China 'has prepared for a preemptive strike against US military bases which would cripple American forces in the region'
- An investigation of satellite imagery compares China's missile testing grounds and US military bases
- The images show that the test areas have been designed to look like the military bases, according to the report
- Earlier this week, a highly accurate Chinese ballistic missile capable of threatening US and Japan bases in Asia made its latest appearance
- The medium-range DF-16 featured in a video posted last week
The levels at which China appears to be planning a missile attack on US military bases in the Pacific have been detailed in a new report.
An investigation of satellite imagery comparing China's missile testing grounds and US military bases shows a pattern - all of the missile tests have been aimed at destroying US carriers, destroyers and airfields in East Asia, the report said.
The images show that the test areas have been designed to look like the military bases, according to the report by Thomas Shugart on War on the Rocks.
Earlier this week, a highly accurate Chinese ballistic missile (pictured above) capable of threatening US and Japan bases in Asia made its latest appearance at recent Rocket Force drills
China's missiles can reach ranges of approximately 1,500km, which is a further distance than many US military bases
A possible PLA Rocket Force ballistic missile impact range shows mock military bases that could be compared to US military bases
An investigation of satellite imagery by the War on the Rocks shows parts of parts of the Rocket Force range appearing to look like Patriot Batter, Kadena in Japan
The medium-range DF-16 featured in a video posted last week on the Defense Ministry's website showing the missiles aboard their 10-wheeled mobile launch vehicles being deployed in deep forest during exercises over the just-concluded Lunar New Year holiday.
While the Rocket Force boasts an extensive armory of missiles of various ranges, the DF-16 fills a particular role in extending China's reach over waters it seeks to control within what it calls the 'first-island chain'.
First displayed at a Beijing military parade in 2015, the missile is believed to have a range of 1,000 kilometers (620 miles), putting it within striking distance of Okinawa, home to several US military installations, as well as the Japanese home islands, Taiwan and the Philippines.
The two-stage DF-16 replaces the older, shorter range DF-11, with a final stage that can adjust its trajectory to strike slow moving targets and evade anti-missile defenses such as the US Patriot system deployed by Taiwan.
An area on the mock airfield shows an aircraft target in almost the same position as an aircraft on Kadena Air Base
Possible test fuel tank targets appear to look similar to above-ground fuel tanks in Hachinohe, Japan
A satellite image dating back to 2012, according to the War on the Rocks, shows craters in a test target
A possible electrical substation target is seen in a satellite image from July 2013. There are no electrical lines, however, running to or from the target
It also carries up to three warheads weighing as much as a ton and carrying conventional high explosives or a nuclear weapon. Further increasingly its lethality, the missile is believed to be accurate to within as little as 5 meters (16 feet) of the target, similar to that of a cruise missile.
China has the most active ballistic missile development program in the world, according to CSIS.org.
Before taking office, President Donald Trump's questioned Washington's 'one China policy' that shifted diplomatic recognition from self-governing Taiwan to China in 1979. He said it was open to negotiation.
But former US officials and scholars said in a report that such an approach could destabilize the Asia-Pacific and leave Taiwan more vulnerable.
Possible shelter or bunker targets resemble hardened aircraft shelters at the Misawa Air Base in Japan
Possible mock moored ship targets resemble the US Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. Inset is a comparison of the ship and mock ship's sizes
An area at the Rocket Force test range in western China resembles the layout of a US Naval base in Yokosuka, Japan
US-China relations are at a 'precarious crossroads' and the two world powers could be on a 'collision course,' it said, describing a rivalry that is growing amid Beijing's assertion of territorial claims in the disputed South and East China Seas.
China has bristled at the 'one China' comments by Trump, who wants to pressure Beijing to narrow its huge trade surplus with the United States.
Beijing also warned of instability in East Asia after Trump's defense secretary, Jim Mattis, said last week on a trip to the region that a US commitment to defend Japanese territory applies to an island group that China claims.
The Trump administration has cast its China policy as part of a 'peace through strength' approach.
