Just in case anyone wondered why we've never tried to invade China......

Great GOOGLEY MOOGLEY that's a LOT of people ........ and they're just an honor guards! Sheesh!!!!

China's President Hu Jintao (Center L) and U.S. President Barack Obama inspect honor guards during a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing November 17, 2009. Obama wrangles over trade and currency policy with his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao on Tuesday, with Iran and North Korea competing for attention at the summit of the two global powers.












Singapore might be a little easier to take....

any other country, either.....


China has a food problem, and it would be tremendously difficult to feed a huge army on the move.

And of course seeing that photo, I cant help but think of their long military history....

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_6K4an3_7Kkk/SeU49qYL3EI/AAAAAAAABv8/GGgfFXRICJo/s400/Terra+cotta+soldiers.jpg



.... and their art, for that matter.

One of the upsides of being President is that you get to travel the world as a part of your job. One of the downsides is that you dont get to see much of it.

Each of those statues is unique and probably modelled on a real human.

Politics aside, the scale is enormous.

Wow, thanks, I'd seen pics of the statues but never en masse like that. That goes beyond the traditional stylizations of many cultres at the time.

It was amazing. Breathtaking... From what I understand they still have not uncovered the entire army.

:thumbsup:

When my mom and I saw the pictures of the statues on the cover of the Sunday Tribune's magazine section, we thought they were maybe a foot tall. We were dumbfounded when we went to the museum and saw them in person. I don't recall ever having seen that lower photo. Nearly three decades after first learning about these statues, they're still finding ways to amaze me.

... from their base in Tibet. China can use the water -- too bad half of South Asia is watered by it.

http://newsx.com/story/65846

http://www.2point6billion.com/news/2009/10/19/uncertainty-over-china’s-aims-for-brahmaphutra-river-2652.html

Hekate

We love to kick the crap out of Iraq and Haiti and Grenada and the Dominican Republic.

in this country. President Obama is a peaceful man. And people the world over are responding positively to him.

with substantial standing armies either. Welcome to DU :hi:

probably have known it all along! Oh well, we can still borrow money from them to INVADE other countries. Funny how we keep throwing "our" money down a rat hole!

I need to stop blogging for today, I'm getting much too worked up and will probably "spew forth" some really crappy stuff!

Interesting that they still use the SKS as a dress/drill/honor-guard rifle. I guess the AK is a little too ghetto to put into this type of service...


-app

You're probably right.

Thought they used a swivel underneath?

Since when did "libs" become gun enthusiasts? You're gonna confuse the Freepers! ;)

Can you please begin a discussion on recycling?

Aren't SKS and AK slings inter-changeable, promoting re-use?

I like my SKS. It was made at Peoples' Armory No. 416 in the Peoples' Republic of China.

The manual that came with it contains wonderful examples of Engrish. My favorite line:

"Be sure to be using only genuine replacement parts from Peoples' Armory No. 416."

It makes me want to take a tour of Peoples' Armory No. 416 if I ever get that far.

My father,a tank company commander, walked way out in the Yalu at night. They wanted to pee in China. Things changed quickly when the PVA (Peoples volunteer Army) attacked the UN units....... Not a Marine, US Army!

pictures of our Prez, Clio~

why our military is so chicken-shit scared of China. It's a good thing they're not imperialistic like the US is.

Ever heard of Tibet?

Surely, that was a joke post.

Have you ever seen an official Chinese map of 'Greater China'?

If you think China doesn't have expansionist dreams, you are sadly mistaken.

the US and China are pals now!:evilgrin:

from the mid 19th through mid 20th century many European powers invaded and effectively carved up China, into militarily controlled "spheres of influence," each of which gave exclusive trade rights to the controlling European power, which is why China today remains so paranoid about foreign influences and intervention. "Gunboat diplomacy" in China didn't even have the benefits of European imperialism in Africa and India which at least built infrastructure while destroying local economies, because the control in China was so chaotic.

The US sought, but did not obtain, a "sphere of influence" in China. It often sent gunboats up Chinese rivers but failed to grab a piece of the action. (There's a great movie about US gunboat diplomacy in China called "The Sand Pebbles" with Steve McQueen.) Because the US was weak militarily in China, but wanted to trade, the US came up with the novel idea that spheres should not prevent other powers from engaging in trade. This "crazy" "new" idea the US came up with was called "free trade."

Historians still speculate whether Douglass McArthur was trying to force Truman's hand to invade China and topple Mao, by pushing the North Koreans all the way to the Yalu River and allegedly making raids into China -- which of course spurred the Chinese invasion of North Korea and the pushing back of the Americans to the 38th parallel.

