First thoughts on Deng Xiaoping
Recently, I’ve been reading Deng Xiaoping and the transformation of China by Ezra Vogel. I still have not finished reading this book, but have read enough to be riveted by…
China's foreign policy under Deng
This is the second part of my blog entries on Deng Xiaoping based on the book by Ezra Vogel. Next time, I will explore Deng and June 4th student movement,…
Liaoning and future Carriers
As I’m sure you all know by now, the formerly known Varyag Aircraft Carrier was commissioned into PLAN as Liaoning and given the Type 001 class AC with pennant number…
How a slowdown of Chinese economy may effect PLA
If you have not been following Asia news recently, you may have missed out on the dramatic slow down recently in the Chinese economy. There are many reasons for this…
Status of J-10
Recently, we’ve seen what appears to be the last batch of J-10A fighter jets making their test flights. The 6th batch of J-10As number all the way up to 637…
The white elephants of PLAN
With the induction of Liaoning into PLAN this past week, PLAN has reached a milestone in its drive to modernize and becoming blue water navy. We can see now that…
First flight of J-15 off Liaoning
It has finally happened. We finally have news confirmation from Xinhua and also have pictures of J-15’s first take/off and landing from Xinhua. The news of first landing came a…
What does J-31 tell us about China?
There have been many articles written about the recent first flight of J-31. If you go to sinodefenceforum where I moderate, you can see pages and pages of analysis by…
J-15 vs Su-33 vs Mig-29K
This past week, there was an article on People’s daily called China’s J-15 fighter superior to Russian Su-33 I had a couple of thoughts reading through it. My first thought…
China's recent expansion of Civilian Maritime Force
One of the things that I’ve been really focusing on in the past few months is the recent dramatic expansion of China’s civilian maritime force. Much of this is caused…
China's maritime disputes
In light of the recent entry by Galrahn on the issue of China’s expanded map, I want to just put my thoughts on this. I was originally thinking of writing…
Comparing Type 056 to LCS
With the recent induction of 056, a lot of comparison has been made between 056 and LCS. The comparisons are understandable. Both are just entering services. Both are expected to…
A little write up on 056
I did a little write up today for Type 056 and here it is. The first 056 class No. 582 was officially handed over to PLAN on the 25th of…
A good article regarding YJ-8 series of Anti-ship missiles
I was contacted recently about this article on YJ-8 series of anti-ship missiles. I read it and found it to be very well written on the proper designations of different…
China's Type 32 class submarine
We’ve known about this class for a while, but it has now been officially unveiled as shown in image below. For those who don’t know, this is the super class…
What to make of speculated deals for Su-35/Lada?
In the past week, there have been a lot of speculations regarding a deal where Russia would export 24 Su-35s and 4 Ladas to China. Now, there have been official…
The state of domestic military aviation projects
Over the past 5 years, we can see the dramatic improvement in the hardware of Chinese navy from all of the really nice new ships that have come out. As…
Chinese Firm wins Turkish Air Defense competition
In a surprise to many PLA followers, this news of China winning the Turkish Air Defense competition came out today. A lot of us had followed the competition, but thought…
The Status of J-10 project
As China’s first advance indigenous fighter jet project, the J-10 program is one of the most important program of PLA. The most recent variant of J-10B made its first maiden…
PLAN nuclear submarine development
As we see new Chinese warships come out, there is always the inevitable question of how capable are these new hardware. We can make assessments based on pictures we see…