“China appears to be expanding its missile forces, allowing it to reach targets in many areas of the world while also expanding its missile capabilities within this region,” he said in the speech to a conference hosted annually by the International Institute of Strategic Studies.
SINGAPORE: US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld accused China on Saturday of upsetting the delicate military balance in Asia by expanding its ability to project power at a time when it faces no threat.
Rumsfeld’s Pentagon has been raising alarms over China’s accelerating military modernisation for several years. But his rhetorical assault, in a speech to a conference of regional defence ministers, underscores a growing concern in other US sectors, such as Congress, over China’s rising military, economic and diplomatic power.
“China appears to be expanding its missile forces, allowing it to reach targets in many areas of the world while also expanding its missile capabilities within this region,” he said in the speech to a conference hosted annually by the International Institute of Strategic Studies.
“China also is improving its ability to project power, and is developing advanced systems of military technology. One might be concerned that this buildup is putting the delicate military balance in the region at risk - especially, but not only, with respect to Taiwan,” he said.
Rumsfeld added: “Since no nation threatens China, one wonders: why this growing investment?’“ The United States itself has vastly boosted defence spending since the Sept.11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Some experts say China’s military increases can be expected of a growing power.
A senior Chinese official, First Vice Foreign minister Dai Bingguo, had initially been expected to attend the meeting, but the Beijing government ended up sending a lower-level delegation.
Rumsfeld made his comments as the Pentagon prepared to release its annual assessment of China’s military expenditures.
While this year’s Pentagon figures are not yet public, the RAND Corp., a research group that studies many issues for the military, said in a report last month that the Defense Department may have overestimated China’s total military spending by more than two-thirds. But CIA Director Porter Goss said recently that China’s military buildup was tilting the balance of power in the Taiwan Strait, an ominous new assessment of the Asian giant’s rising power.
Rumsfeld conceded he had no idea how North Korea might be persuaded to resume negotiations on its nuclear weapons program as allies debated the next steps if Pyongyang continues to shun six-party talks.
“I have no way of knowing what might conceivably finally persuade the people in the North to behave in a way that is more consistent with the behavior of other countries in the world,” said Rumsfeld.
“My hope is that the countries in the six-party talks will continue to be persuasive, try to be more persuasive with them and that they will see it is in their interest to enter those discussions,” he said.
Rumsfeld made the comment in response to questions following a speech in which he warned that Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions threaten the security not just of the region, but of the world.
Given North Korea’s record in selling ballistic missile technologies, as well as trafficking in illegal drugs and counterfeit currency, he said “one has to assume that they will sell anything and they would be willing to sell nuclear technologies”
