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Post by Admin on Aug 21, 2015 20:10:27 GMT
Russia and China on Friday started joint military drills in the waters and airspace of the Sea of Japan, Russia's military said. The exercises off the Russian city of Vladivosktok -- which are set to run until August 28 -- will involve 22 vessels, up to 20 aircraft and over 500 marines from the two sides, the Russian armed forces said in a statement. The culmination of the training will be a joint naval and airborne landing at a Russian military firing range, it said. The drills come as Beijing and Moscow intensify cooperation in military, political and economic spheres, with Russia locked in its worst standoff with the West since the end of the Cold War over Ukraine. In May the two sides conducted their first joint naval exercises in European waters in the Black Sea and Mediterranean. It was China's farthest ever naval exercise from its home waters. Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin hold frequent summits and their countries, both permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, often take similar stances there on divisive issues such as the conflict in Syria.
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Post by Admin on Aug 23, 2015 20:26:10 GMT
Russia will be one of ten foreign countries that will take part in a grand parade celebrating the 70th anniversary China's victory over Japan, which has put strain on the already-tense relationship between Beijing and Tokyo. "Their participation in the parade is a clear indication of their willingness to jointly commemorate victory in the World anti-fascist War, and a symbol of the pursuit of and hope for lasting world peace," Qu Rui, deputy chief of the Operations Department of the General Staff Headquarters of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) told the media in Beijing. Apart from Kazakhstan, it was not confirmed which other countries would be attending the spectacle, which will comprise 12,000 troops and 200 aircraft. It was previously reported that Mongolia and Mexico would dispatch 75-man units to the parade.
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Post by Admin on Sept 6, 2015 20:18:14 GMT
President Xi Jinping announced on Thursday he would cut troop levels by 300,000 as China held its biggest display of military might in a parade to commemorate victory over Japan in World War Two, an event shunned by most Western leaders. China's confidence in its armed forces and growing military assertiveness, especially in the disputed South China Sea, has rattled the region and drawn criticism from Washington. Xi, speaking on a rostrum overlooking Beijing's Tiananmen Square before the parade began, said China would cut by 13 percent one of the world's biggest militaries, currently 2.3-million strong. The Defense Ministry said the cuts would be mostly complete by the end of 2017. The move is likely part of long-mooted military rationalization plans, which have included spending more money on high-tech weapons for the navy and air force. Troop numbers have been cut three times already since the 1980s. Greg Austin, a professorial fellow at the East-West Institute in New York, said the troop cuts had nothing to do with curbing military power. "It's a determination to expand military power by redirecting money to higher impact, higher technologies, which can have more strategic effect," he said, referring to the maritime, cyber and space frontiers. Peng Guangqian, deputy head of China's Council for National Security Policy Studies, said the equipment on display was intended to show the combat readiness of the People's Liberation Army (PLA). "This indicates a change of the PLA training strategy; with more focus on actual combat," Peng told the official Xinhua news agency.
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Post by Admin on Sept 26, 2015 20:11:36 GMT
President Barack Obama said Friday that China and the United States had agreed to work to avoid military misunderstandings and desist from cybertheft for commercial gain during a state visit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. But his guest, appearing beside him at a news conference in the White House Rose Garden, staunchly defended China's territorial claims, which are inflaming tensions in Asia and testing China's ties with Washington, a security guarantor in the region since World War II. The summit, which opened with a 21-gun salute and later Friday will feature a state dinner, comes at a time when the two great powers are seeking to find areas of cooperation on issues like climate and terrorism. But the effort comes amidst rising tensions on subjects including territorial claims and cyberhacking that have fueled fears that the two countries are destined for a new era of confrontation. "Even as our nations cooperate, I believe, and I know you agree, that we must address our differences candidly," Obama told Xi. The Chinese leader, speaking through a translator, also admitted that the nations do not see eye-to-eye on everything and told Obama they needed to "respect each other's interests and concerns, (and) be broadminded about our differences and disagreements." Those differences were on display as Obama announced a deal under which the two sides agreed not to conduct cybertheft against one another but warned that he was still ready to impose sanctions against Chinese entities proven to have taken part in such activity -- a threat that overshadowed the runup to the summit. There was no undertaking by the two countries not to conduct cyber espionage by intelligence agencies, however. Obama and Xi also discussed rising regional tensions in Asia sparked by Beijing's construction of military installations on man-made islands and disputed reefs in the South China Sea. "We agreed to new channels of communication to reduce the risk of miscalculations between our militaries," Obama said. The deals require captains of naval vessels to ensure prompt communication, to make their intentions clear, to maintain a safe distance and to avoid "uncivil language" or "unfriendly physical gestures" to head off collisions that could mushroom into national security standoffs.
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Post by Admin on Oct 6, 2015 20:01:02 GMT
The Trans-Pacific Partnership nations include the U.S., Japan, Canada, Australia, Mexico, Malaysia, Singapore, Chile, Peru, New Zealand, Vietnam and Brunei. Conspicuously absent is China, which has the biggest economy in Asia and is trying to organize a rival trade pact in the region. “We are in effect organizing our friends in a way which should reinforce their disinclination to ally more with China,” said Robert J. Shapiro, chairman of the consultancy Sonecon and a former economic adviser to President Clinton. Shapiro noted that during the Cold War in the 1950s, the U.S. offered economic benefits to those countries that joined the U.S. against the Soviet Union. “This is a more sophisticated version of that,” he said of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Congress, which now must either accept or reject the final agreement, won't vote on it for at least a few months, and possibly not until the end of next year. The deal received a surprisingly skeptical reception from Capitol Hill on Monday, including from some Republicans who previously supported the pact. That suggests the president will face a tougher time than expected in winning approval. The deal will have limited economic impact, in part, because the U.S. already has free-trade pacts with seven of the dozen Trans-Pacific Partnership nations, including Canada, Mexico, Australia, Singapore and Peru. So the biggest trade effect will be with Japan, Malaysia and Vietnam -- but even there, the effects will be incremental and may play out differently than assumed.
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