Report: China looks to expand might

Reuters - Chinese soldiers go through military exercises during recent training in northwestern China's Xinjiang province.

.......Unlike previous Pentagon reports on China's military capabilities, which are required annually by Congress, the new report does not merely catalog China's burgeoning arsenal.

Instead, this year's report attempts to discern the strategy behind China's ambitious arms buildup, and makes ominous assessments about the threat that China's growing fleet of ships, submarines, jets and ballistic missiles could pose to Asia's balance of power within a decade.

"Current trends in China's military modernization could provide China with a force capable of prosecuting a range of military operations in Asia — well beyond Taiwan — potentially posing a credible threat to modern militaries operating in the region," the report says.

The Pentagon estimates that China could be spending as much as $90 billion annually on its military, three times the publicly released defense budget, making China the world's third-largest defense spender and the largest in Asia. A large portion of the secret budget is spent on buying weaponry from nations such as Russia and Israel, the report concludes.

The Pentagon report was due before Congress in March, and many have speculated that the long delay was the result of fights within the Bush administration over the tone of the report. The United States is preparing to open a diplomatic front with China aimed at deeper engagement with the world's most populous nation and building trust between the two powers........

SORRY STATE (Communist, Nationalist, and Dangerous) ***....................................OBSTACLES TO EMPIRE The grand project of restoring and Sinifying the Manchu dominions has unfortunately met three stumbling blocks. The first was Outer Mongolia, from which the Chinese garrison was expelled following the collapse of Manchu rule. The country declared independence in 1921 under Soviet auspices, and that independence was recognized by Chiang Kai-shek's government in 1945, in return for Soviet recognition of themselves as the "the Central Government of China." Mao seems not to have been very happy about this. In 1954, he asked the Soviets to "return" Outer Mongolia. I do not know the position of China's current government towards Outer Mongolia, but I should not be surprised to learn that somewhere in the filling cabinets of China's defense ministry is a detailed plan for restoring Outer Mongolia to the warm embrace of the Motherland, as soon as a suitable opportunity presents itself.

The second is Taiwan. No Chinese Imperial dynasty paid the least attention to Taiwan, or bothered to claim it. The Manchus did, though, in 1683, and ruled it in a desultory way, as a prefecture of Fujian Province, until 1887, when it was upgraded to a province in its own right. Eight years later it was ceded to Japan, whose property it remained until 1945. In its entire history, it has been ruled by Chinese people seated in China's capital for less than four years. China's current attitudes to Taiwan are, I think, pretty well known.

And the third stumbling block to the restoration of China's greatness is…….the United States. To the modern Chinese way of thinking, China's proper sphere of influence encompasses all of East Asia and the western Pacific. This does not mean that they necessarily want to invade and subjugate all the nations of that region, though they certainly do want to do just that to Taiwan and some groups of smaller islands. For Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Micronesia, etc., the old imperial-suzerainty model would do well enough, at least in the short term. These places could conduct their own internal affairs, so long as they acknowledged the overlordship of Beijing, and, above all, did not enter into alliances, nor even close friendships, with other powers.

Which, of course, too many of them have done, the competitor power in every case being the U.S. It is impossible to overstate how angry it makes the Chinese to think about all those American troops in Japan, Korea, and Guam, together with the U.S. Seventh Fleet steaming up and down in "Chinese" waters, and electronic reconnaissance planes like the EP-3 brought down on April 1 operating within listening distance of the mainland. If you tackle Chinese people on this, they usually say: "How would you feel if there were Chinese troops in Mexico and Jamaica, and Chinese planes flying up and down your coasts?" Leaving aside the fact that front companies for the Beijing regime now control both ends of the Panama Canal, as well as Freeport in the Bahamas, the answer is that the United States is a democracy of free people, whose government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed, so that the wider America's influence spreads, the better for humanity: while China is a corrupt, brutish, and lawless despotism, the close containment of which is a pressing interest for the whole human race. One cannot, of course, expect Chinese people to be very receptive to this answer.

Or, indeed, to anything much we have to say on the subject of their increasing militant and assertive nationalism. We simply have no leverage here. It is no use trying to pretend that this is the face-saving ideology of a small leadership group, forced on an unwilling populace at gunpoint. The Chinese people respond eagerly to these ultra-nationalist appeals: That is precisely why the leadership makes them. Resentment of the U.S., and a determination to enforce Chinese hegemony in Asia, are well-nigh universal among modern mainland Chinese. These emotions trump any desire for constitutional government, however much people dislike the current regime for its corruption and incompetence. Find a mainlander, preferably one under the age of thirty, and ask him which of the following he would prefer: for the Communists to stay in power indefinitely, unreformed, but in full control of the "three T's" (Tibet, Turkestan, Taiwan); or a democratic, constitutional government without the three T's. His answer will depress you. You can even try this unhappy little experiment with dissidents: same answer.

