The London Daily Telegraph reports: “China is preparing for conflict ‘in every direction’, the defence minister said in remarks that threaten to overshadow a visit to Beijing by his US counterpart.

‘In the coming five years, our military will push forward preparations for military conflict in every strategic direction,’ said Liang Guanglie in an interview published by several state-backed newspapers in China. ‘We may be living in peaceful times, but we can never forget war, never send the horses south or put the bayonets and guns away,’ Mr Liang added.

China repeatedly says it is planning a ‘peaceful rise’ but the recent pace and scale of its military modernisation has alarmed many of its neighbours in the Asia-Pacific, including Japan which described China’s military build-up as a ‘global concern’.

Mr Liang’s remarks come at a time of increasingly difficult relations between the Chinese and US armed forces which a three-day visit by his counterpart Robert Gates is intended to address. A year ago China froze substantive military relations in protest at US arms sales to Taiwan and relations deteriorated further this summer when China objected to US plans to deploy one of its nuclear supercarriers, the USS George Washington, into the Yellow Sea off the Korean peninsula.

China also announced that it was preparing to launch its own aircraft carrier next year in a signal that China is determined to punch its weight as a rising superpower. The news came a year earlier than many US defence analysts had predicted…” (Revelation 16:12 predicts the region from which warriors come during the second invasion of Armageddon. At this time the Eastern Kings from China and her Oriental partners create the greatest battle in history as described in Revelation 9:14 – 18. See also the next report.)

The Washington Times reports: “China’s military is deploying a new anti-ship ballistic missile that can sink U.S. aircraft carriers, a weapon that specialists say gives Beijing new power-projection capabilities that will affect U.S. support for Pacific allies.

Adm. Robert Willard, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, disclosed to a Japanese newspaper that the new anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) is now in the early stages of deployment after having undergone extensive testing.

‘An analogy using a Western term would be ‘initial operational capability (IOC),’ whereby I think China would perceive that it has an operational capability now, but they continue to develop it,’ Adm. Willard told the Asahi Shimbun. ‘I would gauge it as about the equivalent of a U.S. system that has achieved IOC.’

The four-star admiral, who has been an outspoken skeptic of China’s claims that its large-scale military buildup is peaceful, said the U.S. deployment assessment is based on China’s press reports and continued testing.

The new weapon, the ‘D’ version of China’s DF-21 medium-range missile, involves firing the mobile missile into space, returning into the atmosphere and then maneuvering it to its target.

Military officials consider using ballistic missile against ships at sea to be a difficult task that requires a variety of air, sea and space sensors; navigation systems; and precision guidance technology — capabilities not typical of other Chinese missiles…”