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	January 21, 2000	atimes.com

China

THE MIDDLE KINGDOM: The 'four battlefields'
By Bradley Martin

To the extent it delays the US program to develop a missile defense by 2005, this week's failed test of a missile interceptor launched from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands is good news for China. The glitch serves to buy time in which Beijing can develop its own space-warfare technologies to counter the Pentagon's ''Star Wars'' initiative - a big part of which was to be the ''kill vehicle'' that failed to kill a Minuteman missile fired in its direction on Tuesday from Vandenberg Air Base in California.

An article in the Chinese military's Jiefangjun Bao late last month reported that the country had established a new institute to research military aerospace technologies. Set up at the General Armament Department Command Technology Academy, the center includes ''an aerospace war simulation system and an aerospace launch command training simulation system''.

Hong Kong's Ming Pao picked up that item and published a longer article the next day, ''PLA Said Preparing for Space War''. With the American and Japanese ''attempt to include Taiwan in their Theater Missile Defense (TMD) System, China is determined to win a regional war under high-tech conditions to safeguard the integrity of the state's sovereignty and territory''.

Quoting ''informed sources'', Ming Pao said the 1991 Gulf War, in which Iraq's Scud missiles were detected by early-warning satellites and attacked with Patriot missiles, had provided ''a profound lesson for Beijing'' that it must prepare for future ''space wars''.

In November, China test-launched a spacecraft of a type that eventually will be manned, noted Ming Pao. This ''means that China has mastered low-momentum rocket technology'' which is used in the TMD system and in Russia's Baiyang-M long-range intercontinental missiles. ''The mastery of low-momentum space rocket technology means having a trump card in hand, which can let missiles dance in the air for a while so as to avoid the opposite side's attack.''

Ming Pao observes that ''with the development of advanced science and technology, space will inevitably be turned into a fourth battlefield after the land, marine and air battlefields''.

Meanwhile, China is not neglecting the other three battlefields. Construction of its first aircraft carrier will start at the end of this year and the vessel will be launched in 2003 and officially commissioned in 2005, says another Ming Pao article, published on January 12. After that a new carrier can be launched every three years or so.

The new carrier will carry 24 jet fighter aircraft. Ming Pao predicts they will be Su-30s recently sold to Beijing by Moscow. While awaiting the ship's construction, the PLA is training pilots to land on the deck of the former Australian carrier ''Melbourne'', which China bought and dismantled when it was decommissioned.

The new ship will be useful in dealing with the Spratly islands and with Taiwan. ''Reportedly, the topography in the west of Taiwan facing the mainland coast is easy to defend but hard to attack, while the east coast is plain shoal,'' says Ming Pao. ''If the mainland has an aircraft carrier and makes a detour to the east coast, Taiwan's defensive forces will have to suffer from fighting on two lines.''

But of course the carrier will be of no use if the Taiwan war is fought before the new vessel is put into service. Yet another Ming Pao story, this one in the January 5 issue, reports that officers and men of the Guangzhou Military Region had been ordered not to ask for leave in May this year. ''The reason for the requirement is unknown at this time,'' says Ming Pao.

(Special to Asia Times Online)

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