In recent months, China has tested a spacecraft and not a hypersonic rocket with nuclear capability. This was underlined by a spokesman for the Beijing Foreign Ministry, denying the revelations of the Financial Times, according to which the test “took US intelligence by surprise”.
“It wasn’t a missile, it was a spacecraft“Zhao Lijian said when answering those who asked him about the test at a press conference. According to the spokesperson, it was a” routine test “in order to verify the reusable technology of the spacecraft.
CAMPORINI – “China today is the protagonist of an activity of modernization and strengthening of its armed forces that is unparalleled: it is working with great alacrity to improve and develop its military capabilities. Moreover, compared to the past, it has an absolutely expansionist vision. All this should somehow alert us “, General Vincenzo Camporini, former Chief of Staff of the Air Force and Defense, told Adnkronos.
This episode also demonstrates for Camporini that there is “a new arms race. It takes place in an international context, unfortunately, not without tensions and where the eternal struggle between the bullet and the armor is repeated: the story, after all, it is full of developments that have made it possible to neutralize the opposing defense which in turn has equipped itself to stop the new weapon, so from this point of view there is nothing surprising “. If, on the other hand, one thinks of investments in weapons, then attention should be raised.
“Let us not be fooled by the figures that are circulated – explains General Camporini – It is said that the Chinese spend less than half of what the Americans pay out and therefore in reality they do not constitute a serious threat in the future. But we know well that the cost of labor in China is much lower than in the West, as is the cost of each soldier, so it is clear that even with nominally lower spending, China’s modernization effort can be significantly higher. And this must be a warning. “
RAMPINI – ” A traumatic event ”, a real ” shock as the Soviet Sputnik was put into orbit ”, the journalist and writer Federico Rampini commented to Adnkronos. “A message certainly addressed to the United States, they are the main target”, he explains, defining the carrier “another milestone in China’s long race to overtake the United States, even in the arsenal of strategic weapons” . Rampini also points out that “ discovering that China is so far ahead ” is for America ” an event as important as the launch of Soviet Sputnik, which was a shock to Americans at the beginning of the first. Cold War, when they realized that the Soviet Union was overtaking them in the space race. Here we are clearly facing an equally traumatic event for the United States ” concerning ” missiles that can carry nuclear weapons ”.
The result is that “the vulnerability of the United States is greater than they thought”. In bookstores with his latest ‘Stop Beijing’, published by Mondadori, Rampini believes that the launch of the Chinese missile has led to ” further awareness that China is advancing in great strides with its own imperial and hegemonic plan. And he no longer has any inferiority complex or awe of the United States. ” Indeed, it is a China that ” aims to overtake, to supremacy in all fields, including the military ”.
The United States, for some time now, “has invested in anti-missile shields, the effectiveness of which has never been considered to be one hundred percent”, continues Rampini. Now the Americans ” know that China, with this type of missile, is much closer than they thought. And that the two oceans, the Pacific and the Atlantic, have shrunk a bit due to the speed of a hypersonic missile. ” Among other things, today’s China is ” a China that very openly and explicitly through the mouth of its president Xi Jinping theorizes that America is a terminally ill, the decline of the United States is irreversible ”. We are faced with a “China ready to take up the American legacy also in the context of military hegemony”.
” With these premises, it can only worsen the climate between the two superpowers ”, predicts Rampini, according to whom ” it remains to be seen what Europe will want to do, if it continues to delude itself that it wants to remain a kind of neutral zone. business a little with each other and a little with others. It is becoming more and more complicated to carve out an autonomous position ”.
The launch of the missile ” has also been interpreted in light of the tension surrounding the island of Taiwan, but a hypersonic missile with these characteristics is prepared in 10 years and not in ten months ”. For Rampini, therefore, we must not give a reading that is too tied to Taiwan which ” is another dossier ”, with respect to which ” the Chinese have no hesitation in exhibiting their ambitions of conquest and annexation, of invasion ” which they deem ” legitimate ”. Because the Chinese “think that Taiwan is to China as Catalonia is to Spain”, therefore “that it belongs to them and that no one should meddle in their affairs”.