China Responds to US Posturing, Unveils Nuclear Missile System Capable of Hitting US Bases in Asia

China — Beijing has now surreptitiously revealed a highly accurate ballistic missile system with a range long enough to directly threaten Taiwan, the hotly disputed South China Sea, the Philippines, and Japanese and U.S. military bases in Asia — including Okinawa — with a nuclear first strike.

Increasingly bellicose posturing between President Donald Trump’s administration and the Chinese government over iterations of a trade war, as well as Beijing’s aggression in the South and East China Seas, have spawned rumors of potential military conflict between the world’s two largest economies.

With such an accurate nuclear-capable missile system ready for deployment within range of targets sensitive to U.S. interests, perhaps it’s time to pay attention.

According to the Associated Press, “The medium-range DF-16 featured in a video posted last week on the Defense Ministry’s website showing the missiles aboard their 10-wheeled mobile launch vehicles being deployed in deep forest during exercises over the just-concluded Lunar New Year holiday.

“While the Rocket Force boasts an extensive armory of missiles of various ranges, the DF-16 fills a particular role in extending China’s reach over waters it seeks to control within what it calls the ‘first-island chain.’”

Able to strike targets as far away as 1,000 kilometers (620 feet), the missiles can’t be stopped by several defense systems used by Taiwan.

“It also carries up to three warheads weighing as much as a ton and carrying conventional high explosives or a nuclear weapon. Further increasingly its lethality, the missile is believed to be accurate to within as little as 5 meters (16 feet) of the target, similar to that of a cruise missile,” the AP reports.

Like many nations, China has been known for blustery rhetoric — but intense escalation and braggadocio from the incoming president have soured Beijing to Washington.

“The Chinese government is quite concerned about the potential for direct confrontation with the Trump administration,” Ian Bremmer, president and founder of the global political risk consultant, Eurasia Group, and inventor of the Global Political Risk Index, told CNBC in an email in late January.

“Chinese officials are preparing for the worst, and they expect to retaliate decisively in response to any U.S. policies they perceive as against their interests.”

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In particular, the presence of U.S. Navy ships in the South China Sea has incensed Beijing, who claims the waters as Chinese. To the consternation of U.S. allies South Korea and Japan, among others, China constructed islands in disputed waters and proceeded to equip them with military hardware and airplane landing strips.

China’s new nuclear-capable missiles could easily be used — in what Beijing feels is self-defense — should the U.S. accidentally or intentionally tread too far over the line.

And China isn’t alone in preparing for a possible military escalation — of nuclear proportions.

In fact, the U.S. Congress instructed the Pentagon’s Strategic Command, via the 2017 NDAA, to assess the ‘survivability’ of both Russian and Chinese leaders in the event of a nuclear strike. Although such an assessment could be considered standard for nuclear powers, the timing intimates the use of strategic nuclear weapons could be the subject of debate behind closed doors in Washington.

As bluster ratchets up between the U.S. and China, overtones of potential nuclear war cannot be dismissed as incidental.

US Now Assessing Effectiveness of Dropping Nukes on Russia & China — Seriously

Amid heightening tensions with China and in the wake of accusations Russia somehow interfered in the election, U.S. Congress has instructed intelligence agencies and the Pentagon’s Strategic Command to assess the ‘survivability’ of Chinese and Russian leaders in the event of an above- or below-ground nuclear strike.

Under ordinary circumstances, such a review could be considered routine, but — given President Donald Trump’s ratcheting up of hostilities with China and the Democratic establishment’s scapegoating of Russia for its own shortcomings — it seems more an indication the U.S. could be preparing for war.

Interestingly, the plan for this analysis came buried in the 2017 NDAA, which former President Barack Obama signed into law two days before Christmas — timing almost certainly intended to deflect attention from several unsavory measures buried in the law’s pages.

This review, had it garnered attention, surely would have set off further debate on the perilous provocation to war with nuclear capable nations.

According to the NDAA, reviewers will perform “an identification of which facilities various senior political and military leaders of each respective country are expected to operate out of during crisis and wartime” and, additionally, the “location and description of above-ground and underground facilities important to the political and military leadership survivability.”

“Key officials and organizations of each respective country involved in managing and operating such facilities, programs, and activities” will also be identified by analysts.

Bloomberg reports, “Under the little-noticed provision in this year’s defense authorization measure, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the U.S. Strategic Command — which plans and would execute nuclear strikes — will evaluate the post-attack capabilities of the two nuclear powers. The law mandates a report on Russian and Chinese ‘leadership survivability, command and control and continuity of government programs.’”

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Strategic Command will also evaluate how Chinese and Russian plans relate to the post-nuclear deployment plans of the United States.

“Our experts are drafting an appropriate response,” Strategic Command spokesman Navy Captain Brook DeWalt told Bloomberg in an email, adding, “it’s premature to pass along any details at this point, we can update you further at a later date.”

Written before Trump took office, the planned analysis nevertheless aligns with the president’s statement the U.S. nuclear arsenal should be strengthened — despite his stated goal of rapprochement with Russia.

In December, he told MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski on Morning Joe, “Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.” And in a brazen tweet the same month, Trump declared, “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.”

On Friday, Trump ordered Secretary of Defense James Mattis to “initiate a new Nuclear Posture Review to ensure that the United States nuclear deterrent is modern, robust, flexible, resilient, ready, and appropriately tailored to deter 21st-century threats and reassure our allies.”

