Bloomberg News
China criticized an annual U.S. report on its military, with the state-run Xinhua News Agency citing William Shakespeare in calling it “much ado about nothing.” A military spokesman said it “severely distorted the facts.”
The Pentagon report, released Aug. 24, said China’s military continued to improve its capabilities for a potential conflict with Taiwan “even as cross-Strait relations have improved.” The goal is “to deter Taiwan independence and influence Taiwan to settle the disputes on Beijing’s terms,” the report said.
Yang Yujun, a spokesman for China’s defense ministry, said the report played up China’s threat to Taiwan. “China unswervingly adheres to the path of peaceful development, and its national defense policy is defensive in nature,” Xinhua cited Yang as saying.
The report to Congress is an annual point of tension between the world’s two biggest economies, whose leaders have pushed to improve military ties. The U.S. has the world’s biggest military budget, with more than $600 billion in annual spending. China’s defense spending ranks second in the world. This year China plans to spend 601.2 billion yuan ($94.1 billion) on defense, the government announced in March.
“For many in China, it is weird that the Pentagon, whose expenditures reached nearly 700 billion U.S. dollars and accounted for over an appalling 40 percent of the world’s total in 2010, routinely points its finger at China, whose military only spends a small fraction of what the Pentagon consumes every year,” the Xinhua commentary said.
‘Cock-and-Bull’
The commentary called U.S. claims that China’s naval expansion had implications for regional power balances “utterly cock-and-bull.”
As of December, the People’s Liberation Army had deployed between 1,000 and 1,200 short-range ballistic missiles to units opposite Taiwan, said the Pentagon report, including “missiles with improved ranges, accuracies and payloads.”
“Relations have continued to improve over the past couple of years, but, despite this political warming, China’s military shows no signs of slowing its effort to prepare for a cross- Strait contingency,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia Michael Schiffer told reporters at the Pentagon on Aug. 24.
China’s military, besides its Taiwan focus, is expanding its capability for missions as far away as the Indian Ocean and further into the Pacific region, according to the Pentagon.
“China’s sustained military investments have allowed China to pursue capabilities that are potentially destabilizing to regional military balances,” the report said.
Stealth Fighter
In the past year, “China made strides toward fielding an operational anti-ship ballistic missile, continued work on its aircraft carrier and finalized the prototype of its first stealth aircraft,” the report said.
The report said the anti-ship missile, the DF-21D, has a range exceeding 1,500 kilometers and a maneuverable warhead designed to provide “the capability to attack large ships, including aircraft carriers, in the western Pacific.”
Tensions rose last year after the U.S. announced plans in January to sell $6.4 billion of missiles, helicopters and ships to Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province that should be reunited with the mainland by force if necessary.
China broke off military-to-military talks with the U.S. until late 2010, ahead of visits by Gates to Beijing in January this year and Chinese President Hu Jintao’s state visit to the U.S. that same month.
Chinese General Chen Bingde, chief of staff of the People’s Liberation Army, visited the U.S. in May, further driving efforts to improve ties.
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