China's armed forces have been instructed to raise their fighting ability in 2013, state media reported Tuesday, amid heightened tensions with Japan over disputed islands.
In 2013, "the PLA and the Chinese People's Armed Police Force should focus closely on the objective of being able to fight and win a battle," according to a report in the overseas edition of the state-run People's Daily newspaper.
The directive came in a document released at the beginning of the year by the People's Liberation Army (PLA) General Staff on military training in 2013, said the report, republished from a website linked to a PLA newspaper.
To prepare for combat, the armed forces must also "vigorously strengthen real-combat-like military training" and intensify efforts to cultivate high-calibre military personnel, the report said.
The report made no mention of the dispute with Tokyo over islands in the East China Sea, which are controlled by Japan as Senkaku but also claimed by China as Diaoyu.
A report in state media early last year on military objectives for 2012 did not call on the military to be ready for combat and was more general, focusing on issues including training reform and promoting information technology.
The maritime dispute, which has simmered off and on for years, intensified last year when the Japanese government nationalised islands in the small chain it did not already own, triggering anger and protests in China.
Both sides have scrambled fighter jets to the area in recent weeks in a further escalation, though no actual clashes have taken place.
Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported Monday that Japan will deploy two more patrol ships to boost its defence of the islands and has conducted its first drill simulating the recapture of an isle seized by enemy forces.
Japan occupied parts of China for several decades in the first half of the 20th century, and the countries have fought two wars, one from 1894-95 and the second from 1937-1945, which was part of the broader Second World War.
China has become increasingly assertive over its territorial claims in disputes with its neighbours as its economic and military power have expanded.
The Asian giant already has the world's largest armed forces and its defence budget has seen double-digit increases every year for much of the last decade, rattling the United States, which is forging ahead with plans to expand its own military power in Asia.
China has made advances in satellite technology and invested in advanced weaponry including its first aircraft carrier but it remains technologically far behind the United States.
I wonder how this will affect how the next gen of videogame consoles are going to be? Currently all consoles and handhelds are made in China; a war with Japan might change that though. I just hope China spares the Nintendo building as I want my LoZ at least by 2014!!!
I just saw this on Reuters yesterday which included this:
SHORT, DECISIVE WAR
The Air Force Colonel, Dai Xu, is renowned for his regular calls to arms. With China in dispute for much of last year with Japan in the East China Sea and Vietnam and the Philippines in the South China Sea, Dai argued a short, decisive war, like China's 1962 border clash with India, would deliver long-term peace. He also said Washington would not risk war with China over these territorial spats.
"Since we have decided that the U.S. is bluffing in the East China Sea, we should take this opportunity to respond to these empty provocations with something real," he wrote in an August 28 commentary published in the Chinese-language edition of the Global Times, a nationalistic tabloid published by the Communist Party organ, the People's Daily.
"This includes Vietnam, the Philippines and Japan, who are the three running dogs of the United States in Asia," added Dai, a researcher at Beijing University's China Centre for Strategic Studies. "We only need to kill one, and it will immediately bring the others to heel."
An animated speaker with a shock of thick black hair that's slightly long for a military man, Dai sometimes appears for television interviews in fashionable civilian clothes. On other occasions he appears on the state-controlled military channel, CCTV 7, in his neat, sky-blue air force uniform giving lectures to junior officers on air power or conflicts in the Middle East.
He is also the author of popular books on China's strategic outlook. His 2009 best seller, "Sea Totem, China's Carrier," argues that China's new aircraft carrier, commissioned in September, is a symbol of the nation's maritime rejuvenation.
In "C-Shaped Encirclement," published in 2010, Dai describes how an entrapped China must break out from the curving perimeter around China the United States and its allies have established from northern Japan, through South Korea, Taiwan, South East Asia, India and up to Afghanistan. Dai did not respond to a request for comment on this article.
source:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/17/us-china-hawks-idUSBRE90G00C20130117
This is beginning to be scary shit especially for those 3 dogs they were referring to. Though, Japan would be a dog that would leave a nasty scar in the event that they tried to pick on that one!!!
