
by Richard Fisher, Jr.

Published on May 7th, 2003
China's leadership has already begun exploiting the loss of 70 sailors in the recent submarine accident to justify pumping greater resources into modernizing its People's Liberation Army Navy. Communist Party leader Hu Jintao signaled this intention Sunday, saying, "We should turn our mourning into strength and learn from the accident in order to advance the capacity of our national defense and speed up the modernization drive of the PLA."

Beware the Military Agenda Behind Shenzhou
Asian Wall Street Journal
by Richard Fisher, Jr.

Published on October 16th, 2003
The successful launch of the Shenzhou V will inevitably lead to calls for greater American and European cooperation with China in space. This would be unwise, as any space cooperation with China is bound to assist its considerable military-space ambitions, which are already being fed by Russian and European technology.