A few months before the Communist Party’s big congress starts in the fall, domestic issues are once again pushing into the spotlight. For example, Xi Jinping’s campaign against corruption had been quiet for a while. But now the party is revving up the fight against corruption in its own ranks with great fanfare. For the first time, it is turning to new formats such as reality TV. A miniseries presents real and up-to-date criminal investigations of corrupt cadres: true crime with Chinese characteristics. Finn Mayer-Kuckuk has seen the show and explains why it captivates its audience and how it benefits the party.
For several months now, China’s weapon tests of hypersonic missiles have been causing concern, especially in the USA. One advantage of these missiles, apart from their incredible velocity, is their flexible guidance system. Both Russia and the US have shown interest in the technology. Michael Radunski analyzes what the current hypersonic hype is all about and to what extent this new missile type could change the global security structure.
We hope you enjoy today’s issue!
The anti-corruption campaign as reality television: In a five-part series, state broadcaster CCTV is currently airing particularly spectacular examples of corrupt government officials. The show’s title is “Zero Tolerance” 零容忍, its presentation exciting and modern, the music moving. Emotionally, it is pulling all the stops.
The series presents real cases showing the work of the CCP’s feared Commission for Discipline Inspection. For instance, it shows huge estates illegally financed by high party cadres and collections of luxury watches or jade jewelry. Thick bundles of cash – and the inconspicuous food boxes in which a cadre had the money handed to him – are also prominently featured.
Sun Lijun 孫力軍, that is the name of the party bigwig with the lunch boxes. His story clearly shows the political messages that party leader Xi Jinping wants to convey with this media project. After all, it was Sun who was featured in the first episode. He used to be Vice-Minister of Public Security and thus in direct control of the police apparatus. Sun was also Head of Security in Hong Kong when the democracy movement took to the streets. That goes to show that even henchmen loyal to the system are not safe from prosecution. And: Xi’s purge shows no sign of stopping, even in its tenth year. On the contrary. It is gaining new momentum.
There are several reasons for the merciless continuation of the anti-corruption program. At the lower levels, of course, bribery is far from eradicated. But from the very beginning, Xi’s campaign had another goal in mind. The party leader wanted to strike fear and terror into the hearts of his enemies. That is just as important to him in 2022 as it was back in 2012. After all, Xi wants to have his position as ruler for life endorsed at the party congress in the fall. The chairman won’t tolerate any unrest within the party at such a juncture.
A landmark meeting of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection is now taking place from Tuesday to Thursday this week. Coverage of it is peppered with pithy quotes from Xi Jinping. “Turning the blade inward,” “eradicating the virus that is eating away at the Party body,” “self-improvement.” Such phrases were also mentioned in Xi’s November speech on corruption. In essence, the party is perfectly capable of solving its problems on its own. Pluralism is not required.
That doesn’t mean the campaign isn’t hitting those who deserved it. Sun Lijun is said to have accepted around twelve million euros throughout his career. And apart from Sun, other high-ranking “tigers” have been caught in traps recently:
Accordingly, Wang’s conviction came shortly after his episode on “Zero Tolerance” was aired on CCTV. This proves that the party’s organs are combining their various efforts in the fight against corruption. The CP is intended to form a unified front against sleaze.
The show features its sinners with sad faces and in plain clothing. The show’s centerpiece is the confessions of the fallen cadres while recounting the investigations. Another element of the show is revealing the ties between suspects at different levels – for example, between Sun Lijun and a corrupt chief of police. The camera often peeks through small cracks and crevices at building entrances or into hotel lobbies. This gives the impression of being part of the hunt for criminals.
The first episode kicks off with some statistics: Since Xi Jinping took up the hunt, four million officials have been investigated. Mind you, we are only talking about party members here. The normal police are not in charge of these investigations. Instead, the CCP’s Disciplinary Commission has the primary jurisdiction. Of the four million delinquents, 484 were even key administrative cadres (中管干部). In other words, they belonged to the party elite.
With a renewed campaign and the prime-time TV show, the party strengthens its legitimacy. At the very beginning, the show draws a link to the party’s hundred-year success story. The series paints a picture of a CP that fundamentally acts in the best interests of the common people. Everything is basically in order. But certain corrupt elements keep harming the realization of the Chinese Dream. Xi and the high party organs are finally doing everything in their power to root out corruption.
