"China is not Happy"; book calls for more aggressive China on world stage

[Monoriu]

See me when I retire.

Don't tell me you don't feel a little happy everytime you leave work at night.  I know I do.

Oh hell yeah. Every time I go home is a victory in itself.

[Monoriu]

Some guy figured out a way to make money by writing books.  Not satisfied with one bestseller, he now repeats the same ideas in a sequel.  Nothing to see here.

The nice thing about a dictatorship is that public opinion doesn't really matter anyway

I am glad this guy is just some nut.

I can't imagine someone publishing such a book in the 80s.  Sure, there is still a lot of censorship in China.  But there has been progress.

[Camerus]

Replace 'the West' with 'England' and you have something very Wilhelmian: talking vaguely about being a strong and powerful country without any idea what exactly they want to do with their power.

I am somewhat annoyed they have the gall to accuse us of trying to "drag them down" when we have made them favored trading partners and such.  Oh well.

Of course in Germany that was official government thinking, whereas this is just a few guys writing a book.  I could be horribly misled, but I haven't met a single person in China who shares this kind of thinking. 

The fact is that China has been undergoing a profound societal transformation for 30 years.  And whenever that happens in a society, there are bound to be opponents to it.  Fortunately, in China's case, they appear to be a rather tiny minority.

[Admiral Yi]

Come to think of it, I've never met a happy Chinaman.

I. M. Pei seemed to smile a lot.

[citizen k]

Come to think of it, I've never met a happy Chinaman.

I. M. Pei seemed to smile a lot.

He worked on commission. 

[Alatriste]

This is the sort of thing that makes me very receptive to the idea of rearming Japan with atomic weapons.

But they know how to make nukes, right?

How many can they build per year?

Atomic bombs are old technology, and data about the first bombs are so easy to find that pretty much any fringe group with web access and some money could probably build one - if they had the uranium or plutonium, of course (hydrogen bombs are another matter entirely).

Regarding Japan, they actually do have all the reprocessing capacity needed to build atomic bombs

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/japan/nuke.htm

If they decide to go nuclear, I think the time needed would be measured in weeks rather than months. Days or even hours if they have prepared the move in advance, and with neighbours like North Korea... I would bet they have. Regarding the number of weapons they could build, I would assume they could become very swiftly the third atomic power; overtaking Russia would be far more difficult.

Now, the Japanese would need to develop a working, reliable missile (unless they bought them off the shelf from some other country) which is probably quite tougher than building the bomb. And in all probability a submarine to deploy them would take even longer.

[Neil]

Now, the Japanese would need to develop a working, reliable missile (unless they bought them off the shelf from some other country) which is probably quite tougher than building the bomb.

On the other hand, given the Japanese skill at precision engineering and more importantly their significant space industry, I would imagine that their lack of experience in this area is somewhat overstated.

[grumbler]

Replace 'the West' with 'England' and you have something very Wilhelmian: talking vaguely about being a strong and powerful country without any idea what exactly they want to do with their power.

I am somewhat annoyed they have the gall to accuse us of trying to "drag them down" when we have made them favored trading partners and such.  Oh well.

Without changing a word, this sounds a lot like 1930s Japan.