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CHINA: Red Tide Rising
By Ted Sampley
March/April/May 1997
Our politicians are scheming to send the United States military back to Vietnam where America may find its teenage sons again bleeding and dying. This time, instead of wading the quagmire of blood fighting a "police action" against the communist Vietnamese, our young men will be used as a "diplomatic and military shield," protecting the communist Vietnamese and their American business partners from a much anticipated rising tide of Red Chinese military action in Southeast Asia.
The American people have not been told that officials of the U.S. State Department and Pentagon have been for several years plotting a U.S./Vietnam mutual security agreement to replace a similar pact that the Vietnamese had with the Soviet Union before it collapsed.
Cloaked in the supposed effort to account for American servicemen still missing from the Vietnam War, the U.S. government established the Joint Task Force for a Full Accounting (JTF-FA). Instead of experienced intelligence analysts and personnel familiar with and equipped to deal with searching for MIAs, JTF-FA was staffed with veteran Operation Desert Storm officers and men experienced only in infantry, artillery, and logistics operations.
The secret plan will bloom into view now that the U.S. has established full normalized relations with Vietnam and has posted a U.S. ambassador to Hanoi. The new U.S. Ambassador will soon formally negotiate and sign the mutual defense pact. The officers and men of JTF-FA can then help organize the nucleus for the Joint U.S. Military Assistance Group-Vietnam (JUSMAGV).
Since the late 1980s, the Red Chinese, driven by an unholy desire to demonstrate that they will no longer allow other nations to limit their ability to act where they believe their interests are involved, have been patiently and steadily maneuvering to reduce or eliminate America's ability to constrain them.
To that end, intelligence analysts say, the Chinese military is acquiring specific weapons and drawing up contingency battle plans that will be targeted on U.S. forward-deployed units in the Pacific. They are purchasing Russian-made warships, surface-to-surface missiles and warplanes at an accelerating pace. The Russians are selling the latest in military technology and greed driven business interests in the West are selling them much needed civilian technology.
Red Chinese operatives have been extremely busy lately in and around the United States. Not only have they managed to gain access to the Clinton White House by purchasing influence in recent U.S. elections with secret campaign donations, they also leased an abandoned naval base in Long Beach, California and gained control of two strategic ports, one at each end of the Panama Canal.
In March, 1995, Beijing announced a 21 percent rise in its defense budget to the equivalent of $7.5 billion. Private analysts estimate its actual defense spending is closer to $25 billion annually.
Much of the effort is concentrated on building its navy, which U.S. officials say is likely to include modern aircraft carriers capable of projecting Beijing's power throughout Asia.
China has amassed more than $100 billion in foreign reserves and will acquire $60 billion more when it takes control of Hong Kong in July. U.S. advocates for more trade with the Reds justify their evil dealings by claiming money from their trade will better the lives of China's citizens, therefore helping to guarantee peace. But the money is not going to the people, it is being used to fund a deadly arsenal and to build an industrial base that will make the ambitions of China's ruling Communist dictatorship independent of external constraints by the next century.
To fund their nationalist yearning to replace the United States as a dominant power in Asia, the Reds have available literally billions of dollars earned in lopsided trade deals with Western countries. For every four dollars in Chinese products sold to the United States, only one dollar's worth of U.S. goods are sold in China.
According to the U.S. Commerce Department, China's fastest growing sectors are aircraft and parts, electric power systems, computer software, telecommunications equipment and automobile parts. Ironically, U.S. corporate giants such as Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Motorola and General Motors are in China producing these goods. But the profits are coming at a apocalyptic price. In building their plants there and teaching the Chinese how to produce these products, U.S. businesses are creating a dangerous potential competitor for U.S. products and are undermining the industrial capabilities of the United States.
Chinese produced goods can be found in every aspect of American life. In March, Rep. James A. Traficant (D-OH) demanded that the Pentagon investigate why a military base in his state distributed boots to Air Force personnel that were made in China.
As one observer pointed out, there is something fundamentally wrong in America when even G.I. Joe, the all-American hero toy that is coveted by millions of American boys, bears the inscription "Made in China" on his dog tags. What is worse, however, is that the Reds are using profits earned by selling toys like "G.I. Joe" to buy deadly missiles which are aimed at U.S. bases.
