Month: August 2021

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Chinese Potpourri

Dragon also has Fears

The fall of Afghanistan heightened security fears in China. “Afghanistan looms large in the mind-set of China’s leadership. Although, shared border is only small 47-mile stretch, for China, the nightmare is Islamist terror attacks, plotted across that short border.

 

Height of Insecurity

China is cracking down on its big Business houses.  China’s State Council and the Communist Party’s Central Committee has indicated that they will subject the country’s business sector to increasingly tighter government scrutiny and control over the next five years. The announcement suggests that Beijing’s recent anti-monopoly initiatives against large domestic technology companies and a crackdown on the educational tutoring sector have just been opening shots in a possible long-term campaign to neuter the power of the country’s corporate sector.

 

Uncooperative Dragon

 China calls WHO coronavirus probe “political” and refused to cooperate with a World Health Organization’s proposal for a second investigation into the origins of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19. Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu dismissed that effort as “political tracing” and indicated that China will not cooperate with such a probe.

 

Bullying Dragon

Lithuania allowed Taiwan to christen its new representative office in Vilnius the “Taiwanese Representative Office.” The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Sunday recalled its ambassador to Lithuania. Deputy Secretary of State (USA) Wendy Sherman criticized the Chinese government’s “coercive behaviour” toward Lithuania. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying dismissed U.S. and European Union criticism of China’s diplomatic targeting of Lithuania as “wanton comments.”

 

Needling the Dragon

US announced a virtual “Summit for Democracy” on Dec. 9-10 and has decided to invite a Taiwan representative to the event. Chinese Foreign Ministry responded by warning that China “will definitely not accept the US to invite Taiwan [President] Tsai Ing-wen to participate in the meeting.”

 

Different Songs

Meeting between newly arrived Chinese Ambassador Qin Gang and US State Department’s Sherman took place.

Chinese Ambassador: “the Taiwan question is the most important and sensitive issue in China-U.S. relations.”

Sherman said her focus in the meeting was human rights concerns as well as Beijing’s blocking of the World Health Organization’s ongoing probe into the origin of Covid-19.

 

Fake Always

U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Memphis, Tennessee, reported on Friday that they have seized 121 shipments containing 3,017 fake blank Covid-19 vaccination records from China since the beginning of the fiscal year.

 

Dressing up the History

Official state broadcaster China National Radio dropped a hint that the online gaming industry may be the next target of the government’s regulatory attacks on various business sectors. CNR urged regulators to adopt a “zero tolerance” approach to games that “distort history.” That move is an extension of the government’s criminalization of what it call “historical nihilism,” an umbrella term that applies to any historical accounts that contradict the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s historical narrative.

 

Dragon Decides Right or Wrong

China’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday accused the Canadian government of “megaphone diplomacy” in its criticism of recent prosecutions and convictions of Canadian citizens by Chinese courts. Hua, the Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said that Canada “is ganging up with a handful of countries to confuse right with wrong in disregard of facts” by criticizing recent court judgments against Michael Spavor and Robert Schellenberg.

 

Dragon creating an Arms Race

The Japanese government is accelerating revision of its “Medium Term Defence Program” due to concerns about a worsening threat by Chinese military forces. The updated timetable of the revised plan is designed “to counter China’s growing assertiveness in surrounding waters and prepare for contingencies in the Taiwan Strait.”

 

Smoking Dragon

Chinese investments in new heavily polluting coal-fired power plants and steel factories severely undermine the country’s “carbon neutrality” targets, a research report concludes. The report by the nongovernmental Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air warned that 18 new steel blast furnace projects and 43 new coal-fired power plants announced earlier this year will upon completion emit “an estimated 150 million tons of CO2 a year.”

 

Thought

Even Dragon has weak spots.

How many can you identify?

 

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Credits

Credit goes to all the news reports and articles where these reports were published.

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Pillars of China’s Military Modernisation

 

China’s military modernisation has been top driven, well guided process.

Through observing other countries’ wars, including the Gulf War, the China realised that the information dominance was key to winning modern warfare.

 

Active Defence Strategy and Unrestricted Warfare

China has consistently followed the military strategy of “active defence”. However, the meaning and interpretation of the strategy has undergone changes from time to time.

In Mao Zedong’s era the strategy was premised on “striking only after the enemy has struck” in the overall back drop of total war (World war scenario).

In Deng Xiaoping’s era, local war using conventional weapons was elevated to strategic level, and the active defence strategy came to encapsulate the concept of pre-emptive attack conceived in local wars.

In Jiang Zemin’s era, the goal was to win “local wars under high-tech conditions.”

In Hu Jintao’s era, China recognized the importance of information in warfare, and the goal became winning “local wars under the conditions of informationisation.” Network-centric war is the closest equivalent of this terminology.

After Xi Jinping came to power, China’s aim shifted to winning informatised and intelligentised warfare making use of all the domains, including space, cyber, electromagnetic and psychological. Unrestricted warfare is the terminology introduced in the Chinese military lexicon.

The targets of attack in this type of warfare will include not only physical objects but also nontangible targets in cyber and cognitive spaces. The warfare is not restricted to military and military hardware.  This type of warfare uses anything as a weapon in the DIME paradigm.

