re: china rules "not" China Seen Decades Behind U.S. in Military...

re: china rules "not" China Seen Decades Behind U.S. in Military Might

By Carol Giacomo

Reuters, May 22, 2003

China is at least two decades behind the United States in modernizing its military and is unlikely to seriously challenge America globally or in Asia for an even longer period, experts said on Thursday.

In a new report, the Council on Foreign Relations cautioned against overreacting to Beijing's defense buildup and said that for the foreseeable future, the communist giant likely will be constrained by domestic demands like political succession, public health issues and rising unemployment.

Some U.S. officials and analysts, particularly conservative thinkers, have sounded alarms over the rapid growth of China's military budget over the past 13 years and warned that Beijing might soon challenge U.S. dominance in Asia.

Some envision China as Washington's replacement adversary for the defunct Soviet Union.

But leaders of the task force that produced the report took a nonpartisan and pragmatic approach to assessing trends in Chinese military modernization "so as to avoid the wide and unfounded swings that characterized similar judgments about the Soviets during the Cold War," said council president Les Gelb.

Led by former Defense Secretary Harold Brown and retired Adm. Joseph Prueher, former U.S. Pacific commander and U.S. ambassador to China, the task force acknowledged that China is "pursuing a deliberate and focused course of military modernization" and its actual defense spending may be two or three times higher than official figures.

TAIWAN NEAR-TERM CONCERN

Nevertheless China is "at least two decades behind the United States in terms of military technology and capability," it said.

"If the United States continues to dedicate significant resources to improving its military forces, as expected, the balance between the United States and China, both globally and in Asia, is likely to remain decisively in America's favor beyond the next 20 years," it added.

The report warned Americans against an "underreaction," which might allow Beijing to someday catch the United States and its allies off guard with its military buildup.

It noted that the one area of near-term concern involves Taiwan, the island controlled by Chinese nationalists that Beijing considers a renegade province.

The Peoples Liberation Army is acquiring military capabilities to defend Chinese sovereignty and territorial interests and to "pose a credible threat to Taiwan in order to influence Taiwan's choices about its political future," the task force said.

In the next two decades, Beijing will acquire even more capability to hold and seize territories, the report said.

American forces, which are pledged to defend Taiwan, would ultimately prevail in any military conflict over the island, but Beijing still "might be able to impose serious risks and costs on the U.S. military," the report said.