The coming war on China
“What long-term and global goals does the United States have now? We can already see them. Today, America’s geopolitical rival No. 1 is China. The biggest problem that the United States has to deal with now is the absence of ways to besiege China. The Americans may crop China’s feathers a little, but they can not remove China as a competitor. There is only one “clever way” for the USA to go at this point.
“It is an open secret that Ukraine does not pose any interest for the United States. Ukraine is not a part of America’s geopolitical interests. Why did the Americans pay so much attention to Ukraine, including financially? Why did they achieve so much influence there?
Brzezinski used to say that one needs to set Slavic nations against each other. They set Ukraine against Russia. Now they need Ukraine to put external pressure on Moscow. Today, the Americans need Russia the way Russia exists today.
Previously, they wanted to dismember Russia. Now they do not want to do it, because in this case, the Far East and Siberia will go to China, and China will become stronger than ever before. Brzezinski’s chessboard is now history.
“To put pressure on China, the Americans can block China’s main sea routes and oil transportation routes, but this is not important. The biggest danger for the USA is China’s intention to build the new Silk Road. China wants to replace its economic cooperation with America. China needs Europe instead. China will be able to reach Europe via the new Silk Road. Therefore, the overland route to the continent is a threat to the States.
To curb China’s development, the USA will need to make Russia and China enemies. They have done this with Ukraine, and now they want to do the same with China. They need today’s Russia with its strong arms and everything. The only change the Americans need is a new leader in the Kremlin. They need to change Russia’s president, while everything else will remain the same.”
“Do they want the new leader to be more compliant?”
“Of course, they do. They want to plant “their own” president in Russia, like they did in Ukraine. They control the Kiev authorities from outside. If they succeed in setting Russia against China, the Americans will be on top of the world again.
“Trump has already made it clear: America’s prime enemy is China, but not Russia. Trump may try to convince Russia to twist China’s arms.”
During their first official conversation since Trump took office, Trump and Putin showed 'their readiness for active, joint work to stabilize and develop Russian-American cooperation'
'The presidents said they were in favor of putting in place real coordination of Russian and American actions to destroy IS and the other terrorist groupings in Syria,' the statement said.
They agreed on the need to 'normalize' relations between Moscow and Washington after the tensions during the previous US administration of president Barack Obama over the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine. The scheduled phone call between Putin and Trump has caused concern among European allies and consternation among fellow Republicans about the future of US penalties imposed on Moscow.
Trump has been outspoken about his desire to strengthen ties with Russia and has suggested he is open to lifting sanctions imposed on Moscow by the US government.
Russia's security chief, Nikolai Patrushev said he had high hopes for the telephone call and added 'everything will be positive.'
'We'll see what happens. As far as the sanctions, very early to be talking about that,' he said during his press conference with British Prime Minister Theresa May.
Britain - while part of the European Union - has also punished Russia for its provocations in Ukraine. Voicing the view of many in Europe, May said, 'We believe the sanctions should continue.'
As the relations between Russia and the US becomes warmer to the extent that the Kremlin is willing to be maleable and more so for the protection of Siberia against any overtures of China, this may leave China alone to confront the United States and its allies.
'We are equals': Trump and Putin vow to maintain 'regular personal contact' in their first call, discuss international terror and peace in the Middle East - but avoid talking about U.S. sanctions against Russia
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin agreed Saturday to develop relations 'as equals' and to establish 'real coordination' against the Islamic State group in Syria, the Kremlin said. 'The two sides expressed a willingness to work actively together to stabilise and develop Russian-American cooperation on a constructive basis, as equals, and to mutual benefit,' Putin said in a statement after the two men's first phone conversation since Trump took office.
Describing it as a "positive" exchange, the Kremlin said they touched on many subjects from the Iranian nuclear deal to the Ukraine and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, the tensions on the Korean peninsula and trade relations. The pair did not discuss American sanctions against Russia introduced under President Obama.
As the relations between Russia and the US becomes warmer to the extent that the Kremlin is willing to be maleable and more so for the protection of Siberia against any overtures of China, this may leave China alone to confront the United States and its allies.