Is there anything we can do about all this? One thing only. We must understand clearly that there will be lasting peace in East Asia when, and only when, China abandons her atavistic fantasies of imperial hegemony, withdraws her armies from the 2 million square miles of other people's territory they currently occupy, and gets herself a democratic government under a rule of law. Until that day comes, if it ever does, the danger of war will be a constant in relations between China and the world beyond the Wall, as recent events in the South China Sea have illustrated. Free nations, under the indispensable leadership of the United States, must in the meantime struggle to maintain peace, using the one, single, and only method that wretched humanity, in all its millennia of experience, has so far been able to devise for that purpose: Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum. ***

Pentagon: China's Military Strengthening By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer
Tue Jul 19, 5:58 PM ET

China cannot be certain that its military, while steadily strengthening, is capable of conquering Taiwan, the Pentagon said Tuesday in a new report on Chinese military power and strategy.

Over the longer term, however, an increasingly modern Chinese military could pose a threat to U.S. and other forces in the Asia-Pacific region, it said.

"Some of China's military planners are surveying the strategic landscape beyond Taiwan," the report said.

Among a number of such developments, it noted improvements in Chinese intercontinental-range missiles "capable of striking targets across the globe, including the United States." Air and naval force improvements also appear to be geared for operations beyond the geography around Taiwan, it added.

Fueled by a booming economy and foreign arms purchases, China's military is developing new capabilities in line with Beijing's strategy of deterring Taiwan from declaring its independence and countering a potential U.S. military intervention, according to the 45-page report, an annual assessment required by Congress.

The short-term focus of China's military is preparing for potential conflict in the Taiwan Strait, the report said. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has threatened to invade if the self-governing island declares formal independence or resists Beijing's insistence on negotiating a reunification. The United States, which is Taiwan's main arms supplier, has cautioned both countries not to force a change in the status quo.

Kurt Campbell, who was a senior Asia specialist at the Pentagon during the Clinton administration, said in an interview that the report is "slightly more alarmist" than previous Pentagon assessments of China's military. He noted that the report focuses on a number of new Chinese capabilities, including a naval buildup.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday prior to the release of the report that it illustrates why a European arms embargo against the Chinese should be kept in place.

Some members of the European Union, including France, have sought an end to the embargo, which was imposed after the Chinese military crushed student protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

It "clearly points up the reason that the president and the United States government have been urging the EU to not lift the arms embargo on the People's Republic of China," Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon.

At the White House, President Bush said at a joint news conference with Australian Prime Minister John Howard that the United States has a relationship with China that is "very important and very vibrant. It's a good relationship, but it's a complex relationship."

Bush said the United States and Australia "can work together to reinforce the need for China to accept certain values as universal: the value of minority rights, the value of freedom for people to speak, the value of freedom of religion — the same values we share."

The House, while debating a State Department bill on Tuesday, accepted without dissent an amendment approving sanctions to deter foreign companies and nations, particularly in Europe, from selling arms to China.

The House defeated a similar bill last week, but changes were made to reassure American defense contractors that they would not be subject to penalties unless they knowingly transfer technologies that could potentially have military applications.

The new assessment of China's military said there are reasons to believe that China would not take military action against Taiwan.

"It does not yet possess the military capability to accomplish with confidence its political objectives on the island, particularly when confronted with outside intervention," it said. Chinese leaders also believe that attacking Taiwan would severely retard China's economic development and lead to instability on the mainland.

Rumsfeld said China is at a strategic crossroad.

"As I see it, China is on a path where they are determined to increase their economy, the opportunities for their people, and to enter the world community," Rumsfeld said, adding that the Chinese have been doing "a number of things to leave the world with the impression that they are a good place for investment."

China needs to be more open, politically as well as economically, Rumsfeld said, in order to be seen internationally as a more welcome partner.

"To the extent the political system does not (open up), it will inhibit the growth of their economy and ultimately the growth of their military capabilities," he said.

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On the Net:

China report: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jul2005/d20050719china.pdf

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050719/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_china_8&printer=1;_ylt=AlWbpqvoqb3HQuYNrHp_XMaWwvIE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MXN1bHE0BHNlYwN0bWE-

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