By William Matthews
Top deputies to U.S. President George W. Bush are sounding the alarm on China.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is preparing to send a report to Congress that will warn of China’s rising defense spending, improved missile capabilities and ongoing efforts to acquire advanced systems.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is cracking the whip on Israeli military sales to China and pointing to “rising concern about military modernization in China.”
These warnings follow months of lobbying by Bush to stop the European Union from lifting its arms embargo against China.
In a speech in Singapore June 4, Rumsfeld depicted China in terms reminiscent of the Soviet Union. “Although the Cold War is over, this region, unfortunately, is still burdened by some old rivalries, and military budgets are escalating in some quarters,” Rumsfeld said. “China’s emergence is an important new reality in this era.”
Rumsfeld offered these highlights from his forthcoming report:
• China is spending much more on its military than Chinese officials have acknowledged. Indeed, Rumsfeld contends, China’s military budget has grown into the world’s third-largest, and is “clearly the largest in Asia.”
• China appears to be expanding its missile forces. With better missiles, the Chinese are able to reach targets in many areas of the world, not just the Pacific region, Rumsfeld said.
• China is improving its ability to project power and is developing advanced military systems, Rumsfeld said.
“Since no nation threatens China, one must wonder: Why this growing investment? Why these continuing large and expanding arms purchases?” Rumsfeld said in an address to the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Chinese military officials dismissed Rumsfeld’s comments as self-serving.
“The U.S. Department of Defense needs an excuse to maintain its huge military budget and military scale,” said Maj. Gen. Peng Guangqian, a research fellow at the Chinese Military Academy of Sciences.Portraying China as a military threat helps promote the sale of U.S. arms, especially to Taiwan, Peng said.
But American defense analysts say Rumsfeld has some reason to be concerned.
“Three years ago, the Chinese were said to be 20 years behind us. In the last three years, they have gained 10 years,” said John Tkacik, a China policy research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a think tank in Washington. China has been working to develop better battlefield capabilities with unmanned aerial vehicles, improved telecommunications and greater use of satellites, Tkacik said.
“You’re looking at a potential great power competitor that can match us in a lot of those technologies. These are not heavily capital-intensive technologies,” so China won’t need the industrial base or the enormous budgets the U.S. military has to become competitive in some high-tech areas, he said.
And that is why Rice and Bush are adamant about blocking sales of military technology to China.
China buys much of its military hardware from Russia, said Adam Segal, a China scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
China’s shopping list in recent years reportedly has included Sukhoi fighters, Sovremenny-class destroyers armed with supersonic anti-ship missiles, conventional submarines, tanks, artillery, helicopters and radar.
What the Russians can’t supply are advanced electronics, Segal said, are “systems of systems and avionics integration.” There, Israel and the European Union could fill in the gap, he said.
That’s what U.S. officials suspected Israel was doing by making upgrades to Harpy radar-killing drones it sold to China in 1997. Israel did not deliver the upgraded parts.
“We have had some very difficult discussions with the Israelis about this,” Rice said June 16.
In hopes of spurring Israeli cooperation, the Pentagon slapped restrictions on Israeli participation in the Joint Strike Fighter program in mid-June.
Amid the critical rhetoric, former Secretary of State Colin Powell offered a soothing counterpoint. In a June 14 speech in Hong Kong, Powell said China’s military improvements are not a threat to the United States.
To be a threat, China must have the capability to carry out military action and the intention to do so, Powell said. “My analysis in the last four years is that China has no such intention. China wishes to live in peace with its neighbors and the U.S.,” he told the Pacific Basin Economic Council, which promotes business.
