With China involved in a active campaign of confusion and obscuration of the state of its affairs internally who can say what is credible evidence? This goes double regarding Chinese military affairs. China needs to come off its obsession with paranoia and provide meaningful facts.

There actually is a way to sort out credible evidence from less credible evidence but it takes a while to appreciate the sources they’re coming from and to appreciate the nuance that even some reliable sources are never fully correct, and then to cross check rumours and facts to find a “most likely” consensus scenario.

It would obviously be far easier for us if the Chinese military lowered its opsec a little bit, but I think their overall policy has done some wonders for deceiving potential competitors about their actual military capabilities and upcoming weapons systems.

Why? Is it because he presents a view that does not agree with your glowing opinions on China?

It’s because his opinions are formed from the basis of poor evidence and he is not receptive to deconstructions of his positions and why they are incorrect, and continues maintaining his opinions despite evidence and arguments suggesting the contrary.

In other words, he seems to have preconceived positions on this matter and is more interested in finding random articles and using convoluted logic which supports his preconceived position, rather than using common sense logic and more reliable evidence to form a position instead.

I think the same.. The J-11 production rates are not exactly stellar, might be quality issues?

Hard to tell regarding flanker productionr ates — in prior years we had pretty consistent pictures of the factory and could estimate new J-11Bs and BSs produced, and also estimate deliveries per year by looking at new regiments being stood up. They averaged about a regiment (24 ish aircraft) per year, I think, which is fairly decent.

But in the last year or two, pictures have dried up a little, and I think J-11B and BS production has begun to wind down as they’ve possibly been modifying the line for new J-15 production and J-16 production… and we don’t know how many of those they’ve actually produced. There are at least a dozen J-15s in service, and there are rumours that the first J-16 regiment is entering trials as well.

at any rate, even if SAC could produce 40 flankers per year for the air force, I doubt they would produce flankers for Pakistan or any other export customer (even if they had Russia’s consent) given their domestic needs are very great.

I think the recent perceived “lull” in flanker production from SAC is partly because they’re moving to producing J-15s and J-16s from J-11B/BS, and also because of a slightly degree of greater secrecy in some military matters, across China overall, reducing the pictures we may get from the airfield.

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Also, I find the thread’s opening suggestion to be a little bit strange. China has never shown any desire to export flankers before (as multiple members have said prior), nor would I imagine why they’d have any issues with Pakistan buying Russian flankers (there’s nothing to “take sitting down” in the first place)… and Su-35 is a developed and ready aircraft for purchase, while J-11D only first flew recently at the beginning of the year so it’ll be a few years until J-11D is even ready for China’s air force while Su-35 can be delivered far faster.

I can’t help but feel this thread is a bit needlessly confrontational, almost like it’s intended to compare “which is the best flanker” between Su-35 (and Su-27M) with the unknown quantity of J-11D.

Either you are incredible naive or are being deliberately obtuse if you do not understand that this stock market meltdown in only one small symptom of the malaise China is suffering.

China’s economy is never going to grow at double digits again. 6-7% is basically the new acceptable normal.

The stock market meltdown is because the overwhelming of the investors are mom-and-pop retail investors who lack good education and basic information on how to make investments. Combine that with very high savings rate in the Chinese population overall, as well as a govt decision to stop the housing bubble led the uninformed investors to pile into the stock market without knowing enough about the basics of trading and relying on excess rumour mongering, grapevines, and superstition as the drivers of the massive boom, bubble, and subsequent drop we see. Recent govt assistance to the stock market hasn’t helped and instead created moral hazards.

The stock market drop is worth looking at just out of interest’s sake, and its numbers captures headlines, but there are other more meaningful indicators of the Chinese economy than the stock market, which I agree with you on.

If the stock market in China really was connected to the real economy, then the Chinese economy should have collapsed in 1992-1994 and in 2007-8 when the volatility was as great if not greater than they are now. That said there are some differences between now and then, however the exposure of the real economy to the stock market is still relatively small today compared to western economies… and the massive rise in stock value before each of those bubbles did not also lead to greater consumption and economic growth in that region of time either.

The slowdown in the Chinese economy is structural.

Absolutely it’s structural, but China’s been growing unsustainably for a decade or more now, and a cooling down of the Chinese economy to slower more sustainable growth has been the goal for a number of years now. Whether the slowdown is controlled and healthy, or if it results in a hard landing is the trillion dollar question.

And the CCP is seeing that there are no brakes on this run away locomotive they have lost control over. The image of invincibility China has worked so hard to create has been shown to be at the end of the day a mere facade. The problem the Chinese government is now facing is unrest. And China has never fared well during times of unrest.