China’s citizens experience corruption every day; it would be pointless to try and convince them differently. A far more clever way is the propaganda mission to identify the problem at the highest level – and to always declare that a solution is at hand. The choice of a popular true-crime format is in line with the trend of relying on more sophisticated methods of surveillance and propaganda.
The US leadership is alarmed – and that’s why everything has to happen very quickly now. In cooperation with Japan, they want to develop a defense strategy against hypersonic weapons as quickly as possible. This is what Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Minister Lloyd Austin agreed on with their Japanese counterparts earlier this month. The joint statement cites the reason to be “a rapid and opaque military expansion that jeopardizes the regional strategic balance.” Everyone knows who this refers to: China – and Beijing’s successful test of a hypersonic missile, in particular.
However, at first, it was not clear what China had actually achieved last summer. For a long time, the People’s Republic tried to cover up its success. The Foreign Ministry in Beijing even spoke of a routine test of a space rocket. Foreign office spokesman Zhao Lijian declared that contrary reports were simply wrong.
Reports have long circulated that China has successfully tested a hypersonic weapon. According to investigations by Financial Times, the projectile, traveling at more than five times the speed of sound, had circled the planet once and then hit near its intended target at high speed, with a deviation of about 40 kilometers. “We have no idea how they did this,” the British newspaper quoted a person from US security sources as saying. Their capabilities in military high technology are far beyond what the US is said to have expected them to be capable of.
US General Mark Milley expressed shock and disbelief. “I don’t know if it’s quite a Sputnik moment, but I think it’s very close to that” The Sputnik moment refers to the Soviet Union’s successful launch of the first artificial Earth satellite in 1957, resulting in a decades-long space race between the two superpowers. It seems that such a turning point has now been reached again.
By now, experts like Chinese analyst Xu Tianran from the think tank “One Earth Future” suspect that China has launched a “fractional orbital bombardment system” with a hypersonic glide vehicle as a warhead. This is a military-technical breakthrough that shakes the foundations of the USA’s previous security perceptions. Once, satellites shocked the world; today, they are hypersonic weapons.
Hypersonic weapons are considered the most significant military innovation of recent years. When fully developed, they are fast, precise, and difficult to detect. They have the potential to permanently change the international balance of power. As Russia’s President Putin put it in his defense policy speech in Moscow in late 2019: “It’s a weapon of the future, capable of penetrating both existing and prospective missile defense systems.”
In a statement to China.Table, Xu Tianran urges not to be alarmed for now. “There is no official or universally accepted definition for the term ‘hypersonic missile’.” The most cited characteristic is in its name: high speed. Hypersonic means that an object travels at least five times the speed of sound, i.e. at least Mach 5, or 6,125 kilometers per hour. But speeds of Mach 10 and faster are also quite common. A rocket traveling at Mach 20 takes less than 30 minutes to cover the distance from Washington, D.C., to Beijing. Russia’s hypersonic glide vehicle “Avangard” is accelerated to Mach 27, according to official data.
Other experts also advise a differentiated view of this new type of weapon. “But such a high level of speed is nothing new,” Dominika Kunertova told China.Table. “If it would be only about speed, then basically all ballistic missiles with ranges longer than a few hundred kilometers are already hypersonic,” explains the scientist from the Center for Security Studies in Zurich. What’s more, on average, the speed of the entire course of a hypersonic weapon is even lower, as experts Cameron Tracy and David Wright point out in the magazine Science & Global Security. The media’s focus on the velocity of hypersonic weapons is therefore misleading to a certain extent.
While speed is certainly a factor, it is by no means the most important one. The decisive advantage of hypersonic weapons is their maneuverability. This is because, while ballistic missiles are also very fast, they move like a projectile on a predictable trajectory. Hypersonic missiles, on the other hand, can follow unpredictable trajectories and selectively change their altitude in the atmosphere at any time. As a result, their target only becomes apparent at the very last moment.
Dominika Kunertova identifies a third advantage: “Both the hypersonic gliders and the hypersonic cruise missiles fly fast at unusually low altitudes. So we have to assume that they will frustrate the existing ground-based missile defense systems.” That, in turn, changes the security perceptions of individual nations.
