• published: 28 Oct 2013
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Taipei, Oct. 28 (CNA) A display of China's first nuclear submarine fleet in state-run media was a show of force targeted mainly at the United States, experts in Taiwan said Monday. China's message to the U.S. is that it has second-strike capability, said Lin Chong-pin, a former deputy minister of national defense. Second-strike capability refers to a country's assured ability to respond to a nuclear attack with a nuclear retaliation powerful enough to deter a first strike. Lin said China will not overplay its hand, in order to avoid strengthening the U.S. anti-China lobby. Alexander Huang, a former deputy chief of Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council, said the show of force was meant to be a warning to countries around the Pacific, especially the U.S. The message is that the Chinese military capability has attained a certain level, Huang said, adding that the submarine fleet could pose a challenge to U.S. forces in the Western Pacific. Xinhua News Agency released photos Sunday of what appeared to be Xia-class nuclear-armed submarines belonging to China's northern fleet. The Chinese Navy is believed to have eight to 10 of these first-generation nuclear submarines, which are several decades old. China Central Television also showed footage of the submarines taking part in naval drills. The second-generation Jin-class vessels -- numbering three to five according to international experts -- have not been introduced in the Chinese media. (By Scarlett Chai and Jay Chen) ENDITEM/J China (Listeni/ˈtʃaɪnə/; Chinese: 中国; pinyin: Zhōngguó), officially the People's Republic of China, is a sovereign state located in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population of over 1.35 billion. The PRC is a single-party state governed by the Communist Party, with its seat of government in the capital city of Beijing.[14] It exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four direct-controlled municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing), and two mostly self-governing special administrative regions (Hong Kong and Macau).[15] The PRC also claims Taiwan -- which is controlled by the Republic of China (ROC), a separate political entity -- as its 23rd province, a claim controversial due to the complex political status of Taiwan and the unresolved Chinese Civil War.[16] Covering approximately 9.6 million square kilometres, China is the world's second-largest country by land area,[17] but only the third or fourth-largest by total area, dependent on whether the surface areas of various inland bodies of water such as the Great Lakes are included in the total area of a country.[g] China's landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes and the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts in the arid north to subtropical forests in the wetter south. The Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third- and sixth-longest in the world, run from the Tibetan Plateau to the densely populated eastern seaboard. China's coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometres (9,000 mi) long, and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East and South China Seas. Barack Hussein Obama II (Listeni/bəˈrɑːk huːˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/; born August 4, 1961) is the 44th and current President of the United States, the first African American to hold the office. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004, running unsuccessfully for the United States House of Representatives in 2000. In 2004, Obama received national attention during his campaign to represent Illinois in the United States Senate with his victory in the March Democratic Party primary, his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July, and his election to the Senate in November. He began his presidential campaign in 2007, and in 2008, after a close primary campaign against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won sufficient delegates in the Democratic Party primaries to receive the presidential nomination. He then defeated Republican nominee John McCain in the general election, and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. Nine months after his election, Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. A submarine is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability. The term most commonly refers to a large, crewed, autonomous vessel.