China's Ultimate Secret Weapon?

Where is the target?

China has a novel strategic theory and this time, it is not for the East China Sea.
The Global Times, a publication affiliated to the Communist Party’s mouthpiece The People’s Daily today affirmed that smog could thwart missile attacks and hamper hostile air reconnaissance.
That is indeed an interesting military doctrine!
The Global Times' headline is "The impact of smog on military equipment".
It argues: "Smog may affect people’s health and daily lives … but on the battlefield, it can serve as a defensive advantage in military operations."
The South China Morning Post (see below) commented on the Chinese netizen's reactions to China's new defensive weapon.
However, the same day, China Tibet Online, affilated to Xinhua, reported: 'No hazy weather in Tibet'.
It quoted the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection: "No hazy weather has been witnessed in Tibet even though it has visited 20 provinces in inland China and caused severe air pollution. Tibet is much colder compared with many inland areas, but is much cleaner."
That's not good for the Chinese defence preparedness in their Western sector?
The Chinese website explains: "Recently, it is reported on many media that hazy weather has hit 104 cities in middle-east China continuously, and the National Meteorological Centre has sent orange alert to heavy fog and haze.
The polluted air condition has caused traffic troubles and serious impact on people's health. Some cities like Nanjing, the capital city of Jiangsu Province, have even suspended classes of secondary and elementary schools.
However, none of that happens in Tibet where blue sky is the most common scene in winter."
According to the latest White Paper 'Development and Progress of Tibet' issued by the Information Office of the State Council in October, the Tibet Plateau is "the third-cleanest area in the world in terms of its environment after the South Pole and North Pole".
The White Paper affirms that Tibet has a clean and transparent atmospheric environment, and similar contents of pollutants to the North Pole.
Does it mean that it is bad for China's defence of its borders with India?
The Indian Ministry of Defence should seriously study this issue?
Another possibility is that the PLA has stakes in some polluting industries and the generals are trying to preserve their interests.
It is however surprising that the 'official' press is allowed to publish such a non-sense.

The clean Tibetan plateau

Smog? It bolsters military defence, says Chinese nationalist newspaper
South China Morning Post
December,8 2013
Chris Luo
A nationalist newspaper has tried to put a positive spin on China’s smog, claiming it is conducive to the country's military defence strategy. Smog, it argued, could thwart missile attacks and hamper hostile reconnaissance.
The article in the Global Times under the headline, "The impact of smog on military equipment". It has provoked a lively discussion on Sina Weibo - and also some angry comments.
Missile guidance that relies on human sight, infrared rays and lasers could be affected by smog in varing degrees, the article said. It explained that tiny particles in the air contributing to air pollution could hinder missile guidance systems.
The article said that during the Kosovo war, soldiers of the then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia used smoke from burning tyres to hamper Nato air strikes. The smoke reduced visibility, hindering reconnaissance efforts, the article said.
Photographic reconnaissance equipment employed by satellites, unmanned aerial vehicles and reconnaissance vehicles would be rendered useless by smog it added.
The article also said that during the first Gulf war, sand storms reduced the identification distances of thermal imaging equipment on US tanks from 2,500 metres to 800 metres, while optical detection of Iraqi tanks was reduced to almost nil.
For most of the past week, extensive areas of eastern China including the cities of Shanghai and Nanjing have been hit by severe smog, the worst so far this winter, which some described as an “airpocalypse”.
Smog in Shanghai today. Photo: Brandon King Chinese internet users were unimpressed by the Global Times article, which was seen as an attempt by authorities to put a positive spin on deteriorating air quality and to divert public anger from official inaction.
“Are you saying the smog is not air pollution, but a national defence measure?” a blogger said on Sina Weibo microblog.
Another reader who commented on the article said: “But enemies wouldn’t need to resort to missile attacks if the smog continues to increase – people will simply be poisoned to death.”
Yet some others compared the article to a widely-reposted comment made by a military spokesperson who earlier this year claimed that US nuclear submarines would avoid China’s eastern Yellow Sea because their propeller’s might become entangled by ropes used by farmers to grow seaweed.
“After seaweed, China has added another secret weapon to the country’s national defence arsenal – smog,” one Internet user quipped.

