J-20 makes another appearance as Biden lands in Beijing

Well, we haven't seen much from the the J-20 since its maiden flight to commemorate Bob Gates' visit to Beijing, but surprise-surprise, US Vice President Jo Biden lands in Beijing and as if by magic the J-20 appears once again all over Xinhua.

And why not?

Afterall, we're reliably informed by Xinhua that the new photos were taken after the J-20's 27th flight, which of course is something to celebrate, 27 being such an auspicious number.

Obviously, the guys at the top of the PLA and CCP must have thought that test flying the J-20 during Gates' visit was such a hoot they'll do it again, just for giggles.

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China’s Great Leap Forward in Weapons - Continued

A Great Leap Forward in Weapons is taking place in China as we speak with all the trappings of its original disastrous 1950s granddaddy.

While every other China pundit seems happy to jump on the Chinese military bandwagon and gush how the PLA is tipping the balance in Asia with its ever increasing array of kit, there seems to be only limited critical thinking about how this may be playing out in a more familiar context according to well known CCP tendencies.

Back in 2010, I first wrote about this new Great Leap Forward in Weapons phenomenon and then published it on this Blog in Feb 2011. You can read the original here. Today, the signs are so glaringly obvious to be undeniable, and it is certain that a testing military confrontation for the PLA will see the wheels of this oversized juggernaut come flying off leaving all the brand new equipment high-and-dry and the Chinese public thinking, “what happened?”

So where is the evidence?

Firstly, let’s be clear, the PLA is not a modern, Chinese multi-national company at the cutting edge of technology and development. It is one of the most insular and secretive organizations on the planet and is riddled with corruption and twisted party politics that stifle true innovation. Anyone who has experienced the inner workings of a Chinese multi-national company will know that their internal mechanisms are hobbled by an opaque array of unfathomable relationships and nuances that are only understood by the few and favour a small group of elites. This is nothing new and hardly surprising; this is the way business has been conducted in China for millennia. Managers and directors are prone to explaining these “behind the curtain” practices as, “Chinese characteristics,” which is a disingenuous euphemism for, traditional, top-down, paternalistic, cronyism in tandem with mainstream, accepted corruption. With such characteristics rife in so-called public companies, which are subject to modern, international accountancy and human resource procedures, there is scant chance that the granddaddy of nepotism, the PLA has been able to escape these debilitating age-old habits.

Admittedly, I’m not offering up any concrete evidence to conclusively prove that the PLA is riddled with all the worst characteristics of guanxi but we can look at similar large-scale sectors and projects in China to see how they have faired. Based on this we should ask the critical question, is it rational to assume that PLA has risen above these problems or is in fact fatally ravaged by them behind closed doors.

Exhibit #1 - The Three Gorges Dam

Described as one of the biggest construction and relocation projects on the planet this gargantuan project could only have been achieved in China and is completely at home alongside other epic projects like the Great Wall and the Grand Canal. In order to complete such a monumental task you need a huge, cheap labour force and a dizzying degree of social compliance from the local population. Needless to say, most people in China, and especially those who lost their homes, were never told of the doomsday scenarios that many international experts predicted about building such a colossal dam. However, Mao had dreamt that it was possible and the CCP deemed that it was to become the crown jewel in the national psyche.

Despite vociferous warnings about the folly of the project from any number of independent, international organizations the project went ahead and all doubters were silenced as either unpatriotic or anti-Chinese. Today the Three Gorges Dam stands testament as the mother of all bad ideas. Rather than preventing flooding and taming the mighty Yangtze, towns downstream suffer its curse even more, either via extreme drought or flood. The electricity output has never met its targets and environmentalists are finally gaining traction in light of the utter devastation the dam has caused. Especially in light of the huge landslides the dam causes upstream, which the planners seemed to have completely over looked. In May 2011, no less than Prime minister Wen Jiabao, “admitted it [the dam] had caused severe problems to the environment, shipping, agricultural irrigation and water supplies.” (Global Times)

Therefore the lessons of the Three Gorges Dam are two-fold,

1) It could only be built in China, a country that has the ability to bulldoze any obstacles, whether human or nature.

And…

2) It could only be built in China, a country that could still blunder ahead with a bad idea despite such obvious failings

The Three Gorges Dam has proven to be about as useful at solving the problems of those who dwell in the Yangzi Basin as the Great Wall was at keeping out barbarians from the north.

So, why did the dam still go ahead?

Well, because it embodies the very heart of a new, rising China; a China that can overcome any obstacle or hardship to achieve its goal. In the end, the vast majority of Chinese can happily overlook that the dam is an unmitigated disaster. What’s important is that it shows what China can achieve; it is the largest and greatest dam in the world. The fact that it has never and probably will never do what it was touted to do is inconsequential. In China, building something and building something that works are mutually exclusive factors that do not need to relate to each other. Building something is a matter of fact that can be objectively stated. Whether it works or not is a matter of degree that is subjective. In a world where this attitude makes sense, China, any number of crazy possibilities can and do occur.