A MAJOR US MILITARY BUILD-UP – INCLUDING NUCLEAR WEAPONS – IS UNDER WAY IN ASIA AND THE PACIFIC WITH THE PURPOSE OF CONFRONTING CHINA. JOHN PILGER RAISES THE ALARM ON AN UNDER-REPORTED AND DANGEROUS PROVOCATION.![01-12-2016-keynote-image-590.jpeg [Related Image]](https://newint.org/features/web-exclusive/2016/11/15/01-12-2016-keynote-image-590.jpeg)
© US NavyUS Aircraft carrier strike group deployed to the disputed South China Sea to test Beijing's resolve, raising fears of new tensions
- The USS Carl Vinison is currently leading a group through the South China Sea
- Part of effort to assert the $5trn shipping lane is in international waters
- Beijing claims it owns almost all of the sea and has militarized islands there
- Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State, talked of stopping China accessing the islands
- That led to the Chinese army and state media talking about possible war
- And Steve Bannon, Trump's closes adviser, expects war with China in 5-10 years
China says the sea, which is resource-rich and a $5 trillion shipping lane for Asia, is almost entirely under its control, and has been militarizing islands there in an effort to bolster its claim over a host of other countries.
Trump is now continuing Obama's practice of sending US carriers through to assert that the sea is international waters, and has sent in the USS Carl Vinison.
But threats of military action from Chinese state media, Rex Tillerson's recent hint at a blockade, and recently emerged recordings of Steve Bannon, Trump's closest aide, predicting a Chinese was in 'ten years' mean the situation now is hotter than ever.
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The USS Carl Vinison has been deployed in the South China Sea, where its patrol will reaffirm that waters there are for international use. Beijing claims ownership of the lucrative area
In his confirmation hearing last month, Rex Tillerson sparked talk of war when he said he wanted to stop China from accessing islands in the sea that it has militarized
The USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier group is engaging in 'routine operations in the South China Sea,' the navy said in a statement.
It noted that the ships and aircraft had recently conducted exercises off Hawaii and Guam to 'maintain and improve their readiness and develop cohesion as a strike group.'
'We are looking forward to demonstrating those capabilities while building upon existing strong relationships with our allies, partners and friends in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region,' strike group commander Rear Admiral James Kilby said.
The group will patrol an area that has seen China butting heads with neighboring countries including the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei over ownership.
The Chinese foreign ministry has said ships and aircraft are allowed to operate in the area according to international law.
But on Wednesday, as reports that the Vinison was heading to China first emerged, a Beijing spokesman 'urged' the US to respect the region's 'efforts to maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea'.
Beijing 'firmly opposes any country's attempt to undermine China's sovereignty and security in the name of the freedom of navigation and overflight,' he said.
Concerns about a possible US-China conflict were raised in at the start of the month when a recording emerged of Steve Bannon, Trump's closest aide, saying that he expected a war with China within ten years.
'We're going to war in the South China Sea in five to 10 years, aren't we?' Bannon said on his radio show in March 2016, according to The Independent.
China has artificially built up islands into military bases. It challenges Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines and Burma for the sea. Left: An island in 2014; right: same island, 2015
This is the island in 2016. Tillerson's remarks caused the Chinese army to say the possibility of war with the US was a 'practical reality' and state media to talk of 'nuclear strategy'
'There's no doubt about that. They're taking their sandbars and making basically stationary aircraft carriers and putting missiles on those.
'They come here to the United States in front of our face - and you understand how important face is - and say it's an ancient territorial sea.'
Just days before that report, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) had posted a message on its website saying that war with America was becoming a 'practical reality'.
'"A war within the president's term" or "war breaking out tonight" are not just slogans, they are becoming a practical reality,' the PLA said, according to the independent Hong-Kong-based newspaper The South China Morning Post.
And last month, a report in the Global Times, a state media publication that represents the more hawkish wings of the Chinese government, talked of a possible 'military clash' with the US that would require a 'nuclear strategy'.