The Dark Sky of Beijing

Do you know why the Chinese love Tibet so much?
It is simple, they breathe better on the Roof of the World.
Scientific research conducted by the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Research Institute of China Academy of Sciences shows that the air quality of the Namtso Lake situated in southern Tibet, east of Lhasa is as good as that of Antarctica.
It is not the case in China, particularly in Beijing.
The sky created havoc for the Chinese citizens at the end of the long Mid-Autumn Festival Holiday.
Xinhua reported that Beijing had to close down expressways and airports, preventing the return of holiday goers at the end of the Golden Week. In Beijing, visibility was less than 1,000 meters in the city and even lower in the suburbs.
On October 6, Beijing traffic police closed six interprovincial expressways, including roads to Harbin in the northeast, Shanghai to the south, Tianjin and Hebei Province.
Xinhua said: “Visibility at Beijing's Capital International Airport on the northeastern outskirts was 250 to 500 meters. Nearly 44 percent of the departing flights were delayed or canceled, and dozens of incoming flights were forced to land in neighboring cities or return to where they came.”
On the last day of China's National Holiday week, the smog forced lakhs of citizens to postpone their return.
The Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center frankly admitted that on October 6, early in the morning: “all 35 monitoring centers across the city indicated heavy air pollution at the highest level of six. …the density of PM 2.5 (airborne particles of less than 2.5 microns), exceeded 200 micrograms per cubic meter.”
The weather forecast said that heavy fog would persist for a few days in the provinces of Hebei, Henan, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Shandong and Tianjin.
Worse, the atmospheric condition kept pollutants in the air. The US embassy announced that the air quality indexes “have averaged over 300 in the 24-hour period beginning at 8 pm on October 4, and were over 400 overnight”. The embassy uses the norms of the US Environmental Protection Agency to monitor the pollution; if the index level goes above 301, it is considered hazardous, ‘all physical activities outdoors’ should be avoided.
Well, there were some outdoors activities around the Chinese capital.
As Bloomberg commented: “This weekend, the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) demonstrated its willingness to sacrifice player safety for its own long-term financial health.”
In China as elsewhere, sport is business! The Reignwood Classic being the first LPGA tournament in China, the show had to go on. It was too important an event for the association which is banking on China’s rapidly expanding golf market.
American Jessica Korda told the financial publication: “The smog that’s coming in right now, it’s making it heavy, and it’s harder to breathe out there. You cough a lot.”
Players and caddies were seen wearing face-masks in a smoggy backdrop. Finally, the final round of the Reignwood tournament had to be rescheduled, “due to low visibility, the start of the final round has been delayed by 90 minutes.”
During the week-long National Day holiday, millions of visitors landed in the capital, more than 1.1 million visitors on October 3 alone. The tourists from outside could experience a phenomenon familiar to the Beijingers. Visiting Beijing, a Weibo blogger wrote: “My nose and throat are protesting due to the heavy pollution over the past two days. People who dare to travel to Beijing must be from the death squad.”
The biggest attraction in Beijing during the Mid-Autumn Festival Holiday was the newly arrived Big Yellow Duck by Florentijn Hofman, a Dutch artist. It attracted over 300,000 visitors to Beijing’s Summer Palace, though many clicked only blurred images of the Duck.
In the midst of the holidays, the Chinese Government announced that it will ban new coal-fired power plants in three key industrial regions around Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou in order to combat air pollution.
The State Council, China’s Cabinet, decided to cut coal’s share of the country’s total primary energy use to below 65 percent by 2017 and increase the share of nuclear power, natural gas and renewable energy.
The State Council admitted the country’s air pollution level was ‘grim’ and was ‘harming people’s health and affecting social harmony and stability’. ‘Affecting stability’ will force the Government to move fast. Beijing would now like to cut the density of fine particle matter in Beijing by 25 percent by 2017 (from 2012 levels) and by at least 10 percent in other big cities.
Martin Adams, the Hong Kong-based energy editor for the Economist Intelligence Unit commented on the Government decision: “I think possibly, just as important, if not more important, is the signal that it sends to the Chinese people that ‘we are trying to control pollution levels on the eastern seaboard’.”
The moral of the story is that there is no free meal, even in Communist China where ‘development’ has occurred at a break-neck pace for the past 3 decades. The Middle Kingdom is today paying the price for this rapid development.
Is India watching? Could the great planners in Delhi learn a lesson from what is happening in the Middle Kingdom? Probably not! ‘Development’ at any cost is still the motto of these ‘Planners’.

Chinese tourists near the Namtso

In the meantime, Cong Zhiyuan, researcher of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Research Institute of China Academy of Sciences explains that the area around the Namtso Lake is one of the cleanest on the globe.
The Chinese loves to walk around the blue waters of the lake.
Chen Quanguo, the Party Secretary of the Tibet Autonomous Region vowed to protect the world's last ‘pure land’. He said that environmental considerations should be at the heart of Tibet's development to protect the region's forests, grasslands, mountains and rivers, adding: “Projects with high energy consumption, pollution and emissions will be strictly banned and mineral resource development will undergo environmental assessment procedures.”
But Mr. Chen has invited 15 million Chinese tourists on the Roof of the World, while mining companies continue to loot the mineral wealth of region. Does not Mr. Chen realize tourism and mining are two of the most polluting activities?
There is no doubt the Tibet will soon follow the steps of the Mainland. How long will Chinese tourists continue to breathe freely and deeply on the Roof of the World? A few years perhaps, not more. Isn’t tragic?