The other way to look at China's military build-up(highlight in
bold).
Rumsfeld ventures into
the Middle Kingdom
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/17/opinion/edsham.php
International Herald Tribune
WASHINGTON U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's two-day stop
in Beijing this week is the first time he has set foot in China
since coming to office. The visit is symbolically important and may
also help to breach some of the growing perceptual chasms in
U.S.-China strategic relations.
The first gulf that needs to be filled is Rumsfeld's own naïveté:
In Singapore in June, he questioned China's military budgets, arms
purchases and deployments given, he said, that it wasn't
threatened. Apparently it never occurred to him that China's
military modernization is premised, in part, on the buildup of U.S.
forces and defense arrangements in the region.
Looking out from Beijing, China sees five U.S. security alliances
with nations on its East Asian periphery; a growing naval presence
in Southeast Asia (particularly Singapore); a dramatic build-up of
naval, air and nuclear forces in Guam and the Pacific; a
strengthened U.S. military relationship with India; and U.S. forces
in several Central Asian republics on China's northwestern
frontiers and in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Then there's Taiwan. Under Rumsfeld, the Pentagon has forged a
range of military assistance and intelligence-sharing arrangements
banned by previous administrations, to say nothing of the
largest-ever arms sales package. Atop a series of critical - even
alarmist - Pentagon reports on China's military, the explicit
addition of Taiwan as a "security concern" to the U.S.-Japan mutual
defense treaty was a further affront.
Given such differences in perceptions, it is very useful for
Rumsfeld to directly engage his counterparts in broad dialogue on
regional security and the nature of military modernization in
China, which is indeed proceeding in a sustained, even
accelerating, fashion. To be sure, his hosts need to be much more
transparent about the scope of their military modernization and
deployments, but in gauging their responses, Rumsfeld should ask
himself several questions:
Why is it is not natural for a continental nation like
China to possess the full range of military capabilities? Why
shouldn't the Chinese navy be expected to possess the capability to
patrol at least several hundred nautical miles out around its
periphery and even to protect sea lanes beyond Asia in order to
ensure maritime trade and energy shipping? Why is it unnatural for
the air force to possess the capability to loiter its fighters over
the East or South China Seas, or to shadow foreign reconnaissance
aircraft that try to spy on its territory?
Why is it unnatural for China to develop a second-strike nuclear
capability or its own military satellites or antisatellite weapons,
or to buy weapons and defense technologies abroad that it cannot
produce domestically? And why is it unnatural for China to prepare
for a range of military contingencies to prevent what it considers
to be part of its sovereign territory (Taiwan) from proclaiming
independence?
Though this may be anathema for many U.S. pundits and politicians,
if Rumsfeld were China's defense secretary would he not seek such
capabilities?
China will inevitably possess a modern military - the only real
questions are when and to what ends will it be put? In some areas
we are already witnessing "modern" near state-of-the-art
capabilities (new generations of guided and ballistic missiles,
fighters, destroyers, submarines, tanks, electronic warfare).
In many other categories, China's military-industrial complex is
making incremental advances that, over time, will close the
technological gaps. Yet, in other areas, the People's Liberation
Army continues to lag considerably behind modern capabilities
(command, control and power projection).
As China's military modernizes, it must be monitored carefully, but
it must also be engaged in dialogue. This is the value in
Rumsfeld's visit.
(David Shambaugh is the director of the China Policy Program at
George Washington University and the author of ''Modernizing
China's Military: Progress, Problems and Prospects.'')