'The US has no absolute power to dominate the South China Sea,' the editorial, published without a byline, said.
'[Secretary of State Rex] Tillerson had better bone up on nuclear power strategies if he wants to force a big nuclear power to withdraw from its own territories.
'If Trump's diplomatic team shapes future Sino-US ties as it is doing now, the two sides had better prepare for a military clash.'
Both that editorial and the PLA's remarks came in response to Tillerson's remarks that China should be stopped from accessing the islands that it has been militarizing over the past several years.
Trump's closest adviser, Steve Bannon (right) said in 2016 that he believed war with China over the islands was 'five-to-ten years' away
Rex Tillerson met with Chinese counterpart Wang Yi (right) at a G20 meeting on Friday, cooling the situation. But the Vinison's voyage in the sea will not help tensions
'It's a question of if those islands are in fact in international waters and not part of China proper, then yeah, we're going to make sure that we defend international territories from being taken over by one country,' Tillerson said.
He made the remarks in his confirmation hearing, in which he likened the expansion of China's influence to Russia's annexation of Crimea.
'We're going to have to send China a clear signal that, first, the island-building stops,' Tillerson said. 'And second, your access to those islands also is not going to be allowed.'
Fires were dampened somewhat on Friday as Tillerson met Chinese foreign secretary Wang Yi at a G20 gathering.
Wang told the secretary that the US and China share more similarities than differences.
But the arrival of the Vinison will do little to help tensions.
The Vinson has deployed to the South China Sea 16 times in its 35-year history, the US Navy said.
Washington says it does not take sides in the territorial disputes, despite sending in warships and planes to assert freedom of navigation in the sea several times.
kWhen I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open. At a quarter past eight on the morning of 6 August, 1945, she and her silhouette were burned into the granite. I stared at the shadow for an hour or more, unforgettably. When I returned many years later, it was gone: taken away, ‘disappeared’, a political embarrassment.
I have spent two years making a documentary film, The Coming War on China, in which the evidence and witnesses warn that nuclear war is no longer a shadow, but a contingency. The greatest build-up of American-led military forces since the Second World War is well under way. They are on the western borders of Russia, and in Asia and the Pacific, confronting China.
The great danger this beckons is not news, or it is news buried and distorted: a drumbeat of propaganda that echoes the psychopathic campaign embedded in public consciousness during much of the 20th century.
Like the renewal of post-Soviet Russia, the rise of China as an economic power is declared an ‘existential threat’ to the United States.
To counter this, in 2011 President Obama announced a ‘pivot to Asia’, which meant that almost two-thirds of US naval forces would be transferred to Asia and the Pacific by 2020.
Today, more than 400 American military bases encircle China with missiles, bombers, warships and, above all, nuclear weapons. From Australia north through the Pacific to Japan, Korea and across Eurasia to Afghanistan and India, the bases form, says one US strategist, ‘the perfect noose’.
A study by the RAND Corporation – which, since Vietnam, has planned America’s wars – is entitled War with China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable. Commissioned by the US Army, the authors evoke the Cold War when RAND made notorious the catch cry of its chief strategist, Herman Kahn – ‘thinking the unthinkable’. Kahn’s book, On Thermonuclear War, elaborated a plan for a ‘winnable’ nuclear war against the Soviet Union.
Today, his apocalyptic view is shared by those holding real power in the US: the Pentagon militarists and their neoconservative collaborators in the executive, intelligence agencies and Congress. The current Secretary of Defense, Ashley Carter, a verbose provocateur, says US policy is to confront those ‘who see America’s dominance and want to take that away from us’.
Today, more than 400 American military bases encircle China with missiles, bombers, warships and nuclear weapons.Charles Gatward: The Coming War on China, Darmouth Films
'Punish' China
In Washington, Amitai Etzioni, distinguished professor of international affairs at George Washington University. The US, he writes, ‘is preparing for a war with China, a momentous decision that so far has failed to receive a thorough review from elected officials, namely the White House and Congress.’