I don’t think China has worked to create any facade of invincibility — if anything more often than not it is the western media who fret over China’s growth, and either tend to fear the prospect of China becoming economically dominant or hoping that China economically collapses. It’s a brutally bipolar way of thinking, and would be amusing if it weren’t so logically frustrating.

The surplus of young males in Chinese society today presents a dangerous situation for China to solve. Several times when there has been an unbalance of young males in Chinese society it led to situations like the Nein Rebellion. And history demonstrates that such male surplus societies like we see in China today cannot be governed by anything less than an authoritarian political system. Furthermore, and this is the interesting part, high-sex-ratio societies typically develop a foreign policy style crafted to retain the respect and allegiance of its surplus males — a swaggering, belligerent, provocative style.

Sounds like China today doesn’t it?

So you think more males to females means a more repressive government?
Okay then, doing a bit of googling we can see a site for 2010 gender statistics for various countries:
http://www.geohive.com/earth/pop_gender.aspx

China’s male to female ratio (as of 2010) was about 108. India’s is only slightly lower at 107. Saudi Arabia’s was 124, Qatar was 311, UAE was 228… North Korea’s was 96 (i.e.: more females than males) and South Korea’s was 99, which is actually higher than the North Koreans! The US male to female gender ratio was 97 — also higher than North Korea.

going by your logic that gender imbalance should equate to repressive governments, then in 2010 the US and South Korea should have been more repressive than North Korea with more belligerent and provocative foreign policies, and Qatar should be the most aggressive and repressive country in the world with its massive 311 ratio. heh.

You can find a number of similar contradictions using other estimates of gender ratios. Point is, the logical inferences and use of statistics to support your position is unfortunately unfounded. If gender ratios were the only thing which controlled for government behaviour then we should be able to fit the behaviour of all countries at present and in the past in relation to their gender ratios on a spectrum of repressiveness and aggression to non repressiveness and peace… but once we do fit them onto such a spectrum it obviously doesn’t work.

The author should keep an eye on real world events regarding China. At the rate that China is bleeding cash his scenario should be talking about civil strife in Chinese cities as the collapsing Chinese economy causes the PLA to be deployed maintaining order in Chinese cities. By 2018 China won’t have time to undertake military adventures as the central government will have its hands full with internal security problems

Lol, I don’t know, there are more than a few armchair analysts and even some serious political commentators who think that if their masturbatory socio-economic collapse fantasies occurs in China, the evil commie dictatorship is more likely to start a war to “divert attention away from internal failures” or something… :highly_amused:

The story, while entertaining, is not worthy of serious discussion even on this forum. There are so many failures in logic.
-Three Chinese carriers by 2018? Get real
-He talks about disputed islands being the ones with Japan… does he even know how large the actual islands are and the kind of topography they have? You’d be hard pressed to land a brigade of tanks along with paratroopers and marines… and for what reason? To get them killed by airstrikes?
-Why on earth would China be bothered by attacking the Japanese islands if the Japanese haven’t done anything to provoke them? What kind of failure of geopolitical logic would cause the Chinese to go on such a ridiculous crusade, have they taken leave of their senses?
-What on earth does specifying the USN admiral being female have to do with anything? Is it meant to show US weakness? A bit sexist ain’t it.
-100 J-20s by 2018? Yeah, nah.
-Where is the USN CSG through all this? USN SSNs? USN MPAs? USN SAGs? USN BAMS? USAF fighters, bombers? Are we supposed to believe the Chinese manage to put together a three carrier strong battle group with amphibious assault ships and ventured out of port to the disputed islands without anyone noticing and without any heightened US presence? Hell, are we to believe that such a task force was brought together overnight and the US was caught off guard? It would take weeks and months for such a group to be put together and the US would hardly stand by without doing anything and leaving only an LHA on station
-Counter attacks by tomahawks would be able to defeat un-hardened structures easily, even assuming the Chinese military had somehow managed to “harden” all their command and control centres and what not… air strips of naval bases, naval ports, radars, would all be easy targets.

… it’s written almost like a straw man, but Solomon really does actually fear such a scenario if anyone reads his blog even semi occasionally. Every single new military developement by the Chinese military is perceived as the herald of the inevitable Chinese pre-emptive first strike by Solomon, sigh.

China needs two separate designs…

1- modern Turboprop for long range / maritime loiter capability… something like a 21st century Tu-142.
2- maybe an unmanned high speed long range bomber

They already have Y-8Q for the MPA role…

I doubt the next generation bomber will be high speed, almost definitely going to be subsonic stealthy flying wing. it may be optionally manned going by intl trends.