In February 1995, China took delivery of the first of four new patrol submarines purchased from the Russians. Some analysts estimate China has made arrangements to purchase about 20 more.
The U.S. Veteran Dispatch, in its February/March 1995 edition, published an in-depth report regarding potential confrontation between the United States and China over Vietnam and the oil-rich Spratly Islands.
The disputes are over an estimated $1trillion worth of oil and natural gas resources buried beneath the Spratlys, a long string of rocky outcrops--some one thousand islets and reefs, which straddle strategic shipping lanes. The Spratlys are located about 250 miles east of Vietnam in the South China Sea.
The following U.S. Veteran Dispatch story reported in the January 1994 issue and headlined:
U.S Carrier, Chinese Sub, Squared Off --Beijing promises to shoot to kill the next time underscores Red China's growing propensity for confrontation:
The American aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk and a Chinese nuclear submarine squared off in international waters off China's coast Oct. 27-29, 1994, the Los Angeles Times reported in December.
According to the Times, shortly after the incident, which occurred in the Yellow Sea, China served notice through a U.S. military official in Beijing that the next time such a situation arises, China's orders will be to shoot to kill.
Although in the end no shots were fired, U.S. officials acknowledge the confrontation was serious. The Navy's carrier battle group in the region included not only the Kitty Hawk, but also three cruisers, one frigate, one submarine, two logistics ships and an estimated 10,000 American naval personnel.
The incident began after the captain of the Kitty Hawk dispatched S-3 anti-submarine warfare aircraft and dropped sonic devices designed to track the nuclear sub.
Apparently agitated, the Chinese military responded by scrambling jet fighters which flew within sight of the American planes.
Finally, after the Chinese submarine withdrew to its base at the Chinese naval port of Qingdao, the U.S. aircraft carrier was pulled out of the area.
The confrontations highlight some of the gunboat diplomacy involving the United States, China and North Korea that surrounded the U.S.-North Korean nuclear agreement reached Oct. 17, 1994.
In the South China Sea, another dispute has been brewing which could potentially involve the U.S. and China in other military confrontations, this time over ownership and control of the little known, but potentially oil-rich Spratly Islands.
At present, the confrontations are confined to China, Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines, but American oil men eager to compete for oil drilling rights in what is considered one of the most rich oil and natural gas fields yet to be exploited in the world may draw the United States into the dispute.
In 1988, after Hanoi officially announced it owned the Spratlys, Chinese naval vessels sunk three Vietnamese gunboats in the Spratlys and openly threatened to take further action against the Vietnamese if they continued to contest Chinese claims to the Spratly Island chain.
China warned Vietnam in January 1993 to either resolve the question of ownership of the Spratly Islands by "peaceful means" or China would, in 1997, take over all the Spratly Islands by military means.
China then deployed dozens of its naval vessels, including three Soviet-built Romeo-class attack submarines, in and around the Spratly Islands, vowing to defend the oil exploration and drilling operations of Crestone Oil, a Denver, Colorado-based oil company which the Chinese granted exclusive rights to in 1992.
Vietnam, in turn, granted other U.S. oil companies, including such giants as Mobil and Exxon, rights to drill in the same Spratly fields claimed by China.
While U.S. businessmen were pushing U.S. politicians to declare the United States POW/MIA problem with Hanoi solved and normalize relations, China was busy, and unreported, building a massive military presence encircling Vietnam and the oil and natural gas-rich offshore waters.
Within an hour flight time from the east coast of Vietnam at Zhanjiang, China has built facilities for basing aircraft capable of refueling, in the air, modern jet bombers extending their range hundreds of miles south to the Spratly Islands.
South of Zhanjiang, 300 miles east of Vietnam, the Chinese constructed a massive airstrip and warship docks on Woody Island, which is part of the Parcel Island chain they seized decades ago from Vietnam.
In the Bay of Bengal, west of Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, China has established key military positions, including an electronics monitoring station and has access to a naval base it built for Burma on Hanggyl Island.
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