There are two different types of missiles: Hypersonic glide missiles (HGVs) and hypersonic cruise missiles. HGVs do not have a dedicated propulsion system but are launched into the atmosphere via a rocket. In the first phase, they briefly leave the atmosphere. But HGVs then quickly return to lower altitudes to glide without the need for propulsion – like a glider. Due to their ability to glide up to several thousand kilometers, they are also called “boost-glide vehicles.” By comparison, traditional ballistic missiles travel far outside the atmosphere on a predetermined trajectory.
Hypersonic cruise missiles, on the other hand, have their own scramjet propulsion system. They travel at much lower altitudes, where they use the aerodynamic lift in the atmosphere similarly to aircraft. Both systems are extremely fast and very maneuverable. They thus combine the advantages of ballistic missiles and cruise missiles: speed and precision.
Given these advantages, it is not surprising that China wants to call this supposed wonder weapon their own. “It seems that China is in possession of the next generation of hypersonic weapons,” Niklas Swanstoerm told China.Table. “If they have reached the breakthroughs they say, it will be a threat as they will increase the possibility to hit aircraft as well as ‘seeing’ through stealth technology.” The highly praised stealth technology of US armed forces would also lose its effectiveness, warns the director of the Institute for Security and Development Policy in Stockholm.
Other states are also pursuing the development of hypersonic weapons. A global arms race for the wonder missile is in full swing. According to information released by Russia, it developed its first hypersonic missile called “Kinzhal” in 2018. The “Avangard” hypersonic glide missile followed in late 2019. China tested a glide missile called DF-ZF.
The US seems to have fallen somewhat behind in this race recently. Swanström estimates that the US armed forces are even several years behind the capabilities of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in this regard. China has simply put more resources into military development. Experts believe that the US will probably not put its first hypersonic long-range weapons into service until 2023 – a fact that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin already had a hard time hiding his amusement over at the end of 2019: “We are in the unique situation in our contemporary history in which they’re trying to catch up with us.” Accordingly, Washington has recently massively increased the budget for the development of hypersonic weapons – from $800 million in 2017 to $3.8 billion this year.
However, the US is pursuing different goals in their development than Moscow and Beijing. Washington has publicly ruled out the idea of hypersonic weapons with nuclear payload for the time being. Due to their lower blast force, US weapons would be far more precise.
And North Korea? Although rockets were recently tested in series, the regime of ruler Kim Jong-un is still playing in a different league, as Dr. Kunertova puts it. According to open-source information, North Korea simply put a new gliding body on a ballistic missile. “North Koreans have combined a regular shorter-range ballistic missile with a new prototype of a maneuvering re-entry vehicle,” says Dr. Kunertova.
In general, the missile expert notes an incredible amount of hype surrounding the technology. “Politicians and media tend to overestimate the capabilities of these weapons.” Scientific studies showed that the interplay of speed, altitude, maneuverability, and precision still requires a lot of research and development. In particular, the physical limitations due to the low altitude travel in the atmosphere raise questions regarding speed and stealth. There would be quite a few moments when even existing missile defense systems might be able to detect hypersonic projectiles.
Hypersonic projectiles are also by no means as undetectable as some assume. In this regard, of all things, the hypersonic weapons’ exceptional speed is a major downside: The high friction with the Earth’s atmosphere at high speeds generates heat and ionized gas, which makes the missiles detectable to radar and space-based sensors. Even the widely praised advantage of excellent maneuverability could turn out to be a potential weakness: By emitting jamming signals, externally controlled weapons could be scrambled.
It quickly becomes clear that the development of this technology is still in its infancy. At the earliest in 2030, although more likely in 2040, hypersonic weapons could be ready for use, believes expert Kunertova. And yet, the implications of the technology are serious. Regardless of its actual military capabilities and future advantages, hypersonic technology has permanently destabilized the global security environment. Be it in Washington, Beijing, or Moscow, the subjective perception of one’s own vulnerability has already changed.
To be sure, new disarmament initiatives seem unrealistic given the association with Sputnik. Nevertheless, politicians around the globe should try to incorporate this new weapon type into international agreements as quickly as possible. After all, both fear and overconfidence can have fatal effects on security and armaments policy.
