14 DAY TRIAL // Every year, the annual report on China's military power that the Pentagon presents before the U.S. Congress is met with criticism by the Asian country, and every year the US say that they are worried by the advancement level the rival power has achieved. That's the backbone of what has been going on, the meat on the bones is, however, changed every year with various details.
China gets upset because it is portrayed as a war-loving country arming itself, the United States vote a bigger defense budget and so on, there's not much innovation in the way the ball bounces. This year, the big problem presented is the numerous intrusions into computer networks around the world that have originated in China (but who put the US in charge of overviewing the well being of every country's international affairs?).
The Chinese, in response, keep their intentions to themselves, but continuously develop new technologies that could disable its enemies' space technology such as satellites in a conflict, according to the Pentagon report released last week and quoted by Reuters. "I think the biggest thing for people to be concerned about really is the fact that we don't have that kind of strategic understanding of the Chinese intentions," said David Sedney, deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia and the top Pentagon China specialist.
The uncertainty is caused by the string of double digit percentage rises in military spending that the Beijing government has reported over the last decade, and the big scare for the Pentagon is that the numbers might be under-stated. Last March, according to Reuters, China reported a 17.8 percent rise in military spending, up to about $45 billion for 2007. However, US specialists say that a figure closer to reality would be somewhere between $97 billion and $139 billion. Just for a quick comparison, the Bush administration requested some $515.4 billion for the Pentagon, and that is not including the cost of supporting the war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the nuclear weapons programs run by the Department of Energy.