He sent his army in and wouldn't let the NKs end the war. Stalin and Mao wanted conflict, they wanted to see how far they could push the UN and the US. And Chinese troops were in the conflict before we the Yalu.

UN forces in Korea were mystified by the order to retreat as they were massacring waves of Chinese. Unlike the first Chinese offensive a few weeks earlier (lost to common knowledge), UN forces were *not* caught by surprise a second time. Scattered due to MacArthur's orders, but not surprised.

The day before the Chinese attack, east of the mountain spine of North Korea, the USMC commander pulled the Marines back into defensive positions and notified Washington that he had removed his forces from MacArthur's command. All other UN forces, including US Army, were scattered and exposed, but they knew the attack was coming and reacted swiftly in response. They took terribly heavy causulties, but nowhere near the magnitude they inflicted on the Chinese. They could have held, but, unlike the Marines, they were still following MacArthur's orders -- it would be a few days before UN forces notified their respective governments they were no longer taking orders from MacArthur; Truman relieved MacArthur from a command officially that he no longer held in reality.

So when MacArthur gave them an "every man for himself" retreat order, they mostly** obeyed. US Army at Kunu Ri followed this order, and suffered terribly. UN forces at Kunu Ri paused to capture the pass before retreating through it and came out in far better shape. The Turkish Brigade remained behind to cover their retreat.

Interesting side note: Turkish Veterans of the Korean Conflict numbered exactly ZERO. Not one member of the brigade survived. Since it is statistically impossible for them all to have died upright and fighting, one must conclude the Chinese executed any survivors they found.

When Ridgeway arrived in Korea (already en route to find out why MacArthur was telling them one thing and all other commanders another) he found the US Army 24th scattered south of Seoul with no commander (died during the retreat). The two questions he encountered over and over were, "what should we do now?" and "why did they order us to retreat?".

Ridgeway assumed command and answered the first. The second became a classified secret until a retired US Army general writing The Forgotten War used the FOIA to make public MacArthur's secret plan. After ordering UN forces to put as much distance between themselves and the Chinese as possible, MacArthur ordered the local SAC commander to drop atomic bombs on the Chinese positions. He even went so far as to falsely claim he had authority. Fortunately, the SAC commander refused the order without confirmation from Washington.

So the "push" back to the 38th was the result, not of the Chinese army, but of an actual true-life Dr Strangelove moment. You can understand why the US gov't would have wanted THAT kept secret.


**They "mostly" obeyed in that they retreated as fast as possible. With a sole exception division commanders refused the order to return to Tokyo. The US Army 8th Division CO and XO was the only command to abandon*** their men in the field. They even borrowed the Marine commander's helicopter to do it as the Army had no copters at that time. I forget the CO's name, but the XO's should be familiar: later Secretary of Defense, Alexander "I'm in charge" Haig.

***Most of the 8th walked out of Chosin wearing Globe & Anchors taken off dead Marines. There is a saying about everyone walking out of Chosin a Marine. Most of the Army veterans at Chosin steadfastly refused to serve another day under USA commanders after being abandoned then led out by the Marine commander. The Marine Corps 1st Division experienced the oddity of losing almost 50% of their men yet emerging at full strength due to the first and only large-scale lateral transfer of troops from one service to another in US military history.

They can't get that huge army to the US. It would be a naval war and China would get spanked.

Read about the Korean Conflict, the US mowed down the Chinese by the hundreds of thousands.

It would interesting to see if they still use the same tactics. Given the huge army, I would say yes.

In conflict most of those peasant soldiers are already wearing toe-tags.

First wave weapons & ammo, second wave ammo, third wave, pick up ammo & weapons from dead PVA comrades. My father retreated from the Yalu. Worse than any of his WW2 actions, including Hurtgen Forrest.

so the ones remaining alive would have enough food to eat.

If China ever went to war with any big power, and they lost the ability to connect to food resources on the world market, there would be mass starvation in short order.

You have to see Chinese agriculture to believe it. When you travel around the countryside, there are many places where it seems like every square inch is cultivated or producing food in some way or another.

How can people complain about not wanting "tainted" imported food from China while also believing China relies on other countries for food?

China is pretty much self-sufficient in food, except for wheat which is not the major staple, and exports a lot of food.

Whenever I read posts or articles about how we're running out of land to grow food globally, I think back to my field trips in China. When you see what can be done with resources it's pretty obvious that we're no where near running out of food resources -- not that we, the rest of the world, ever want to get anywhere near their level of resource utilization.