For Paul Harris, an explosive term ends in January 2022. “I will try to protect freedom in Hong Kong. I don’t know if I will succeed,” he had told the British newspaper The Times when he was elected chairman of the Hong Kong Bar Association for a year in early 2021. He was aware that he had attained this challenging position at a critical time: “It is a difficult time for the rule of law in Hong Kong,” Harris told South China Morning Post.
During his term, he was accused of being an “anti-China politician” by the Chinese central government’s liaison office in Hong Kong. Calls for his impeachment were raised. Among other things, his calls for an amendment to Hong Kong’s new National Security Law played a role. Statements about the prosecution of peaceful protesters have also cost him Beijing’s favor. Harris argues, “People have strong feelings and they need to find an outlet for those feelings. A peaceful demonstration is an outlet. If you don’t allow it, those feelings will not go away.”
But Harris should be used to tensions in his work environment from his years on the job. He worked for many years in London as a barrister. This is a professional title in the United Kingdom that includes the privilege of appearing as a lawyer in higher courts. Since 1993, the lawyer, who specializes in public law and human rights, has also worked in Hong Kong and has handled many sensitive cases in immigration law and human trafficking, among others. He also looks after the rights of the many household workers who live on the fringes of society in Hong Kong.
Paul Harris is a multi-faceted character. On LinkedIn, he writes: “I am a barrister, writer, traveler, and human rights activist.” There is ample evidence to support every part of this self-description on his resume: He earned a master’s degree in law at Lincoln College, Oxford, and later a second master’s degree in international human rights law at the University of Hong Kong. He has practiced law since 1988.
He also publishes papers on legal subjects: “The Right to Demonstrate” is the title of one of his books. He is also the founder of the Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor, the city’s most important human rights organization. The NGO’s monthly publication provides updates on the latest views and developments in the field of human rights.
The Human Rights Monitor’s scope is not limited to Hong Kong. It spans the entire globe, and that is in line with its founder’s passions and character. It is not only his work as a desk officer for Ethiopia, Somalia, and Yemen in the mid-1980s that distinguishes him as a man of the world. Harris has already traveled to every country on the planet. By his count, it’s 198, and in addition to English, he also speaks Cantonese, French, Spanish, and German. Juliane Scholuebbers
A few months before the Communist Party’s big congress starts in the fall, domestic issues are once again pushing into the spotlight. For example, Xi Jinping’s campaign against corruption had been quiet for a while. But now the party is revving up the fight against corruption in its own ranks with great fanfare. For the first time, it is turning to new formats such as reality TV. A miniseries presents real and up-to-date criminal investigations of corrupt cadres: true crime with Chinese characteristics. Finn Mayer-Kuckuk has seen the show and explains why it captivates its audience and how it benefits the party.
For several months now, China’s weapon tests of hypersonic missiles have been causing concern, especially in the USA. One advantage of these missiles, apart from their incredible velocity, is their flexible guidance system. Both Russia and the US have shown interest in the technology. Michael Radunski analyzes what the current hypersonic hype is all about and to what extent this new missile type could change the global security structure.
We hope you enjoy today’s issue!
The anti-corruption campaign as reality television: In a five-part series, state broadcaster CCTV is currently airing particularly spectacular examples of corrupt government officials. The show’s title is “Zero Tolerance” 零容忍, its presentation exciting and modern, the music moving. Emotionally, it is pulling all the stops.
The series presents real cases showing the work of the CCP’s feared Commission for Discipline Inspection. For instance, it shows huge estates illegally financed by high party cadres and collections of luxury watches or jade jewelry. Thick bundles of cash – and the inconspicuous food boxes in which a cadre had the money handed to him – are also prominently featured.
Sun Lijun 孫力軍, that is the name of the party bigwig with the lunch boxes. His story clearly shows the political messages that party leader Xi Jinping wants to convey with this media project. After all, it was Sun who was featured in the first episode. He used to be Vice-Minister of Public Security and thus in direct control of the police apparatus. Sun was also Head of Security in Hong Kong when the democracy movement took to the streets. That goes to show that even henchmen loyal to the system are not safe from prosecution. And: Xi’s purge shows no sign of stopping, even in its tenth year. On the contrary. It is gaining new momentum.
