While the world braces for e-threats, India moves slow

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6 Feb, 2012, 10.58AM IST, Rajat Pandit,TNN

MUNICH: After the first four “real” battlefields of land, air, sea and now increasingly space, India needs to get very serious about the virtual front as well. The country should begin planning a full-fledged military cyber command, instead of the current piecemeal and disjointed steps to bolster cyber-security, grappling as it already is with incessant online espionage and other attacks from China, Pakistan and others.

This was the clear takeaway from the deliberations on cyber-security and cyber-warfare in the high-profile Munich Security Conference on Sunday, even though India hardly figured in the discussions.

Experts said the emergence of “cyber-weapons” like the Stuxnet software ‘worm’ that was used to sabotage Iran’s nuclear programme over a year ago, had changed the entire security ballgame, almost on par with the use of nuclear bombs for the first time in 1945.

Migration Information Source – Living In Between: The Chinese in South Africa

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By Yoon Jung Park
Rhodes University, South Africa
Visiting Professor, Howard University, Washington DC

Two South African young men view a poster advertising a 2006 Chinese cultural festival in Pretoria, South Africa.

January 2012

While there is a long history of limited migration from China to Africa, the past decade has brought tens of thousands of Chinese to African cities, towns, and rural areas. These migrants are part of the growing political, economic, and sociocultural ties between China — now the world’s second largest economy — and the poorest and most underdeveloped continent.

In a clever political move, China recently supported South Africa’s candidacy to become the newest member of the international organization of rapidly emerging markets that make up BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), thus ensuring South African (and perhaps even African) support for China at the United Nations Security Council as well as other international bodies.

In terms of economic ties, trade figures between Africa and China are dazzling with respect to both their rapid rate of growth as well as their actual total, now estimated at more than $120 billion. Beijing is now Africa’s largest trade partner, with Chinese investments fueling 49 countries and a wide range of sectors, including mining, finance, manufacturing, construction, and agriculture. Where many Western investors see risk, the Chinese see opportunity — an outlook that has led to phenomenal growth in the numbers of Chinese in Africa.

Chinese Plan Reveals Space Ambitions

A modified model of the Long March CZ-2F rocket carrying the unmanned spacecraft Shenzhou 8 blasts off from the launch pad at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China’s northwest Gansu Province in November.

December 30, 2011

China is shooting for the moon in an effort to become a major player in the long-dormant space race.

A newly released five-year plan outlines Beijing’s goals of developing new rockets, satellites, and embarking on deep-space navigation. Longer-term, the aim is to have a global satellite-positioning system in place, construct a space station, and eventually to put a man on the moon.

Clean-burning fuels will power its next-generation rockets, which will launch heavy cargos into space, according to details of the program released by the government this week.

China’s space program has already made major breakthroughs in a relatively short time. In 2003, it became the third country to launch its own astronaut — known as a “Taikonaut” — into space, and five years later, completed a spacewalk.

The Jamestown Foundation: Chinese Air Force Officer Recruitment, Education and Training

Publication: China Brief Volume: 11 Issue: 22

November 30, 2011 01:12 AM Age: 2 days

Category: China Brief, Military/Security, China and the Asia-Pacific

By: Kenneth Allen

PLAAF National Defense Students in Training

As the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) continues to emphasize the need to raise the quality of its personnel, analyzing the recruitment, education and training of the officer corps becomes all the more important for assessing Chinese military modernization, especially for the technology-dependent PLA Air Force (PLAAF). Based on the available information, it is unclear whether the PLAAF has succeeded in reforming officer recruitment, education and training to build a more highly-educated officer corps capable of commanding, operating and supporting a growing high-tech force in a combined-arms and joint environment.  It is clear however that a number of challenges remain, including limited opportunities for joint training in the academy and a lack of centralized management.

PLAAF officers come from military academic institutions, a Defense Student (Reserve Officer) Program and direct recruitment of civilian graduates. The PLAAF, which has multiple officer academic institutions, separates its education and training system at each level (cadet, basic, intermediate and advanced) based on the five officer career tracks: military/command, political, logistics, equipment and special technical. Whereas all PLAAF academic institution graduates receive their specialty training as a cadet, Defense Students and directly recruited graduates must receive their specialty training after graduation. In addition, almost all new officers serve a one-year probationary period and must serve at least eight years before leaving the military.

Classical Geopolitics Today – A Case Study

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Today we look at the classical approach to geopolitics in relation to China. There are those who would very much like to contain this growing geopolitical power, but there are very real impediments in the way – e.g., an economy expected to become the world’s largest in the coming decades, a lengthy coastline that cannot be ‘landlocked’ by containment-minded foes, and a growing ‘blue water’ naval capability. The latter development, of course, is of special interest to those nations that populate the broader Indian Ocean area. In the following STRATFOR conversation, it is also of interest to George Friedman and Robert Kaplan, who discuss China’s far reaching bid for sea power and its geopolitical implications.

China, Pakistan boost anti-terrorism

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JHELUM, Pakistan — The Pakistani and Chinese attack choppers swoop low across the valley, strafing a mock terrorist hideout and a bomb-making factory. Then a joint commando team storms the camp — to the gentle applause of top brass from both nations watching from the stands.

The fact that such a drill is needed reflects a new concern troubling their long-standing alliance: Chinese militants along the Afghan border allegedly aiding separatism in China and plotting terrorist attacks there

Countries around the world, especially the U.S., share Chinese concerns about Pakistan’s militant-infested tribal regions, but few get the same kind of public commitment of help as Beijing. It’s a legacy of China’s oft-hailed “all-weather friendship” with Pakistan.

Anti-terror cooperation is the latest example of the special relationship between the neighboring countries.

China’s good will is vital to Pakistan: China is its largest defense supplier, and it has helped construct two nuclear reactors. Chinese investments help keep the Pakistani economy afloat.

China’s Slow Surge in Kyrgyzstan: A View from the Ground

Publication: China Brief Volume: 11 Issue: 21

November 11, 2011 02:54 PM –By: Raffaello Pantucci, Alexandros Petersen

Chinese Ambassador Wang Kaiwen with the Kyrgyz Premier

Kyrgyzstan’s recent peaceful presidential elections did not feature China as a campaign issue. For the most part, they focused on domestic issues and where foreign policy seeped in, it was mostly in the positive light that most Kyrgyz see Russia and separately its regional customs union, or perennial whipping boy the U.S. “transit hub” at Manas airport, outside Bishkek. Subsequent to the elections, the winner Mr. Atambaev declared: “In 2014 the United States will have to withdraw its military base from the ‘Manas’ international airport” (www.regnum.ru, November 1). China was not mentioned at all, even though a series of conversations and interviews up and down the country in the weeks prior to the election revealed a strange sense of unease about Kyrgyzstan’s growing dependence on China.