The Pentagon’s new report on China’s military underscores the rapid progress it is making. But what exactly is this build-up for?
On Wednesday afternoon, in post-earthquake Washington, the US Defence Department released the latest edition of its annual report to the US Congress on China’s military power. Since the Chinese military remains opaque about its defence plans and programmes, many international security experts rely heavily on the report’s judgments, notwithstanding its frequent caveats about their limited information concerning these issues – or the objections of Chinese officials that the reporting is misleading.
The latest report offers the balanced assessment that China will need several decades to develop the capacity to project and sustain large high-intensity military operations far from Chinese territory, but it still expects the Chinese armed forces to acquire considerable regionally focused capabilities by 2020. It also estimates that China spent more than $160 billion for its military in 2010, well above China’s official figure, which sounds about right since the Chinese government excludes several categories from the official defence budget.
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