There are several reasons for the merciless continuation of the anti-corruption program. At the lower levels, of course, bribery is far from eradicated. But from the very beginning, Xi’s campaign had another goal in mind. The party leader wanted to strike fear and terror into the hearts of his enemies. That is just as important to him in 2022 as it was back in 2012. After all, Xi wants to have his position as ruler for life endorsed at the party congress in the fall. The chairman won’t tolerate any unrest within the party at such a juncture.
A landmark meeting of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection is now taking place from Tuesday to Thursday this week. Coverage of it is peppered with pithy quotes from Xi Jinping. “Turning the blade inward,” “eradicating the virus that is eating away at the Party body,” “self-improvement.” Such phrases were also mentioned in Xi’s November speech on corruption. In essence, the party is perfectly capable of solving its problems on its own. Pluralism is not required.
That doesn’t mean the campaign isn’t hitting those who deserved it. Sun Lijun is said to have accepted around twelve million euros throughout his career. And apart from Sun, other high-ranking “tigers” have been caught in traps recently:
Accordingly, Wang’s conviction came shortly after his episode on “Zero Tolerance” was aired on CCTV. This proves that the party’s organs are combining their various efforts in the fight against corruption. The CP is intended to form a unified front against sleaze.
The show features its sinners with sad faces and in plain clothing. The show’s centerpiece is the confessions of the fallen cadres while recounting the investigations. Another element of the show is revealing the ties between suspects at different levels – for example, between Sun Lijun and a corrupt chief of police. The camera often peeks through small cracks and crevices at building entrances or into hotel lobbies. This gives the impression of being part of the hunt for criminals.
The first episode kicks off with some statistics: Since Xi Jinping took up the hunt, four million officials have been investigated. Mind you, we are only talking about party members here. The normal police are not in charge of these investigations. Instead, the CCP’s Disciplinary Commission has the primary jurisdiction. Of the four million delinquents, 484 were even key administrative cadres (中管干部). In other words, they belonged to the party elite.
With a renewed campaign and the prime-time TV show, the party strengthens its legitimacy. At the very beginning, the show draws a link to the party’s hundred-year success story. The series paints a picture of a CP that fundamentally acts in the best interests of the common people. Everything is basically in order. But certain corrupt elements keep harming the realization of the Chinese Dream. Xi and the high party organs are finally doing everything in their power to root out corruption.
China’s citizens experience corruption every day; it would be pointless to try and convince them differently. A far more clever way is the propaganda mission to identify the problem at the highest level – and to always declare that a solution is at hand. The choice of a popular true-crime format is in line with the trend of relying on more sophisticated methods of surveillance and propaganda.
The US leadership is alarmed – and that’s why everything has to happen very quickly now. In cooperation with Japan, they want to develop a defense strategy against hypersonic weapons as quickly as possible. This is what Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Minister Lloyd Austin agreed on with their Japanese counterparts earlier this month. The joint statement cites the reason to be “a rapid and opaque military expansion that jeopardizes the regional strategic balance.” Everyone knows who this refers to: China – and Beijing’s successful test of a hypersonic missile, in particular.
However, at first, it was not clear what China had actually achieved last summer. For a long time, the People’s Republic tried to cover up its success. The Foreign Ministry in Beijing even spoke of a routine test of a space rocket. Foreign office spokesman Zhao Lijian declared that contrary reports were simply wrong.
Reports have long circulated that China has successfully tested a hypersonic weapon. According to investigations by Financial Times, the projectile, traveling at more than five times the speed of sound, had circled the planet once and then hit near its intended target at high speed, with a deviation of about 40 kilometers. “We have no idea how they did this,” the British newspaper quoted a person from US security sources as saying. Their capabilities in military high technology are far beyond what the US is said to have expected them to be capable of.
US General Mark Milley expressed shock and disbelief. “I don’t know if it’s quite a Sputnik moment, but I think it’s very close to that” The Sputnik moment refers to the Soviet Union’s successful launch of the first artificial Earth satellite in 1957, resulting in a decades-long space race between the two superpowers. It seems that such a turning point has now been reached again.
By now, experts like Chinese analyst Xu Tianran from the think tank “One Earth Future” suspect that China has launched a “fractional orbital bombardment system” with a hypersonic glide vehicle as a warhead. This is a military-technical breakthrough that shakes the foundations of the USA’s previous security perceptions. Once, satellites shocked the world; today, they are hypersonic weapons.