Exhibit #2 - High Speed Rail

High Speed Rail was supposed to be the project where China “got it all right” and proved to the doubters that it could lead the way with its own indigenously developed high-tech system with world-class quality control. Having pilfered the technology from the Germans and Japanese, the Beijing Shanghai line was to be an all-China project of unprecedented scope and size. Behind the scenes, bubbles of disquiet would occasionally rise to the surface such as, “the line had been built to hastily and the bases were going to subside”. However, these voices were quickly silenced once again as unpatriotic or anti-Chinese.

The opening day got off with much pomp and ceremony, with the train bedazzling international journalists and top party officials, but it has been downhill since then. In its first two weeks the rail line rarely worked and has had constant power outages. Conveniently the Party faithful blamed these outages on “teething problems” that were caused by a freak thunderstorm. Admittedly, every big project across the world has teething problems, but what we’re looking at here is something far more systematic than just tiny problems that need to be ironed out. The disastrous first few weeks of the high-speed rail network point to endemic corruption that even the nation’s highest, most prized projects could not escape. As the old saying goes, “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig”. The Party can whitewash over the failures and blame the public for being overly critical and demanding, but in reality the high-speed rail had everything to prove and came up wanting, stinking off burnt wires, dodgy workmanship and the all too familiar smell of corruption. Rumours are now rife that, “builders ignored safety standards in the quest to build faster trains in record time”.[1] Once again, “the shining new emblem of China’s modernization looks more like an example of many of the country’s interlinking problems: top-level corruption, concerns about construction quality and a lack of public input into the planning.[2]

One has to ask, if the CCP can’t get it right with these two national projects that embody the national spirit where can they get it right – in the PLA? Some may believe or hope that it can, but in fact an epic folly of self-deception is taking place within the Chinese Military, just like the Great Leap Forward, the Three Gorges Dam and high-speed rail. The PLA is now subject to enormous pressure, just like the above mentioned projects and it is just not realistic to think that it will be able to escape the same fate.

Here are the key red flags to look out for,

• Huge projects that far exceed anything that has ever been achieved before - CHECK
  
• Emphasis on surpassing competitors - CHECK
  
• Attaching goals to the national interest - CHECK
• Achieving goals in record-breaking times - CHECK
• Leap-frogging development time frames and obstacles - CHECK
• No public input - CHECK
• Managed from the top down by untouchable career politicians - CHECK

All of these factors were present in the original Great Leap Forward, The Three Gorges Dam and high-speed rail and new PLA pet projects like Varyag, the J-20 and the ASBM ooze with them.

In the next post I will detail more how the PLA is predictably following the same calamitous path.

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[1] Are China’s high-speed trains heading off the rails? Washington Post. 24^th April 2011

[2] Are China’s high-speed trains heading off the rails? Washington Post. 24^th April 2011

Where are the Chinese planes?

Is it not weird that Admiral Mullen goes to China to meet the PLA and only gets to see Russian made planes?

Why not Chinese made planes?

Why isn't China show casing its indigenous technology?

China's J-20 Fighter

Fortunately for future military planners great innovative breakthroughs rarely happen in a vacuum and so rarely appear out of nowhere. This is why the generational analogy is so apt for describing military hardware. In the case of fifth generation fighters (5G), the concept encapsulates an enormous culmination of incremental knowledge that has led up to a new direction for the entire system. What is key is that the systems are continually evolving in conjunction with the human skills and the ongoing tactical knowledge. None of these factors exist separately from the other. In the case of the F-22 Raptor, this plane represents the technological and human breakthroughs that have been banked over numerous wars and countless morphications of the American fighter plane. In recent months the appearance of the Chinese J20 fighter has sent ripples through the military world, but we have to ask ourselves, what are we really looking at here? What really constitutes a 5G fighter?

To answer our question, we can first look at nature. Just like technology, the evolution of a species doesn’t just happen overnight in a vacuum. It’s a constant work in process evolving over countless generational designs and tweaks. Of course, in nature there are mimics, take the example of the Milk snake and the Coral snake, to the untrained eye, both look deadly, but one is harmless and practicing mimicry, while the other is a highly dangerous, venomous snake. Batesian mimicry as it is known is typified by a harmless species evolving to imitate the warning signals of a deadly species. This is possible as the evolutionary step to imitate outer appearance is much easier than the huge leap to synergize the entire biological system, venom and all. Snakes are not the only animals in the business of mimicry, we find it all over the animal kingdom, because natural selection actually makes this process fairly simple in evolutionary terms. However, biologists are not expecting the Milk Snake to suddenly materialize venom, as it has followed a completely different evolutionary track to its similar looking Coral cousin. Looking similar is good enough to serve its purpose and in reality, is the limit of the Milk snakes ability given the circumstances. Of course at the end of the day, both the snakes are in the business of killing, it’s just that one does it a lot more efficiently than the other, because it is packing venom. This Batesian mimicry is apt for generational weapons systems too and especially so for the modern 5G fighter presented to the world by the PLAAF. It certainly looks like a 5G fighter, but without the obvious evolutionary history to back it up, it may well prove to be more of a Milk snake than a Coral snake. Unfortunately, we can’t know without ‘looking under the hood,’ or seeing it in combat but the clear lesson from nature is that these things rarely, if ever happen over night and take time.

