BEIJING, May 16 (Xinhua) -- The release of an annual report by the United States to hype up China's "military threat" will only undermine the strategic mutual trust between the two major countries.
For starters, the United States has no right to "monitor" the military strategy and force development of such a sovereign country as China.
China follows a national defense policy that is defensive in nature. Like any other country in the world, it has every legitimate reason to develop military forces to safeguard its sovereignty and peaceful development.
In the report based on flawed information, the Pentagon "estimates" that China's total military-related spending for 2015 exceeded 180 billion U.S. dollars, saying it seems that China will sustain defense spending growth in the foreseeable future despite its economic growth deceleration.
But the Pentagon failed to notice that Beijing announced its plan in March to raise the 2016 defense budget by only 7.6 percent, the lowest percentage in six years, to about 146 billion dollars in the face of rising economic headwinds and following last year's massive reduction of service people.
The 146 billion dollars is in fact only about a quarter of that of the United States, whose defense budget for the 2017 fiscal year is 582.7 billion dollars. This contrasts the fact that China's GDP is already two thirds of that of the United States.
The great gap between the two countries' defense budgets easily reveals who is more likely to be a "military threat" to the world.
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