Hypersonic weapons are considered the most significant military innovation of recent years. When fully developed, they are fast, precise, and difficult to detect. They have the potential to permanently change the international balance of power. As Russia’s President Putin put it in his defense policy speech in Moscow in late 2019: “It’s a weapon of the future, capable of penetrating both existing and prospective missile defense systems.”
In a statement to China.Table, Xu Tianran urges not to be alarmed for now. “There is no official or universally accepted definition for the term ‘hypersonic missile’.” The most cited characteristic is in its name: high speed. Hypersonic means that an object travels at least five times the speed of sound, i.e. at least Mach 5, or 6,125 kilometers per hour. But speeds of Mach 10 and faster are also quite common. A rocket traveling at Mach 20 takes less than 30 minutes to cover the distance from Washington, D.C., to Beijing. Russia’s hypersonic glide vehicle “Avangard” is accelerated to Mach 27, according to official data.
Other experts also advise a differentiated view of this new type of weapon. “But such a high level of speed is nothing new,” Dominika Kunertova told China.Table. “If it would be only about speed, then basically all ballistic missiles with ranges longer than a few hundred kilometers are already hypersonic,” explains the scientist from the Center for Security Studies in Zurich. What’s more, on average, the speed of the entire course of a hypersonic weapon is even lower, as experts Cameron Tracy and David Wright point out in the magazine Science & Global Security. The media’s focus on the velocity of hypersonic weapons is therefore misleading to a certain extent.
While speed is certainly a factor, it is by no means the most important one. The decisive advantage of hypersonic weapons is their maneuverability. This is because, while ballistic missiles are also very fast, they move like a projectile on a predictable trajectory. Hypersonic missiles, on the other hand, can follow unpredictable trajectories and selectively change their altitude in the atmosphere at any time. As a result, their target only becomes apparent at the very last moment.
Dominika Kunertova identifies a third advantage: “Both the hypersonic gliders and the hypersonic cruise missiles fly fast at unusually low altitudes. So we have to assume that they will frustrate the existing ground-based missile defense systems.” That, in turn, changes the security perceptions of individual nations.
There are two different types of missiles: Hypersonic glide missiles (HGVs) and hypersonic cruise missiles. HGVs do not have a dedicated propulsion system but are launched into the atmosphere via a rocket. In the first phase, they briefly leave the atmosphere. But HGVs then quickly return to lower altitudes to glide without the need for propulsion – like a glider. Due to their ability to glide up to several thousand kilometers, they are also called “boost-glide vehicles.” By comparison, traditional ballistic missiles travel far outside the atmosphere on a predetermined trajectory.
Hypersonic cruise missiles, on the other hand, have their own scramjet propulsion system. They travel at much lower altitudes, where they use the aerodynamic lift in the atmosphere similarly to aircraft. Both systems are extremely fast and very maneuverable. They thus combine the advantages of ballistic missiles and cruise missiles: speed and precision.
Given these advantages, it is not surprising that China wants to call this supposed wonder weapon their own. “It seems that China is in possession of the next generation of hypersonic weapons,” Niklas Swanstoerm told China.Table. “If they have reached the breakthroughs they say, it will be a threat as they will increase the possibility to hit aircraft as well as ‘seeing’ through stealth technology.” The highly praised stealth technology of US armed forces would also lose its effectiveness, warns the director of the Institute for Security and Development Policy in Stockholm.
Other states are also pursuing the development of hypersonic weapons. A global arms race for the wonder missile is in full swing. According to information released by Russia, it developed its first hypersonic missile called “Kinzhal” in 2018. The “Avangard” hypersonic glide missile followed in late 2019. China tested a glide missile called DF-ZF.
The US seems to have fallen somewhat behind in this race recently. Swanström estimates that the US armed forces are even several years behind the capabilities of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in this regard. China has simply put more resources into military development. Experts believe that the US will probably not put its first hypersonic long-range weapons into service until 2023 – a fact that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin already had a hard time hiding his amusement over at the end of 2019: “We are in the unique situation in our contemporary history in which they’re trying to catch up with us.” Accordingly, Washington has recently massively increased the budget for the development of hypersonic weapons – from $800 million in 2017 to $3.8 billion this year.