 

Information Warfare and Cyber Domain

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has recognised that “information dominance” is crucial for seizing core initiative in modern warfare.

In this process, the Strategic Support Force (SSF) was established in late 2015. It appears that the SSF is responsible for achieving information dominance as well as providing information support for joint operations, including the space, cyber, and electromagnetic domains, and converting advanced technologies into military capabilities.

To achieve information dominance, the PLA also attaches importance to information warfare and cyber operations. This includes monitoring (surveillance), offensive operations (cyber-attacks) and defensive operations.

To cope with these challenges, China has sought to indigenise core technologies and train specialists in the cyber field.

 

Military Use of Space

China considers space as an essential domain for the prospective intelligentised warfare.

China’s space activities from their inception have been closely linked to military activities. However, it was only from the 1990s through the 2000s that the military value of space began to be recognized more widely in the PLA.

The PLA uses space to provide information support for operations on land, sea, and air and is also developing capabilities to disrupt other countries’ use of space.

In China, emerging space enterprises have rapidly boosted their technological capabilities with government and military support. The future is expected to herald an era in which the military adopts the technologies developed by the private sector and uses their services.

 

China’s Military-Civil Fusion Strategy

In China, military capabilities are being enhanced through military-civil fusion (MCF).

The MCF strategy advanced by the Xi administration aims to strengthen military capabilities and promote national development by tying together the military and socio-economy.

Since its establishment, the PLA has maintained close relations with the private sector, including participating in production activities. However, this relationship has changed with the times.

As science and technology takes on an increasing role in the security sector, and against the backdrop of the rising technological level of China’s private companies in the shift to a market economy, emphasis has been placed on MCF to enhance the military capabilities of the PLA.

The Xi administration created the Central Commission for Military-Civil Fusion Development, a powerful organization. It has launched measures in succession to ensure the smooth implementation of MCF.

In conjunction, the commission promotes the prioritisation of science, technology, and industry for national defence in new security domains, the active use of cutting-edge technologies for military purposes, and indigenisation of core technologies.

 

Thought

At times it is prudent to learn few things from one’s adversary.

Are we doing that?

 

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References

NIDS China Security Report 2021.

https://thediplomat.com/2021/04/chinas-military-has-a-hidden-weakness/

https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/is-china-speeding-up-military-modernisation-it-may-but-its-not-yet

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernization_of_the_People%27s_Liberation_Army

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-modernizing-military

 

 

 

 

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Tribute to Maki Kaji – “Grandfather of SUDOKU”

Maki Kaji (Pic: Courtesy Legacy.com)

Maki Kaji was the president of a Japanese puzzle manufacturing company (Nikoli Company Ltd). He is widely known as “the father of Sudoku”.

 

Maki Kaji was born on 08 Oct 1951 in Sapporo, Hokkaido. His father worked as an engineer at a telecom company and his mother was employed by a kimono shop.

 

Maki Kaji Kaji attended Shakujii High School in his hometown. He later studied literature at Keio University, but dropped out during his first year.

 

After a succession of jobs including being a roadie, a waiter and a construction worker, he started a publishing.

 

Kaji launched a quarterly puzzle magazine in 1980 together with two friends from his childhood. They called it Nikoli, after a race horse.

 

Three years later, he founded a company under the same name. The magazine, the company’s main product, grew to have 50,000 quarterly readers. The number game Sudoku appeared in early issues of Nikoli.  

 

His interest in the puzzle piqued after encountering it in 1984 under the title “Number Place”. He formulated the name “Sudoku” while he was scrambling to get to a horse race. He shortened it from Suuji wa dokushin ni kagiru (“numbers should be single”) at the urging of his fellow workers.

 

After the game spread to Britain and the United States, it became wildly popular.

 

Kaji also invented or introduced various other puzzle games, such as Masyu. He resigned as head of Nikoli in July 2021, one month before his death.

 

Kaji was married to Naomi and they had two children.

 

Kaji died on 10 August 2021 at his home in Tokyo at age 69, from bile duct cancer.

 

Maki Kaji will live on for ever in the hearts of all SUDOKU solvers.

 

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References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maki_Kaji

“‘Father of Sudoku’ puzzles next move”. bbc.co.uk. 13 June 2000.

“Japan’s ‘father of Sudoku’ Maki Kaji dead at 69”. www.thenews.com.pk. 17 August 2021.

 Jump up to:a b c d e f g Albeck-Ripka, Livia; Ueno, Hisako (17 August 2021). “Maki Kaji, ‘Godfather of Sudoku,’ Dies at 69”. The New York Times. New York. Retrieved 17 August 2021.

 Jump up to:a b “Sudoku maker Maki Kaji, who saw life’s joy in puzzles, dies”. AP NEWS. 17 August 2021.

Smith, David (15 May 2005). “So you thought Sudoku came from the Land of the Rising Sun …” The Observer.

 Devlin, Keith (28–29 January 2012). “The Numbers Game (book review of Taking Sudoku Seriously by Jason Rosenhouse et al.)”. The Wall Street Journal. Weekend Edition. p. C5.

Kelly, Tim; Lies, Elaine (16 August 2021). “Japan’s Kaji, the “godfather of Sudoku,” dies at 69″.

“Maki Kaji, the ‘godfather of Sudoku,’ dies at 69”. CNN.