From Wednesday’s Omega Letter comes something to think about.

Special Report: Inscrutable China

The world’s attention — particularly the Western world’s attention — is laser-focused on the threat posed by Islamic extremism and the war on terror.

The bulk of US intelligence gathering, the bulk of its forward deployed assets, the majority of its money and resources are devoted to the Middle East and Iran.

Somewhere, off in the periphery, there is a nagging awareness of big trouble brewing from China, but China is so far away (and so big!) and, after all, the Chinese aren’t shooting at us. Muslim extremists are.

The Islamic problem is enormous. If only ten percent of world-wide Islam is sympathetic to the aims of al-Qaeda, that equates to some 120 million Islamic enemies — a ratio of one Islamic fighter per to every three Americans, including women and children and grandparents.

And at the heart of it all is the Israeli-Arab conflict, which threatens to spill over into open warfare again before the year is out. That could bring about an all out conflict in the heart of the Middle East, and, in a worst-case scenario, one involving nuclear weapons. The danger is so acute that it occupies the full attention of the “Quartet” consisting of the UN, EU, and Russia with the US as the lead negotiator.

China is taking an arm’s length approach to the Middle East, leaving it to occupy the West and Russia’s attention. And, since it is not actively involved in the global war on terror, China manages to stay ‘off the radar.’ But still, there is that nagging sense that China is up to no good — but that will have to wait for now.

China is like the elephant in the living room that everybody is trying unsuccessfully to ignore. No matter where you turn, there it is.

China’s trade imbalance threatens the stability of the dollar. Chinese products are dangerously defective.

Chinese food additives poisoned pet food, Chinese-farmed fish are raised in raw sewage, Chinese-packed food products are laced with dangerous chemicals.

This week, Chinese president Hu Jintao, in speeches marking the People’s Liberation Army’s 80th anniversary, officially announced China was increasing its military budget by 17.8 percent — about $45 billion US — for this year. The Pentagon issued a report in May that suggests the official figure is a smoke-screen that that the budget increase is probably double that amount.

The PLA’s military exhibition provided ample evidence of China’s expanding military strength. Its military forces are vast, greatly modernized and primarily consist of professional soldiers. Thanks to China’s ‘one-child’ policy, there are a disproportionate number of young Chinese males to females.

Given China’s vast population, that means there are many millions of young Chinese males of military age who aren’t able to find a wife. As a consequence, most of China’s officer corps and senior enlisted are professional soldiers, not conscripts.

In his remarks, President Hu boasted that the PLA is “no longer a small, single-service force, but a strong and multiple-service force,” which has made progress in modernization and is stepping toward an information technology-based army, he said.

“By putting in place a comprehensive scientific, technological and industrial structure for national defense, the PLA is increasingly better positioned to defend the nation,” Hu said.

It has cleared a path of development that suits China’s realities, improved its own organizations and structures, enhanced logistic and equipment support capabilities, and cultivated many competent military professionals for the new era, he said.

“All these have strengthened the PLA’s capability to better perform its mission and provided a solid foundation for the basic realization of defense and military modernization,” he added.

Hu made repeated references to China’s defense-related science and technology and weaponry in his speech, saying, “We must press ahead with the reform and development of national defense science and technology sector. . . We will gradually increase input in national defense as the economy grows, and continue to modernize national defense and the armed forces in a way that serves the interests of our national security and development.”

Moreover, Hu said the modernization of national defense and armed forces “is the historical mission of the PLA and the common cause of the Chinese people of all ethnic groups.”

“We must endeavor to achieve sound and fast modernization of national defense and armed forces.” he said, “In the new century and new stage, modernization of defense and military capabilities must be integrated into the country’s overall modernization strategy and serve the interests of national security and development.”

China already has the world’s largest military reserve force. According to President Hu, the new focus of China’s military buildup is via technology.

Consider, for a moment, the sheer size of the Chinese military intellectual potential. The twenty-five percent of the population with the highest IQs in China is greater than the combined population of the United States, Canada and Mexico. That’s a lot of intellectual firepower at the PLA’s disposal.

The big question is, what are they doing with it?

Assessment:

We spoke of China’s nano-weapons technology program in a recent briefing. To recap, nano-weapons are tiny nano-computers that can seek out and destroy another country’s nuclear arsenal.

Since the development of nuclear weapons, world peace has depended on the MAD Doctrine (Mutually Assured Destruction). The MAD Doctrine depends on the fact that every nuclear nation has the means of nuclear retaliation, which an enemy nuclear attack cannot destroy.

Nuclear weapons can destroy New York, Moscow, or Beijing, but they cannot destroy submarines deep underwater, carrying nuclear missiles, underground nuclear installations, or bombers on duty high in the air carrying nuclear bombs.

Nano assemblers can find these retaliatory weapons and destroy them by penetrating in between their atoms. Afterwards, an attacked country can be destroyed safely by nuclear weapons because it has no means of nuclear retaliation.

As Nanotechnologist Eric Drexler explained it; “A nation armed with molecular nanotechnology-based weapons would not require nuclear weapons to annihilate a civilization. In fact, it seems that a rather surgical system of seeking and destroying enemy human beings as cancerous polyps could be developed–leaving the nation’s infrastructure intact to be repopulated.”

Is China really that big a threat? What does it hope to gain? The simple answer, from the perspective of the Chinese communist leadership, is survival. Right now, China’s biggest ally is the West. The West is a ready and wealthy market for China’s developing market economy.

Friendship with the West allows China to buy up portions of the US defense establishment, buy or steal technologies it doesn’t have, and help China move to a self-sustainable economy.

But at the same time, the West is China’s biggest enemy. Beijing realized how close it came to collapsing in 1989 during the Tianneman Square uprising.

It was Western democracy that prompted the uprising, and it was Western democracy that caused the fall of the Soviet Empire two years later.

For Beijing, it is a simple choice of survival, and they intend to survive.

As Russian nano-technologist Lev Navrozov explained China’s love-hate relationship with the West:

“The worst enemy is the democratic West, whose very existence produces Tiananmens able to destroy the Chinese dictatorship. The best ally is the democratic West, supplying China with everything necessary for the annihilation or subjugation of the democratic West.”

Would China’s leadership start a war with the West if it saw such a war as necessary to its survival? (Well, would we?)

Would China kill to win? (Well, would we?)

How many would they kill to survive? (How many would we kill if our survival were at stake?)

China has no more love for Islam than it does for Western society. Beijing is content to sit on the sidelines and wait to see who wins. If it is radical Islam, they’ll be ready. If it is the West, they’ll be ready.

China is doing what nations do — acting in its own best interests. At the moment, it is in China’s best interests to eclipse the West economically, and then eliminate the West as a political threat.

Unless Islam does it for them.

I would like to add that the United States is not working on nano-weapons, which can destroy nuclear weapons by splitting the split atom.