The United States on September 13 said the Russian news outlet RT is taking orders directly from the Kremlin and working with Russian military intelligence to spread disinformation around the world to undermine democracies.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States has gathered new evidence that exposes cooperation between RT and four other subsidiaries of the Rossia Segodnya media group, and it intends to warn other countries of the threat of the disinformation.
In addition to RT, Rossia Segodnya operates RIA Novosti, TV-Novosti, Ruptly, and Sputnik, but the announcement on September 13 focused largely on RT. The outlet, formerly known as Russia Today, has previously been sanctioned for its work to allegedly spread Kremlin propaganda and disinformation.
<CRY> You are absolutely right. I cannot rightfully call myself center-right anymore. The right has literally jumped off a cliff and I’m stuck here shaking my fists in anger at the sky. I probably am close to neo-lib. I would have used to call myself libertarian but whoo boy that went sideways. It’s a sad reality for me. Maybe that’s why I’m so upset about it all.
So here’s a surprising thing about China’s Navy. Besides small arms, naval ships are what China sells the most. There are a lot of weird political reasons for this, for example fighter jets and tanks are almost exclusively sold to close allies and allies just isn’t China’s thing. Just look what happened to Egypt’s purchases of SU-35s as they got hit by CAATSA. So China decided to focus on a niche to get the word out that they’re selling high end military equipment, not just small arms. Something that would go under the radar of many super powers (read USA) and would still be able to show off high end equipment. Secondly, you have to remember who China’s buyers are. SE Asia is mostly island nations, so they don’t go for the more conventional equipment that you’re thinking of. They’re islands, so they’re more likely to buy maritime equipment rather than ground assault equipment that you would see pretty much everywhere else on the planet.
I mean just recently you have Thailand and Cambodia both buying Chinese Naval warships. Here’s a super fun one, Malaysia is one of their customers. A country they’re having a spat with over the SCS. So you have Malaysia buying Chinese warships to protect Malaysia from China.
https://www.voanews.com/a/malaysia-buying-chinese-ships-to-protect-waters-from-china-others/3780026.html
That all said times they are a changing. Egypt just signed a deal for J-10CE fighter jets and Algeria is ready to buy VT-4 tanks. Both are abandoning Russia in favor of Chinese military equipment for very obvious reasons. This is likely one of the reasons China is in no hurry to see the end of the war. Watching Russia destroy itself and having all of it’s customer’s go to China doesn’t seem like it’s against China’s interests at the moment.
Yeah, exporting some smaller craft is definitely not out of the question. It’s always nice when you can gather up additional buyers for your kit, that way you can leverage additional economies of scale to keep your own costs down. They are building large amounts of naval assets that won’t be suitable for export though. Patrol craft are one thing. Larger seagoing warships are another–most countries simply don’t maintain a very large fleet of them, as they’re very expensive to operate and not broadly useful during peacetime outside of certain niche situations. Since its the type of thing where a few countries would maybe buy a few every few decades, it’s never really going to be a big money maker for anyone.
That’s an interesting insight on moving into Russia’s export market. I hadn’t thought of that, but it actually makes a tremendous amount of sense. lol Aircraft are definitely a hotter export market. They’re just something you want in greater numbers, generally speaking, and have a much broader appeal.
You’re smart, I like you. What your saying is absolutely correct which is exactly why China by and large doesn’t build the large sea crafts and instead focuses on littoral patrol ships. Even the US had noticed it.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2021/11/05/yes-china-has-more-warships-than-the-usa-thats-because-chinese-ships-are-small/
The US states it’s because the Chinese navy is focused on power at home and not power projection. I say it’s for sales purposes.
Now, China also makes the large super ships. But those are made in small numbers. They have their type 55 destroyer that has been compared to the Agies which I think there are 8 and their 3 aircraft carriers. But those ships are basically marketing brochures. They catch the attention of the media and not much else. These you hear talked about all the time, and China sails them everywhere for photo ops.