The US has deployed an aircraft carrier strike group to patrol the South China Sea, days after Beijing told Washington not to challenge its supposed ownership of the waterway.
This war would begin with a ‘blinding attack against Chinese anti-access facilities, including land and sea-based missile launchers… satellite and anti-satellite weapons’. The incalculable risk is that ‘deep inland strikes could be mistakenly perceived by the Chinese as pre-emptive attempts to take out its nuclear weapons, thus cornering them into “a terrible use-it-or-lose-it dilemma” [that would] lead to nuclear war.’
In 2015, the Pentagon released its Law of War Manual. ‘The United States,’ it says, ‘has not accepted a treaty rule that prohibits the use of nuclear weapons per se, and thus nuclear weapons are lawful weapons for the United States.’
In China, a strategist told me, ‘We are not your enemy, but if you [in the West] decide we are, we must prepare without delay.’ China’s military and arsenal are small compared to America’s. However, ‘for the first time,’ wrote Gregory Kulacki of the Union of Concerned Scientists, ‘China is discussing putting its nuclear missiles on high alert so that they can be launched quickly on warning of an attack… This would be a significant and dangerous change in Chinese policy… Indeed, the nuclear weapon policies of the United States are the most prominent external factor influencing Chinese advocates for raising the alert level of China’s nuclear forces.’
'I don't want it to be a fair fight. It it's a knife fight, I want to bring a gun'
Professor Ted Postol was scientific adviser to the head of US naval operations. An authority on nuclear weapons, he told me, ‘Everybody here wants to look like they’re tough. See, I got to be tough… I’m not afraid of doing anything military, I’m not afraid of threatening; I’m a hairy-chested gorilla. And we have gotten into a state, the United States has gotten into a situation where there’s a lot of sabre-rattling, and it’s really being orchestrated from the top.’
Andrew Krepinevich is a former Pentagon war planner and the influential author of war games against China. He wants to ‘punish’ China for extending its defences to the South China Sea. He advocates seeding the ocean with sea mines, sending in US special forces and enforcing a naval blockade. He told me, ‘Our first president, George Washington, said if you want peace, prepare for war.’
In 2015, in high secrecy, the US staged its biggest single military exercise since the Cold War. This was Talisman Sabre; an armada of ships and long-range bombers rehearsed an ‘Air-Sea Battle Concept for China’ – ASB – blocking sea lanes in the Straits of Malacca and cutting off China’s access to oil, gas and other raw materials from the Middle East and Africa.
It is such a provocation, and the fear of a US Navy blockade, that has seen China feverishly building strategic airstrips on disputed reefs and islets in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. Last July, the UN Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled against China’s claim of sovereignty over these islands. Although the action was brought by the Philippines, it was presented by leading American and British lawyers and can be traced to then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
In 2010, Clinton flew to Manila. She demanded that America’s former colony reopen the US military bases closed down in the 1990s following a popular campaign against the violence they generated, especially against Filipino women. She declared China’s claim on the Spratly Islands – which lie more than 7,500 miles (12,000 kilometres) from the United States – a threat to US ‘national security’ and to ‘freedom of navigation’.
Handed millions of dollars in arms and military equipment, the then government of President Benigno Aquino broke off bilateral talks with China and signed a secretive Enhanced Defense Co-operation Agreement with the US. This established five rotating US bases and restored a hated colonial provision that American forces and contractors were immune from Philippine law.
Under the rubric of ‘information dominance’ – the jargon for media manipulation on which the Pentagon spends more than $4 billion – the Obama administration launched a propaganda campaign that cast China, the world’s greatest trading nation, as a threat to ‘freedom of navigation’.
CNN led the way, its ‘national security reporter’ reporting excitedly from on board a US Navy surveillance flight over the Spratlys. The BBC persuaded frightened Filipino pilots to fly a single-engine Cessna over the disputed islands ‘to see how the Chinese would react’. None of the news reports questioned why the Chinese were building airstrips off their own coastline, or why American military forces were massing on China’s doorstep.
