Posted on 11/17/2006 7:29:46 AM PST by edpc
The United States has some concerns about a rising China, including a military expansion that may be excessive, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday. Beijing has spent heavily in recent years on adding submarines, missiles, fighter planes and other high-tech weapons to its arsenal and extending the reach of the 2.3 million-member People's Liberation Army, the world's largest fighting force.
Its reported military budget rose more than 14 percent this year to $35.3 billion, but outside estimates of China's true spending are up to three times that level.
"There are concerns about China's military buildup," Rice told a television interviewer. "It's sometimes seemed outsized for China's regional role."
Beijing insists its multibillion-dollar buildup is defensive, but it has alarmed some Asian neighbors and U.S. military planners who see China as a potential threat to U.S. military pre-eminence in the Pacific.
Asked whether U.S. foreign policy toward China is aimed at containing China's ability to flex military power, Rice turned the question to politics and economics.
"U.S. policy is aimed at having China be a responsible stakeholder in international politics," she replied. "That means that Chinese energy, Chinese growth, Chinese incredible innovation and entrepreneurship, would be channeled into an international economy in which everybody can compete and compete equally."
Rice, in Asia with President Bush for a regional economic forum, said China's economic growth "has been a net gain for the international system." But she also ticked off a list of U.S. concerns including questions of economic fairness and China's record on human rights.
"There are concerns about a rising China, concerns about China's transition, concerns about whether the Chinese economy will in fact act in a way that is consistent with the level playing field that the international economy needs," Rice said in the interview with CNBC Asia.
U.S. concerns are manageable within a relationship she described as strong overall, Rice said. She visited China last month to shore up United Nations sanctions against China's ally, North Korea, and she credited Beijing with cooperation in opposing the North's nuclear development.
Bush and Rice were both meeting with their Chinese counterparts during this weekend's Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
A congressional advisory panel on Thursday questioned China's willingness to be a more responsible international player, saying world prosperity depends on China's abandoning a single-minded pursuit of its "own narrow national interests."
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission made 44 recommendations in its annual report to lawmakers. It calls on the United States to combat Chinese attempts to isolate Taiwan by supporting the island's membership in various world bodies, and urges Washington to pressure Beijing to help end the bloody conflict in Sudan's Darfur region.
"While China is a global actor, its sense of responsibility has not kept up with its expanding power," said Larry Wortzel, chairman of the commission, which Congress created in 2000 to investigate U.S.-China issues.
The panel also admonished U.S. intelligence agencies, urging the United States to set up "a more effective program" for gathering information about China's military buildup and development.
In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said she had not seen the report, but "we are against the attempt by any country or any organization to interfere with China's internal affairs under the pretext of the Taiwan question and impede our reunification course."
The report said China's global reach extends beyond East Asia to the Middle East, Africa, South Asia and Latin America, where China "is coming to be regarded almost as a second superpower."
It's naive to think Chinese growth will lead to an opening of the society. So far, all I see is a government tightening its grip on power and an emerging threat.
china bump......
Well well, it's about fifteen years too fricken late, but at least some people appear to be waking the hell up.
Where did we think our polices with this iron fisted communist state would lead?
Tell me, did them knocking our P3 out of the aire not get anyone's attention in D.C.? Sure doesn't look like it.
I think Ms. Rice needs to take care of Iran first.
The rest of us have been concerned since before September 11, 2001. Remember there was a little incident of China taking one of our spy planes and refusing to return it........
I'll bet she shops at Walmart.
LOL
Underwritten by the United States...
You've really got to wonder how leaders could be this stupid.
I guess American business is doing for China in the 21st Century what it did for Japan in the 20th Century. And we all know what that led to.
History repeating itself.
Money only makes Communists rich Communists. And thus a tag was born.
Asked by a reporter, "You’re not worried about the Chinese controlling the Canal?" Mr. Clinton replied: "I think the Chinese will, in fact, be bending over backwards to make sure that they run it in a competent and able and fair manner.... I would be very surprised if any adverse consequences flowed from the Chinese running the canal."
We should pull all of our corporations out of China and move them the Mexico. This will cripple China's GDP and give the illegals a reason to stay home!
And we give them "most favored nation status" because?
Why aren't we creating jobs in our own backyards, e.g. North and South America instead of China?
You're right. Japan used our scrap metal to build military machines used against us. Cheap goods from China purchased by Americans are subsidizing their expanding war machine.
Well now, what did Dr Rice think China was going to do with their US market $$$? Feed their poor?? Become a capitalist country? Play fair? Sometimes I wonder about her public comments but guess that's why she's a diplomat and I'm not.
It seems like you need to swallow a lot of crap and sometimes look the fool if you want to be a diplomat. That's too bad. Nothing meaningful ever gets accomplished that way.
The way we run our defense/Pentagon/wars etc based on polling, it's likely we'll all be speaking chinese real soon.
At least that is moving faster than the way we deal with national energy policy, perhaps we'll start drilling in ANWR when it's too late as well.
"We should pull all of our corporations out of China and move them the Mexico. This will cripple China's GDP and give the illegals a reason to stay home!"
You might have just saved the republicans in 2008. Brilliant. Like a diamond bullet hitting the forehead.
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