Of course, once upon a time, the Coral snake didn’t have poison either, and had to rely upon an evolutionary glitch to innovate it. So has this revolutionary leap taken place in the new Chinese 5G fighter? Again, we can’t know for sure, but if it has, we are looking at the first stage in a very long process, that is entirely separate from any of the generational breakthroughs that have taken place in the US militaries evolution since the dawning of flight and air combat. So, if we are looking at something truly innovative, then it would be much fairer to describe this as China’s 1^st generational fighter.

Detractors from this argument will argue, “But China can skip the previous evolutions by the clever use of reverse technology and leap-frog breakthroughs,” but this idea is more ‘hopeful’ than factual. Again, we can’t know, it could well be that the Chinese 5G fighter really has hurtled through the evolutionary steps that were needed to create the F-22. However we can look for signs in other fields, as major technological breakthroughs don’t happen in a vacuum, and signs of successful leapfrogging or reverse engineering will show up in other industries.

The obvious first place to look is the Shengyang J-11. Certainly this is a copy of the Sukhoi 27, originally purchased from the Russians to be built in China. The appearance of the identical J-11 was certainly met with consternation by the Russian arms market, especially when the J-11 was offered for international sale at a price that undercut the SU-27, but like so many ‘Made in China’ products, it too can’t escape the accusations of inferiority. Whether the claims are true or not, they certainly are persistent in tagging the J-11 as inferior to its SU-27 cousin. Claims that the Chinese-made engines have neither power nor survivability of the Russian engines all point to the notion that reverse engineering just doesn’t cut it when reproducing hi-tech products. Shengyang were able to reproduce the airframe as it was provided with blueprints, the vital avionics and engines were left out of the deal. Even the much-lauded J-20 is rumoured to be equipped with two Russian engines. A particularly ominous sign, if true, as it would clearly indicate that the J-11 engine problem is real and a significant hurdle for the Chinese technicians to reverse engineer. Obviously, if the J-11’s engines, were up to scratch then they would be the basis for development in the new J-20. The fact that the F-22’s engines were completely designed from scratch only widens the obvious known generational gaps between the two fighters.

We can also look on a much broader scale to see whether signs of ‘5G’ technology are coming of age in China. We can start by looking at other comparable technologies where China is not inhibited by the cumbersome arms ban imposed upon it by Europe and the U.S. The car industry is a good place to start. Foreign car companies have been heavily investing in China for over 25years. One only needs to travel north of Shanghai to see the huge car plants opened up by the likes of Volkswagon to see that China has had ample investment of both money and technology in this field, yet, China still does not produce a world class car, designed and manufactured entirely in China. The likes of Chery Motors are now making in-roads into the local market, but their future global penetration remains limited. Chery has been cited for stealing designs and has employed Mitsubishi employees to reinforce its brand, but still it struggles to produce a quality, global product. Chery plans to start importing sedan’s into the European and US markets in 2011, but let’s put a perspective on this, we’re talking a 25year cycle to produce a sedan fit for the global market and whose to say how it will compare to other sedan cars? So, the question has to be asked, if China isn’t producing a global, selling sedan, is it reasonable to believe that it is producing 5G technology for fighter planes? Until we see comparable high-technology coming out China in other industries then it will remain likely that the military technology it rolls out will be more mimic than substance. Call me a cynic, but until I see a Chinese government officials giving up their Japanese or German cars for local ones and a locally made high performance car, not a sedan, that is a preferred buying option over a Ferrari or the Porsche, then I’ll believe that engineers are making in roads through reverse technology. The PLA and its organizations are nowhere near as dynamic as modern Chinese companies with high levels of FDI. After all, Chery employs Japanese car specialists. This is obviously not happening over at Shegyang aircraft, who’s engineers are probably left studying models of F-22s to work out why the shapes occur like they do. We may take this example across the entire spectrum of products coming out of China, from kitchen taps to flat screen TVs. For China makes them all, but they’re not quality global brands and fall way short of the quality expected.

Here’s a list of the most prominent brands in China to look out for, Lenovo, Haier Geely Motors, Huawei, China Mobile, Baidu. All these companies were made as direct competitors to their high-end overseas competitors. They maybe making great in roads into the markets but are they really pioneering breakthrough technologies? Remember, when the German company Meile comes out with a new fridge design, Haier will probably buy up a dozen and reverse technology their own version, but this is not happening in the 5G fighter plane market. It simply isn’t reasonable to believe that the J-20 is anything but a FIRST GENERATION fighter for China and this will only be the case if all of its parts are designed and manufactured in China.