The designated chief propagandist is Admiral Harry Harris, the US military commander in Asia and the Pacific. ‘My responsibilities,’ he told The New York Times, ‘cover Bollywood to Hollywood, from polar bears to penguins.’ Never was imperial domination described as pithily.
Malleable media and obsequious partners
Harris is one of a brace of Pentagon admirals and generals briefing selected, malleable journalists and broadcasters, with the aim of justifying a threat as specious as that with which George W Bush and Tony Blair justified the destruction of Iraq.
‘The China trade’
James Bradley is the author of the best-selling The China Mirage: The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia (Little Brown, 2015). In these excerpts from his interview with John Pilger, he describes how modern America was built on the ‘China trade’.
James Bradley: For most of American history, it was illegal for someone like me to know a Chinese. The Chinese came to America to mine gold and build the railroads, and Americans decided we didn’t like competition. So in 1882 we had the Chinese Exclusion Acts, which kept the Chinese out of the United States for about 100 years. Just at the point we were putting up the Statue of Liberty saying we welcome everybody, we were erecting a wall saying: ‘We welcome everybody except those Chinese.’
John Pilger: And yet, for the American elite in the 19th century, China was a goldmine.
JB: A goldmine of drugs. Warren Delano, the grandfather of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was the American opium king of China; he was the biggest American opium dealer, second only to the British. Much of the east coast [establishment] of the United States – Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Princeton – was born of drug money. The American industrial revolution was funded by huge pools of money – where did this come from? It came from illegal drugs in the biggest market in the world: China.
JP: So the grandfather of the most liberal president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was a drug runner?
JB: Yes. Franklin Delano Roosevelt never made much money in his life. He had public-service jobs that were very lowly paid, but he inherited a fortune from Warren Delano, his father. Now if you scratch anyone with the name Forbes, you’ll find opium money… such as John Forbes Kerry…
JP: That’s the present Secretary of State.
JB: Yes. His great-grandfather [Francis Blackwell Forbes] was an opium dealer. How big was opium money? Opium money built the first industrial city in the United States. It built the first five railroads. But it wasn’t talked about. It was called the China trade.
In Los Angeles in September, Harris declared he was ‘ready to confront a revanchist Russia and an assertive China… If we have to fight tonight, I don’t want it to be a fair fight. If it’s a knife fight, I want to bring a gun. If it’s a gun fight, I want to bring in the artillery… and all our partners with their artillery.’
These ‘partners’ include South Korea, an American colony in all but name and the launch pad for the Pentagon’s Terminal High Altitude Air Defense system, known as THAAD, ostensibly aimed at North Korea. As Professor Postol points out, it targets China.
In Sydney, Australia, Harris called on China to ‘tear down its Great Wall in the South China Sea’. The imagery was front-page news. Australia is America’s most obsequious ‘partner’; its political elite, military, intelligence agencies and the dominant Murdoch media are fully integrated into what is known as the ‘alliance’. Closing the Sydney Harbour Bridge for the motorcade of a visiting American government ‘dignitary’ is not uncommon. The war criminal Dick Cheney was afforded this honour.
Although China is Australia’s biggest trader, on which much of the national economy relies, ‘confronting China’ is the diktat from Washington. The few political dissenters in Canberra risk McCarthyite smears in the Murdoch press. ‘You in Australia are with us come what may,’ said one of the architects of the Vietnam War, McGeorge Bundy. One of the most important US bases is Pine Gap near Alice Springs. Founded by the CIA, it spies on China and all of Asia, and is a vital contributor to Washington’s murderous war by drone in the Middle East.
In October, Richard Marles, the defence spokesperson of the main Australian opposition party, the Labor Party, demanded that ‘operational decisions’ in provocative acts against China be left to military commanders in the South China Sea. In other words, a decision that could mean war with a nuclear power should not be taken by an elected leader or a parliament but by an admiral or a general.