Ohio Representative Michael Turner, who sits on the House Armed Service Committee’s Strategic Forces panel, told Bloomberg via email the U.S. “must understand how China and Russia intend to fight a war and how their leadership will command and control a potential conflict. This knowledge is pivotal to our ability to deter the threat.”

China and Russia, he continued, “have invested considerable effort and resources into understanding how we fight, including how to interfere with our leadership’s communication capabilities.

“We must not ignore gaps in our understanding of key adversary capabilities.”

While posturing about Russia being responsible for hacking and otherwise manipulating either the election or the U.S. populace has subsided since Trump took office, the president has intensified hostilities with China over trade, as well as maritime territorial issues in the South and East China Seas.

Russia and the U.S. ostensively possess some 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons — but Moscow has reportedly spent a great deal of time and money upgrading and improving its arsenal, where the U.S. has not.

Assessing the plans of world leaders in the event military action turns nuclear indicates the use of these weapons remains a viable option.

“Nuclear leaders in Russia and China ‘plan to direct nuclear forces from inside command bunkers buried deeply beneath the earth or deeply inside mountains,’ said Bruce Blair, a Princeton University research scholar on nuclear security policy and co-founder of Global Zero, a group devoted to eliminating nuclear weapons,” Bloomberg reports.

With a cascade of contentious executive actions coming nearly every day since Trump took the oath of office, vigilance — particularly concerning bellicose exchanges between the U.S. and China or Russia — is an absolute imperative.

As Americans Debate Immigration, China Says War With US is Now ‘Reality’

Discussing the United States and rapidly accelerating tensions, an article appearing on the Chinese army’s website, states, “The possibility of war increases.”

And China is preparing itself accordingly.

Liu Guoshun, a member of the national defense mobilization unit of China’s Central Military Commission, reports CNBC, penned the editorial on the day President Donald Trump took the oath of office.

His characterization of U.S.-Chinese relations evinces how much has unraveled between the two nations over the potential looming trade war — China is preparing itself for military action.

“‘A war within the president’s term,’” Liu asserted, “‘war breaking out tonight’ are not just slogans, but the reality.”

Although the opinion piece certainly sends an ominous message, Ian Bremmer, president and founder of the global political risk consultant, Eurasia Group, and inventor of the Global Political Risk Index, believes it to be more bluster than outright bellicosity. However, China’s long habit of posturing seems to be nearing an end.

“The Chinese government is quite concerned about the potential for direct confrontation with the Trump administration,” Bremmer told CNBC by email.

Egged on by Trump’s indiscriminate bashing of China, Beijing may be nearing the point of intolerance — and could act out in a military show of force.

“Chinese officials are preparing for the worst,” Bremmer continued, “and they expect to retaliate decisively in response to any U.S. policies they perceive as against their interests.”

Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea have further degenerated already cool relations with the U.S., as South Korea, in particular, has turned to American aid to protect its interests in the international waters.

China ramped up hostility by refusing to recognize the South China Sea as international waters per a ruling last year — and has continued construction on a series of manmade islands. The nascent Trump administration has already provoked vociferous condemnation from Beijing for vowing to prevent Chinese aggression in that region.

Asked if he agreed with Secretary of State and former Exxon Mobil CEO, Rex Tillerson, that China should not have access to its constructed islands, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer asserted,

“The U.S. is going to make sure that we protect our interests there.”

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Some of the manmade islands have been outfitted with landing strips and stocked with military weaponry — sufficient for Beijing to claim the U.S. would have to “wage war” to stop it from maintaining access.

CNBC reports, “The U.S. needs China’s cooperation to keep North Korea’s nuclear threats in check. But challenges to the U.S.’s ‘One China policy’ that does not officially recognize Taiwan’s independence — a red-line issue for Beijing — could also add to tensions.”

Provocation over the South China Sea, trade, Taiwan, and more — even of the semantic variety Trump has limited himself to thus far — could spark a response from Beijing in the future.

“China doesn’t want trouble with the U.S., especially not in the run up to their own leadership transition this fall,” Bremmer told CNBC. “But if it comes, they want President Trump to understand the consequences.”

As part of the escalating conflict over trade between the two largest economies on the planet, Beijing has been deeply critical of inefficiencies of so-called Western Democracy and corporatist capitalism.

“Western-style democracy has played a progressive role in history, but right now it has heavy drawbacks,” Communist Party secretary of the Beijing Foreign Studies University, Han Zhen, wrote in an editorial for the People’s Daily, cited by CNBC.

Some analysts feel Beijing might be opportuning contention in the United States over the election and subsequent executive actions by Trump to insert commentary favorable to its interests while shining a negative light on the West.

“I think they’re just trying to take advantage of what looks like a disorderly transition in the U.S. and a great anxiety around the world about what a Trump administration looks like,” noted Scott Kennedy, director of the Project on Chinese Business and Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, as CNBC reports.

“When you have a country like China whose growth is slowing with massive debt, with concerns of its neighbors as it moves to become more powerful, I don’t know if it’s the right time for China to be strongly promoting its system relative to others.

“Democracy isn’t meant to be efficient,” Kennedy explained in an answer to Chinese criticisms. “It’s meant to reflect diversity, have checks and balances on power and proceed in a manner where everyone has a say.”

China, in the meantime, has continued limited missile tests and made its military prowess known to Taiwan and parties present in the South China Sea. While belligerence has thus far been limited to talk, were the Trump administration take a tangibly aggressive stance in the South China Sea, China’s military will apparently be more than prepared to respond in kind.