WITHIN two decades the United States will be forced out of the western Pacific, says a senior Chinese military officer, amid concerns that increasingly militarised great-power rivalry could lead to war.
Senior Colonel Liu Mingfu, at the People’s Liberation Army’s National Defence University, told Fairfax Media this week that American strategic influence would be confined “east of the Pacific midline” as it is displaced by Chinese power throughout east Asia, including Australia.
Colonel Liu’s interpretation of one facet of what the new Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, calls “a new type of great-power relationship” adds to the uncertainty and anxiety surrounding China’s strategic ambitions.
It clashes with comments days earlier by his university colleague, General Zhu Chenghu, who told a conference in the US: “We have no intention of driving the US out of east Asia or the western Pacific.”
Read the full 2 page story at China Defense Mashup