This is the Pentagon line, a historic departure for any state calling itself a democracy. The ascendancy of the Pentagon in Washington – which Daniel Ellsberg has called a silent coup – is reflected in the record $5 trillion the United States has spent on aggressive wars since 9/11, according to a study by Brown University. The million dead in Iraq and the flight of 12 million refugees from at least four countries are the consequence.
‘I state clearly and with conviction,’ said Obama in 2009, ‘America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.’ Under Obama, nuclear warhead spending has risen higher than under any president since the end of the Cold War. A mini nuclear weapon is planned. Known as the B61 Model 12, it will mean, says General James Cartwright, former vice-chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that ‘going smaller [makes its use] more thinkable’.
Peaceful resistance
The Japanese island of Okinawa has 32 military installations, from which Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan and Iraq have been attacked by the United States. Today, the principal target is China, with whom Okinawans have close cultural and trade ties.
In 1959 a US fighter plane crashed into Miyamori School, Okinawa, killing a number of children.
There are military aircraft constantly in the sky over Okinawa; they sometimes crash into homes and schools. People cannot sleep, teachers cannot teach. Wherever they go in their own country, they are fenced in and told to keep out.
A hugely popular Okinawan movement has been growing since a 12-year-old girl was gang-raped by US troops in 1995. It was one of hundreds of such crimes, many of them never prosecuted. Barely acknowledged in the wider world, the resistance in Okinawa is a vivid expression of how ordinary people can peacefully take on a military giant, and threaten to win.
Their campaign has elected Japan’s first anti-base governor, Takeshi Onaga, and presented an unfamiliar hurdle to the Tokyo government and the ultra-nationalist Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s plans to repeal Japan’s ‘peace constitution’.
The resistance leaders include Fumiko Shimabukuro, aged 87, a survivor of the Second World War, when a quarter of Okinawans died in the American invasion. Fumiko and hundreds of others took refuge in beautiful Henoko Bay, which she is now fighting to save. The US wants to destroy the bay in order to extend runways for its bombers. As we gathered peacefully outside the US base, Camp Schwab, giant Sea Stallion helicopters hovered over us for no reason other than to intimidate.
Fumiko Shimabukuro (right), an Okinawa World War Two survivor, is now fighting to save a bay from US bombers. With her is Eiko Ginoza. Bruno Sorrentino and John Pilger
Across the East China Sea lies the Korean island of Jeju, a semi-tropical sanctuary and World Heritage Site declared ‘an island of world peace’. On this island of world peace has been built one of the most provocative military bases in the world, less than 400 miles (650 kilometres) from Shanghai. The fishing village of Gangjeong is dominated by a South Korean naval base purpose-built for US aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines and destroyers equipped with the Aegis missile system, aimed at China.
A people’s resistance to these war preparations has become a presence on Jeju for almost a decade. Every day, often twice a day, villagers, Catholic priests and supporters from all over the world stage a religious mass that blocks the gates of the base. In a country where political demonstrations are often banned, unlike powerful religions, the tactic has produced an inspiring spectacle.
The world is shifting east, but the astonishing vision of Eurasia from China is barely understood in the West
One of the leaders, Father Mun Jeong-hyeon, told me, ‘I sing four songs every day at the base, regardless of the weather. I sing in typhoons – no exception. To build this base, they destroyed the environment, and the life of the villagers, and we should be a witness to that. They want to rule the Pacific.
South Korean woodcarver and Catholic priest, Father Mun Jeong-hyeon, leads a daily protest against the building of a naval base that the US will use to target China. Bruno Sorrentino and John Pilger
I flew to Shanghai for the first time in more than a generation. When I was last in China, the loudest noise I remember was the tinkling of bicycle bells; Mao Zedong had recently died, and the cities seemed dark places, in which foreboding and expectation competed. Within a few years, Deng Xiaoping, the ‘man who changed China’, was the ‘paramount leader’. Nothing prepared me for the astonishing changes today.