However, the US is pursuing different goals in their development than Moscow and Beijing. Washington has publicly ruled out the idea of hypersonic weapons with nuclear payload for the time being. Due to their lower blast force, US weapons would be far more precise.
And North Korea? Although rockets were recently tested in series, the regime of ruler Kim Jong-un is still playing in a different league, as Dr. Kunertova puts it. According to open-source information, North Korea simply put a new gliding body on a ballistic missile. “North Koreans have combined a regular shorter-range ballistic missile with a new prototype of a maneuvering re-entry vehicle,” says Dr. Kunertova.
In general, the missile expert notes an incredible amount of hype surrounding the technology. “Politicians and media tend to overestimate the capabilities of these weapons.” Scientific studies showed that the interplay of speed, altitude, maneuverability, and precision still requires a lot of research and development. In particular, the physical limitations due to the low altitude travel in the atmosphere raise questions regarding speed and stealth. There would be quite a few moments when even existing missile defense systems might be able to detect hypersonic projectiles.
Hypersonic projectiles are also by no means as undetectable as some assume. In this regard, of all things, the hypersonic weapons’ exceptional speed is a major downside: The high friction with the Earth’s atmosphere at high speeds generates heat and ionized gas, which makes the missiles detectable to radar and space-based sensors. Even the widely praised advantage of excellent maneuverability could turn out to be a potential weakness: By emitting jamming signals, externally controlled weapons could be scrambled.
It quickly becomes clear that the development of this technology is still in its infancy. At the earliest in 2030, although more likely in 2040, hypersonic weapons could be ready for use, believes expert Kunertova. And yet, the implications of the technology are serious. Regardless of its actual military capabilities and future advantages, hypersonic technology has permanently destabilized the global security environment. Be it in Washington, Beijing, or Moscow, the subjective perception of one’s own vulnerability has already changed.
To be sure, new disarmament initiatives seem unrealistic given the association with Sputnik. Nevertheless, politicians around the globe should try to incorporate this new weapon type into international agreements as quickly as possible. After all, both fear and overconfidence can have fatal effects on security and armaments policy.
For Paul Harris, an explosive term ends in January 2022. “I will try to protect freedom in Hong Kong. I don’t know if I will succeed,” he had told the British newspaper The Times when he was elected chairman of the Hong Kong Bar Association for a year in early 2021. He was aware that he had attained this challenging position at a critical time: “It is a difficult time for the rule of law in Hong Kong,” Harris told South China Morning Post.
During his term, he was accused of being an “anti-China politician” by the Chinese central government’s liaison office in Hong Kong. Calls for his impeachment were raised. Among other things, his calls for an amendment to Hong Kong’s new National Security Law played a role. Statements about the prosecution of peaceful protesters have also cost him Beijing’s favor. Harris argues, “People have strong feelings and they need to find an outlet for those feelings. A peaceful demonstration is an outlet. If you don’t allow it, those feelings will not go away.”
But Harris should be used to tensions in his work environment from his years on the job. He worked for many years in London as a barrister. This is a professional title in the United Kingdom that includes the privilege of appearing as a lawyer in higher courts. Since 1993, the lawyer, who specializes in public law and human rights, has also worked in Hong Kong and has handled many sensitive cases in immigration law and human trafficking, among others. He also looks after the rights of the many household workers who live on the fringes of society in Hong Kong.
Paul Harris is a multi-faceted character. On LinkedIn, he writes: “I am a barrister, writer, traveler, and human rights activist.” There is ample evidence to support every part of this self-description on his resume: He earned a master’s degree in law at Lincoln College, Oxford, and later a second master’s degree in international human rights law at the University of Hong Kong. He has practiced law since 1988.
He also publishes papers on legal subjects: “The Right to Demonstrate” is the title of one of his books. He is also the founder of the Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor, the city’s most important human rights organization. The NGO’s monthly publication provides updates on the latest views and developments in the field of human rights.
The Human Rights Monitor’s scope is not limited to Hong Kong. It spans the entire globe, and that is in line with its founder’s passions and character. It is not only his work as a desk officer for Ethiopia, Somalia, and Yemen in the mid-1980s that distinguishes him as a man of the world. Harris has already traveled to every country on the planet. By his count, it’s 198, and in addition to English, he also speaks Cantonese, French, Spanish, and German. Juliane Scholuebbers