I know it’s weird, but it actually is easier to think of China as a corporation that’s gone off the rails rather than a country.
This is just off of wikipedia, so I’m not sure how up-to-date it is:
3 aircraft carriers 4 landing helicopter docks 12 amphibious transport docks 32 landing ship tanks 33 landing ship mediums 58 destroyers 54 frigates 75 corvettes 150 missile boats 26 submarine chasers 17+ gunboats 36 mine countermeasure vessels 79 submarines 19 replenishment ships 232 auxiliaries
Those corvettes, missile and gun boats could all be considered “small”. The frigates and up are all capable of deep water work further out, independently if necessary. Interestingly, it’s almost a revival of the 19th century French naval doctrine Jeune École, which was typified by a heavy reliance on torpedo boats, with the idea that that would be a cheaper way to operate a navy while still posing a threat to the larger battleships that dominated naval strategy during that period.
It’s certainly more than just a big business. Which is also smart, a large country would want a significant blue water navy if it hopes for influence on the global stage. Even the UK and France have them, and they are much smaller countries. It would just be very illogical for China to ignore blue water capabilities.
True, while a lot of it is clearly for business purposes. I may have been flippant stating their blue water navy stuff, that absolutely won’t sell, is just marketing material. In truth, their blue water Navy moves which only began like 10 years ago or so is in fairness quite impressive. They’ve created large destroyers that the US is saying is on par with Ageis and aircraft carriers that have shown similar sortie rates to UK’s carriers. If it really was just for show as I’m trying to say, it would have probably been more like Russian equipment. What with their sole aircraft carrier constantly catching fire and their stealth fighter jet that they’re scared to put into the front line. The fact that China can demonstrate the equipment working on a fairly consistent basis in different weather conditions should tell me they’re much more serious about all this than I give them credit for.
That said, this shift is too new to know what they’re really thinking. Plus, they absolutely have been parading around the Type 55 to future prospective buyers of their equipment. Yet there’s also clearly some movement towards actually being able to use this stuff. For example about 4 years ago, India showed off to the world that they could operate both of their aircraft carriers simultaneously. Something that at the time at least China was unable to do. However, last month they sailed all three of their carriers out simultaneously. Clearly this is an attempted signal that we do have enough trained officers and we’re not just building equipment without training soldiers.
China’s just done the this stuff is for sales for so long it’s honestly hard for me to see it any other way. On top of them actually doing the training starting so recently that it’s hard for me to say this is a permanent shift and not just a way to throw off the comments from India mocking their training.
All in all, this IMO is why China was befriending Russia to begin with. China has powerful technology, but ironically they don’t have the bodies to put behind them. The one child policy has basically made every parent in China refuse to let their kids become soldiers. Russia on the other hand seemed to have a limitless supply of bodies to throw at a problem as they’re doing in Ukraine. With China’s best friends constantly facing off with terrorists, Pakistan, Myanmar, Saudi Arabi, UAE, Egypt and many more I think it made perfect sense China wanted access to Wagner to deal with this. Then, uh… Well Russia PROVED they have the bodies to throw in the grinder because they threw the bodies into the grinder.
China does have a very large number of active duty servicemembers, though I don’t think that’s all that surprising when they’re one of the planet’s largest countries, and have been steadily modernizing over the last few decades. I also imagine their unusually high youth unemployment numbers contribute to the ease of recruitment. When you have over a billion population, keeping 1% of them active duty is probably not particularly difficult.
Russia has the advantage of global recruitment, and are offering frankly huge financial incentives to anyone willing to fight. It’s got to be rapidly draining their coffers. I suspect Xi is mainly just war profiteering off of them. In light of western sanctions, this has probably been the best period to be a Chinese exporter in many years. lol Russia is likely willing to pay top dollar for whatever they require to fuel their war machine. And there’s always their raw material exports as well.