I met Lijia Zhang, a Beijing journalist and typical of a new class of outspoken mavericks. Her best-selling book has the ironic title Socialism Is Great! She grew up during the chaotic and brutal Cultural Revolution and has lived in the US and Europe. ‘Many Americans imagine,’ she said, ‘that Chinese people live a miserable, repressed life with no freedom whatsoever. The [idea of] the yellow peril has never left them… They have no idea there are some 500 million people being lifted out of poverty, and some would say it’s 600 million.’
China today: a tourist snaps the bull of capitalism in front of Shanghai’s Bund hotel, bedecked with communist flags.Bruno Sorrentino and John Pilger
She described modern China as a ‘golden cage’. ‘Since the reforms started,’ she said, ‘and we’ve become so much better off, China has become one of the most unequal societies in the world. There are lots of protests now: typically, land being grabbed by officials for commercial development. But farmers are more aware of their rights; and young factory workers are demanding a better wage and conditions.’
The world is shifting east
China today presents perfect ironies, not least the house in Shanghai where Mao and his comrades secretly founded the Communist Party of China in 1921. Today, it stands in the heart of a very capitalist shopping district; you walk out of this communist shrine with your Little Red Book and your plastic bust of Mao into the embrace of Starbucks, Apple, Cartier, Prada.
Would Mao be shocked? I doubt it. Five years before his great revolution in 1949, he sent this secret message to Washington. ‘China must industrialize,’ he wrote. ‘This can only be done by free enterprise. Chinese and American interests fit together, economically and politically. America need not fear that we will not be co-operative. We cannot risk any conflict.’
Mao offered to meet Franklin Roosevelt in the White House, and his successor Harry Truman, and his successor Dwight Eisenhower. He was rebuffed, or wilfully ignored. The opportunity that might have changed contemporary history, prevented wars in Asia and saved countless lives was lost because the truth of these overtures was denied in 1950s Washington ‘when the catatonic Cold War trance,’ wrote the critic James Naremore, ‘held our country in its rigid grip’.
Eric Li, a Shanghai venture capitalist and social scientist, told me, ‘I make the joke: in America you can change political parties, but you can’t change the policies. In China you cannot change the party, but you can change policies. The political changes that have taken place in China this past 66 years have been wider and broader and greater than probably in any other major country in living memory.’
Beijing journalist and outspoken maverick, Lijia Zhang.Beijing journalist and outspoken maverick, Lijia Zhang.
For all the difficulties of those left behind by China’s rapid growth, such as workers from the countryside living on the edge in cities built for conspicuous consumption, and those Tiananmen brave-hearts still challenging ‘the centre’, the Party, what is striking is the widespread sense of optimism that buttresses the epic of change.
The world is shifting east; but the astonishing vision of Eurasia from China is barely understood in the West. The ‘New Silk Road’ is a ribbon of trade, ports, pipelines and high-speed trains all the way to Europe. China, the world’s leader in rail technology, is negotiating with 28 countries for routes on which trains will reach up to 400 kilometres an hour. This opening to the world has the approval of much of humanity and, along the way, is uniting China and Russia; and they are doing it entirely without ‘us’ in the West.
We – or many of us – remain in thrall to the US, which has intervened violently in the affairs of a third of the members of the United Nations, destroying governments, subverting elections, imposing blockades. In the past five years, the US has shipped deadly weapons to 96 countries, most of them poor. Dividing societies in order to control them is US policy, as the tragedies in Iraq and Syria demonstrate.
Protesters on Jeju, South Korea. Bruno Sorrentino and John Pilger
‘I believe in American exceptionalism with every fibre of my being,’ said Barack Obama, evoking the national fetishism of the 1930s. This modern cult of superiority is Americanism, the world’s dominant predator. Accompanied by a brainwashing that presents it as enlightenment on the march, the conceit insinuates our lives.
In September, the Atlantic Council, a US geopolitical thinktank, published a report that predicted a Hobbesian world ‘marked by the breakdown of order, violent extremism [and] an era of perpetual war’. The new enemies were a ‘resurgent’ Russia and an ‘increasingly aggressive’ China. Only heroic America can save us.
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